This week’s opening pictures are dominated by the comics-based Watchmen. I’m planning to attend tonight’s screening of the picture, which reunites Little Children co-stars Patrick Wilson and Jackie Earle Haley, and I’ve been told by a reliable source who’s seen it that Watchmen is an extremely violent movie that goes against the comic book, which this person ranks as having the best comics characters. I must say that I hated 300—aptly described as history hijacked by horror—and I cringe at what I call blood porn, which I think takes a serious toll on a person’s capacity for joy. Also, it’s not a good sign that Watchmen’s writer, Alan Moore, has disavowed any connection with this movie, which apparently takes place in an alternate reality in which Richard Nixon is president for four terms. On the other hand, I thoroughly appreciate the comics-based V for Vendetta and Watchmen has a strong cast.
I saw the vapid and ridiculous Tyler Perry’s Madea Goes to Jail and Viola Davis (Nights in Rodanthe, Doubt) is the best thing about it. This striking, strong woman is on a roll with three intense recent performances—here as a preacher who helps drug addicts and prostitutes by mixing Christianity with selfishness—and the movie’s completely silly, which is probably why it’s number one at the box office. Madea Goes to Jail is my first of these Southern-fried Madea movies, centered on Christian filmmaker Tyler Perry’s title character in drag, and its broad-based regional and cultural humor is a hit with black audiences. Disney’s Christian boy band, the overproduced and oversold Jonas Brothers, starring in their first movie, are no match for a black man in drag.
