No mad rush to the cinema

With a spate of new releases opening in Australia on Boxing Day, and then every Thursday throughout the month of January, I’m usually racing to the cinema to keep up with awards nominees that had their American debuts in November and December.

Not this year. In fact, after last night’s viewing of The Favourite, I may only have one more must-see theatrical viewing before I publish my 2018 year-end list on January 22^nd.

And that doesn’t open for ten more days. And given that it is has made very few critics year-end lists, it’s debatable whether Mary Queen of Scots qualifies as “must-see viewing” anyway.

I’ll be going to the theater at least twice more, but that’s only because I’m going to an advanced critics screening of Green Book this Thursday morning, when I’m working only the second half of the day. Green Book doesn’t open here until two days after my deadline, so that’s a good get. However, it also has not made many year-end lists despite some early buzz.

A couple well-received films (such as If Beale Street Could Talk) will elude me as they usually do, but not as many as in most years.

In fact, the only movies opening this Thursday, one of two new release dates before my deadline, are the Mark Wahlberg comedy Instant Family, which doesn’t feel like essential viewing, and two documentaries, one about the musician M.I.A. and one about … dogs.

A few movies that once seemed like they had awards ambitions, but have gone largely unmentioned in critics list, open in late January or early February, like The Hate U Give, The Frontrunner, The Mule and On the Basis of Sex. But they won’t be difficult losses, and I’m already ranking a documentary about Ruth Bader Ginsburg this year anyway.

So … good?

I suppose, though I do kind of enjoy increasing my theatrical viewings to approximately every three nights at this time of year, from approximately every five. Given how I was falling asleep by the end of The Favourite last night, despite caffeine and sugar stimulants, maybe all I can handle at the moment is home viewings anyway.

And of course this does give me the time to catch up with some movies I need to see at home. But they aren’t feeling quite as urgent this year either. I also have a couple movies I’d like to re-watch, but they are also feeling sort of optional.

Maybe year-end exhaustion has set in earlier this year than in the past. Who knows.

I can credit part of it to having seen three movies while I was on vacation last week, rather than the usual one. Where in the past I might have only caught Ralph Breaks the Internet on that trip, this year we also saw Holmes & Watson and Mary Poppins Returns. I was fully satisfied with having gotten in the first two on our New Year’s Eve trip to the drive-in, and it was actually my wife’s suggestion to take the kids to the third on our transition day Thursday, when we went from the beach house we’d been renting for the previous five nights to staying with friends for two more.

If you read my previous post, which vowed to start producing more interesting content following the tenth anniversary of the blog, and are wondering why I’m now writing this post, the kind of “filler post” I swore off … well, let’s just say that old habits die hard. Also, I did want to put up some new comment so I didn’t leave my “I’m struggling for content” post as the one out there dying on the vine.

Maybe without the mad rush I can start brainstorming this new blog content I keep talking about?