“If I get pulled Before I Wake...”

So here’s a spooky horror movie mystery: whatever happened to Before I Wake, a film Wikipedia says is opening today and which features an adorable moppet whose dreams manifest in reality? It seems to have been replaced by The Disappointments Room, which goes Before I Wake one better by bringing in a haunted house to go with its adorable moppet.

Is The Disappointments Room where Before I Wake was sent after some awful test screenings? As recently as August 25, it was right there on my release schedule (unlike The Disappointments Room, which still isn’t on there). Strange. At any rate, neither film was screened for critics, which also goes for When the Bough Breaks.

Meanwhile, The Wild Life did screen, though it probably shouldn’t have. Parents looking for animated entertainment should go to Kubo and The Two Strings instead. We’ll even get a review up today!

Moving on to what we’ve reviewed already: there must have been a blowout on film stars at Big Lots!, because Scott bestowed four of them on two separate films this week: the meditation on American heroism that is Clint Eastwood’s Sully and the real-estate-centered family drama Little Men. (I got to jump in on Sully, which was fun.) Small wonder he had only one left over for the broken-bodies/mangled hearts musings of My King.

As for me: as a guy who once got three chapters into a comic novel that incorporated San Diego’s own RealDoll sex doll factory and once pitched a rotoscope-animated cartoon for grownups to some money people (they liked the pilot script, but nothing came of it, of course), I was probably disposed to enjoy Zoom more than most. So consider yourself forewarned. And as a failed artist who is overly preoccupied with mortality, I was probably also disposed to enjoy Mia Madre more than most. More forewarning!

In other news, The Lot Liberty Station is having a little Latino film fest this weekend. If nothing else, it provides you with another opportunity to see Scott’s beloved Mr. Pig!