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It's nearly fall! That magical time of year when the air gets crisper, the leaves change color, and Hollywood conspires with the pharmaceutical industry to win Oscars and sell craploads of Paxil. Last year gave us awards-quality glumfests like There Will Be Blood, Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, and In the Valley of Elah. It also gave us a severe case of clinical depression. Will we survive 2008? Or will this year's crop of movies be even more dour than last year's? After the jump, we break it down weekend by weekend.
WEEKEND 1 (Sept. 5)
2008: Bangkok Dangerous, Ping Pong Playa
2007: 3:10 to Yuma, The Brothers Solomon, Shoot 'Em Up
Studios program this first workweek in September as if it's soundless August, and this yr is no exception. It's depressing that most of these movies exist, merely 2008 and 2007 seem mostly the same. Toss-up.
WEEKEND 2 (Sept. 12)
2008: Burn After Reading, Righteous Kill, Towelhead, Tyler Perry's The Family That Preys, The Women
2007: Across the Universe, The Brave One, Eastern Promises, In the Valley of Elah
Tyler Perry's moving-picture show should be uplifting, Burn After Reading should be laugh-filled, and Righteous Kill should be laughable. It's true that Towelhead's taradiddle of a young girl's sexual misuse and The Women's portrayal of Meg Ryan's New Old Face will be somewhat glum, but zippo can equate to 2007's one-two gut-punch of Eastern Promises and In the Valley of Elah. Edge: 2007.
WEEKEND 3 (Sept. 19)
2008: The Duchess, Ghost Town, Lakeview Terrace
2007: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, The Jane Austen Book Club, Into the Wild
We're not sure what will be more tragic in 2008: Keira Knightley's brassica napus in The Duchess, Neil LaBute's misanthropy in Lakeview Terrace, or Ricky Gervais's gritting his teeth through mainstream comedy Ghost Town. Edge: 2008.
WEEKEND 4 (Sept. 26)
2008: Blindness, Choke, Eagle Eye, Miracle at St. Anna
2007: The Darjeeling Limited, The Game Plan, The Kingdom, Lust, Caution
What does it aver that a movie called Choke power be the most pollyannaish of 2008's entries? Edge: 2008.
WEEKEND 5 (Oct. 3)
2008: Beverly Hills Chihuahua, How to Lose Friends & Alienate People, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist, What Just Happened
2007: Lake of Fire, The Heartbreak Kid, Michael Clayton
2008's slate looks downright pollyannaish, but we have a hunch that Beverly Hills Chihuahua is going to inspire a number of murder-suicides. Edge: 2008.
WEEKEND 6 (Oct. 10)
2008: Body of Lies, Happy-Go-Lucky, RocknRolla
2007: Control, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Lars and the Real Girl, We Own the Night
2007's We Own the Night was about the most downbeat thriller ever, but Body of Lies looks just as serious. And we don't cerebrate anything in 2007's slate can compete with the delight sure to come from Mike Leigh's Happy-Go-Lucky, described by its possess director as "an anti-miserablist film." Good enough for us! Edge: 2007.
WEEKEND 7 (Oct. 17)
2008: Flash of Genius, The Secret Life of Bees, Sex Drive, W.
2007: Gone Baby Gone, Rendition, Reservation Road, Things We Lost in the Fire
2008 had no probability, even ahead the unwilled comedy of W. was scheduled for this date, since the equivalent weekend in 2007 has been certified by the American Psychiatric Association as the most cheerless movie weekend in history. Seriously: The only cheerful movie to come out on this weekend last year was called Wristcutters: A Love Story. Edge: 2007.
WEEKEND 8 (Oct. 24)
2008: Changeling, High School Musical 3, Saw V, Synecdoche, New York
2007: Before the Devil Knows You're Dead, Dan in Real Life, Saw IV
Clint Eastwood's babynapping drama Changeling looks gloomier than anything on this weekend's 2007 list, and that includes not only Before the Devil merely also Saw IV. Edge: 2008.
WEEKEND 9 (Oct. 31)
2008: The Haunting of Molly Hartley, Zach and Miri Make a Porno
2007: American Gangster, Bee Movie
Nothing specially depressing this weekend, especially in 2008, when it conflicts with Halloween, making the waiver calendar a Hollywood burial ground. Toss-up.
WEEKEND 10 (Nov. 7)
2008: Madagascar 2, Quantum of Solace
2007: Fred Claus, Lions for Lambs, No Country for Old Men
We're gonna pitch this coin. Call it. What are you calling it for? Your life. Edge: 2007.
WEEKEND 11 (Nov. 14)
2008: Australia, The Road
2007: Beowulf, Margot at the Wedding, Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium, Redacted, Southland Tales
2008 scores a clear victory, with the help of the bleakest movie of all time made, a movie so horrifying it could only be guesswork in Pittsburgh: The Road, the version of Cormac McCarthy's novel which posits that after the revelation of Saint John the Divine, things get even worse. Edge: 2008.
WEEKEND 12 (Nov. 21)
2008: The Soloist, Twilight
2007: Enchanted, I'm Not There, The Mist, Starting Out in the Evening
Such was the exuberance of Enchanted that it made the entire weekend sunny for all America � especially because no one went to examine any of those other movies. That 2008's big-budget entry on this date is a vampire romance suggests 2008 might be a little darker. Edge: 2008.
WEEKEND 13 (Nov. 26/Thanksgiving)
2008: Bolt, Four Christmases, Milk
2007: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly, The Savages
Despite the downer power of 2008's Milk, the biopic of beloved yet assassinated San Francisco politician Harvey Milk, the combined quadriplegia/dysfunction of Diving Bell and Savages takes the crown. Edge: 2007.
WEEKEND 14 (Dec. 5)
2008: Frost/Nixon
2007: Atonement, The Golden Compass, Grace Is Gone, Juno
Frost/Nixon won't be cheerless, although it might be boring. Atonement and The Golden Compass, alas, were both. Edge: 2007.
WEEKEND 15 (Dec. 12)
2008: The Day the Earth Stood Still, Defiance, Doubt, Seven Pounds
2007: Alvin and the Chipmunks, I Am Legend, The Kite Runner
Wow! Keanu Reeves warning of environmental catastrophe? Daniel Craig as a World War II Jew? Philip Seymour Hoffman as a priest who crataegus laevigata have abused a child? Will Smith as a suicidal IRS agent? What a mixed bag of sullen delights! Edge: 2008.
WEEKEND 16 (Dec. 19)
2008: The Tale of Desperaux, Yes Man
2007: Charlie Wilson's War, Sweeney Todd, Walk Hard
Christmas approaches on this, often the most debonair movie weekend of Oscar season. So this year's animated mouse tale Desperaux and Jim Carrey comedy Yes Man can't contend with the meat pies and hollow eyes of last year's Sweeney Todd. Edge: 2007.
WEEKEND 17 (Dec. 25/Christmas)
2008: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Marley & Me, Revolutionary Road, The Spirit, Valkyrie
2007: The Bucket List, The Great Debaters, The Orphanage, Persepolis, There Will Be Blood
With the score 7-7 on our Vulture Depression Face-off, it all comes down to this last crowded holiday weekend. One sappy heart-warmer? Check (Marley, Bucket). One overlong, electrifying but drear maybe-masterpiece? Check (Benjamin Button, Blood). But 2007 never had Revolutionary Road, a movie based on a novel that makes Mad Men's vista of the fifties look like Ozzie & Harriet. 2007 ne'er had The Spirit, the movie that looks so bad it might vote down the superhero genre dead. And it never had Nazi Tom Cruise weakness to kill Hitler. Edge: 2008.
Final tally: 2008: 8, 2007: 7. It's been courteous knowin' ya!
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