With Oscar night just a few weeks away, fans in Lubbock have to just cross their fingers and hope that some of the nominated movies make it to screens here. No luck this weekend. While we get another copy of "Hugo" in 3D, the year's best film to my mind, we're still waiting on so many others.
Here's the list, and it doesn't even include documentaries, which would just be asking for the moon, I suppose:
Albert Nobbs
Anonymous
A Better Life
A Separation
A Cat in Paris
Bullhead
Chico & Rita
Footnote
In Darkness
W.E.
There are also a number of films that we saw endless trailers for recently that never made it here:
A Dangerous Method
Coriolanus
In the Land of Milk and Honey
Melancholia
Margaret
We Need to Talk About Kevin
And that's just scratching the surface.
Understand: this isn't the fault of local theater managers. I know management at both Cinemark Movies 16 and Tinseltown ask for these movies to play on local screens, and between the two theaters we certainly have room for them. Sorry, but we just don't need that many screens of "Contraband."
The problem is the studios don't make these smaller films widely available. Some films only open in the big markets like New York, LA, Chicago, Dallas, etc. So it's actually kind of cruel to show us trailers for something that may in fact never play in a theater near us. "Coming Soon," indeed. I've seen trailers for "Albert Nobbs" and "A Separation" numerous times in Lubbock for weeks now. Where are they? With Oscar nominations announced, how much more buzz do these movies need to build to make it into wide release?
It's endlessly frustrating because I think that if moviegoers in Lubbock were used to these movies making it here, they'd go see them. But occasionally, a movie like "The Tree of Life" will open quietly, spend a week here, and then get yanked. Meantime, critics nationwide are praising it as one of the best movies of the year - and have been for weeks - and a Lubbock moviegoer gets the hankering to see it and can't.
Why can't studios give hard release dates for these indies like they do with major releases? I knew "Red Tails" was coming out January 20th back in September.
Last year was a tough one for the box office. Why not give us more options and quit hiding these movies from us?
