Dark Skies: Last weekend, all the studios got super-excited about the prospect of mass moviegoing and put out a major action sequel, a name-brand romance, a computer-animated family movie, and a would-be fantasy franchise starter all at once. This weekend, everyone beats a hasty retreat—or just assumes, I guess, that
A Good Day to Die Hard and
Safe Haven and Oscar nominees will continue to dominate the box office. This weekend's wide releases are pure programmers, the kind of thing you'd expect to find in mid-January. This is because the second half of February is secretly the worst time of year for movies, possibly because everyone is distracted on last-minute Oscar advertising? I'm not sure. All I know is that the most interesting-looking movie out this weekend is from the writer-director behind
Legion and
Priest, only it co-stars Josh Hamilton instead of Paul Bettany. This is actually kind of awesome, because this is
Kicking and Screaming star Hamilton's highest-profile role in a solid decade-plus, much higher-profile than, for example, his appearance as "hey is that Josh Hamilton?!" in
Margaret, and "wait, Josh Hamilton is in this?!" in
J. Edgar. He's matched with a fellow purveyor of 90s(ish) angst; current FX darling Keri Russell plays his wife in an alien-horror-thriller thing, and how much do you want to bet any conversations Russell has to promote this movie will be steered toward
The Americans right quick? Unfortunately,
Dark Skies also costars the insufferable little bastard from
Real Steel. I'm pretty sure if this movie had come out any other weekend this year, I would not have seen it; I'm also pretty sure I'll wind up seeing this one on Friday night.
