Getaway
Release Date: August 30 Oscar Prospects: Bad Now we get into the real cinematic dreck with the releases of the final week in August which, along with the first week in September, is usually the nadir of the year in terms of movie output. Case in point, Getaway, a film about a man who is forced to follow the driving directions of a mysterious entity who have kidnapped his wife (talk about a bad GPS). The film stars two of this year's indie darlings, Ethan Hawke (Before Midnight) and Selena Gomez (Spring Breakers), in a decidedly un-indie film directed by Courtney Solomon, who has thus far directed Dungeons and Dragons (2000) and An American Haunting (2005). The "car genre" of course has had a few classics over the years, the most recent being Tarantino's vastly underrated film Deathproof, but somehow I don't see Getaway becoming the next Bullitt. Part of my skepticism over the film has to do with the fact that beyond the "car genre", the film also belongs to the "doing what someone on the phone is telling me to do" genre. So far, this plot devise has produced such unremarkable films as Phone Booth and The Call, and although some were praiseworthy towards 2012's Compliance (I still haven't seen it), overall, I am not very fond of the genre. Of course, the purpose of this article is to forecast the Academy's reaction to the film, not my own, but I can guess that our taste will likely be simpatico on this one. Getaway will probably be a film the public won't remember in three months time, and if no one among unwashed masses can remember the movie, there is no chance in hell anyone in the Academy will. Possible nominations: None