Why Late August/September Movies Suck So Hard, And 9 That Might Not

By Rebecca Pahle | Lists | August 25, 2015 |

By Rebecca Pahle | Lists | August 25, 2015 |

This past weekend, three new movies came out in wide release: Sinister 2, American Ultra and Hitman: Agent 47. All of them, on balance, got poor reviews. All of them made less money than expected, which wasn’t even all that much money in the first place.

Readers: WELCOME TO HELL.

Around this time of year is when major studio releases begin to—to use proper entertainment journo parlance—suck balls. It happened gradually this year, with Fantastic Four, the most meh of the summer’s superhero movies, farting its way into theaters two weeks ago, followed a week later by Straight Outta Compton, which actually made more money than expected. A lot more. Think Hollywood will wise up and start putting out movies with more diverse casts, if only from a Machiavellian sense of practicality? Nah. Me neither.

Anyway. The reason late August-through-September sucks is that summer’s over and the kids are back in school, but studios’ major awards season boners don’t start really popping until October, which is when the more “prestige”-y movies start to come out. Between October and December, if you listen very, very carefully, you can the riotous clanking sound of Harvey Weinstein humping the mailbox of every Academy member in the greater LA area.

Hollywood’s love of hardware is why January sucks, too—the previous year’s period of Oscar eligibility is up, but no one will remember January movies when it comes time to nominate for this year, and in general audiences are still catching up on Christmas releases anyway.

September and January—and, to a lesser extent, February and March—are notorious for being dumping grounds, months where studios release shit that they know won’t do well, but the movie’s in the can and they have to put it out sometime, so whatever. (See: Dragon Blade, September 4th). That “rule” has started to change, as studios have gradually begun to spread out their more promising releases beyond the summer and award season blocks.

For example: January, as mentioned, tends to be one of the worst months for new movies, but The Weinstein Company put out Paddington then, and it did well financially ($259.5 million worldwide against an estimated budget of $55 million) and surprised critics by being a legit good movie instead of the direct-to-VOD, Uncanny Valley horror show many were expecting. Paramount’s The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water and Disney’s Cinderella both raked it in despite being released in February and March, respectively. In any other year, those might have been summer movies, but their studios took a chance and moved them into weekends with less competition, and it worked out. And The Grand Budapest Hotel picked up a ton of Oscar nominations despite being released in March, which is highly unusual, because Academy voters tend to have the attention span of lemmings.

Still, for all that studios’ movie release calendars are starting to look more even across the board… this time of year still blows. Upcoming major studio releases include Zac Efron, DJ; Pierce Brosnan: Still in Things!; Generic Rebootquel #387; That One That Isn’t The Hunger Games; Oh, Robert De Niro, No; and Adam Sandler Still Makes More Money from One Movie Than You Do in Your Entire Life.

There is, however, a solution: Indies. The good movies will be fewer and farther between over the next six weeks or so, but they’ll still be out there. For those lucky enough to be near an indie movie theatre, we recommend:

Z for Zachariah (August 28)

Coming Home (September 9)

Goodnight Mommy (September 11)

99 Homes (September 25)

Pawn Sacrifice (September 16)

Black Mass (September 18)

Everest (September 25)

The Keeping Room (September 25)

The Walk (September 30)

Rebecca (@RebeccaPahle) is a little freaked out by how much Charlotte Le Bon—to the right of JGL in that The Walk YouTube thumbnail—looks like a young Winona Ryder.