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Vulture’s Five Least Anticipated Films of the Fall

Photo: Columbia Pictures
Photo: Columbia Pictures

Yesterday, we brought you a list of our 50 most anticipated films of fall. There were so many promising movies on it! This autumn looks to be a real moviegoing delight. And yet, and yet … it can’t all be good news, now can it? No, it cannot. Proportionally speaking, the fall is still looking swell, but, without further ado, the five movies of the season we are least looking forward to. (Watch out for Adam Sandler and piranhas.)

Out of all the movies on this list, Machine Gun Preacher is probably aiming the highest. It wants to be good! And yet this (based on a true) story about Gerard Butler saving black people is gonna be a tricky thing to sell in the wake of the controversy kicked up by The Help. And we’ve been burned by helmer Marc Forster before. Like, when the trailer says, “From the acclaimed director of The Kite Runner”? The Kite Runner was not acclaimed; it was not very good. Photo: Phil Bray/? 2011 MGP Productions, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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@font-face { font-family: “Cambria”; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: “Times New Roman”; }a:link, span.MsoHyperlink { color: blue; text-decoration: underline; }a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed { color: purple; text-decoration: underline; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; } The irritating Chipmunks franchise returns, as annoying and helium-voiced as ever, but now with Lady Gaga jokes. We would be more Zen about the chipmunks’ existence — how many times can you get worked up over the same thing, no matter how horrible? — if it wasn’t inspiring other films (ahem, The Smurfs) and likely to make so much damn money (the first two films have grossed $200 million each). 
This all-over-the-place drug melodrama starring Thomas Jane, Jeremy Piven, and Rob Lowe spurred walkouts galore at its Sundance premiere. It’s over-the-top and completely nutty, yet not quite so-bad-it’s-good … more like, so-bad-it’s-bad-but-the-jokes-afterwards-will-be-good.
Adam Sandler goes where Martin Lawrence, Eddie Murphy, and Tyler Perry have gone before in this comedy about a man whose overbearing, identical sister comes to stay with his family, with Sandler playing both siblings. If you can stand bad jokes about what an unattractive woman Sandler makes, you probably won’t be able to stand the movie’s heartwarming message about learning to love your crazy family, and vice versa.@font-face { font-family: “Cambria”; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: “Times New Roman”; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }
Vulture’s Five Least Anticipated Films of the Fall