This Week In Tickets: 21 January 2013 - 27 January 2013

I've been seeing a whole bunch of people talking about the pace at which they're seeing movies to start the year, and I must admit that I am not keeping up a comparable pace:



Just a couple of movies seen this week: Hansel & Gretel: Witch Hunters on Friday and Parker on Saturday. Truth be told, there wasn't a whole lot playing before they opened that I was excited to see even if the commute didn't tend to work out as too late or too early depending on the theater. There was Amour, but it's kind of hard to psych oneself up to see Michael Haneke's latest crushing opus.

I wound up writing eFilmCritic reviews for both, likely in part because the guy who normally covers the new releases, Peter Sobczynski, is one of a number of Chicago critics who is helping Roger Ebert out while he's at reduced capacity. So, while he's doing work for the Sun-Times, there's a hole to be filled at EFC (which may be getting a few more visitors with one of its main guys having a higher profile). That led to mornings and early afternoons the next day spent writing, followed by... well, spending a few hours reading comics. The French sci-fi I read Sunday was particularly fun.

I was going to see one more, but Sunday night was kind of a mess. I kind of knew I was cutting my attempt to see Barbara close, at least by the times listed on the phone's bus-tracker app, and as I stood waiting and rode on the bus, it slipped until "five minutes to spare" became "ten minutes late", which doesn't get you into one of the small screening rooms even if you're inclined to miss the first few minutes. So, onto the T to head downtown, where I figure I'll use MoviePass to see Movie 43, but the universe appeared to have pretty strong ideas on that: First, the mobile site wouldn't confirm my location, forcing a call to customer service. Then the kiosks were having connection issues with the credit card company, then one wouldn't authorize payment from the card, prompting another call to customer service. Then I tried the box office, where the person manning it said they'd been having trouble with cards all day, then no authorization, then when I call customer service, the system appears to be flooded or down, so... Well, back home. From the reviews, I was done a favor. And since I'm not likely to have a lot of time this week to catch it again, I'll never know how big a favor.