Even more movies not screened for critics!

The studios are snubbing the critics again! But not consistently, it seems. The other day, Jeffrey Wells wrote:

This coming Friday is something like a Labor Day clearance sale with The Wicker Man, Crank, and Idiocracy — all opening on 9.1 — not screening for the press, and in the case of Lassie, barely screening for the press. (Nobody cares one way or the other.)

Like a number of other late-summer horror movies, The Wicker Man did have a preview screening very late on the evening before its release date — late enough so that the critics wouldn’t be able to start writing their reviews until after midnight, i.e. until the release date itself. So I think it’s fair to say that that film was not screened for critics “in advance”. But at least the studio invited us to the so-close-to-the-wire-it’s-only-barely-a-preview.

As for the others, Idiocracy and Lassie don’t appear to be opening in Canada at all — at least not this week — so I’m not surprised I haven’t heard of any screenings for them. And Crank actually was screened for the Vancouver media over a week ago, though I missed that screening — so I guess that’s another example of the Canadian and American distributors following different paths.

BTW, the image above is from The Wicker Man. I caught the film tonight, but I am still waiting for my turn to borrow the library copy of the 1973 original, and I don’t think I can comment on the new film until I’ve seen the old one. At any rate, I’d rather not.