The bad news is that you’re going to have to wait longer to bask in the glory that is Darren Aronofsky’s The Fountain, the best movie of this year, hands down. The good news is that the film has been moved from a wasteland October release date to a prime November 22 – the movie is getting a Thanksgiving berth and is being placed in prime Oscar territory. I imagine that this is solely because of my review of the film, where I point out that Hugh Jackman seems a shoo-in for a Best Actor nomination.
That means The Fountain goes from being up against The Grudge 2 and the probably similarly targeted Sunshine to taking on Denzel in Déjà Vu and week 2 of the new Bond film. I don’t know how the film will perform – while I love the shit out of it I have taken to truly assuming the American public has no taste when it comes to movies – but the new spot indicates a hearty vote of support from Warner Bros. And with a budget of just 35 million, if The Fountain connects it has the possibility of being that rarest of things this year: a profitable Warner film.
By the way, a number of other people have now seen this film, and their reactions broke down pretty much the way I expected. The smart people loved it while the people with more mainstream taste were a little baffled. It’ll be interesting to see if this dichotomy continues when the film plays Fantastic Fest and Toronto.