No Thursday Movie Picks this week

This being Thursday, it's normally time for another edition of Thursday Movie Picks, the blogathon run by Wandering Through the Shelves. And indeed, there is a theme this week. But it's "2019 releases". I had thought it was movies with memorable scores, but that's next week. And to be honest, I can't in good faith do an entry for this theme, because I realize I've only seen one 2019 release. This isn't just because I write a classic movie blog and watch a boatload of old movies on DVDs and my DVR.

I finally went back to the movie theater for the first time in about 3-1/2 years recently, in order to watch 1917, and at some point I'll get around to doing a full review of it, probably in conjunction with the Oscars since the movie was nominated for a boatload of the more technical awards. Part of the reason I didn't go for a while is that the movie theater in our dead mall closed down for several months starting in the summer of 2018, and part because actually going to the theater isn't really conducive with my schedule. I work the early shift, so seeing a movie in prime time isn't my favorite thing with my normally relatively early bed time. That and I don't want to pay prime time prices. And it's the rare occasion that I don't have other stuff planned for my days off that I'd go see a matinee (which is still $9).

Having pointed that out, I will make one other comment, which was about the coming attraction trailers. Apparently Harrison Ford is starring in a version of Call of the Wild that looked like it was way to influenced by CGI. The more interesting trailer, however, was for a movie called The Invisible Man which is coming out at the end of February.

This movie is unrelated to the Claude Rains classic which was based on the H.G. Wells story. Instead, as I watched the trailer, my immediate thought was of Sleeping With the Enemy, combined with.... Well, my first thought was Topper, but then I figured that Blithe Spirit might be more appropriate, which is probably being a bit mean to the movie.

The basic plot is that a woman (Elisabeth Moss) has an abusive, controlling husband (hence the obvious similarity to Sleeping With the Enemy) who kills himself, and sets a clause in his will that she inherits only if she's not declared mentally ill. Of course, it turns out that the husband didn't kill himself, but figured out some way to make himself invisible (standard disclaimer about the physics violations necessary to make the plot of any "invisible person" movie work) so that he can harass her unseen and get her committed, thus losing the inheritance.

Now, Gaslight isn't appropriate here because the wife seems to realize fairly early on that the husband is behind everything that's going on and he must still be alive despite the evidence to the contrary. Further, I really needed to think of a comedy for the mash-up, because the premise is one that, while interesting, also has the potential to go hilariously wrong, something which happens at times with Sleeping With the Enemy.

I don't know that I'll be dropping the nine bucks on The Invisible Man, however.