My Rant about Limited Releases

It's that time of year again-- the pre-holiday, pre-award show season when great movies flood the theaters. Magazines are starting to issue lists of Golden Globe and Oscar worthy movies and performances. This buzz can work the avid movie fan into a state of drooling anticipation. Calanders get marked, the last of the summer/fall floods of flat, trite, and dry pop movies are patiently tolerated, and expectations mount, but if you don't live in LA, NY, or Chicago the odds are that many of these movies so anticipated will not becoming to a theater near you. It's the marketing scheme of the limited release. The idea that independent or "artsy" films require a tiered release so that films have time to build word of mouth to insure the bottom line of the studio. This system of limited release has been the bane of my existence. Two weeks in a row I let myself get amped up for a film only to find, on release-day-Friday, that the film would only see a limited release and not anywhere near me. As a result, I find myself asking is this really a necessary scheme to keep studios in business or is a sad commentary on the culture of film goers in America?

I understand that film studios, though often portrayed as evil and overly concerned with their bottom line, are in fact business entities that must make money to continue making movies. With the case of small independent movies, the system of the tiered release is, though frustrating, at least understandable. It is movies such as Up in the Air which stars George Clooney and has the budget, stars, and buzz to support an immediate wide release that I find so frustrating. Publicity for Up in the Air inundated the airwaves flaunting a release date of December 4th, but the release date was limited--a fact which was not publicized. With the case of this movie it is clear that the platform release was designed to draw out buzz and keep the movie fresh on the tongues of movie goers--and in the minds of award voters--into the new year. Either that or any movie that is not Transformers or New Moon is considered to be an artsy flick that needs such a limited release. To bolster my point, the new Disney Princess film--The Pincess and the Frog--which has been vaunted and long awaited, only saw a limited release over Thanksgiving--a traditional weekend of kids and family movies. Was the Disney powerhouse really that afraid of the power of New Moon?

However, it is not the wait of a few extra weeks to see a film that is problem. It is the fact that many of these substantive films will not make it to many theaters for months, if they make it all. (500) Days of Summer took months to make it to many theaters in the middle of the country and then only ran for a couple of weeks. The Reader, Kate Winslet's Oscar winning film, did not see anything resembling a wide release until the weeks running up to the Oscar ceremony and correspondingly the weeks running up to the DVD release--and even then the movie did not make it beyond the biggest cities in the nation.

Whether it is a widely publicized release date that is actually only a limited release--such as was the case with the December 4th limited release of Up in the Air, which does have a scheduled wide release on December 25th--or a movie getting rave reviews and Oscar buzz--such as A Single Man, An Education, The Road, and countless others, which will see wide releases only if the box office offers unexpected returns or they start racking up awards--the limited release is the frustration of many avid movie lovers and cinema goers during the pre-Oscar movie season.