New Year’s Movie Preview: “Case 39″ and “The White Ribbon” (VIDEO)

By Jennifer Hudock on December 30th, 2009

With the brand new year falling on a Friday, the big wigs probably figured theatres wouldn’t do a lot of business for the holiday. Most people will be out at clubs or parties, or at home ringing in 2010 with Dick Clark and his rockin’ party in Times Square. If you’re all partied out, and looking for a quiet night at the theatre, don’t forget you can always catch that movie you missed last weekend, or you can check out one of the two films scheduled to drop this weekend.

“The White Ribbon” (R) will begin playing in select New York and Los Angeles theatres on Wednesday, December 30. Michael Haneke’s black and white film is a disturbing exploration of the darkness and malice that grip a small German town in the days preceding World War I. A series of disturbing events torment the town, from mysterious deaths and disappearances to mutilations and crop failures, and the only ray of hope is a budding romance between the film’s narrator, a school teacher and a young woman in the town. While this doesn’t sound like it will be particularly uplifting, you know what they say about historical resonance. Hindsight is 20/20, and as Haneke looks back on an era filled with hatred and sorrow, perhaps kicking off the year with a lesson in human compassion will inspire a little kindness in this film’s viewers.

Renee Zellweger, Kerry O’Malley and Callum Keith Rennie star in thriller, “Case 39” (R), scheduled to hit theatres on New Year’s Day. When a social worker gets involved in the saving of a young girl who appears to be suffering abuse at the hands of her parents, events unravel that suggest the girl is not so innocent as she seems. After taking the girl into her own home, the social worker discovers that when Lily’s parents said, “People die around her,” she wasn’t kidding. First of all, I love a good thriller, and the little girl who plays Lily was incredibly creepy in the film adaptation of “Silent Hill.” On the other hand, I never need an excuse to see a movie with Callumn Keith Rennie in it, so I’ll definitely be checking this out.

Pickings are slim this weekend, but there are still a lot of great movies that have come out over the last two weeks, like “Sherlock Holmes,” “Avatar” and “The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus.” There are also a handful of promising prospects set to release January 8, 2010, so be sure to tune in next week for the weekend movie update!