By Jason Adams, MyNewPlaidPants

The premise to Anna Faris’ new comedy What’s Your Number? was surely inspired by a billion insipid Marie Claire articles – how many guys have you slept with and what does that say about you? – but hopefully Faris will shine her effervescence upon it and make it something worthwhile, because we love her and want her to do well. I wish she’d push herself towards the edgier Observe & Report side of the spectrum more than The House Bunny end (although as far as guilty pleasures go, I don’t feel all that guilty about liking Bunny a whole lot thanks to Faris and Emma Stone). Or dare I dare ask her to make more movies like Smiley Face? Anyway like Bridesmaids she seems actively intent on being part of disassembling the male-led broad comedy marketplace one wacky step at a time. These are movies that could’ve been simple straightforward rom-coms in somebody else’s hands, but elbow the “rom-” half right in the throat. It’s not really about catching the man, in the end. At least I what I hope, and expect, from her. With a half-naked Chris Evans wandering about that might be tough, though. Somebody catch that man! And the film’s stuffed to the gills with more sexy menfolk – Joel McHale, Chris Pratt, Andy Samberg, Zackary Quinto, Mike Vogel, Oliver Jackson-Cohen, Martin Freeman. Plus there’s Ari Graynor, so amazing as the drunk best friend in Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, playing Anna’s sister about to get married. Sounds good to me, dammit.

I don’t get to pull out this word often enough anymore, so let’s use it right up front – 50/50 is a DRAMEDY about a dude – Joe Gordon-Levitt – that gets the cancer and another dude – Seth Rogen, who apparently can’t get enough cancer in his comedies – who is the first dude’s friend, and how all these dudes deal. With the cancer. Dramedy! I love that word. Anyway that’s what this movie is. A drama, plus a comedy, plus the cancer, oh my.

Apparently the original version of Dream House out of Hong Kong is pretty dang good, I hear, but that hasn’t stopped me from rolling my eyes until they’ve rolled right out of my head and out the door and under a bush at the trailers for this here Americanized remake that seem to give the whole game away as to what’s going on. But still, it’s got quite the cast of actors with Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz (who met and boinked and married with this film) and Naomi Watts classing up the joint. Craig and Weisz star as marrieds in a possibly haunted house, or are they the haunters? Naomi Watts in disheveled mode is their weirdo next-door neighbor. If Shining-esque little girls still frighten you then maybe this’ll do it for you.

It’s been like fifty years since Kenneth Lonergan’s You Can Count On Me came out and made household names out of Mark Ruffalo and Laura Linney. Well, household names in my house anyway. If they’re not household names in your house then maybe you need to do some hard thinking about the things you talk about in your house. Lonergan’s follow-up film Margaret, which stars Anna Paquin and Ruffalo again, has been finished for a few years now but due to all kinds of ridiculous backstage wrangling it’s only coming out in limited release now. That sort of delay can attach a stink to a project, but from what I hear Margaret is actually a solid sophomore effort. Watching the trailer all I can think is how weird it is to see Paquin as somebody that’s not Soooookeh.

And also in limited release is Take Shelter, which give or take some Anna Faris silliness is the film I’m most looking forward to from this batch. I’m a big Michael Shannon proponent, and this movie reunites him with his Shotgun Stories director Jeff Nichols, and that was a beautiful little film with a beautiful little performance from Shannon. Shelter tells the story of a man possibly losing his marbles with apocalyptic visions, so it pretty much hits Shannon’s sweet spot right in the center. Jessica Chastain, every man’s muse this year, plays his wife.

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