00:00For those who don't cover movies, January, and occasionally February, is considered a
00:04dump month where a lot of studios release the movies that they don't think too highly
00:08of and won't give that big of a promotional push, especially as it coincides with the
00:12water season, and thus, that's where the thrust of the main promotion will go.
00:16This has led to a reputation of January being the month of bad movies, and I have kind of
00:20the opposite opinion of that.
00:22In fact, I often look forward to seeing what's on offer during the month of January.
00:25Now January is often considered a dump month in terms of quality by a lot of the movie
00:28press, and mostly the American movie press.
00:31This is because they've already seen the big awards movies at screenings, festivals, and
00:34usually in big cities like New York and Los Angeles, where those films have their qualifying
00:38runs for awards.
00:39And so in January, there's not a lot of big important new releases to talk about, but
00:43if you're based in places that aren't cities, or just America in general, it's when the
00:46big awards movies come out, like in the UK.
00:48In 2014, Scott Mendelsohn wrote about this in Forbes, saying,
00:52Yeah, I would argue that such a thing only proves true for those who happen to live in
00:55Los Angeles, New York, or other major cities.
00:57For those who live in what is sometimes insultantly termed flyover country, January is in fact
01:02a deluge of high quality movies.
01:04Thanks to a mix of new releases, which, yes, are often very terrible, Oscar bait finally
01:08reaching true wide release, and some of the best films of the prior year that never made
01:12it to your town, finally dropping on VLD or DVD, January is a bastion of cinematic riches.
01:18For us regular folk, January is when we get all the big Oscar films along with the deluge
01:22of new releases of varying quality. Now, the types of new releases that aren't awards
01:25movies are of a certain calibre, often certain genres like comedy, horror, and occasional action
01:29movie. Now, examples of these genre movies are The Bye Bye Man, The Spy Next Door, and
01:34Book of Eli. Now, the design theory of why these films are dumped in this month is sometimes
01:37due to quality, but I also believe it sometimes has to do with that some movies are hard to
01:41market. Sometimes they're a bit out there for the summer movie season, or it's not as
01:45prestigious for awards season. For example, films like Gerald Carnahan's Meditative Wilderness
01:49Survival Movie for Grey was released in January, and that's a great movie. So are both Dead
01:52of Thieves movies, and those were pretty good, me and Christian Petzold agree. Bad Boys for
01:57Life was 2020's highest grossing film at the US box office that year, but, like, there's
02:01big asterisks there, but still. This current January, at the time of writing and recording,
02:05has films like 28 Years Later, The Bone Temple, one of my most anticipated films of the year,
02:08The Killer Monkey Movie Primate, End of Watch But Vampires, another Addams Family film,
02:13a Silent Hill movie from Christoph Gans, a new Sam Raimi movie, a Charlie XCX movie, and a movie
02:18directed by Markiplier. Those sound interesting, right? Will they be good? I don't know, I haven't
02:22seen them yet, but I definitely have an eye on them. I always look forward to January, not because
02:26it might be a great month for movies, but usually to see what gems and oddities are on offer.
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