Dark times, Harry, for crime films.

What's that? Ray Winstone and Martin Scorsese are working together? Reuniting Winstone with Sexy Beast's Ben Kingsley? With Christopher Lee and Jude Law? Wow, that has the making of a terrific gangster film!

I wonder what IMDB says about the plot...

"The Invention of Hugo Cabret" concerns a 12-year-old orphan who lives in the walls of a Paris train station in 1930 and a mystery involving the boy, his late father and a robot.

Uh...huh.

I don't like the sound of that at all. I hate children, I hate Paris, and while I'm partial to train stations and the 1930s, I don't feel like they belong together. Especially not with robots.

Why can't people just make what they're good at? Ray Winstone is an amazing actor, but no one wants to see him in a musical where he plays Julius Caesar. Just beat up some people, will you?

Thing is, there's an AWESOME looking Winstone film coming out sometime soon called London Boulevard. It's got a good cast and it's directed by WIlliam Monahan, the screenwriter for the Departed. The book was by Irish crime writer Ken Bruen, and while it's not a brilliant book, it's a terrific homage to Sunset Boulevard while also being a first-class crime story.

And you can't find an opening date for it, because I guess it's not popular enough.

I am so sick of movies I want to see not getting theatrical releases. And the weird thing is, a lot of stuff that I'd never expect to get a release actually does. The original Swedish "Girl Who..." movies have come to cinemas, and last week I caught the first of the two French-language Mesrine films starring Vincent Cassell. Excellent movies. But where are their English-language equivalents?

I mean, why did My Son My Son What Have Ye Done never get a theatrical release? It's got Michael Shannon, a terrific underrated actor who will be in Terence Winter's HBO series Boardwalk Empire. It's got Willem Defoe, great in anything. And it's directed by Werner Herzog, the most original filmmaker out there. Plus, Herzog's last film, Bad Lieutenant (an EXCELLENT film), got a wide release. Couldn't My Son open in a couple of theatres?

The first part of the Red Riding trilogy, a British series based on James Ellroy knockoff David Peace's series, got a theatrical release for about six minutes. I wanted to see it, really I did, but when only one theatre plays a film like that, it's tough to make arrangements. Like Sean Bean (who's in the film, along with Rebecca Hall), it's never around long long enough.

The one I have the most hope for is The Town, Ben Affleck's (the director, not the actor) follow-up to the amazing Gone Baby Gone. Good cast, what looks like a good story.

But I put it to you, cinema owners, that the Greater Vancouver Regional District has enough aficionados of crime films to fill a theatre for a week's run. So bring these movies out. Give us something besides Matthew McConaughey and fucking vampires.