This coming winter will bring us two major showdowns: Glenn vs. Meryl in the Best Actress race, and now ferocious exes Madonna and Guy Ritchie are officially duelists: Her W.E. debuts Dec. 9, and his Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows follows up on Dec. 16. Place your bets now: Which of these dubious, aggressively modern "old-fashioned" films will critics and audiences enjoy/tolerate more?
First, here's Madonna's W.E., an unofficial adaptation of the esteemed children's book The English Roses (if you ask me), in all its watercolored, scone-nibbling bliss:
And as we just posted, here's Guy Ritchie's Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows -- or as I call it, The Ham of the Baskervilles.
I can't believe I'm doing this to my sweet panther sorceress Madonna, but I think Sherlock's Meta-score will top hers. Critics will be willing and primed to accept the nonsense whizzbang of Sherlock's adventures, but there's no prefacing Madonna's waterlogged pretension. Every character in W.E. looks more static than the last, and I can't say Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law lack personality. Ugh, why! Why does Madonna's movie have to be so bad? Why! I thought I'd seen the worst of it in I Am Because We Are, but no, now accents, crinkly royal smiles, and that stupid fucking monogram have to come into play. I've worked too hard for Madonna to blow this. I tolerated American Life for this queen. I think I even called Jesus Luz "potentially all right" once. Is anyone else even remotely upset by the outlook of this bomb? It's the unsightly hydrangea of the season, and now Arthur Conan Doyle's Adderall-addicted, gunpowder-fed step-grandchildren are better than it. This? This is true blue sads.
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