This month contains films that make normal activities like
dating and visiting grandma seem terrifying and more than one film about hiking
(two, but two is more than one).
Ed Skrien had a role in Game
of Thrones and, spoiler alert, his character is still alive! But for one
reason or another he left, they replaced him and he snagged the lead role in The Transporter Refueled. The Transporter was Jason Statham’s
first franchise and it’s essentially about a getaway driver who has no problem
driving criminals and transporting illegal items. But in the first 3 films he comes across a
situation where an innocent person gets tossed in the mix and he uses his
military and driving skills to do good. Now Fast
and Furious it ain’t (Statham declined to be part of this 4th
film but did join the 7th F&F
film) but these films have no shortage of crazy car stunts so the action lover
should have a good time.
From the director of Dunstin
Checks In and Sesame Street Presents:
Follow that Bird comes A Walk in the
Woods. The director might be better known for He’s Just Not That Into You and The
Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants but I haven’t seen those. The last two
films were based on books and this most recent film is also based on a book. It
looks as if that as time has passed he has moved away from films about animals
and gone with already written material. This most recent film stars Robert
Redford as a man coming back from a long stay in England and his old friend,
Nick Nolte, playing a man in over his head who needs to get off the grid. Together the two men go on a walk in the
woods (actually it’s the Appalachian Trail). Pretty simple. The title says it
all. It certainly says a lot more than The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, I
can’t even begin to guess what that was about.
The title The Perfect
Guy elicits the name of a Chris Pine movie or perhaps a late 90’s Adam
Sandler movie where he’s not the perfect guy but Drew Barrymore totally
realizes he is. Well this is neither of those. The tagline is “Trust one, fear
the other.” Now does that sound like a fun romantic comedy to you? Well good
because it isn’t. Starring Sanaa Lathan as a recently single woman who left
Morris (I’m aged but still handsome) Chestnut and meets Michael (I’m over 40
but look 20) Ealy. Ealy is charming but proves to be a bit of a violent and
temperamental individual. She left Chestnut because he wasn’t ready for
marriage so this was not a step in the right direction. Dating is scary folks.
Remember that brief period in time that people were excited
for a M. Night Shyamalan movie? People would say ‘wow, a new movie!’ now it’s
‘ugh, a new movie?’ Well I have to imagine that those negative reactions have
reached Mr. Shyamalan and he decided to take a step back from making big movies
and he has made a small movie that you might not have heard of called The Visit. I don’t know much about it
myself. The story is about a single mother who sends her children off to stay
with their grandparents. The poster lists some rules, 1. Have a great time. 2.
Eat as much as you want and 3. Don’t ever leave your room after 9:30 pm. I’m
guessing the expected horror aspect is played up with that third rule. It is
also listed as a comedy-horror - which could be interesting from a guy who has
only really done horror films.
The film Everest
is about a group of men climbing Mount Everest but it stars every gruff looking
actor the producers could dig up - Jason Clarke, Josh Brolin, John Hawkes, Sam
Worthington and Jake Gyllenhall. They go
from charming to tough in however long it takes them to grow a beard and from
the promo shots, this movie is full of bearded men. This is based on the true
story of one group’s journey to climb Everest and the deadly storm they
encounter while up there.
As we all know there are plenty of young adult novels that become
movies and I enjoy a bunch of them. This month’s is Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials. The first one had a group of kids
lost in a maze and, spoiler alert, they get out. They find that the maze was
controlled by a shadowy post-apocalypse government. The apocalyptic event here
was the sun scorched a good chunk of the earth and now out of the maze and into
the frying pan our heroes go. I know that’s not a real phrase, just go with it.
In the first film the kids dealt with an ever changing maze of death where a
terrifying creature lurked. Now on the outside they’re fighting a harsh world
not fit for humans and a pseudo-government out to kill them.
Johnny Depp has played several real life criminals - George
Jung in Blow, John Dillinger in Public Enemies - and now he’ll play Whitey Bulger in Black Mass. He’s got some making up to
do for his audience because Blow
starts out a fun drug/party film like Dazed
and Confused before taking a jarring tonal shift into a depressing
drug/family drama and Public Enemies
is just a pretty lame movie for a gangster flick. This one boasts more star
power with the likes of Benedict Cumberbatch, Joel Edgerton, Dakota Johnson,
Adam Scott, Kevin Bacon and Peter Sarsgaard. Edgerton plays a federal agent and
Depp’s Bulger and he shadily take on the Boston Italian mob which leads to all
sorts of trouble.
There is a terrible shortage of female leads in action
films, fortunately Emily Blunt has quietly taken it upon herself to slowly fill
the void. In the past few years she has appeared in two of the, and I say this
without hyperbole, greatest action sci-fi films: Looper and Edge of Tomorrow.
Seriously go see them, they’re awesome and she’s fantastic in each. This month
she stars in Sicario and gets top
billing! This film is the story of an F.B.I. agent thrown into the middle of a
drug war on the U.S.-Mexico border. Films like this do not tend to be light
fare but usually promise excitement.
Chess is a tool used in many action-crime films as a kind of
metaphor about how one criminal toppled another. Then sometimes it is the whole
focus of a film. Steven Knight, the creator of Eastern Promises and Peaky
Blinders, wrote the screenplay for Pawn
Sacrifice several years ago and it sat on a shelf until Edward Zwick,
director of Glory, The Last Samurai, and Defiance picked it up. The man loves
himself some historical drama so the tale of Bobby Fischer taking on a Russian
chess legend sounds right up his alley. As I said, chess is often used a
metaphor but in this film there is no metaphor - it’s just about a really tense
chess match, which I imagine could be done well.
I’ve never seen an animated Adam Sandler film but a few
years ago he released a film about a group of monsters all hanging out at hotel
and now we have the sequel - Hotel Transylvania 2. The film features
Dracula, The Wolfman, The Invisible Man, Frankenstein’s Monster, The Mummy and
Andy Samberg. From what I understand, in the first one Samberg is a human who
wanders into the hotel for monsters and falls in love with Dracula’s daughter.
Unlike most monster stories, everyone survives to see another day and now we
have this sequel where Dracula gets to hang out with his half-vampire
half-human son. Blade it is not
(Blade is half human-half vampire).
Eli Roth prides
himself in making disturbing films for a big audience. Trouble is the Disney
audience (Disney being the blanket that covers Pixar, Marvel and Star Wars)
doesn’t like disturbing films so these films are hard to market and sometimes
have to wait to get released. Well, The
Green Inferno was directed in 2013 and sat on a shelf until now. The film
is the tale of a bunch of do-gooders who venture into the Amazon to save the
rain forest and come across a tribe of cannibals. Roth actually did find a
tribe in the forest who has never seen or heard of film before. Once they
learned what it was they apparently enthusiastically joined in on the feature
film. This movie will probably be gross, just a warning.
If you haven’t seen the Coen Brothers remake of True Grit you should do yourself a favor
and see it. It’s really good. The Keeping
Room isn’t another Coen film but it is another western featuring Hailee
Steinfeld and that’s just as good. The civil war is coming to an end and it’s a
dangerous time. Two sisters and a slave find themselves the target of murderous
rogue soldiers and have to fend for themselves in their home. Female led indie
western is a pretty rare genre but that could mean it will be great.
There are some very popular gambling movies out there and Mississippi Grind could be one of the
better ones. Starring Ben Mendelsohn as the older guy who is running out of
luck and Ryan Reynolds as a young poker player who seems to know what he’s
doing, the two get together to win some money. The older/younger team up in
gambling movies has been done before but there always seems to be room for
more. Mendelsohn is relatively new to the Hollywood scene yet has played the
older character for the past few years whereas Reynolds has been around since
the 90’s and still gets to play the younger guy. Good for him.
So what are some films you’re excited about this month?
