January Movies

The time to get your 2015 Oscar hopeful into theaters has passed. See the trick is, films like The Revenant and The Hateful Eight might not be out in every theater across the U.S.A. until mid-January but as long as they are released to some theaters in December 2015, they are eligible for the 2015 Oscar run. Films that are not released in December sometimes get stuck in the film dumping ground that is January. That means that a lot of films coming out this month will have an aura of ‘who wants to see this?’ However some studios have caught on. They know that people will still want to go see a movie so they are putting out big releases this month in hopes of capturing a big audience that cannot find anything else to watch. 

For those Game of Thrones fans out there we have The Forest, starring Natalie Dormer. In the film she ventures off to a Japanese forest that is famous for being a location where people go to end their lives. So we’re starting with heavy material here. She hears that her twin sister went off into the forest and goes in after her. After learning the sad history of the place she is told that if she is to go in she is not to leave the path. So of course she immediately does just that and gets attacked by the spirits haunting the forest. I saw a string of horror movie trailers recently and all of them included people being instructed to do something and doing the exact opposite. I know that happens in many horror films but why make the protagonist look so careless in the trailer? 

It disappoints me when sequels to hit films come out and the producers just tack a number on the title. Unfortunately this is the case with Ride Along 2. I’ve always been a fan of Ice Cube and I’m warming up to Kevin Hart. In the first one, which is pretty entertaining, wannabe cop Hart wanted to marry tough detective Cube’s sister and had to prove he was worthy by joining Cube on the titular ride along which became a messy situation of police corruption, criminals and ridiculousness. In the end they learned to tolerate each other. Fast forward a few months, it is right before the big day and the duo head to Miami to take down a drug dealer. If goofy action-comedy is your thing this movie will surely provide.

The name Michael Bay has become a joke in the movie world. If a film is made by Bay, it is more often than not considered to be an over the top stupid movie and if a film is too over the top and stupid, then it is considered to be too much like a Michael Bay movie - which most consider a bad thing. His movies are big and expensive looking, but that a good movie does not make. Okay, so all that said it looks as if Bay is making an attempt to turn all of that around with 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. This is based on the true story of an attack on a U.S. compound in Libya and the military contractors who fought back. Now some people take issue with Bay doing a ‘true story;’ lest we forget the action-romance extravaganza that was Pearl Harbor. Recently he has made a toned down crime-drama. Maybe he learned a thing or two and will turn down the insanity that he usually provides. 

When a piece of trivia for a film includes the fact that the film was supposed to be released straight to DVD it causes me to worry for the quality of the film. Then toss in the fact that it is a global warming propaganda cartoon about a polar bear voiced by Rob Schneider and I worry this may be the worst film ever. There are several films that have an agenda and sometimes the message gets in the way of a good film. This isn’t the place to get into a discussion about global warming but if you have something to say, there are better ways to go about it. So about the movie, it’s called Norm of the North and is about a displaced Arctic bear who goes to New York City and gets on the path to saving the world, probably.

Robert De Niro hails from The Godfather series, Zac Efron hails from the High School Musical series so it only makes sense to put them in a film together. Neighbors proved that Efron could be funny in that he plays a frat boy and really plays it up to hilarious levels. It’s very entertaining, but in this one he is the more reserved one and De Niro is playing his Dirty Grandpa. This film is directed by the writer of Sacha Baron Cohens films Bruno and Borat and helped out on his show Da Ali G Show, so the potential for raunchiness is high with this one.

The Hunger Games is over, for now anyway until producers convince the writer to make prequels, so Hollywood is looking for the new young-adult-novel-female-lead-sci-fi-drama series which brings us to The 5^th Wave. Aliens have invaded earth and after 4 waves we’re pretty beat and now have aliens taking the form of humans. This causes a young woman, Chloe Grace-Moretz, no stranger to action films as she played Hit-Girl in the Kick-Ass series, to rise up and start to fight back. I’m concerned with this one as it has all the makings of a Hunger Games or Divergent film, but with a January release as opposed to summer so we’ll see how this goes. 

No matter how bad it is I always have an appreciation for any film that features a doll coming to life. It terrifies me to such a degree that I can ignore how bad it might be and enjoy it. The best of the bunch is Childs Play. The worst of the bunch is Pinocchio’s Revenge, which is the actual title of a lousy Childs Play knockoff. The Boy sounds like a more subtle approach to the sub-genre of killer dolls but it’s from a horror director, so either the trailer is misleading or I’m in for a surprise. In it a woman is hired by a family to watch their son while they are away. When she gets there she finds that the child in question is a life-sized doll and the parents take caring for him very seriously - that is until they leave a stranger in his care for some reason. They give her a list of rules, which include never leaving him alone and feeding him, which she totally ignores, and this leads to some bizarre events that lead her to believe the doll is alive and out to kill her. 

I’m not a fan of all cartoon series that come out but one that I really enjoy is the Kung Fu Panda series. The first and second both have a lot of heart, action and comedy - plus that added bonus of Jack Black, Jackie Chan, Seth Rogen, Lucy Liu, David Cross and others as voice actors. It makes for a pretty fun time so I am excited for Kung Fu Panda 3. The whole series was built on the fact that a lonely (there’s a sad backstory where he is the only panda left) giant panda has no place kung-fu fighting alongside more nimble creatures like a monkey, a snake or a crane, but he learns and becomes a master and saves the day, twice. In the end of the second one he finds there are more pandas in hiding so this one finds him joining his long lost family, and he has to teach them to fight as a new threat is on its way. This series has a knack for getting great actors to play villains. The first was Ian McShane, the second was Gary Oldman and now it’s J.K. Simmons. I am concerned about the release date but I will see this anyway.

Taking a break from spoofing horror movies, Marlon Wayans has decided to spoof another series and he has chosen 50 Shades of Grey as his next target. If you’ve seen the Scary Movie films (the first two are great) and have a basic understanding of what Grey is about you probably have a good idea where Fifty Shades of Black is headed. If you don’t I’ll just say it’s going to be goofy and very crass.

I’m sure Star Wars will be number 1 at the box office throughout the whole month but hopefully there is something for you in here! Happy 2016!