October

It's October, the month I spend watching as many horror movies as possible! This month actually has a pretty good line up so I may have to venture into other genres. 

I'm only just now beginning to crawl through Jackie Chan's back catalogue of action movies and wow it is quite the catalogue. The guy has been acting since the 60's and is in more than 100 films so it'll take me some time. It's made more difficult by the fact that he is regularly putting out movies. Some are from China and not released here until years later on streaming, some are voice roles but then you have stuff like The Foreigner which just looks awesome. In this one Chan loses a child during a terrorist bombing and tracks down a government official, Pierce Brosnan, to get answers on who may have been involved. When Brosnan refuses to assist Chan begins to show off some dangerous skills from his checkered past and when men come to silence him he shows off all of the skills from his checkered past. This is another in a long line of films that are made in the fall out of the Taken film series where a 50+ year old star shows he can still kick butt. I have yet to be tired of this and am excited for this one.

Chadwick Boseman's has made a career starring in docu-dramas portraying Jackie Robinson, James Brown and now Thurgood Marshall in Marshall. I'm not sure if this is a recent trend but I've noticed a few films taking a real life character and instead of telling their whole life story in 90-120 minutes the creators decide to focus on one particular event that they feel represents the character. In the case of Marshall the focus is The State of Connecticut v. Joseph Spell which was one of the earlier cases in his career which took place nearly 30 years before he would become the first African American Supreme Court Justice.

I watched Blade Runner once as a kid and another time as an adult and it's one of those classic films that I hear about all of the time but I can't remember anything about it. Not sure if that speaks to the film or my attention span. I'm pretty interested in Blade Runner 2049 so I may revisit the first. Taking place 30 years after the first Ryan Gosling plays a new blade runner, which I'm pretty sure is a cop who tracks down robots disguised as human, who tracks down Deckard, Harrison Ford returning as his character from the first. This will be the 3rd time in recent memory that Ford has returned to a character he first portrayed in the late 70's-early 80's. Let's hope this is more Force Awakens and less Crystal Skull.

I'm not one to judge so I'll just say there's a thing called Bronies where grown men dress up as My Little Pony characters and leave the judging to you. I wonder where they stand on the My Little Pony: The Movie, a film I was completely unaware of.  There's seems to be an Avenger's thing going on here when Ponyville is under attack and the group of hero pony's unite and be friendly and colorful and save their world. I know this is probably shameless product placement but I can't really dis a movie that pushes the idea of friendship on kids.

The Friday the 13th series, like it's lead character, is dormant but not completely dead. A new one was supposed to have been released on Friday the 13th this October but the studio bailed. So horror fans might be delighted to hear that slot has been filled with Happy Death Day. Using the Groundhog's Day trope that has been used rather successfully for a couple sci-fi films the film features a college student who dies, wakes up and has to repeat the day until she finds out who the killer is. Not sure how this will play out quality wise but I'm always happy when a horror film actually gets and October release.

With George Clooney directing, the Coen Brothers writing and Matt Damon, Oscar Isaac and Julianne Moore starring Suburbicon has a lot going for it. The plot seems to be secondary to the star power with this one but it's about Damon trying to cover up a murder after a home invasion and Isaac trying to uncover the truth. Expect bursts of violence and satire. Might not be for everyone but it'll be hard to ignore.

Don't be surprised when you watch the trailer for Geostorm and think 1. That's not a real word and 2. This looks pretty similar to world ending films like Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow and 2012. Because it's not a real word and it's directed by Dean Devlin who is the protege of Roland Emmerich, the director of all those films. In the time of the Geostorm the planet is surrounded by satellites that have the ability to stop natural disasters before they cause severe damage. So of course someone wants to reverse the effect and destroy the world. In comes Gerard Butler, the man who helped program the satellites. When something goes awry he goes up to space, realizes there's a conspiracy at hand and enlists his brother, a secret service agent, to kidnap the president with his girlfriend because only he can shut off the satellites. The trailer promises goofy fun alongside disturbing world ending destruction much like Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow and 2012. I have no idea why this was not released during the summer.

Back in 2004 the first Saw was a bit of a surprise and as a series did see a lot of success. The creators churned out a new film year after year until 2010, which has the overused and often inaccurate subtitle The Final Chapter. It's been 13 years since the original so obviously it's time for a new one and lo and behold we have Jigsaw, the killers call name. I'd usually have no interest but the pair of brothers who directed this one have made some pretty decent genre films in the past. The plots of these films usually revolve around criminals and low lives stuck in traps that will kill them unless they figure out a riddle. Spoiler alert: they usually don't. Oh another spoiler alert: Jigsaw died way back in Saw III so, not sure how that's going to work. The films following III had a copy cat so it'd be boring if that was the case again.