New Releases for the Week of August 3, 2018

CHRISTOPHER ROBIN  

(Disney) Ewan McGregor, Hayley Atwell, Mark Gatiss, Jim Cummings (voice), Brad Garrett (voice), Peter Capaldi (voice), Sophie Okonedo (voice), Toby Jones (voice), Bronte Carmichael. Directed by Marc Forster

An adult Christopher Robin struggles to balance his career and his family having left his childhood imagination behind. When his family leaves for a weekend holiday without him when work requires him to stay, he encounters his childhood friend Winnie the Pooh who helps him reclaim the joy in life.

See the trailer, interviews, video featurettes and B-roll video here
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Drama
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG (for some action)

The Darkest Minds

(20^th Century Fox) Bradley Whitford, Mandy Moore, Amandla Stenberg, Gwendoline Christie. In a dystopian future, young people begin to develop amazing powers before they turn eighteen. Adults, fearing their own children, seek to lock them in camps and keep them prisoner. A resistance group aims to allow teens to take charge of their own lives. In other words, every parent’s nightmare.

See the trailer, clips, interviews and B-roll video here
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Science Fiction
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG-13 (for violence including disturbing images, and thematic elements)

Eighth Grade

(A24) Elsie Fischer, Josh Hamilton, Emily Robinson, Jake Ryan. The eighth grade is something of a transition between childhood and teenage years. An introverted young girl has felt every humiliation possible in her disastrous grade eight year. All she can do is hope to survive her last week of school before starting fresh in high school.

See the trailer, interviews and a video featurette here
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Drama
Now Playing: AMC Altamonte Mall, AMC Disney Springs, AMC Universal Cineplex, Cinemark Artegon Marketplace, Regal Pointe Orlando, Regal The Loop, Regal Waterford Lakes, Rialto Spanish Springs Square
Rating: R (for language and some sexual material)

Generation Wealth

(Amazon) Limo Bob, Florian Homm, Tiffany Masters, Jaqueline Siegel. The super-wealthy of the United States is the wealthiest and most privileged class to ever exist in the world. This documentary investigates the pathologies that created that class.

See the trailer here
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Documentary
Now Playing: Regal Winter Park Village
Rating: R (for strong sexual content, nudity, disturbing images, and drug material)

The Spy Who Dumped Me

(Lionsgate) Mila Kunis, Kate McKinnon, Justin Theroux, Gillian Anderson. After Audrey is dumped by her boyfriend, she finds support and solace in her best friend Morgan. However, it turns out that Audrey’s ex is a spy and the two women are drawn into his shadowy world with absolutely no skills and no experience. Apparently Melissa McCarthy was unavailable for this one.

See the trailer, clips, interviews, video featurettes and B-roll video here
For more on the movie this is the website
Release Formats: Standard
Genre: Spy Action Comedy
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: R (for violence, language throughout, some crude sexual material and graphic nudity)

ALSO OPENING IN ORLANDO/DAYTONA:

Boundaries
Chi La Sow
Death of a Nation
Goodachari
Karwaan
Kusina Kings

ALSO OPENING IN MIAMI/FT. LAUDERDALE:

1945
Chi La Sow
Death of a Nation
Fanney Khan
Goodachari
Karwaan
Restless Creature: Wendy Whelan

ALSO OPENING IN TAMPA/ST. PETERSBURG:

Chi La Sow
Death of a Nation
Fanney Khan
Goodachari
Karwaan
Mulk
Urban Country

ALSO OPENING IN JACKSONVILLE/ST. AUGUSTINE:

Chi La Sow
Death of a Nation
Fanney Khan
Goodachari
Kusina Kings
Mulk

SCHEDULED FOR REVIEW:

Christopher Robin
The Darkest Minds
Eighth Grade
Restless Creature: Wendy Whelan
The Spy Who Dumped Me

Dark Skies

Things that go bump in the night.

(2013) Sci-Fi Horror (Dimension) Keri Russell, Josh Hamilton, Dakota Goyo, Kadan Rockett, J.K. Simmons, L.J. Benet, Rich Hutchman, Myndy Crist, Anne Thurman, Jake Washburn, Ron Ostrow, Tom Costello, Marion Kerr, Alyvia Alyn Lind, Josh Stamberg, Tiffany Jeneen, Brian Stepanek, Judith Moreland, Adam Schneider, Jessica Borden Directed by Scott Stewart

In one’s home, one feels secure, safe as if locked doors and a deadbolt can keep the outside world at bay. The terrors of the outside world however are insidious and some of them can’t be deterred by a closed door or a security alarm.

Daniel Barrett (Hamilton) is an unemployed architect unable to find a job in a recession-era environment. His wife Lacy (Russell) is a real estate agent in a market when NOBODY is buying houses. They are surviving on her meager income and the bills are rapidly becoming an issue that is affecting their relationship.

Their kids Jesse (Goyo) – the eldest – and Sam (Rockett) – the youngest – are aware that their parents are under some strain but don’t really know why. And then some odd things begin to happen. They find the refrigerator door open and all the vegetables eaten. The canned and packaged food is stacked up in a neat pile on the kitchen table. The chandelier over the table begins projecting strange symbols on the ceiling.

The incidents begin to escalate. Sammy has some kind of seizure during a soccer game. Lacy witnesses hundreds of birds flying into their home and killing themselves. Lacy sees an alien figure standing over Sammy’s bed who disappears when she turns on the light. As the incidents get worse and worse, Lacy does some research and comes up with a single cause – U.F.O.s. She consults an expert (Simmons) who tells them that these cases usually end up in child abduction.

That night, which happens to be the Fourth of July, Daniel and Lacy load up for bear, sealing up their home and awaiting an alien onslaught. But how can you fight an enemy you can’t see – and whose motivations you don’t know?

There have been plenty of alien abduction movies ranging from Communion to The X-Files: Fight the Future. Where does this one stack up on the list? Somewhere in the middle. Director Stewart, whose background is in visual effects, manages to set a great suburban environment where everything is normal – at least normal for this time and place. At first the villains are purely financial – bill collectors and the possibility they might lose their home bring in modern horror we can all relate to.

But as the movie goes on, it slowly begins to come off the rails until it builds to a climax that is to put it mildly disappointing. I can’t stress enough that this is a movie with enormous potential that you watch with a stupefied catatonic expression on your face as it completely blows it.

Keri Russell is a really fine actress and normally she can be relied upon to keep a film centered but here, she – like everyone else in the cast – overacts almost to the point of parody. All the gestures are wild and overbearing; all the dialogue delivered like they’re pronouncements rather than lines. I have never seen a movie in which there was such universal scene chewing as this one, or at least none that I can remember.

The two actors playing the kids – Royo and Rockett – are completely unconvincing and as wooden as a treehouse. I get that having children put in jeopardy is part of the movie’s whole reason to be, but at least make the children believable. I can’t believe they couldn’t find better juvenile actors than these.

The most major failing however is that this sci-fi horror movie isn’t as scary as it could be. For one thing, we never see the aliens clearly. If you’re going to have an alien movie, the least you can do is show us the aliens. And as the ending dives over the cliff of futility, the sense of jeopardy that the director worked so hard to establish disappears entirely. By the end of the movie you’ll be hard-pressed not to check the time.

The first half of the movie is actually pretty terrific and if they’d maintained the momentum they set up, this could have been a horror classic. Instead we get a movie that is a bit of a mess. There are definitely some features worth exploring here but overall this is fairly unsatisfying and despite a decent cast, falters in nearly every important way.

WHY RENT THIS: Establishes a sense of normalcy. Hits close to home.
WHY RENT SOMETHING ELSE: Abundant overacting. Not scary enough.
FAMILY VALUES: Situations of terror, a fair amount of violence, some sexual material, a little bit of drug use and a fair amount of foul language.
TRIVIAL PURSUIT: Dark Skies was also the original title for Sharknado.
NOTABLE HOME VIDEO EXTRAS: None listed.
BOX OFFICE PERFORMANCE: $26.4M on a $3.5M production budget.
SITES TO SEE: Netflix, Amazon, iTunes, Flixster, Vudu , M-Go
COMPARISON SHOPPING: Fire in the Skies
FINAL RATING: 4.5/10
NEXT: Six Days of Darkness continues!

New Releases for the Week of February 22, 2013

DARK SKIES

(Dimension) Keri Russell, Josh Hamilton, Dakota Goyo, Kadan Rockett, J.K. Simmons, L.J. Benet, Rich Hutchman, Myndi Crist, Annie Thurman, Ron Ostrow. Directed by Scott Stewart

When a suburban family begins to experience terrifying unexplained occurrences, they look for answers and discover that they’ve been targeted by a mysterious and deadly force. When they can get no help from skeptical authorities, they take matters into their own hands to protect themselves against a malevolent foe.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Sci-Fi Horror

Rating: PG-13 (for violence, terror throughout, sexual material, drug content and language – all involving teens)

Bless Me, Ultima

(Arenas Entertainment) Luke Ganalon, Miriam Colon, Benito Martinez, Dolores Heredia. When a mystical healer comes to stay at a New Mexico boy’s home during the Second World War, she changes his life in many ways – opening him up to his own spiritual qualities and teaching him to see the world in a different way. Based on the beloved but controversial novel by Rudolfo Anaya.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Drama

Rating: PG-13 (for sexual references and some violence)

Kai Po Che!

(UTV) Sushant Singh Rajput, Raj Kumar Yadav, Amit Sadh, Amrita Puri. A trio of childhood friends decide to unite to start their own business – a cricket training academy. In India where cricket is like hockey for Canadians, it seems like a slam dunk of an idea – but the hurdles facing them are large and not so easily surmounted.

See the trailer here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Bollywood

Rating: NR

Snitch

(Summit) Dwayne Johnson, Susan Sarandon, Benjamin Bratt, Barry Pepper. When a young man is busted for a drug crime he didn’t commit, his father is willing to do anything to keep him out of prison. What “anything” entails is going undercover in one of the most vicious drug cartels operating in the United States. Unbelievably, this is based on actual events.

See the trailer and a promo here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Action Thriller

Rating: PG-13 (for drug content and sequences of violence)  

West of Memphis

(Sony Classics) Damien Echols, Lorri Davis, Jason Baldwin, Pam Hicks. Documentary filmmaker Amy Berg looks into the notorious case of the West Memphis Three, three teenage boys unjustly convicted for the murders of three eight-year-old boys in 1993. Given the death penalty, it took an extraordinary effort which was often thwarted by the state of Arkansas itself to bring to light the truth which eventually would set these young teens – now grown to young men – free.

See the trailer and clips here.

For more on the movie this is the website.

Release formats: Standard

Genre: Documentary

Rating: R (for disturbing violent content and some language)