New Releases for the Week of May 24, 2019

ALADDIN

(Disney) Will Smith, Naomi Scott, Mena Massoud, Marwan Kenzari, Billy Magnusson, Nasim Pedrad, Alan Tudyk (voice), Jordan Nash. Directed by Guy Ritchie

Continuing Disney’s recent spate of live action remakes of animated hits, a young Arabian thief discovers a magic lamp and frees the genie within, allowing him to be transformed into a handsome prince to win the princess of his dreams. However, an evil sorcerer has his own plans for the lamp.

See the trailer, video featurettes, clips and promos here
For more on the movie this is the website
Genre: Family
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: PG (for some action/peril)

Booksmart

(Annapurna/United Artists) Kathryn Dever, Beanie Feldstein, Billie Lourd, Skyler Gisondo Two hard-working high school seniors who were academic champions at their school come to the realization that they should have spent a little more time having fun. They are therefore determined to cram four years of fun into a single night.

See the trailer, clips, interviews, video featurettes and B-roll video here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Comedy
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: R (for strong sexual content and language throughout, drug use and drinking – all involving teens)

BrightBurn

(Screen Gems) Elizabeth Banks, David Denman, Jackson A. Dunn, Matt Jones. A childless couple find a child in a crashed spacecraft and raise them on their own. Sound familiar? Think of this as Superman Dark.

See the trailer and a clip here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Horror
Now Playing: Wide Release
Rating: R (for horror violence/bloody images, and language)

India’s Most Wanted

(Fox STAR) Arjun Kapoor, Rajesh Sharma, Prasanth, Gaurav Mishra. Based on the true story of the largest covert operation in the history of India in which a vicious terrorist is captured without firing a single bullet.

See the trailer and clips here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Action
Now Playing: Touchstar Southchase
Rating: NR

Photograph

(Amazon) Nawazuddin Siddiqi, Sanya Malhotra, Akash Sinha, Abdul Quadir Amin. A struggling street photographer in Mumbai, heavily pressured by his grandmother to marry, manages to convince a shy young stranger to pose as his fiancé. Unexpectedly, the two form a deeper bond that transforms them in ways they couldn’t have predicted.

See the trailer and a clip here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Romance
Now Playing: Regal Winter Park Village
Rating: PG-13 (for some thematic material)

PM Narendra Modi

(Rising Star) Vivek Oberoi, Boman Irani, Barkha Bhist, Anjan Srivastav. The story of the often controversial Indian Prime Minister, who was recently re-elected to a second term.

See the trailer, clips and video featurettes here
For more on the movie this is the website  
Genre: Biographical Drama
Now Playing: AMC West Oaks
Rating: NR

ALSO OPENING IN ORLANDO/DAYTONA:

Assimilate
Between Maybes
Combat Obscura
The Poison Rose
The Professor

ALSO OPENING IN MIAMI/FT. LAUDERDALE:

All is True
Between Maybes
The Cold Blue
Non-Fiction
Sita

ALSO OPENING IN TAMPA/ST. PETERSBURG:

Isabelle
Ratnamanjari
Sita

ALSO OPENING IN JACKSONVILLE/ST. AUGUSTINE:

Between Maybes
Sita

SCHEDULED FOR REVIEW:

Aladdin
Booksmart
BrightBurn

The Lucky One

Zac Efron and Taylor Schilling save the last dance for each other.

(2012) Romance (Warner Brothers) Zac Efron, Taylor Schilling, Blythe Danner, Jay R. Ferguson, Riley Thomas Stewart, Adam Lefevre Robert Terrell Hayes, Joe Chrest, Russ Comegys, Sharon Morris, Ann McKenzie, Kendal Tuttle, Courtney J. Clark, Jillian Batherson. Directed by Scott Hicks

 

The novels of Nicholas Sparks and the films that are based on them tend to sparkle with a certain patina of sentiment. They are filmed in rich autumnal colors, through hazy lenses smeared with Vaseline. They are the stuff of modern day fairy tales.

Logan Thibault (Efron) is a Marine serving in Iraq. While on his last tour he goes on a raid of a home and comes under heavy fire from snipers. He watches as men from his company and others are cut down by the insurgents.

The next morning he and his men are lounging around the now-secured area when he spies a photograph in the rubble. Curious, he walks over to it, bends over and picks it up to see a beautiful blonde  – when an explosion wipes out the men he’d just been standing with.

The rest of his tour he survives again and again, sometimes without rhyme or reason. One of his fellow Marines jokes that the girl in the picture is his guardian angel. Logan isn’t laughing though; he thinks she might just be.

After leaving the Marines he goes to visit his sister and her family in Colorado but it’s clear he has issues. He’s jumpy, morose and when startled reacts violently. He knows he can’t stay with his sister and her bratty sons; he decides to go find the woman in the photograph. By pure happenstance he stumbles on a picture of the lighthouse in the back of the photo with the woman and decides to hoof it from Colorado to Louisiana.

Six years later, he arrives in Louisiana with scarcely a bunion, his impossibly well-behaved German Shepard Zeus by his side. He shows the picture around town and is led to the local pet groomer’s where he finds the object of his search, Beth Clayton (Schilling). She is divorced from Keith (Ferguson), the town sheriff and son of the powerful Judge Clayton (LeFevre) and at the moment an uneasy peace exists between them, threatened by Keith’s alcohol abuse. Beth lives with her son Ben (Stewart) and her grandma Ellie (Danner) and their business is sorely in need of some help. Beth mistakes Logan for a respondent to her want ad but something about him – the fact that he confessed to having walked from Colorado to Louisiana made her a bit reluctant to hire him. However Ellie – who possesses a Sense About These Things – hires him on the spot, hoping he’ll re-ignite Beth’s spark.

Boy does he ever. It takes a few games of chess with Ben (who takes to the newcomer like a tick to a Golden Retriever), a fully clothed outdoor shower for the two of them together and a couple of beers and before you can say Logan’s Your Uncle, Ben the two of them are canoodling.

But the suspicious Sheriff doesn’t like having his ex hanging around another man and when he finds out that he has the Picture, he blabs it to Beth whom Logan neglected to mention that little tidbit of information to. Who had that picture and why will lead Beth to break things off with Logan, even though everyone and their cousin Moe knows that he’s The One for her. What will it take to get the two of them together? How about a freakish rainstorm?

Yup, this is Nicholas Sparks through and through, laden with coincidences and conveniences. In an interview, he talked about the book having a theme of destiny and fate, items he claims he doesn’t believe in himself. Me, I don’t buy it – most of Sparks’ books have an element of events conspiring to bring true love together by the final chapter, or tearing them apart.

Efron plays the taciturn Logan and we all know that he saw a lot of Bad Things over there because he’s supposed to be haunted. We can tell he’s haunted because his expression never changes. Ever. And his periwinkle blue eyes seem to look right through things. Efron may not be the most expressive actor on the planet but I know he can act. I’ve seen him do it in other movies. I think he either decided to play Logan as a soul-dead person, or he was told to by the director. Either way it was a poor choice. Even so, he has enough natural charisma that I actually liked his character. Go figure.

Schilling doesn’t generate a lot of heat with Efron and really doesn’t do much to make me think Beth is worth walking down the block for, let alone thousands of miles. Danner alone gives her role anything that can be qualified as memorable.

Yet despite all this I liked the movie much more than I thought I would and certainly much more than other critics did. I liked the story line and I liked Efron and I liked the dogs (there are LOTS of them) and I liked the Louisiana setting. I walked out with a good feeling and even though the movie is terribly flawed, I would still count it as a success just for that reason.

REASONS TO GO: Much better than I expected it to be. I liked Efron in this, although I would have liked a bit more expressiveness from him. Nicely photographed.

REASONS TO STAY: A little too over-reliant on coincidence.

FAMILY VALUES: There is some war and domestic violence as well as a bit of sexuality and drinking.

TRIVIAL PURSUIT: The filmmakers changed the location of the film to Louisiana from North Carolina where the book was set.

CRITICAL MASS: As of 5/5/12: Rotten Tomatoes: 21% positive reviews. Metacritic: 38/100.The reviews are solidly negative.

COMPARISON SHOPPING: Message in a Bottle

ARMED FORCES LOVERS: The studio screened the film in advance on military installations throughout the world as a way of saying thank you to the men and women in uniform.

FINAL RATING: 6/10

NEXT: The Five-Year Engagement