In Theaters: August 31, 2018

There are two wide releases this weekend.

Operation Finale (Wednesday Release)

I love this new trend of movies about Jews getting stuff done.

Operation Finale is about a special team sent to Buenos Aires to track down and capture Ben Kingsley's character, a Nazi war criminal who was also the author of the holocaust.  It's based on a true story.  It's almost funny to hear of Israel tracking down Nazi war criminals to Buenos Aires, because now it's practically common knowledge that Buenos Aires became a haven for nazis in hiding.

One thing to watch out for is director Chris Weitz.  He has one drama (that I've heard of) to his name, and that's a shared credit with his brother, "About a Boy" back in 2002.  His prior directorial credit to that is the original American Pie, and I hate raunch comedies, so even though I like the idea of this film, I'm having trouble reconciling this information.

Operation Finale is rated PG-13 for disturbing thematic content and related violent images, and for some language.

Kin

And now for something completely different.

Kin looks to be a truly terrible mixture of domestic drama, alien invasion, and crime thriller.  It's worth mentioning that two of those genres have been mixed successfully many times in the past.

Okay I'm gonna try my best to break this down.  Kid finds an alien weapon.  Kid's older brother gets out of jail and has debts to repay to bad people.  Kid catches bad people beating up on older brother and threatens them with alien weapon.  Kid and brother escape.  Kid and brother are chased by bad people and by aliens who want their weapon back.  This is the part where Sean Moore says "and then it gets weird."

Confused?  So am I.  Here's the kicker: James Franco plays the leader of the bad people.  How did they get him on board for this?

Kin is rated PG-13 for gun violence and intense action, suggestive material, language, thematic elements and drinking.

      Big Shot Critic

In Theaters: August 24, 2018

There are two wide releases this weekend.

A.X.L.

Last week we had the dark and gritty dog movie.  Here we have the robot action dog movie.

Random dirtbiker kid finds giant robot dog in a junk pile.  Giant robot dog is a secret government project designed to "pair" to someone and protect them.  It can run fast, it has guns, and it can fly.  Government developers come looking for it, but they don't respect it the way random dirtbiker kid does.  How dare they want their property back?

A.X.L. is rated PG for sci-fi action/peril, suggestive material, thematic elements and some language.

The Happytime Murders

"If you're feeling too optimistic about the world, then it's the film to see."  - Alissa Wilkinson, for Vox

Jim Henson would be ashamed.  His son, Brian Henson, directs this puppet-filled raunch comedy.  And Brian truly is devaluing The Jim Henson Company brand.  Even the critics hate it.  They basically all say the same thing.  It's horribly unfunny.  Alissa Wilkinson even goes so far as to say it's a real contender for worst film of the year.

The Happytime Murders is rated R for strong crude and sexual content and language throughout, and some drug material.

      Big Shot Critic

In Theaters: August 17, 2018

There are three wide releases this weekend.  One of them could change things.

Crazy Rich Asians (Wednesday Release)

This is the one that could change things.

This romantic comedy is likely to become the movie to see for the next few weeks.  It's been picking up lots of hype and it has earned really good reviews.  If it does succeed, romantic comedies as well as ethnic representation in movies both stand to benefit greatly.  Even the film's director is Asian, John Chu.  You know him for directing Step Up 2 The Streets and G.I. Joe: Retaliation.

What most of you probably don't know is that I have written a screenplay, and it is a romantic comedy.  The genre is pretty dead right now, only receiving attention in independent films and in Netflix originals (I am not particularly interested in either of those avenues).  So in the event that my script actually gets sold or goes anywhere (the likelihood of that is . . . nevermind, I don't want to talk about it) this movie's success would translate directly into my success.  Because, in theory, romantic comedies would be more in demand.

I actually want to see this movie.  It's about an Asian woman in New York who is dating an Asian man.  Finally, her boyfriend suggests that she meet his family, so they fly out east so she can meet them.  She finds out that her boyfriend and his family are crazy rich Asians.  The main conflict seems to be between the would-be daughter-in-law and the boyfriend's mother, played by Michelle Yeoh.

Crazy Rich Asians is rated PG-13 for some suggestive content and language.  It will probably be the best romantic comedy since Hitch.  That's my honest opinion.

Alpha

You know how dog lover movies are almost their own genre now?  Well Alpha is to dog lover movies as The Dark Knight is to superhero movies.

Behold: the dark and gritty dog lover movie.

Alpha is about a boy who lives, according to the trailer, 20,000 years ago.  Naturally he speaks perfect english and so does the rest of his tribe.  They all like to put mud on their face and hunt buffalo and other things.  They're nomadic, and the boy's father is the chief.  He teaches the boy how to be a leader.  Good thing too, because one day when they're out hunting buffalo, the kid gets knocked off a huge cliff and the tribe thinks he dies, but it looks like he just gets knocked out and breaks his foot.  Anyway he ends up running in with some wolves and he becomes . . . say it with me now . . . the alpha.

So this movie sets out to tell the story of the original domesticated dog.

Alpha is rated PG-13 for some intense peril.

P.S. It looks like a live action Ice Age.

Mile 22

Mile 22 is just like every other action movie with a hard edge these days.  Mark Wahlberg is the government operative from the organization you've never heard of that is tasked to deal with problems that us regular citizenry aren't even aware of.  It's basically the IMF from the Mission: Impossible movies.

Mile 22 is rated R for strong violence and language throughout.

      Big Shot Critic

In Theaters: August 10, 2018

There are four wide releases this weekend.

The Meg

Not much to tell here.  It's a really big shark, basically.  A megalodon (Meg) turns up alive and starts attacking people.  Megolodons were real creatures that lived millions of years ago.  Basically 60' sharks.  For comparison, great white sharks get to about 20'.  Oh, and Jason Statham is the hero.

The Meg is rated PG-13 for action/peril, bloody images and some language.

Dog Days (Wednesday release)

This is like every inspirational dog movie rolled into one.  I have no idea what it's about.  One dog gets lost and found, one dog brings a family together, one dog is rescued out of the trash, one character volunteers at a dog shelter and finds fulfillment, the dog shelter has to throw a fundraiser to stay open, one guy has to dogsit a dog that is challenging.  It is seriously all over the place.  It's just throwing inspirational dog-related nonsense at the audience to see what sticks.  Surely one or two of the 20,000 subplots will tug at your heartstrings, right??

Dog Days is rated PG for rude and suggestive content, and for language.

BlacKkKlansman

So this looks kinda funny.  It's a comedy (probably with some serious dramatic elements) about a black officer in the 70's who leads an undercover operation into the KKK.  Apparently it's based on a true story.

BlacKkKlansman is rated R for language throughout, including racial epithets, and for disturbing/violent material and some sexual references.

Slender Man

Just don't.  This is how out of gas the horror genre is.  Slender Man originated as an internet creation in a forum.  Basically a scary story that got shared around and became popular.  So this is literally fan fiction on the big screen, sorta like Fifty Shades.  But if I had to pick one to watch I'd pick Slender Man in a heartbeat, amazingly.

Slender Man is rated PG-13 for disturbing images, sequences of terror, thematic elements and language including some crude sexual references.

      Big Shot Critic

In Theaters: August 3, 2018

There are four wide releases this weekend.

Disney's Christopher Robin

You know how the premise of Hook is that Peter Pan chose to grow up, and the movie takes place with a grown Peter?  It's like that, but with Christopher Robin.

I see no reason for this movie to be bad.  Who doesn't love Ewan McGregor, honestly?  And Marc Forster is a good director.

Just like Peter Pan in Hook, adult Christopher Robin has his priorities a little bit out of order.  He has been putting work above family.  Pooh discovers this, and invites his friends to go with him into the real world to help Christopher.

Disney's Christopher Robin is rated PG for some action.  It's probably good action too, Marc Forster once directed a James Bond film, don't you know.

The Darkest Minds

Leftovers from the YA adaptation genre.

I'm impressed.  I thought the third Maze Runner movie was the last of them, but one more seems to have come through.  You know the drill.  You're a youth, you're special, you're the only hope for the future, etc.

In this one all the kids in the world either died or got superpowers.  And the bad adults wrangled 'em all up and put them in internment camps, because they're big bad adults that you can't trust.  Look for this one to flop epically.  The good news is it supposedly only cost $34 million for Fox, and they pretty much didn't pay for any advertising, so it should make its money back.

The Darkest Minds is rated PG-13 for violence including disturbing images, and thematic elements.

Death of a Nation

I'm not crazy about Dinesh D'Souza.  I'm not sure any of Trump's base(d) supporters are.  He's more of a favorite among old school hardline republicans.

Dinesh D'Souza is the man behind "2016: Obama's America" and "Hillary's America".  His style is too dramatic to appeal to people like me.  We don't like narratives from the right or the left.  That's why we like Donald Trump.

The idea behind Death of a Nation is drawing comparisons between Donald Trump and Abraham Lincoln.  They both served during divisive times.  Again, this is a little too dramatic of an angle, even for a hardcore Trump supporter like myself.

Death of a Nation is rated PG-13 for strong thematic material including violence/disturbing images, some language and brief drug use.

The Spy Who Dumped Me

The Spy Who Dumped Me is about a girl who was recently in a relationship with a CIA agent, and this compromises her so that bad people are now after her and her friend.  As you may have guessed from the poster, it's an action comedy.

The Spy Who Dumped Me is rated R for violence, language throughout, some crude sexual material and graphic nudity.

You know, I am getting really sick of these hard R comedies.

      Big Shot Critic