In Theaters: February 23, 2018

There are three wide releases this weekend.

Annihilation

A shelved movie that resurfaced after the success of Arrival.  Coincidence?  I think not.

Annihilation is also a medium sized science fiction adaptation.  It's also from an acclaimed director, also has a very respected cast, and also has a psychological twist to it.  But make no mistake, this one is the wannabe.  To prove it I'll just show you pictures of the directors.

Denis Villeneuve (director of Arrival)

Alex Garland (director of Annihilation)

I don't know how he pulls off looking more pretentious than a French film director, but he does.

Anyway, you know how some science fiction novels get concepts and plot points all mixed up, so everything is thematic but nothing has face value anymore?  Annihilation is one of those novels.  The basic idea is that there is this thing called The Shimmer in south Florida.  It's a region so titled because its boundary is marked by a shimmering wall.  Nobody knows what it is or what is inside, but it's expanding, so they send people in to find out what's going on.

Annihilation is rated R for violence, bloody images, language and some sexuality.

Every Day

Do you know why they're kissing in the poster?  It's because both actors look about twelve years old.

Every Day is a YA romance adaptation about a person (entity?) who wakes up in a different body every day.  It's like Invasion of the Body Snatchers reimagined as a tween romance, and that's about how appealing it is to me.

Every Day is rated PG-13 for thematic content, language, teen drinking, and suggestive material.  Sheesh, if I had a daughter in this target audience, no way I'd let her go see it.

Game Night

Game Night is an action comedy about a murder mystery party that gets mixed up with actual danger of some kind and the participants don't know it.

Game Night is rated R for language, sexual references and some violence.

      Big Shot Critic

Black Panther is gonna be number one again guaranteed.

In Theaters: February 16, 2018

There are three wide releases this weekend.

Black Panther

I gotta say, the tribal meets art deco art style is not doing it for me.

Even so, this movie has a good chance of being epic.  So the cast is loaded with black people.  That doesn't matter.  It's loaded with really good actors and that does matter.  The director is also black and his name is Ryan Coogler.  It doesn't matter that he's black.  He's a really good director.  Obviously a mostly black cast and a black director make sense for this movie - that's a no brainer.  But that is not why it's going to succeed.

Black Panther, like Wonder Woman, really deserves to be released in a better time.  The overwhelming majority of voices you will hear praising this movie will be going on and on about it being successful because it's chock full of black people.  While that is a contributing factor (a Black Panther movie with any fewer black people would be idiotic), it is not even close to the main reason for this movie's inevitable success.

What genuinely troubles me is that the artistic talent of those involved will be glossed over because they're black.  I can see the headlines now . . .

"Black Director Breaks Box Office Record"

"All-Black Cast Sets New February Record"

"Black History Is Made At The Box Office"

Isn't it sad that they can't see past the fact that Patty Jenkins (Wonder Woman director) is a woman, and they can't see past the fact that Ryan Coogler is black?  They just get so caught up in the wrong things.

******

I'm sorry to get so sidetracked.  I just get so disgusted by this stuff.

Black Panther is about T'Challa of Wakanda, and his struggles following the events of Captain America: Civil War.

Black Panther is rated PG-13 for prolonged sequences of action violence, and a brief rude gesture.

Early Man

You know this one is gonna be good.

Aardman is the studio behind Chicken Run, Wallace & Gromit, and Shaun the Sheep.  They are ALWAYS funny.

Early Man is about a tribe of cavemen whose valley is annexed by some bronze age ruler (he declares that the stone age is over).  The tribe then must find out if they have what it takes to take back their home.

Early Man is rated PG for rude humor and some action.

Samson

Christian filmmaking has officially forayed into the swords and sandals sub-genre . . . and it does not look good.

First of all, where did they get this guy playing Samson?  Would you look at this guy?

I don't want to be rude, so I will now state some facts that have nothing to do with the rest of this post.

A lower angle, sloping forehead, a prominent brow, and small dark eyes are not facial features traditionally associated with intelligence.

Samson was not known for his intelligence, but there is nothing to suggest he was basically a cave man.

speaking of Early Man...

Now back to our regular blog post.

Samson just looks bad.  The visual effects, the acting, the writing, the sets, the costumes - well I take that back, the costumes look okay.  But the rest looks bad.

Samson is rated PG-13 for violence and battle sequences.

      Big Shot Critic

In Theaters: February 9, 2018

There are three wide releases this weekend.

The 15:17 to Paris

In August of 2015 there was an attempted mass shooting on a train from Amsterdam to Paris.  The gunman's rifle jammed immediately (a miracle) and he was subdued quickly by some passengers, two of which were off duty members of the U.S. Military.

Clint Eastwood directs this movie.  He has a sort of fatal attraction to true stories.  His true story films tend to not be as well-liked as his fictional films, and this time he has gone a step further.  The three leads in the film (the three men primarily responsible for subduing the gunman) will be played by the real people.  Yeah.  Remember Act of Valor?  Remember all those acting awards it won?  Neither do I.

Proceed with caution.  The three lead actors playing themselves feels like a gimmick to me.  Also, the actual event was over in like three minutes, which means this movie's 94 minute runtime is going to be padded through the nose with sentiment.  You heard it here first.

The 15:17 to Paris is rated PG-13 on appeal for bloody images, violence, some suggestive material, drug references and language.

That means it was originally rated R, but the filmmakers appealed the MPAA for a lower rating.  They may have changed the content, or just made their case for a lower rating.

Fifty Shades Freed

There is no metric by which this movie or franchise can be a success, except dollars.  Morally?  I think not.  Creatively?  No one is impressed.  Every review I've heard even criticizes the love scenes, which, as far as I can tell, is the whole point of the franchise.

Just don't do it.

Fifty Shades Freed is rated R for strong sexual content, nudity, and language.

Peter Rabbit

It's nothing more than a copycat of the new Paddington movies.

It is mind-boggling how often studios greenlight movies for the wrong reasons.  It happens about two to five times for every truly good movie that is really successful.  The Lego Movie paved the way for Angry Birds and that Emoji movie.  Star Trek Beyond was almost a Guardians of the Galaxy copycat until Simon Pegg saved it.  The Secret Life of Pets came out just a few months after Zootopia.  That might seem like it wasn't a copycat, but everyone knew for years that Disney was working on an animated film centered around different animals living in a city together.  Sometimes this leads to additional good movies, as in the case of Logan, which was allowed to go for the R rating because of the success of Deadpool.

Studio executives are like overprotective mothers.  They know that risk is unavoidable, but they will try to minimize it insofar as it is humanly possible - often to the detriment of the finished product.

I guarantee you the studio execs at Sony genuinely believe Peter Rabbit will earn critical praise because it has a lot in common with Paddington and Paddington 2.  These are both live action children's movies with an animated lead.  They're both classic British children's books, and they're both loaded with a very British cast.  Both the leads are even talking animals that wear clothes!  The current 57% on Rotten Tomatoes is going to confuse the heck out of them.

In the mind of a studio executive, surface level commonalities with a proven hit minimizes financial risk.  No matter what you do, no matter how many decades of experience tell us this is not true, they will persist in this belief.  It's probably because they're numbers men more often than not, coming from a strong business background.  The really sad thing is that they get filmmakers who are willing to play along, too dazzled by the opportunity to work on a big studio picture to point out fundamental flaws, and they bring us films like Peter Rabbit.

Will Gluck, director of Peter Rabbit, is more of a studio man than a dazzled noob.  The kind of guy studios know they can count on to not draw attention to troublesome things like character and story.  Don't get me wrong, Will.  You make a living making movies and that's awesome!  And what you're doing isn't technically morally wrong.  But you're feeding the beast.

This whole thing is a never ending source of frustration for film fans like myself, but now back to Peter Rabbit.

Peter Rabbit is about a rabbit named Peter who lives in a village in England with his animal friends.  A new (human) neighbor movies in and doesn't want to let Peter and his friends eat his crops!  A battle of wills ensues.

Peter Rabbit is rated PG for some rude humor and action.

      Big Shot Critic

In Theaters: February 2, 2018

There is only one wide release this weekend.

Winchester

I guess a lot of people like horror movies because they just keep making them.

My readers know I don't care for horror movies.  As a genre they are overwhelmingly derivative and cheap.  This one looks somewhere in between the really good ones and the really bad ones.  It doesn't look horrible.  It would probably keep you entertained once.

In what looks like the late 1800's, some old woman played by Helen Mirren keeps adding to her house, Winchester Manor.  The construction makes no sense.  Stairs here, a room there, a door wherever.  So Jason Clarke plays the doctor sent in to figure out if she's gone mad.  It turns out she's doing it to keep the ghosts confused or something.  Anyway the house is haunted and the ghosts get out and cause trouble.  You know the drill.

Winchester is rated PG-13 for violence, disturbing images, drug content, some sexual material and thematic elements.

      Big Shot Critic