Only two new wide releases reach
theaters this weekend, but with March becoming a reality on Sunday,
these movies are part of a larger Hollywood trend in recent years.
It's lately been in vogue for studios to release untested, “original”
(re: properties that are not already huge money makers in other forms
of entertainment) material to see what sticks. Younger filmmakers are
given some more shots, oddball ideas are greenlighted, and we end up
with some interesting movies – and usually very good ones – like
Watchmen, How to
Train Your Dragon, and an Oscar
nominee from just last week, The Grand Budapest
Hotel.
Focus
Directors: Glenn Ficarra, John Requa
Directors: Glenn Ficarra, John Requa
Writers: Glenn
Ficarra, John Requa
Starring: Will
Smith, Margot Robbie, Adrian Martinez
Will Smith hasn't
done a movie geared toward adults in a while. It's been almost
exclusively blockbuster work for him since Ali in 2001, albeit
with a couple detours here and there. So it's exciting to see him
take on the con man genre with a hint of sleaze attached. Smith plays
Nicky, a schemer and grifter who seems pretty adept at his job. An
old flame, played by The Wolf of Wall Street's Margot Robbie,
comes back into his life and things get wacky. It's well-worn stuff,
sure, but there's a breezy gloss to the trailer that recalls Michael
Mann and even The Sting. People get beat up and bleed here,
they have a bit more snarl to them, they are a tiny bit rougher
around the edges. This could be a solid entertainment for people who
don't just want Smith's gargantuan charisma in movies where he has to
save the world from aliens.
The Lazarus Effect
Director: David
Gelb
Writers: Luke
Dawson, Jeremy Slater
Starring: Mark
Duplass, Olivia Wilde, Sarah Bolger, Donald Glover
The premise of The
Lazarus Effect suggests a cheapie horror flick, but its cast is
so wonderfully weird and talented. Duplass and Glover come from the
comedy world and Wilde is one of the better dramatic actresses of our
day. Wilde plays Duplass's wife/lover who suffers an accident in
their Frankenstein-esque life regeneration lab. In his grief over her
death, he hooks her up to the untested machine and poof, she comes
back to life. But things are different about her. Stuff goes wrong.
Her eyes turn ink black, which isn't good. There has to be something
to this script or director Gelb's pitch to them that elevates this to
something special, because it's rare for everyone in a cast like this
to be slumming it just for a paycheck.
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