Holy moly. There
are seven (!) movies premiering in the Chicago area this weekend.
Some are expanding after initial New York-Los Angeles debuts and
others are opening wide. Either way, you have a bevy of choices when
deciding what to see this weekend. There's historical fiction, heady
sci-fi, broad-as-can-be comedy, ripped-from-the-headlines drama, a
nature documentary with voiceover work from one of our most beloved
national comic treasures, and plenty more. Let's take a deeper look.
Child 44
Director: Daniel
Espinosa
Writer: Richard
Price
Starring: Tom
Hardy, Gary Oldman, Noomi Rapace
Putin's Russia
ain't happy about this one, so that's reason enough to go see it. Tom
Hardy stars as a Russian investigator searching for a serial child
murderer and any surviving kids. There's a coverup going on because
of the government refusing to let the people know about their
overseers being unable to protect them. There are shades of Fritz
Lang's M here, and if that similarity bears out for the entire
film, let's just start celebrating now.
This is as nit
picky as it gets, but the only problem I have with this movie is the
“let's just have the actors speak in English with Russian accents
despite it taking place in Russia!” trick. This has been done since
time immemorial, but for some reason it feels less authentic in
recent years. This has no bearing on whether the story is told in a
compelling fashion, but it bugs me. I suck.
Monkey Kingdom
Directors: Mark
Linfield, Alistair Fothergill
Narrated By: Tina
Fey
30 Rock's
Tina Fey, one of the most important comedic voices of the last 20
years, narrates a documentary about monkeys. Sure, it's an earnest
Disney thing, but either way, 'nuff said.
Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2
Director: Andy
Fickman
Writers: Kevin
James, Nick Bakay
Starring: Kevin
James, Raini Rodriguez, Eduardo Verástegui
Call me an elitist,
but I'm not excited by this one. Even if I weren't a snob, this one
would be difficult to recommend. The ol' “fatty go boom” jokes
ran dry about 20 minutes into the first Paul Blart movie,
which I have indeed seen. I may have been hungover and trying to
study for a test while it was on TV, but that's beside the point.
It's not the type of movie that requires a boatload of attention to
understand.
Mr. Blart, mall cop
extraordinaire, returns this time, but now he's on vacation in Las
Vegas for some reason. Doesn't matter. Either way, this takes the Die
Hard sequel route of “how could this happen again?!” plotting
and Paul is forced to stop a sort of terrorist attack on the city.
Fatty go boom.
True Story
Director: Rupert
Goold
Writer: Rupert
Goold
Starring: James
Franco, Jonah Hill, Felicity Jones
This one's neat.
While Franco and Hill are frequent collaborators, to date they have
only appeared together in comedies. Both are strong dramatic actors –
Franco has been in tons of great dramas and Hill has branched out in
recent years with supporting roles in Moneyball and The
Wolf of Wall Street – but until now they have kept those worlds
separate when together. Now, though, they show up as an imprisoned
murderer (Franco) and a down-on-his-luck journalist (Hill) trying to
learn the real story behind why Franco's wife and children are dead.
Expect a lot of chemistry and give-and-take.
Unfriended
Director: Leo
Gabriadze
Writer: Nelson
Greaves
Starring: Heather
Sossaman, Matthew Bohrer, Courtney Halverson
A few weeks back, a
movie called A Girl Like Her was released. It lasted a week in
theaters. Nobody went to see it. Now, in an Armageddon-Deep
Impact bit of coincidence, out comes another webcam/bullying
drama. This time, though, there's a horror hook. It takes place on
the two-year anniversary of the suicide by a girl, Laura Barns, who
became despondent after video of her becoming excessively drunk at a
party was posted across social media for everyone she knew to see.
Now, her friends (?) get together for a group chat on their computers
– it looks to be entirely shot on webcams – and supernatural
things start happening to them. Bad supernatural things. Let's see
how long this one lasts.
Clouds of Sils Maria
Director: Olivier
Assayas
Writer: Olivier
Assayas
Starring: Juliette
Binoche, Kristen Stewart, Chloe Grace Moretz
In a modern update
on All About Eve, Juliette Binoche stars as a famous, if
fading, middle-aged actress returning to the property that made her a
star in the first place. This time, though, she's playing the older
lead, with an upstart, played by Chloe Grace Moretz, taking her
original role. Writer-director Assayas has a heck of a reputation –
full disclosure: I haven't seen his work, although his South American
terrorist miniseries, Carlos, has been in my Netflix queue for
some time, so I'm TRYING – and anything involving Binoche, Stewart
(in non-Twilight roles, she typically knocks it out of the
park), and Moretz is worth seeing.
Ex Machina
Director: Alex
Garland
Writer: Alex
Garland
Starring: Alicia
Vikander, Domhnall Gleeson, Oscar Isaac
Sight unseen, I am
calling it now: this is the movie of the weekend. Maybe of the month.
Perhaps, if some of the praise I've heard for it finds its way into
my own opinion, one of the best of the year. Gleeson and Isaac have
been on the rise these last few years, and Vikander could be the
breakout actress of 2015 after roles in this, the
not-good-but-not-completely-horrible-but-that's-not-Vikander's-fault Seventh Son, and the
upcoming The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
Following in the
footsteps of movies like last year's The One I Love,
writer-director Alex Garland, a frequent Danny Boyle collaborator,
places a small number of actors in a confined space to play out
science fiction moral quandaries. This one in particular deals with
our relationship and anxiety toward artificial intelligence, with
Vikander playing a robot created by Isaac.
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