Here to take a look at the films coming out in wide and limited release this coming weekend. I’ll give you my thoughts to help you decide what’s worth checking out.
- Mortdecai – This is another uninspired weekend at the movies. Mortdecai is based on a 1970’s comedic crime novel series, and stars Johnny Depp in a role that’s sure to incite the common complaint that’s he’s always just playing weird characters. But usually those movies at least make money while he played a normal character in Transcendence and that was a flop. So I can see why he returns to these oddball rolls since they’re at least usually more successful, and obviously fun for him. Since reviews are just starting to roll in, I took a gander and saw some cringe-enducing phrases such as “psychotically unfunny”, “shockingly unfunny”, and “obstinately unfunny”. I’m not completely surprised because watching the trailer I really could not get a sense of what the movie was actually about or the tone. It was mostly just a lot of people saying “Mortdecai”.
- The Boy Next Door – This is the movie where Jennifer Lopez is sexy as hell and apparently reveals all in some steamy sex scenes. The trailer comes off funny because this high school age boy is clearly nearing 30 (27-year-old Ryan Guzman to be exact). But it’s one of those throwback erotic thrillers that used to be much more prevalent. If this aims for a more campy feel, where it knows what it is, I could see myself throwing it on cable one day just to see that Lopez booty. Then again there is that line where Guzman says ““I love your mother’s cookies”… Well there’s at least one thing going for it – the budget was only $4 million, so I’m sure it will be profitable, even if it does have a weak open.
- Black Sea – Jude Law plays a submarine captain who takes on an expedition to recover gold from a sunken German submarine from WWII. He gathers a team together and once the plan is revealed greed causes a rift in the group over how this gold will be dispersed. I only watched the first minute of the trailer because I’ll be reviewing this next week and it’s the rare occasion where I can go see a movie without knowing much at all about it. So it’s possible that there’s some huge shift in the second minute of the trailer and I am missing a bigger dynamic of the movie. It looks like a decent thriller though and is sitting comfortably at 80% on Rotten Tomatoes currently, so I’m looking forward to checking this out.
Playing in select theaters and expanding next week. - Cake – This definitely looks like one of those little indie dramas that could easily pass by without much notice. The only thing making it more well known is Jennifer Aniston’s various awards nominations and short lived Oscar campaign. This movie as a whole apparently is not great, but her performance is supposedly pretty good. I’ve always wanted her to do something more dramatic after how great she was in The Good Girl. In this she plays a woman dealing with chronic pain who’s barely getting by. She’s very wise-cracking and grumpy so I can certainly see her character feeling a bit cliche, but I’m still moderately interested in checking this out at some point. How did no one tell me Chris Messina is in this? I’ve watched enough bad movies of his just to see him, so why should this be any different?
Playing in select theaters.
