Ok, now to be fair, the title of this post might be a little gratuitous. Just a little...
Its not that all these movies look bad or anything, they just aren't really big releases. It kinda seems like the industry skipped this week for the blockbuster films.
Either way, there's still a few movies that might interest you coming out this weekend.
Woman vs. nature. It certainly has a ring to it, especially when woman wins. But there are too few such stories in our popular culture, and certainly on our movie screens.
Enter “Adrift,” based on the harrowing, real-life story of Tami Oldham, who sailed off on a romantic voyage from Tahiti to San Diego in 1983 with her fiance, Richard Sharp, and ran into a brutal hurricane. Oldham wrote of the ordeal — 41 days on the open seas in a damaged 44-foot sailboat — in her book, “Red Sky in Mourning,” and if you haven’t read it yet, good: Stop Googling and see the film first. You’ll be glad you didn’t know all the details beforehand.
Off the bat, “Adrift,” by Icelandic action director Baltasar Kormakur (“Everest”), has several things going for it. First of all, Kormakur is a lifelong sailor, and he chose to film on the open ocean off Fiji, lending the proceedings an obvious visual urgency. Second, the story is simple and thrilling — because it’s true. And third, Shailene Woodley, one of the most naturalistic young actresses working today, is hard not to root for in any film, and certainly here as Tami, a relaxed California girl suddenly caught in an elemental battle to survive.
Read the full review at Associated Press
For anyone who has ever read “Crime and Punishment” and then really wanted to see a frat boy version — Bro-stoyevsky, if you will — your movie has finally arrived.
“American Animals” is about a foursome of Kentucky college students — all white kids from privileged backgrounds — who in 2004 decided to steal some extremely valuable books from the Lexington library at Transylvania University. They are motivated less by the millions the books (particularly John James Audubon’s multi-volume “The Birds of America”) could fetch than a desire to step beyond a line and turn their regular lives into something “special.”
“We’re supposed to be hunter gatherers, man,” one says to another in a grocery store aisle.
The irony is that their brazen plot turns them into just another kind of cliché — hapless, dimwitted criminals — and leaves them ultimately with nothing but regret and shame. Oh, and this movie.
Read the full review at Associated Press
***WARNING - THE FOLLOWING TRAILER IS GRAPHIC***
Now, Upgrade didn't really get much coverage up to its release, but it does look pretty interesting.
And then there's Action Point.
It's a Johnny Knoxville movie.
About a theme park with no rules.
I think we all know how this movie is gonna be...