There’s a punitive amount of new releases this week. Five? Third week of October and there are five new releases coming out? And one is a Medea film? They don’t pay me enough.
1. Geostorm (Warner Brothers, 3,246 Theaters, 109 Minutes, Rated PG-13 for destruction, action and violence, Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer at press time: 29% Fresh [7 Reviews]: Well, this is an inappropriately timed film, isn’t it?
In the near future, satellites can control the weather and do so to keep super storms in their place. It’s a perfect system, until the satellites start causing storms instead of stopping them. Soon, it’s a race against time to stave off global destruction and find out the real reason the satellites malfunctioned.
This might be a nifty sci-fi thriller if it wasn’t for the fact that the American Southeast and Puerto Rico are still recovering from weather-based catastrophes. Surely Warners and the filmmakers didn’t know that would happen when they made the movie, but you’d think they’d delay the release a bit because of it.
2. Only the Brave (Sony/Columbia, 2,577 Theaters, 133 Minutes, Rated PG-13 for thematic content, some sexual references, language and drug material, Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer at press time: 90% Fresh [71 Reviews]: Yet another inappropriately timed film. Is this weekend at the box office cursed (considering what the next movie is, I’d say yes)?
This film tells the true story of the “Granite Mountain Hotshots,” fire fighters who specialize in fighting wildfires that threaten towns. It shows the bonds made between the men and what lengths and risks they are willing to go through to keep their town and families safe.
With wildfires raging throughout California, and fire fighters like the ones portrayed here in similar kind of danger, perhaps now is not the best time for this film to be released.
3. Tyler Perry’s Boo 2! A Madea Halloween (Lionsgate, 2,388 Theaters, 101 Minutes, PG-13 for sexual references, drug content, language and some horror images, Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer at press time: N/A [Not Submitted to critics, only 1 negative review at press time]: I think I said when the last Madea film was released that this has become a cash cow for Tyler Perry. Whenever he needs a little more spending money, he throws on a dress and makes another one of these films. My opinion has not changed.
And this sub-franchise could be quite the lucrative cash cow. The film follows the same plot from the first Madea Halloween film: Her granddaughter (?) goes to a traditional slasher movie location and is in danger for her life. It’s up to Madea to come to the rescue.
And even though it is essentially the same movie as last time, projections show that it is likely to dominate the box office this weekend. And considering the genre has enough tropes to allow Perry to revisit it again and again, this might be the second in a long line of these kind of parodies,
4. The Snowman (Universal, 1,812 Theaters, 119 Minutes, Rated R for grisly images, violence, some language, sexuality and brief nudity, Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer at press time: 14% Fresh [88 Reviews]: It’s the first snow of the season and The Snowman is back on the hunt. A detective (Michael Fassbender) must race against time to keep the serial killer’s carnage to a minimum this time. However, being that the killer is two steps ahead of him, that will be impossible to do.
The trailer has a real Silence of the Lambs vibe to it, which is only natural because it is a serial killer movie based on a best-selling novel with an all-star cast.
However, that Tomatometer score says that the cast is wasted in this film. It’s a shame, because this is a film that a lot of people were looking forward to.
5. Same Kind of Different As Me (Pure Flix, 1,362 Theaters,119 Minutes, Rated PG-13 for thematic elements including some violence and language, Rotten Tomatoes Tomatometer at press time: N/A [No Reviews Listed at Press Time]: It’s always a bad weekend for movies when you have one film that wasn’t submitted for critics. This week we have three. Yikes.
Ladies and gentlemen, may we have a moment of silence for Renee Zellweger’s career. This is her first “religious picture” of her career, the final resting place for stars who once had a career, but have fallen out of favor. She joins Greg Kinnear and Jon Voight–savvy vets of the genre–in a story where Christian values towards a homeless man changes the lives of the town as whole and them in particular.
These films typically do well at the box office, but that’s not likely in a crowded, Madea dominated week.
Next week, we will hopefully have a more manageable number of new releases to cover, including another Saw film, another Miles Teller film and another pairing of George Clooney and the Coen Brothers.
