Now Showing - Weekend of January 27 - 29, 2017
Ok, so it's not a great week for new wide releases. Gold and A Dog's Purpose have both received fairly negative overall reviews. I had the misfortune of seeing Resident Evil: The Final Chapter and it's terrible. I am not going to be overly harsh to it because it's a Resident Evil movie and about the same as any other title in the series. Unless you really really like the series, just save your money or go see something else. However, I feel obligated to point out that I am having an absolute blast playing Resident Evil 7: Biohazard right now. It's the newest entry in the long-running video game series and it is completely unlike any of the other games that came before it. This game feels like you are in an Evil Dead or Texas Chainsaw Massacre movie of your own and I love it. My advice: play it loud and play it in the dark. I imagine I will be continuing to play it until the wee hours of the morning until I get all the way through it.
All of my recommendations from last week should still be available in most theaters, so you should check these movies out, if you haven't already: Arrival, Elle (listen to my warning about the subject matter), La La Land, Rogue One, and Split. Here are my new picks for this weekend:
Jackie - Let me get this out of the way, I detest biopics. They are by far my least favorite genre and I always feel like the material could be better served formatted as a documentary or television miniseries. Jackie changed my mind. You can listen to me gush about it on Episode 02 of The Film Coterie and see how high I placed it in my Top 10 Films of 2016. Directed by Pablo Larrain, Jackie shares with us the moments and days following JFK's assassination. We get to see the titular Jackie Kennedy as she must deal with her grief, her anger, and her future as she is preparing Jack's funeral and deals with being moved out of the White House. What I really like about this movie is that it doesn't play out as a "greatest moments" style story of someone's life. By focusing in on this tight timeline of events and not being broader, I think it gives the audience a greater understanding of Jackie as a person. Natalie Portman is powerful in this movie and I think she's a shoe-in for her second Oscar. I can't recommend this movie enough, so get out and check it out. And if you like it (and you will), check out Pablo Larrain's Neruda which will be hitting more theaters next week. I don't think we will be doing a formal review of Neruda, but I will probably post an article with my thoughts.
Hidden Figures - I have not had the chance to see this movie yet, but I plan to do so soon. There's some slight liberties taken with the story, but see the mostly true story of the African-American women who worked at NASA and who served as the brains behind one of the biggest and most important space operations of all time. There is good word from just about everywhere on this movie and we'll have a Guest Review on it that should be posting tomorrow. I don't think you'll be going wrong by seeing it this weekend.
So there ya go, 7 good choices to see this weekend. If you check out any of these movies or even see anything else, let us know your thoughts below.