Posted by Hello fellow Geeks!
Welcome back to This Week in Theaters! It’s January 25th.
With the Oscar nominations posted this week, many of the nominees are expanding (Green Book) or returning to theaters (Can You Ever Forgive Me?). In addition, we have two wide releases targeting different audiences and a handful of limited releases.
As always, feel free to check out our Podcast on the group’s reviews of wide-releases through April. Find that here.
Wide Releases:
The King Who Would Be King, fantasy family adventure, written and directed by Joe Cornish. Starring Louis Serkis (Andy’s son!), Denise Gough, Rebecca Ferguson, 120 minutes
I’ll admit, the trailer didn’t excite me. This CG-heavy family adventure about a kid who finds Excalibur and has to fight a legion of demons led by a resurrected Morgana LeFey. Joe Cornish made Attack the Block, so that was a plus. Perhaps not a strong trailer? Reviews have been very positive, at 67 on Metacritic, saying its clever well-done, and doesn’t pander.
I’m still wondering why the title references the Rudyard Kipling story and not King Arthur directly. I’ll hopefully check it out sometime this week.
Serenity, thriller, Written and Directed by Steven Knight. Starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jason Clark, Djimon Hounsou, Diane Lane
This often delayed thriller is an inexplicable mess. Our review is over here, so I’ll leave anything further to that page, or try to as I write this up. McConaughey is a down on his luck fisherman with a dark past. That past is Anne Hathway, who shows up to ask him to murder her abusive husband by pushing him off his boat. The machinations around that is the basics of the plot. But there is so much more, and that more is so damned stupid it has to be seen to be belived. As many wanna-be noirs are, expect a twisty story with secrets and lies. I dunno why they would choose to name the movie the same as the Firefly film. Will only be confusing. But that’s the least of the confusions around Serenity.
The reviews have come ashore at 37 on Metacritic and 20% at RottenTomatoes. They highlight the inanity of plot points and the director’s floursishes. This is the year’s first Best Worst movie.
A quick run down of the limited releases: sorry, no time to go into them this week
In Like Flynn – Nothing to do with the spy parodies from decades ago. Instead this is a Errol Flynn bio-pic, focusing on growing up in Australia before his fame. Three of the four reviews, averaging 67, are good, saying it has the swash-buckling adventure of Flynn’s films.
The Invisibles – A Holocaust narrative about 7000 Jews hiding in Berlin after Goebbels believes the city to be cleared. Reviews range from 50 to 75, averaging at 59 so that’s decent. From that looks to be consistantly good, but not great.
Jihadists – Documentary exploring the idiology of ISIS. Two reviews, one is a 75 and the other a 0, both solid sources so I’m intrigued from that alone.
Never Look Away – one of the Oscar nominees for Foreign Language. A young man finds love in a rebuilding Europe after WWII.
