Happy wall of Friday releases, everybody! You know the drill.
Carrie: Kimberly Peirce brings absolutely nothing to this pokey, toothless remake of Brian de Palma’s 1976 adaptation of Stephen King’s novel. And Chloe Grace Moretz suffers for trusting her.
Cottage Country: I like Tyler Labine and Malin Akerman in most things. I might even like them in this dark relationship comedy, even. But Rad‘s review isn’t exactly instilling me with a lot of confidence.
Escape Plan: Stallone and Schwarzenegger, together again for the first time that isn’t in a movie with Expendables in the title. Is it wrong that I kinda want to see this?
The Fifth Estate: John is a lot harder on Bill Condon’s self-important docudrama about Julian Assange and the creation of WikiLeaks than I would have been; me, I think it’s exactly what you’d expect if the director of Dreamgirls and The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn decided to unpack the psychology of a technological crusader.
Le Joli Mai: Chris Marker’s 1963 documentary isn’t quite the classic you may have heard — it’s two and a half hours long, and feels it — but it’s lovely, and totally worth seeing on a big screen in this new HD restoration. So there.
Thanks for Sharing: A year after premiering at TIFF, Stuart Blumberg’s mostly okay ensemble drama about sex addiction lands in theatres. It’s gonna be weird for Marvel fans when Bruce Banner takes Pepper Potts to bed. TONY STARK IS YOUR SCIENCE BRO, MAN!
A Touch of Sin: Jia Zhang-ke once again puts contemporary China in front of his lens, and finds it wanting — though this time he does it with a new sense of danger and rage. It’s one of the year’s best films, you guys.
12 Years a Slave: Steve McQueen’s harrowing historical drama is another of this year’s best films, built around a tremendous performance from Chiwetel Ejiofor. You won’t soon forget it.
Really, just go see something this weekend. Gravity‘s good too, if you haven’t caught up to it yet.
So, director’s faults aside, does enjoying The Fifth Estate depend on where one places Assange on the dangerous douche….rarified visionary spectrum? I am somewhere in the middle on this and was hoping for any degree of balance from this movie.
Condon tries to cover all the Assange bases, which is the movie’s second biggest problem after “Wow, this is really just about people messaging one another for two hours.” It doesn’t really have a point of view in the end, either about Assange’s actions or the man himself.