It’s Oscar weekend! New Year’s Eve for cinephiles. And, between brushing up on Oscars trivia and filling out predictions ballots and spending hours in the kitchen making Academy Awards-themed snacks for the viewing party you’re hosting, there’s very little time remaining to go to the movies this week. But if you’re superhuman and actually have the time, or if you don’t care about the Oscars (whaaaaaat?!), then you actually have three brand-new releases to look forward to.
The new film getting the widest release this weekend is Gods of Egypt, a fantasy epic about a battle between mortal humans and Egyptian gods over who gets to rule the Earth. Or something. Honestly, this one looks atrocious. If the trailer is any indication, we’re in for CGI excess, wooden acting, hammy villaining, and gibberish filling in for narrative. The saddest thing is that this comes from director Alex Proyas, who made The Crow and Dark City in the ’90s; anything distinctive or special about him as a filmmaker seems to have been devoured by studio factory production. The cast includes Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Game of Thrones), Brenton Thwaites (The Giver), Gerard Butler, and Academy Award winner Geoffrey Rush. Early reviews are as wretched as you’d expect. I’m nevertheless looking forward to seeing this, if only for the fun review it’s sure to inspire.
Also opening is Triple 9, a generic-sounding heist thriller from John Hillcoat, director of The Road. The plot involves crooked cops and blackmail and the Russian mafia, and I’m already asleep. The cast is appealing, however, with Oscar nominees (Casey Affleck, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Woody Harrelson), Emmy Award winner Aaron Paul, and my beloved Kate Winslet as a Russian mobster (!!!). Critics so far have been totally ambivalent and passionless about this, which sounds about right. I’ll follow Kate anywhere she wants to take me (though the last time she played a villain, in the Divergent franchise, she was baaaaad), but I can’t say that I’m in any way excited to see this.
The third film opening in wide release this week is sports biopic Eddie the Eagle, about Eddie Edwards, the first British Olympic ski jumper. Directed by Dexter Fletcher (an English character actor and occasional filmmaker), the film stars Taron Egerton (who gave such an impressive star-is-born performance in last year’s Kingsman: The Secret Service), Hugh Jackman, and Christopher Walken. I don’t really have anything else to say about this — Egerton looks to be giving an interestingly oddball performance, but this is the second sports biopic in two weeks (after last week’s Race), and that’s about the snooziest thing imaginable for me. Reviews thus far are cautiously positive. Let’s see what happens. No one really went to see Race last week. Will people care this time around?
Among the limited releases this week are Bollywood comedy Tere Bin Laden: Dead or Alive and King Georges, a documentary about Philadelphia restaurateur Georges Perrier.
What are you planning to see this weekend?
