This weekend at the movies will be pretty busy, with three new wide releases to lure audiences. Not one of them looks too appealing to me, though. I plan to focus on catching up with those prestige films from before Christmas that are released all at once, seemingly in an attempt to overwhelm the discerning adult filmgoer.
Opening in the largest number of theatres is Ride Along 2, the new comedy starring Ice Cube and Kevin Hart. A sequel to the surprise hit from two years ago, this promises to be… more of the same? I don’t know. I didn’t see the first installment, and I have zero interest in seeing this one. I confess that I tend to be allergic to Hart — I find him shrill and irritating and offensively unfunny. But that’s just me. If any of you reading this count yourselves among his fans, can you please explain to me why that is? I’m not making fun of you; I’m genuinely curious, because I really don’t get it. In any case, early reviews of this are overwhelmingly negative. Save your money for something worthwhile.
Also new this weekend is 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, a war thriller about the 2012 attack on the U.S. diplomatic compound in the Libyan city. This marks only director Michael Bay’s second non-Transformers film in the past ten years, so that’s something? The film features an ensemble cast led by James Badge Dale and John Krasinski — and I’m definitely intrigued to see the formerly dorky Krasinski follow wife Emily Blunt into action-hero mode. Reviews are mixed, and I will definitely check it out at some point this week. That 2-hour-25-minute runtime is already making me feel exhausted, though.
The weekend’s third and final new wide release is Norm of the North, an animated comedy about a talking polar bear who travels to New York City to save his Arctic home from an evil real estate developer. TV spots have made this look just horrible… and that 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes certainly doesn’t inspire much confidence.
New films in limited release this weekend include Band of Robbers, which re-imagines Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn as grown men in the present, still searching for that hidden treasure, and A Perfect Day, an English-language Spanish film that premiered in the Directors Fortnight program at Cannes and which stars Benicio Del Toro and Tim Robbins as aid workers working to resolve crisis in an armed conflict zone.
Meanwhile, Todd Haynes’s elegant Carol finally expands into wide release on the heels of its six Oscar nominations (including for both of its stars, Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara). This is one of the best films of the year, so you shouldn’t miss it.
What are you planning to see this weekend? Please say Carol.
