Monthly Movie Preview: September 2014

September is one of the dullest months in the year for a movie fan, and this year's may be even slower than average.  The summer movie season has ended, usually with a string of failures in August, and generally you want start to see the earliest awards season fare (the earliest usually being the more mainstream) until October.  Meanwhile, there aren't even any big movies coming to home video because most of the releases are from the typically slow previous April and the flops from May.  High profile theatrical releases are especially short in supply this September, where the lineup is mostly comprised of thrillers adapted from previous sources (BEFORE I GO TO SLEEP, A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES, THE EQUALIZER) and the likeliest contender for #1 movie of the month is a HUNGER GAMES rip-off, THE MAZE RUNNER, although even that will probably be minor.  In a very dead-looking month, the most interesting release is THE BOXTROLLS, a stop-motion animated fantasy from the makers of CORALINE and PARANORMAN

September 5th
THE IDENTICAL  (DRAMA)
Directed by Dustin Marcellino; Starring: Blake Rayne, Ashley Judd, Seth Green, Amanda Crew, Ray Liotta
Rated PG for thematic material and smoking.
This movie was listed as an upcoming wide release, but I wasn't familiar with it at all, so I had to do a bit of digging.  This is the kind of movie that they don't bother with advertising- you've got to find them.  But the best thing it seems to have going for it is that people don't know about it.  Made by a Nashville-based Christian company whose mission statement is to create films with "redeeming value," this musical-drama is about a preacher's son in the 1950s who defies his father's wishes to become a rock 'n' roll singer.  He begins doubling for a famous rock star, and even though it would technically constitute a big "spoiler," the official website and preview reveal that, yes, they are twins, and this eventually leads him to God (the Christian one).  This isn't a movie, it's a sermon, and an aggressively cheesy-looking one at that.  It's a shame how far GOODFELLAS-star Ray Liotta has fallen, but I guess it's because he has a weird mouth.  Independent Christian cinema is burgeoning, but without better films, it'll never break out into the mainstream.

September 5th
FORREST GUMP  (COMEDY-DRAMA)
Directed by Robert Zemeckis; Starring: Tom Hanks, Robin Wright, Gary Sinise, Mykelti Williamson, Haley Joel Osment
Rated PG-13 for drug use, some sensuality and war violence.
The divisive #1 Movie of 1994 and winner of the Academy Awards for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor returns to the big screen, specifically, the biggest screens for a special 20th anniversary IMAX release.  When I say it's divisive, it isn't so much that audiences are split between whether it's good or bad, but rather, there's an atypically heated split over whether it's good or great.  Whether you believe Forrest is an exemplary conservative role model or subversive and liberal tale of historic irony, FORREST GUMP is a fine example of Cinema Americana, and if its one of your favorite films, there's no better way to watch a movie in theaters than IMAX.

September 12th

DOLPHIN TALE 2  (FAMILY/DRAMA)
Directed by Charles Martin Smith; Starring: Harry Connick Jr., Ashley Judd, Nathan Gamble, Cozi Zuehlsdorff, Kris Kristofferson, Morgan Freeman
Rated PG for some mild thematic elements.
What I remember best about the first DOLPHIN TALE is that it wasn't quite as bad as the previews made it look and that it had an amusing amount of gimmicky 3D shots for a truth-based movie about building a prosthetic tail for a dolphin.  The previews for the sequel also look dreadful, and I'm not sure why this film isn't going straight to home video, because that's exactly what this whole thing resembles.  It's basically a big fat commercial for the Clearwater Marine Aquarium, where the film takes place and was filmed along with the aquarium's star resident, Winter, a bottlenose dolphin with a prosthetic tail.  In this film, also based on true events, Winter's depressed and the veterinarian diagnoses him as horny, so they have to get him a dolphin girlfriend.  That's how they'd describe it if it were a comedy, and I might be more interested in seeing that.  The film also features an appearance by Bethany Hamilton, the real-life inspiration for the extra-cheesy 2011 family drama SOUL SURFER.

September 12th
NO GOOD DEED  (THRILLER)
Directed by Sam Miller; Starring: Idris Elba, Taraji P. Henson, Leslie Bibb, Kate del Castillo, Henry Simmons
Rated PG-13 for sequences of violence, menace, terror, and for language.
A former District Attorney turned stay-at-home mother of two faces off against an escaped convict/sociopath when he shows up at her house asking to use the phone.  It's a little troubling that this film was supposed to be released last October (release delays like this sometimes suggest a lack of faith by the film studio), but as a starring vehicle for Idris Elba (PACIFIC RIM, PROMETHEUS) it has potential.  Watch the reviews on this one as well- it could lean either way.

September 19th
THE MAZE RUNNER  (SCI-FI/ACTION-THRILLER)
Directed by Wes Ball: Starring: Dylan O'Brien, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Kaya Scodelario, Will Poulter, Patricia Clarkson
Rated PG-13 for thematic elements and intense sequences of sci-fi violence and action, including some disturbing images.
In yet another adaptation of a young adult science fiction action-thriller novel, a group of teens wake up to find themselves trapped in an expansive maze riddled with numerous perils and no memory of how they got there or who they are.  Racing to survive in the labyrinth, they piece together the clues of their past to discover their purpose and the way out.  Based on a best-selling novel published a year after The Hunger Games, the advertising has showcased some grabbing visuals, but has done nothing to suggest that it can overcome its greatest obstacle: to prove it's not a rip-off.  If it can do as much as that (and other films with much more distinct plots have failed to do so, cough, DIVERGENT, cough), then it will at least be a minor success.

September 19th
TUSK  (HORROR) 
Directed by Kevin Smith; Starring: Justin Long, Michael Parks, Haley Joel Osment, Genesis Rodriguez, Johnny Depp
Rated R for some disturbing violence/gore, language and sexual content. 
Justin Long stars as a podcaster who travels to the backwoods of Manitoba to interview an eccentric old seaman, but his then held hostage by his subject who intends to surgically turn Long into a walrus.  Nope, you did not misread.  It's kind of like THE HUMAN CENTIPEDE, but instead of sewing peoples' mouths to peoples' butts to create one digestive tract, the mad scientist is turning a man into a walrus.  I'm a little iffy on Kevin Smith myself, but the concept is... intriguing.  Also, Haley Joel Osment, the Academy Award-nominated child actor from THE SIXTH SENSE, co-stars as Long's best bud, and he's significantly weightier, so that's a win right there.  Probably won't make it out to the theater for this one though.

September 19th
A WALK AMONG THE TOMBSTONES  (CRIME-DRAMA)
Directed by Scott Frank; Starring: Liam Neeson, Dan Stevens, Boyd Holbrook, Ruth Wilson, Sebastian Roche, Whitney Able, Stephanie Andujar
Rated R for strong violence, disturbing images, language and brief nudity.
Liam Neeson, apparently typecast forever as the gritty, hard-boiled badass, stars as a disgraced former cop turned private detective who's hired by a drug lord to find his kidnapped wife, but when she's found murdered, he starts tracking down the killers.  Scott Frank hasn't directed much to date and is best known for writing THE WOLVERINE and MINORITY REPORT, but this is clearly going for a dark, violent neo-noir vibe.  It'll probably be a bit smarter than TAKEN fans are used to, but as it's adapted from one of a series of books featuring Neeson's character of P.I. Matt Scudder, a potential series may be in order.

September 26th
THE BOXTROLLS  (ANIMATED/FANTASY) 
Directed by Graham Annable & Anthony Stacchi; Featuring the Voices of: Isaac Hempstead-Wright, Ben Kingsley, Elle Fanning, Toni Collette, Jared Harris, Simon Pegg, Nick Frost
Rated PG for action, some peril and mild rude humor. 

Based on the children's novel Here Be Monsters!, THE BOXTROLLS is the story of an orphan boy dubbed Eggs, who lives with his adopted family of underground-dwelling, garbage-collecting creatures called Boxtrolls (they wear cardboard boxes), but an evil exterminator named Archibald Snatcher (voiced by Sir Ben Kingsley no less!) has them in his sights and Eggs has to help save his oddball family.  This may not be a sure thing (unfortunately, it's very unlikely to make much of a mark at the U.S. box office), but there's undeniable charms to the idea and after the one-two punch of the good and very chilling CORALINE and the spectacular and heartwarming PARANORMAN, I'm more than willing to give the stop-motion animation wizards at Laika some credit.

September 26th
THE EQUALIZER  (ACTION-THRILLER) 
Directed by Antoine Fuqua; Starring: Denzel Washington, Chloe Grace Moretz, Marton Csokas, Melissa Leo, Haley Bennett, Vladimir Kulich, Robert Wahlberg, Bill Pullman
Rated R for strong bloody violence and language throughout, including some sexual references.
Another TAKEN wannabe, but potentially one of the more entertaining ones, TRAINING DAY-director Antoine Fuqua's adaptation of the eighties television series of the same name reunites him with star Denzel Washington as an ex-black ops commando now laying low as a worker at a home improvement store, but in secret fights crime as a vigilante and helps the victims of criminals.  When a teenage prostitute (Chloe Grace Moretz) he's befriended at the diner he visits as his off-hours haunt is hospitalized but who he assumes are mere pimps, he takes the men out and discovers that he's declared a one-man war on the Russian mob.  On the one hand, it looks like an unintentionally funny combination of TAKEN, TAXI DRIVER and James Gunn's SUPER, but on the other hand, there's a schlocky sort of appeal here.