Month: September 2017

Weekend Box Office September 15, 2017

Welcome back to Screen Scholars’ trailer-round up, yee-haw! Last week’s big winner was It, which…I don’t know, is that really so surprising? Luckily for those of us less inclined to face our fears, there’s plenty to see this weekend, too.


American Assassin stars MTV’s Teen Wolf‘s Dylan O’Brien as a cute guy with a gun and a shaggy haircut. Oh, and Taylor Kitsch, Michael Keaton, and Sanaa Lathan are in this action film too. O’Brien is a young man who has “lost everything” and self-trains to defeat terrorism worldwide. Uh, sure, dude.


mother! is Darren Aronofsky’s latest film, starring Javier Bardem, Jennifer Lawrence, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Ed Harris. Aronofsky doesn’t want you to know what it’s about (how hard it is to be an artist), but it looks a lot like a cheap Rosemary’s Baby, right?


Brad’s Status is yet another drama where Ben Stiller is an insufferable moron because of his lingering feelings of inadequacy. You don’t have to keep making these movies, man.


Rat is purportedly a documentary about “Baltimore’s social history,” but how can you even tell from this pretentious trailer? I mean, yes, that’s Baltimore in the b-roll. And yes, the maritime city has rats, but I could go for less of them in my truth-telling cinema.


Because Of Grácia is this week’s poorly-made, ham-fisted, Christian film. It has a subplot with a pregnant teen thinking about abortion! She definitely won’t get one.


Manolo: The Boy Who Made Shoes for Lizards is a documentary about Manolo Blahnik.


Carpinteros is a film about inmates in the Dominican Republic. Julián inadvertently falls in love with Yanelly, who he is supposed to be sending messages to, via a form of sign language, for her violent boyfriend. This is the Dominican Republic’s entry for the Oscars.


In Search Of Fellini is the story of a young, sheltered woman who travels to Italy as a result of her love for Fellini. (Can’t hate that.) Then things get a little…French as she falls in love.


Simran stars Kangana Ranaut as a housekeeper who gets sucked into the world of crime.


The Wilde Wedding is a romantic comedy starring Glenn Close, John Malkovich, Patrick Stewart, and Minnie Driver. Chaos ensues when an actress invites her ex-husband to her wedding.


The Force is a documentary about the Oakland Police Department.


Lucknow Central is an Indian jail musical!


Vengeance: A Love Story stars Nicholas Cage in an adaptation of a Joyce Carol Oates story (this will not be Smooth Talk). Cage vows vengeance when a single mother is brutally assaulted in front of her young daughter.


Red Trees is a documentary about a man’s survival in the Holocaust.


Wetlands is a New Jersey crime thriller starring tarring Heather Graham, Jennifer Ehle, and Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje

Your Weekend Box Office, September 8, 2017

Welcome back to Screen Scholars! We never forgot about you, we’ve just been really busy. One of us spent the last several months wondering if she’d have to live in a box on the side of the road in Kings County. (Me. I wondered that.) And while we remain tremendously busy, just tremendously tied up with the obligations of the world that exists outside the television and film.

Welcome to fall. Here are your weekend films.

Home Again stars Reese Witherspoon in a film she’s too good for as a recently divorced mother of two who takes in three boarders in her childhood home. Glad now that Liz Lemon didn’t marry Michael Sheen.

IT stars Bill Skarsgård as Pennywise in this completely unnecessary remake (fine, the last one was a miniseries) of Stephen King’s novel. It’s getting good reviews!

9/11 is a drama starring a bunch of assholes in an elevtor in a film that shouldn’t have been made in the first place. Fuck this.

Napping Princess is an animated film about a girl who uses her dreams to solve a family mystery.

Poster Boys is a comedy about three men who face wacky hijinks when their faces are used to advertise sterilization.

Rebel in the Rye stars Nicholas Hoult (and Kevin Spacey, great) as a man who pensively walks around in the woods because he’s written Catcher In the Rye and teen boys LOVE it.

School Life is a documentary about two teachers at a boarding school in Ireland.

Trophy is a documentary about hunting. It’s supposed to be really good! It will be a bummer, and I’m sure Leonardo DiCaprio will be tied to its success.

Twenty Two is a documentary about the last surviving Chinese “comfort women,” women who were abducted into imprisonment for the pleasure of Japanese soldiers.

Year by the Sea, based on a memoir of the same name, is about a pretty wealthy woman who Finds Herself in Cape Cod when she separates from her dumb husband.