This Weekend at the Box Office: Friday, December 14th, 2018

This weekend we get a female directed film (Capernaum), a comedy special from Ellen, Alfonso Cuarón’s latest (Roma on Netflix and art houses near you), the Boss on Broadway, and an animated Spider-man on the big screen.

Capernaum is a Lebanese drama about a boy who sues his parents for neglect. The film is nominated for a Golden Globe.

Mortal Engines, directed by Christian Rivers, with a screenplay co-written and co-produced by Fran Walsh and Peter Jackson (among others, apparently this film took a village), and based on the novel by Philip Reeve, who asks us what a world would look like if you mashed The Hunger Games, Snowpiercer, and Mad Max: Fury Road together. London, now a traveling city in a post-apocalyptic world, can only be saved by a disfigured, mysterious young woman. I had a hard time not rolling my eyes through that, but I think the movie looks like a fun, reasonable way to waste your time at the theater.

That Way Madness Lies… is a documentary from Sandra Luckow about her family’s struggle to help her brother, who is a paranoid schizophrenic.

The Quake is a Norwegian disaster film. A geologist races to struggle his family as the Earth crumbles!

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse is an animated Spider-Man feature, covering Miles Morales’ (Shamiek Moore!) origin story. Miles meets Peter Parker (Jake Johnson), too. Additional voices include Lily Tomlin (Aunt May!), Brian Tyree Henry, Luna Lauren Velez, Mahershala Ali, Liev Schrieber, and Hailee Steinfeld. We’ll also hear from Kathryn Hahn, John Mulaney (Spider-Ham), Kimiko Glenn, Zoe Kravitz, and, are you sitting down?, Nicholas Cage.

The Mule is a film directed and produced by Clint Eastwood, so good luck with that. (It’s written by Nick Schenk, who wrote the abominable Gran Torino.) The film is based on the true story of Leo Sharp, who ferried a prolific amount of drugs for the Sinaloa Cartel. You can read about Sharp in the New York Times, who published the story that inspired the film. (That’s Real News, not Fake News, if you’re out there, Clint.)

Second Act is Jennifer Lopez’s latest; “an underachiever 40-year-old mother” finds an opportunity in a better paying job when she mistakenly hired. A Working Girl for a new era…?

Out Wednesday, December 19th, 2018

Mary Poppins Returns, the sequel to the beloved Julie Andrews film stars Emily Blunt and Lin-Manuel Miranda. (With appearances and/or voices from Angela Lansbury, Meryl Streep, and Dick Van Dyke.) Poppins returns to Depression-era London because the suffragettes won and Jane and Michael are depressed.

Today Amazon releases LOL: Last One Laughing. A trailer was not available at press time.

Today from Netflix:

This weekend trailers were not available for the following titles: Inside the Real Narcos, Inside the World’s Toughest Prisons season three, Prince of Peoria: A Christmas Moose Miracle, and Terrace House: Opening New Doors Part 5.