A Viewer's Guide to Weekend Movies: Crying and Dying with Tom Cruise and Teens
By the grace of whatever deity you pray to, neither film going wide this week is a franchise installment. Limited releases continue the originality with an abortion rom-com. It's summer refreshment at the movies this weekend. Savor it.
.By the grace of whatever deity you pray to, neither film going wide this week is a franchise installment. Limited releases continue the originality with an abortion rom-com. It's summer refreshment at the movies this weekend. Savor it.
In Theaters
In what may be the first truly great week of blockbuster season, you can't go wrong with either wide release this week.
Let's talk about the flashy blockbuster first. Edge of Tomorrow, the sci-fi action-palooza with Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt has an admittedly terrible marketing campaign ("Live. Die. Repeat." ugh) but it is, miraculously, not as bad as it looks. In fact, if you trust movie critics, it might actually be pretty good: Tomorrow enjoys a 90 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Don't expect a whole lot of depth (nor box office success), as The Wire's own David Sims compares it to a cinematic video game, but sometimes depth isn't the point. "Edge of Tomorrow is the perfect mix of blustering action and sci-fi thinky nonsense that is best enjoyed without picking at it too much," Sims writes. "It's worth seeing just for the performances, the set-pieces, and the strong exploitation of its high-concept premise. It's what summer movies are supposed to be for."
What summer movies might not be for is crying, but if you're looking for that, boy, do we have just the thing. If you aren't one of the fanatics who've been counting down until Friday for months (if not years) and unfamiliar, The Fault in Our Stars is a guaranteed weeper, based on the novel of the same name by John Green, enjoyed and cried over by teens and adults alike. The film might not evoke the same devastation as the book, but it has teens and romance and cancer – who among us could withstand that? Plus, Shailene Woodley, Ansel Elgort, and Nat Wolff put in compelling performances, and there are some nifty production details to keep an eye out for. So if you're not into sci-fi thrillers, TFIOS is definitely worth checking out – just don't blame us when your heart is broken.
In Limited Release
Both the anti-conservative big-money documentary Citizen Koch, which AV Club calls "spirited, convincing, and eminently watchable," and Test, a film with a 90 percent RT rating that deals with modern dance and AIDS in 1985 San Francisco, appear to be worth watching this weekend. But if you're in Los Angeles or New York City this weekend, our pick goes to Obvious Child, the abortion rom-com starring Jenny Slate. Reasons you should see it: the movie takes its title from the Paul Simon song, it's about time Slate had a starring role like this, it's romantic comedy about abortion, and it and looks absolutely wonderful:
Video on Demand
None of your choices are particularly appetizing this week. There's the Robocop reboot that seems eminently forgettable; Filth if you want to watch James McAvoy do something other than be Professor X; Lone Survivor, a behind-enemy-lines war thriller that seems self-explanatory; and The Pretty One, which has Zoe Kazan playing twins, where one impersonates the deceased other and eventually woos Jake Johnson. Lone Survivor has the best RT rating of the bunch, but there's enough variety here that it probably depends on what you like. We recommend Filth, mostly because it's based on a novel by the guy who wrote Trainspotting.
Streaming on Netflix
What should you watch on Netflix this weekend? You mean if we're pretending we're not all going to be binging Orange is the New Black? Well, there's another season of Luther up on instant, and three movies worth checking out: Rudy for some inspirational sports feelings, Girl Most Likely for Kristen Wiig (unfortunately it's most likely not as good as you want it to be), and Harriet the Spy for some good old fashioned '90s nostalgia.
Movies on TV
Enough Said is on at 8 p.m. Saturday on HBO, and you should most definitely watch. Both Julia Louis-Dreyfus and James Gandolfini give outstanding performances in this middle-age rom-com, and watching Louis-Dreyfus play a character the polar opposite of Selina Meyer could be a refreshing warm-up for the Veep finale Sunday. On Showtime Saturday, you either have the last two Twilight movies starting a 2 p.m., or The Last Exorcism Part II (because apparently the first Last Exorcism wasn't the last) at 10 p.m. But seriously, watch Enough Said.