Weekend Movies: Friends Don’t Let Friends See Bad Movies

Here we go again – another August weekend of full of drivel.

Getting an early Wednesday start this week, the widest new movie release is The Weinstein Company’s ‘No Escape‘. Owen Wilson leads the cast as an important figure within his company. When the opportunity becomes available, he relocates his family to Malaysia. What seemed like a safe move quickly turns into a nightmare when a coup flares up around his hotel. The family’s safest bet is to get to the U.S. embassy in hopes that it’s still a secure location. Lake Bell co-stars as his wife and Pierce Brosnan plays a British tourist who aides them in their escape.

Warner Bros. has the second widest release with ‘We Are Your Friends‘. Zac Efron is still trying to break his ‘High School Musical’ persona with a drama that pegs him as the opposite: a party-loving aspiring DJ caught in the middle of a major moral conflict. Just as he finally cracks into the underground Los Angeles DJ scene, a conundrum kicks off when he falls for the girlfriend (Emily Ratajkowski) of his new-found mentor (Wes Bentley). Which will yield the most long-lasting happiness: getting the perfect girl, or the perfect dream job?

From the makers of ‘Fireproof‘ and ‘Courageous‘ comes the new faith-based drama ‘War Room‘. The story follows a young successful couple whose marriage and family are at risk of being torn apart. With the help of a wiser, older woman, the wife learns the secret to healing their family – but will the husband join along?

The Sundance drama ‘Z for Zachariah‘ is finally getting a 29-screen release thanks to acquiring distributor Roadside Attractions. Set in a post-apocalyptic world that doesn’t appear much different from that in ‘The Road‘, three people find themselves together as the presumed last survivors of a devastating disaster that destroyed most of the planet. Margot Robbie, Chris Pine and Chiwetel Ejiofor play the trio caught in the middle of the last-ever love triangle.

4 comments

  1. William Henley

    So out of all the reviews posted, no one reviewed Friday’s number one movie. From Box office Mojo:
    “Forecast Update: Looks like that headline, “‘Compton’ Three-peats,” should have had a question mark behind it. Sony is reporting that War Room, the faith-based film from the Kendrick brothers, made $3.87M in Friday receipts while Universal reports that Straight Outta Compton made $3.83.”

    http://www.boxofficemojo.com/daily/chart/?view=1day&sortdate=2015-08-28&order=DESC&p=.htm

    At least Luke acknowledged it.

    Not that those numbers are great, but that is an awesome per-screen average for a faith based movie – most movies don’t even earn that much per-screen per-weekend. It just pulled ahead of Straight Out of Compton, which is playing on 3x the number of screens.

    • Faith-based movies don’t often screen for critics. They play directly to the core audience with focused marketing. The distributors know that they will almost always receive poor reviews, so there’s no point in letting critics see them.

      • William Henley

        I guess this makes sense. I heard many people saying “I haven’t even heard of it” and I was like, really, it has been advertised like crazy on Up, Daystar and at churches and on Christian radio stations:. I guess the people who would go see it will see it despite what the critics say, and those who would avoid it would still avoid it despite what the critics would say.

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