Weekend Movies: What’s Up, Tiger Lily?

This weekend’s new movie destinations include a trip back to Neverland, or to the 1970s and the days before Apple was a trendy behemoth.

After a few busy weeks, the only wide release storming theaters this weekend is Warner Bros.’ new Peter Pan adventure, ‘Pan‘. You can always expect creativity from director Joe Wright, but you never can pin down the genre he’ll tackle next, nor the original direction with which he’ll take it. After years of indie success, he has produced his most mainstream and commercial studio picture yet, but it definitely has Wright written all over it stylistically. Just as ‘Hook‘ expanded the Peter Pan narrative by telling what happened after the characters adventures with Wendy, John and Michael, ‘Pan’ takes us in the other direction, showing the story before. If you’ve ever wondered how Peter got to Neverland in the first place and why he could fly while the other Lost Boys could not, then you’ll enjoy this new take on that classic tale. The big surprise is that Peter and Tiger Lily (Rooney Mara) are friends with James Hook (Garrett Hedlund). No, you won’t learn how they become enemies, but that’s what sequels are for.

Robert Zemeckis’ nerve-wracking and intense bio-pic about Philippe Petit – the Frenchman who pulled an ‘Oceans Eleven’-style heist to fulfill his dream of walking a high-wire between the World Trade Center towers in 1974 – didn’t have a very good IMAX-exclusive run (less than $3 million in nine days), so it’s looking to be the next Sony flop of 2015. Despite that, Sony is still pushing ‘The Walk‘ out to more than 2,500 screens of all formats this weekend.

Aside from that, the rest of this weekend’s notables are limited indie releases.

Danny Boyle and Aaron Sorkin’s three-act ‘Steve Jobs‘ is said to be the Oscar-worthy bio-pic we’ve been waiting for. Ashton Kutcher could never have pulled off playing the tech innovator – but if anyone can, it’s Michael Fassbender. With a supporting cast including Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen (who’s said to be quite good), Jeff Daniels and Michael Stuhlbarg, Universal can’t expand its four-screen LA/NY release soon enough. (It goes wide Oct. 23rd.)

Coming from the distributor that recently struck gold with ‘A Walk in the Woods’, opening on 689 screens is new thriller ‘99 Homes‘. Based on a true story, the film follows a young dad (Andrew Garfield) and his family following the 2008 financial crash. After being evicted from his home, he takes a job with the devil – the very man who evicted him (Michael Shannon) – doing the exact same thing to other down-and-out families. Although I never doubt a Michael Shannon project, I don’t see Broad Green Pictures having great success with this one.

In the recent past, Mexican-American films have come out of nowhere and debuted in the Top 10 ranking. Lionsgate is going for such a thing again with ‘Ladrones‘, an action-comedy starring two of Latin America’s biggest stars (Fernando Colunga and Eduardo Yáñez). With a group of other heisters, the duo return from retirement to steal back land from a villainous rich woman and her henchman in order to return it to its rightful owner.

1 comment

  1. Bolo

    I’ll be seeing ‘Fort Tilden’. The trailer made me laugh a couple of times, which is more than most comedies. So, hopefully it will be some worthwhile.

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