Weekend Movies: Don’t Be Fooled

A few smaller, barely-marketed movies are opening this week in the wake of ‘Batman v. Superman’, but none of them are particularly notable.

The distribution company Pure Flix invests in low-budget “sure thing” movies with built-in Christian audiences so that no money has to be invested in marketing. Having made boatloads with the faith-based drama ‘God’s Not Dead’, the studio is dumping the aptly titled sequel ‘God’s Not Dead 2‘ on April 1st. No, this isn’t an April Fool’s joke. In the sequel, Christianity falls under attack when a school teacher gets into hot water for answering a student’s question about Jesus. Coming a week after Easter (and ‘BvS’) and tailing three widely marketed faith-based movies (‘Risen’, ‘The Young Messiah’ and ‘Miracles from Heaven’), Pure Flix may have chosen a poor window for the 2,300-screen release.

Also released with a minuscule advertising campaign is the comedy ‘Meet the Blacks‘. Mike Epps stars as the head of a household that has lived the stereotypical black lifestyle for too long. He’s fed up with it. So, when he comes across an unexpected small fortune, he pulls a ‘Beverly Hillbillies’ and uproots his family for a social upgrade to Beverly Hills. Although that already sounds like the basis of a bad comedy, just wait, there’s more. They just so happen to arrive in their new ritzy neighborhood on the day of the annual 12-hour period where any and all crime is legal. Yes, someone took the plot of ‘The Purge‘ and applied it to a stereotypical urban comedy. No, I’m not making this up. Mike Tyson, George Lopez, Charlie Murphy, Perez Hilton and Paul Mooney co-star in this 1,000-screen release.

After banking on his overrated gimmick picture ‘Boyhood‘, Richard Linklater is taking the easy road for his new movie and has stooped to making a sequel to an old hit. Well, in this case, it’s an unofficial sequel. ‘Everybody Wants Some!!‘ serves as a companion piece to ‘Dazed and Confused‘ – only this round is set in the 1980s (instead of the ’70s) and follows a group of college baseball players who will try anything and everything thanks to the newfound freedom that college life away from home offers. I wonder if anybody from this no-name cast will ultimately be as successful as those from ‘Dazed and Confused’? Paramount is launching ‘Everybody Wants Some!!’ on 19 screens.

In very limited release, Sony Pictures Classics is releasing Don Cheadle’s feature film directorial debut, ‘Miles Ahead‘. Cheadle also leads the cast in this witty-titled Miles Davis bio-pic that comes to L.A. and New York screens just one week after the Hank Williams bio-pic ‘I Saw the Light’ debuted. Ewan McGregor and Michael Stuhlbarg star.

Jeff Nichols’ well-received and well-reviewed sci-fi drama ‘Midnight Special‘ opened on a handful of screens two weeks ago, but is expanding to 55 screens this weekend. That brings it one step closer to being accessible to the masses!

8 comments

  1. HuskerGuy

    “I wonder if anybody from this no-name cast will ultimately be as successful as those from ‘Dazed and Confused’? ”

    If I had to guess, it’d be Glen Powell. The guy is downright amazing in Scream Queens and I believe he’s back for the second season as well.

    • I didn’t recognize the actor’s name so I had to look up who he played in Scream Queens. Yeah, I agree, he’s hilarious as the outrageously dickish Chad Radwell.

    • I believe the working title was ‘God’s Not Dead 2: Revenge of God’ until fanboys pointed out that a god wouldn’t take revenge. Then they changed the title to ‘Return of God’, but somebody asked where he went between movies. So, ultimately, they just dropped the suffix.

    • Elizabeth

      I’m holding out God’s Not Dead 3D. Here’s hoping it involves Louis Gossett Jr. and a Sea World clone amusement park.

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