Transformers: The Last Knight looks like the best of the action films this week, but 2:22 may give it a pretty good run for its money. For those looking for a western animation, Mune: Guardian of the Moon looks like your best option this time around. We will do our best to pretend no one even mentioned Cyborg 2087, because ouch! The only anime option this time around is HYOUKA – Part 2, and it might just be tasty.
There are a couple of good options this week. I pretty much have to see Kingsman: The Golden Circle because the first one was such a hoot. And I am a big fan of the franchise, so I will probably also check out The LEGO Ninjago Movie, having laughed my way through their Batman endeavor. But there is a wonderful animation I absolutely have to mention: Loving Vincent. This may be the first animated feature film about an artist done in that artists own painting style, and it looks amazing.
The movie I want to see this weekend is Hirune-hime: Shiranai watashi no monogatari, or Napping Princess for the English title (the Japanese title literally means My baby girl: My story I do not know). It is a sci-fi story about a girl who dreams the future, taking place during the Tokyo Olympics in 2020. Sadly, there will be very few theaters carrying it in this country; most theaters are carrying It, a decent number will have The Limehouse Golem, and a very few will have Anti Matter. But I am just not a horror fan, so if I have to drive for a while to find a theater where it is playing, so be it.
Almost, at least. The movie I most want to see this Friday isn’t a movie at all; it is the pilot episode of the new TV series The Inhumans. Not only is it in movie theaters, but it is in IMAX format, which means on the biggest screen you can see it on! If it were only in 3D it would be prefect, but I am not going to let a detail like that stop me from seeing it. There is also a fantasy animation called Animal Crackers about a magical circus being released this week, which I would ordinarily be going to see; maybe next weekend.
We have two titles from the DC Universe this week, with Gotham: The Complete Third Season and the animated DCU: Batman and Harley Quinn both hitting the shelves. I find the live action TV show addictive, at least the first two season, so I look forward to binging my way through it. The fantasy comedy Killing Hasselhoff will also be out this week, so I suppose I should mention the associated non-genre comedy Baywatch will also be out come Tuesday. Finally, Anime has Ushio & Tora: Complete TV Series, a tale of yokai vs. human vs. yokai.
There are several interesting films out this week, although some of them will be in limited release. The classic Terminator 2: Judgment Day has been reprocessed into 3D, and there are now a couple generations of Terminator fans who have never seen it on the big screen in the first place to enjoy it. Birth of the Dragon tells some of the Bruce Lee story, although according to his daughter they completely bypassed his philosophy of both Martial Arts and storytelling, so she bailed on the project as not representing her dad. Unleashed is a modern fantasy about a woman whose cat and dog were turned into handsome male humans, it has been winning awards all over the festival circuit and looks very amusing. There is a new French animation called Leap!, original title Ballerina, also coming to theaters on Friday. France has been at the forefront of international film making since the 1890s, and has been creating some amazing animations at least since WWII. They may only have a few movies which break across the language barrier each year, but the ones that do are usually minor (and sometimes not so minor) masterpieces. If you live within driving distance of one of the larger Megaplex theaters, one of them may be carrying The Villainess, a South Korean movie about a woman trained from youngest childhood to be an assassin for a criminal organization. When a government agency offers her freedom and a place in society if she works for them for a decade, she jumps at the chance to escape. When they betray her in turn, the vengeance train goes off the rails and rampages down main street. And one more that I really want to see is the Bollywood film A Gentleman. A RomCom where a case of mistaken identity changes everything!