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!
The genre entry is Dave Made a Maze, and indie fantasy which has been quietly winning awards at film festivals for a while now. I suspect it won’t be getting a lot of screens across the country, so you may have to hunt for it if you want to see it. The Hitman’s Bodyguard isn’t genre (beyond the fact that it looks like it is straight out of a comic book), but it does look like it will be silly fun. Decisions, decisions…
The latest Daoko song, just posted today, is called Big Fireworks, and is the theme song for the new animated motion picture Fireworks, Should We See It from the Side or the Bottom?. The film opens in Japan on the 18th of this month, and is a remake of a 1993 live action drama of the same name. This one is a slice of life Anime with a side order of time travel, I can’t wait to see it! The animation work itself looks excellent, I hope they don’t wait a whole year before bringing it to the big screen in North America. Oh, yeah, the last trak is Daoko’s Good bye Goodbye from the J-WAVE SONAR MUSIC SPECIAL SHOW CASE about 3 months ago.
The short answer is Steven King’s The Dark Tower is the one genre film this week, and I won’t be in the audience.
The heir to Studio Ghibli is Studio Ponoc, and they are about to roll out Mary and The Witch’s Flower, their first feature film. It is good to know this kind of quality animation will continue to be created.
We get nothing this week that is definitively genre, but we do get animated silliness in the form of The Emoji Movie, and a kick-ass spy flic with Atomic Blonde. We also get Wolf Warrior 2 bringing the rest of the high-adrenaline level excitement for the week, and Mubarakan has the corner on romantic comedy fun.