Disney’s A Wrinkle In Time will be hitting theaters on March 9th, 2018, and if this trailer is any indication it will be a fun film to check out. This epic adventure is based on Madeleine L’Engle’s classic book of the same name, running across dimensions of time and space to explore the nature of good and evil.
After decades of waiting, this week we finally get to see Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets on the big screen! The 5th Element was a sub-plot of this story, the Canteen scene and a lot more from the original Star Wars movie was taken from it; now we finally get to see the first main story from the original French graphic novels. Say Yes to IMAX and 3D for this one, you won’t regret it!
This week we have Kong: Skull Island and Resident Evil: Vendetta as the Western options, both heavy on the adrenaline and light on the plot subtlety. I didn’t see anything for new Anime releases this time around, so it is a short list today.
War for the Planet of the Apes continues the new series, mapping out how we got to the place Charleston Heston found himself in way back in the original film. I like this reboot-prequel series better than any of the previous iterations, and I liked all of them. It is not the only option this week though, as Disney is rolling out Jagga Jasoos, a delightful little fantasy about a teenage detective and his female associate on a mission to find his father.
The Western world has Spark: A Space Tail as its offering, which does at least have an impressive line up of Voice Actors. Of course, we also have Smurfs: The Lost Village, and no, I am not handing out a link to that one. GATE: Complete Collection was my favorite Anime of 2015/2016; I am not going to tell you anything about the events of the two seasons themselves, but I am going to give you the setup/backstory that took place before the first episode started: When a Gate between universes opened up in Tokyo over half a million mounted warriors poured out, ready to conquer the world. They were humans, elves, animal people, and magicians, armed with bows, axes, swords and spells, and they killed several thousand civilians in their initial surge across the city. An Otaku officer in the Japanese Self Defense Force recognized what was going on and rallied a local military response, saving thousands in immediate danger in the process. As more forces were mobilized the attackers found themselves up against assault rifles, armored personnel carriers, tanks, grenade launchers, mortars, and shoulder-launched missiles. Only the few hundred invaders left to guard the Gate managed to get home alive, and most of them were wounded; the JSDF followed them through the gate and took over the town on the other side and the surrounding countryside for kilometers in every direction. What happened after that is the story of this series, and their universe will never be the same.
Another no contest week, with Spider-Man: Homecoming not only being the winner, but the only horse in the race, really. You will find me in the 3D IMAX theater for this one.