7 films to see on the week of September 2-September 9, 2016
Amityville Theater (aka Amityville Playhouse)
HAVING inherited the theater in the town of Amityville after the tragic death of her parents, Fawn Harriman and her friends decide to spend the weekend there. Naturally, things go wrong… Directed by John R. Walker, it stars Kennie Benoit, Linden Baker, and Monèle LeStrat. “It’s so bad one starts to wonder if it’s all not some kind of elaborate satanic joke that induces a kind of giddy, demonic hilarity,” writes Leslie Felperin of the Guardian.
MTRCB Rating: R-13
Mechanic: Resurrection
JASON STATHAM returns as the Mechanic in the sequel to the 2011 action thriller. This time the retired assassin is forced to commit three more kills in order to save the love of his life. The film, directed by Dennis Gansel, also stars Jessica Alba and Tommy Lee Jones. “When it comes out on home video, fast-forward to the stunts. You won’t miss a thing,” writes Noel Murray of the Los Angeles Times. “Mechanic: Resurrection suffers from a script that strains credulity and insults intelligence, even by the low bar set by the majority of contemporary action movies,” declares Glenn Kenny of RogerEbert.com.
MTRCB Rating: R-13
Godzilla: Resurgence
THIS FILM is Toho’s 29th entry in the Godzilla franchise which kicked off way back in 1954. Once more Japan is plunged into chaos upon the appearance of a giant monster. “What is audacious about this remake is not the liberties taken with Godzilla lore, but rather how faithful it is to the canon established by Toho Pictures in the 1950s,” writes John Lui of The Straits Times. “Those rampages — staged by effects veteran Shinji Higuchi and his team, with co-director and sci-fi/fantasy maestro Hideaki Anno supervising — are worth the wait,” says Edmund Lee of the South China Morning Post.
MTRCB Rating: PG
Pamilya Ordinaryo
THIS Cinemalaya film is about a pair of homeless teens whose newborn child is stolen from them, and what they do to get him back. Written and directed by Eduardo Roy, Jr., it stars Hasmine Kilip and Ronwaldo Martin. ClickTheCity.com’s Philbert Ortiz Dy writes: “Pamilya Ordinaryo is thoroughly unkind, and it is the best and worst thing about it. It might have actually benefitted from a measure of structure, a general sense that these episodes in the life of the characters might amount to something greater. It might have made this story just a little easier to stomach. But again, this film isn’t trying any of this palatable. It doesn’t want to sugarcoat any of what these characters are going through. In being as raw as possible, the film reveals a shade of humanity far more moving than any sort of dramatic structure may provide.”
MTRCB Rating: R-16
One Piece Film: Gold
THE LATEST in the Japanese series of animated films, this one follows a crew of superpowered pirates who take on one of the richest men in the world.
MTRCB Rating: PG
Train to Busan
POPULAR with the critics on the Rotten Tomatoes review aggregate site — it has a 93% “fresh” rating — Train to Busan is a Korean horror movie written and directed by Sang-ho Yeon that follows a group of terrified passengers fighting their way through a countrywide viral outbreak while trapped on a suspicion-filled, blood-drenched bullet train ride to Busan, a southern resort city that they think has managed to hold off the zombie hordes. It stars Yoo Gong, Yumi Jung, Dong-seok Ma, Kim Eui-Sung, Kim Soo-ahn, and Kim Su-an. Brian Tallerico of RogerEbert.com writes: “The most purely entertaining zombie film in some time, finding echoes of George Romero’s and Danny Boyle’s work, but delivering something unique for an era in which kindness to others seems more essential than ever.”
MTRCB Rating: R-16
Don’t Breathe
A TRIO of thieves break into the home of a blind man rumored to be a hiding a fortune, only to find that their target is far more dangerous than they could have thought. Directed by Fede Alvarez, it stars Daniel Zovatto, Dylan Minnette, and Jane Levy.
The film is pretty popular over at Rotten Tomatoes where the Critics Consensus was “Don’t Breathe smartly twists its sturdy premise to offer a satisfyingly tense, chilling addition to the home invasion genre that’s all the more effective for its simplicity.”
MTRCB Rating: R-13
