YOUR GUIDE TO THIS WEEK’S NEW CINEMA RELEASES (4 JUNE 2015)
It’s a terrible week for new cinema releases this week.
TOP PICK TO SEE
There’s only one movie that comes anywhere near to being a top pick this week. It’s SLOW WEST, an action/thriller/western that tells the story of a young Scottish man who travels across America in pursuit of the woman he loves, attracting the attention of an outlaw who is willing to serve as a guide. It’s rating just above average with general audiences and critics. For New York Magazine (Vulture)’s Bilge Ebiri, …Slow West never quite settles on a tone to call its own, [but] it does still offer many pleasures. Fassbender and Smit-McPhee are excellent – the boy’s outward bewilderment and unpreparedness play off well against the cowboy’s ragged, stone-faced charisma. It’s in limited release so you might need to find a cinema showing it.
MAYBE/MAYBE NOT
ENTOURAGE is for all you out there who have watched the HBO series of the same name. Movie star Vincent Chase, together with his boys Eric, Turtle, and Johnny, are back – and back in business with super agent-turned-studio head Ari Gold on a risky project that will serve as Vince’s directorial debut. General viewers are averaging around 4 stars – one assumes they are fans of the show. Critics are averaging about 1.5 stars! TheWrap’s Alonso Duralde says that Piven’s Ari is so over-the-top in his narcissism and megalomania that he’s fun to watch, but the other lead characters are the kind of bros who should be having drinks thrown in their faces on a regular basis. I might be giving this one a miss. But if you see it, let us know what you think.
TO AVOID
One movie to avoid this week – ALOHA. Starring Bradley Cooper and Rachel McAdams, it’s the story of a celebrated military contractor who returns to the site of his greatest career triumphs and re-connects with a long-ago love while unexpectedly falling for the hard-charging Air Force watchdog assigned to him. It might have two good actors and premise, but according to those who have already seen it, it is bad! Time Out New York’s David Ehrlich describes it this way: The film is cut together with the haphazard feel of a posthumously completed record, its ungainly structure a macrocosm of the awkwardness with which the individual scenes are Frankensteined together into a lumbering monster built from close-ups and music cues. The director has also been strongly criticised for casting Emma Stone as a Chinese-Hawaiian who doesn’t look like one. If you’d like to read more about this, check out this Sydney Morning Herald article.
That’s it for this week. See you at the movies!
*NOTE* Movie summaries are adaptations of movie summary on IMDB. Opinions are mine unless credited.