Opening this Week – July 24-26

This is going to be a weekly post where we look at what is coming out this week in the US and i will give my initial thoughts on the films so you can determine whether you want to see them in theatres. We may not get to every film that is releasing but the major ones will be featured here. So lets kick off this weeks movies with the arguably the most well known film of the bunch, Adam Sandler’s next family friendly comedy titled ‘Pixels‘. In the film, alien life-forms receive information about Earth from a time capsule that was sent into space, rather than interpreting that information as an act of peace, they believe it to be a threat. And so the aliens take the form of famous video game characters and come down to Earth in an effort to destroy all humanity. Pixels follows Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Peter Dinklage, and Josh Gad as they use their gaming skills to take down the aliens and stop the war between man and alien. Personally i haven’t been all too impressed with this movie, especially as most of Adam Sandler’s recent movies have completely sucked. If he can let go of the typical dumb comedy he has been known for recently, then this movie has a chance to do well otherwise strap yourselves in for another crap-fest. The supporting cast looks decent, you have Peter Dinklage who is a great actor and Josh Gad who is a good actor then you have Kevin James who is the worst of the bunch. I feel that he has severely dropped off the mark recently and really is not funny anymore. But with everything not looking so good with the two main leads i have to say the one thing keeping my excitement up is the concept of fighting classic arcade games in real life. I feel that if done right it can be a really interesting film otherwise we are just going to get another average or potentially bad comedy. Here is the trailer for you all to see:

Next up in this weeks releases is Jake Gyllenhaal’s next film titled Southpaw. Southpaw is at its core a boxing film that follows a boxer by the name of Billy Hope whose career appears to be striving, but one day a tragedy strikes and he loses his home and family and must get back in the ring for those he loves with the help of Tick Willis played by Forest Whitaker. I liked this trailer for the most part, it sets up the tone of the movie and looks like we are going to get another stellar performance from Jake Gyllenhaal. But what i hated about the trailer is that it appears to reveal way too much, i may be wrong and it may be only a smaller focus of the film but for initial impressions, it makes me more excited about Gyllenhaal’s performance than the actual movie. So if you are a fan of boxing films or Gyllenhaal, this is probably the one for you, below is the trailer.

Paper towns is a coming-of-age story that follows Quentin and Margo who meet and begin to pull mischievous pranks on people who disrespected her. Then one day Margo disappears and there begins Quentin’s quest to follow whatever clues he could get his hands on to try and locate the girl with he fell in love with. This looks like a film that has a really interesting premise, I am a sucker for good coming-of-age stories so i think this actually looks quite promising. I am aware of Cara Delevingne and Nat Wolff although neither of them has really had a role that has really impressed me yet so i guess we will have to wait and see how this turns out. Here’s the trailer for you to judge for yourself.

The Vatican Tapes stars Michael Pena as Father Lozano in yet another exorcism film that doesn’t seem to offer anything new. It follows Pena as he tries to relieve the soul of a woman from the demon that is fighting to control her body, or in other words, EVERY EXORCISM FILM EVER. At least you get to go into this film knowing exactly what you are going to get plot wise. This is definitely a very different and more serious role for Michael Pena following up from his role in last weeks Ant-Man, so it will be interesting to see if his range of acting abilities stretches over to horror. I don’t know about you guys but i am not looking forward to this film at all, if you are a fan of exorcism films then this is for you, i will leave the trailer below for you to decide.

So that just about covers all of the major films releasing this week. And i have to say these look like four very very different films, you have a family comedy, a boxing action film, a coming-of-age film, and a horror flick, so there is definitely something for everyone. If i was going to choose, i would be heading to the theatres to see Southpaw, but what about you, which film stands out the most and make you want to get the theatre experience?