We've got four movies hitting the big screen this weekend with varying amounts of intrigue and excitement. A couple look legitimately great, and then there's Vin Diesel and a Christian comedy. Get ready for The Founder, Split, xXx: The Return of Xander Cage and The Resurrection of Gavin Stone. It's gonna be a Rotten Week!
Just remember, I'm not reviewing these movies, but rather predicting where they'll end up on the Tomatometer. Let's take a look at This Rotten Week has to offer.
Ever wonder how McDonald's showed up on seemingly every street corner and rest stop throughout the entire world? You're about to find out where all those Happy Meals started. Director John Lee Hancock has experience in putting compelling, real-life stories up on the big screen. He's made Saving Mr. Banks \(78%), _The Blind Side _(66%) and _The Rookie _(83%). Now with _The Founder_ he tells the story of how McDonald's went from a small little shop to the Golden Arches with roughly a gajillion locations around the world.
Michael Keaton could be making an Oscar turn here as Ray Kroc, who apparently not only grew McDonald's to what you see today but also grabbed a lot of the financial upside away from the two founding brothers (played by Nick Offerman and John Caroll Lynch). Keaton appears the perfect choice for upwardly mobile, kind of snaky dude who grabs a substantial piece of the Golden Apple Pie for himself. Biopics like The Founder often make for solid critical fare and early reviews are strong. I suspect we see it stick in this range over the course of the week.
After a fairly brutal, nearly decade-long run of meh to downright bad movies, M. Night Shyamalan is creeping back into solid director territory. The Visit (64%) rated out on the positive side with critics and his latest, Split, has come out of the gate strong. It helps that James McAvoy is legit creepy as Kevin, a dude with a whole host of personalities who kidnaps some girls and goes all kinds of crazy. We know Shymalan can deliver high tension in movies and has it in him to offer up legit scares. This movie looks like it hits those marks and early reviews are trending positive.
James McAvoy's character suffers from dissociative identity disorder and one or more of those personalities living inside him wants to go full crazy. And who knew it would just take a simple shaving of the head to make the Scottish actor instantly into a legit villain? That, plus what's reported as a strong performance, have early reviews trending around 80%. They aren't across the board perfect, but it looks like M. Night is back.
One of the downsides in writing about xXx: The Return Of Xander Cage is having to explain the browser history searches with a bunch of "XXX"s and claiming it "isn't what it looks like honey! I swear!" I'm not sure how many people were waiting for Xander Cage to return, but he's back folks. And this time, Vin Diesel's getting even more extreme. So freaking extreme you'll wonder how you ever handled it all at once!
Following the first two films in the franchise, xXx \(48%) and _xXx: State of the Union_ (16%), The Return Of Xander Cage looks like more of the ridiculous same. i.e. chances for Vin Diesel to flash the guns, blow shit up go flying through the air. Yawn. Director D.J. Caruso has a couple of critical wins on his resume like _Disturbia _(69%) and _The Salton Sea _(62%), but more often than it's stuff like _The Disappointments Room _(0%), _I Am Number Four _(33%) and _Two For The Money _(22%). The latest will almost surely fall in the latter group.
The Resurrection of Gavin Stone gets labeled as a comedy, though in the 90 seconds of trailer I was able to get through (and it wasn't easy) not only were there no laughs, but I didn't sense any actual attempts at jokes. It's a hardcore Christian movie (churches are usually laugh factories for sure) about a famous celeb-type who has to perform community service in a local parish because of some sin he committed. Honestly, this scenario could be funny the right hands, but it isn't here and unless you are into Christian flicks, this will definitely be a skip.
There's little doubt Gavin Stone finds the Lord by the end of the movie and I do think they are playing a bit fast and loose with the term "Resurrection". Again, why it's labeled a comedy we might never know though maybe the comedic bar is set way lower in churches.
I only hit within ten percent on one of the movies from last week, though I'd like to think I got the critical tenor correct on all of them. Sleepless (Predicted: 27% Actual: 11%) sucked worse than I thought, and I didn't have any real hope for it from the start. Critics crushed it, and the flick's barely hanging on to double digits on the Tomatometer. It might dip even more with a few more eyes as there's only been 18 total reviews in at the time of this post. This kind of fate is almost worse than just being bad. It's one thing to suck, and quite another to get totally ignored.
Meanwhile, The Bye-Bye Man (Predicted: 19% Actual: 27%) wound up within range of my prediction and even finished a little better. It still got totally pummeled by critics, however. The positive reviews have little caveats to them wherein the critics almost apologize for not trashing the film. This flick almost assuredly disappears as quickly as it came. These horror/slasher films are a dime a dozen, and it doesn't look like The Bye-Bye Man did anything to separate himself from the other boogey men in the genre.
And finally, _Monster Trucks _(Predicted: 18% Actual: 31%) ended up a tick better than I thought. A 31% score for a movie about a weird looking monster who lives in a teenagers car and helps drive it around feels like a major accomplishment all things considered. If anything, I thought 18% was going to be way too high and wouldn't have been shocked to see it just grab a 0%.
Next time around we've got a big one with A Dog's Purpose, Gold, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter. It's gonna be a Rotten Week!
I only hit within ten percent on one of the movies from last week, though I'd like to think I got the critical tenor correct on all of them. Sleepless (Predicted: 27% Actual: 11%) sucked worse than I thought, and I didn't have any real hope for it from the start. Critics crushed it, and the flick's barely hanging on to double digits on the Tomatometer. It might dip even more with a few more eyes as there's only been 18 total reviews in at the time of this post. This kind of fate is almost worse than just being bad. It's one thing to suck, and quite another to get totally ignored.
Meanwhile, The Bye-Bye Man \(Predicted: 19% Actual: 27%) wound up within range of my prediction and even finished a little better. It still got totally pummeled by critics, however. The positive reviews have little caveats to them wherein the critics almost apologize for not trashing the film. This flick almost assuredly disappears as quickly as it came. These horror/slasher films are a dime a dozen, and it doesn't look like _The Bye-Bye Man_ did anything to separate himself from the other boogey men in the genre.
And finally, _Monster Trucks _(Predicted: 18% Actual: 31%) ended up a tick better than I thought. A 31% score for a movie about a weird looking monster who lives in a teenagers car and helps drive it around feels like a major accomplishment all things considered. If anything, I thought 18% was going to be way too high and wouldn't have been shocked to see it just grab a 0%.
Next time around we've got a big one with A Dog's Purpose, Gold, Resident Evil: The Final Chapter. It's gonna be a Rotten Week!
