Now that we've hit the month of August, the summer movie season is starting to wind down. That being said, we still have some reasons to stay excited, with some big new releases getting ready to arrive in theaters. Stephen King's masterpiece is hitting the screen, and Halle Berry gets into a truly scary situation. Get ready for The Dark Tower and Kidnap. 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.
After years of development hell, and plenty of starts and stops, we are finally getting The Dark Tower movie. Honestly, I never thought we'd see the day where Stephen King's epic series hit the big screen and yet here we are with Idris Elba as the Gunslinger Roland Deschain and Matthew McConaughey as the Man in Black. This is meant to be the first in a series - setting the tone and establish the world for those who haven't read the books. It looks like a spectacle and at least visually fulfilling. I'm a little worried about the rest. A movie that's spent this much time in development, had a number of script rewrites, been attached to a ton of different names and now actually doesn't seem to be marketed that much has more than a few warning bells.
The run time has some folks concerned about how exactly The Dark Tower could be an intense epic shoved into 95 minute package. And director Nikolaj Arcel doesn't have much in the way of big budget movies under his belt. But here's to hoping this first one hits so we see the rest of the series play out on the big screen.
As a parent, there's no bigger terror-inducing scenario than the thought your kid's been taken by some stranger. Stranger danger having been ground into us a society from jump street, and Kidnap plays on that base fear around what happens when it's only on you to rescue your child. It's certainly a nauseatingly gripping situation - though I'm not entirely sure how effective this movie is going to be.
Kidnap looks to be essentially a chase film wrapped in the idea that Halle Berry's character is isolated without communication and must stay on the tail of the car who took her son. Of course, it looks a bit over the top with her having to continue with near misses at getting her kid back while also continually accept the idea that this kind of thing could go on for a super long period of time. I suspect there's some kind of fatigue on the idea well before the movie's over. It wouldn't be the first time we've seen it happen with a high-concept chase movie.
All in all, it was a solid week for the Rotten Watch last time around, with a near bulls-eye and the second just out of my 10% range of success. Atomic Blonde (Predicted: 74% Actual: 75%) may very well end up as a total strike if another review or two comes in. But overall this is just the kind of thing the movie world needs: a badass female lead with extended fight scenes galore. Critics really appreciated the way Charlize Theron held down the Bond-esque role while also taking her own amount of punishment in the action/thriller.
With The Emoji Movie (Predicted: 20% Actual: 8%) I went low with my estimate, but not quite low enough. This flick created some midweek buzz when it was sitting at a solid 0% on the Tomatometer, but then was able to climb out of the basement to get to simply "horrifically bad" status. Could a movie about phone emojis have been anything but terrible? Of course not. It's a disaster of a premise born out of some sort of weird cultural cesspool.
Next time around we've got Annabelle: Creation, The Glass Castle and The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature. It's gonna be a Rotten Week!
