We’ve got a week packed with movies this time around, and it's a selection that should offer something for everybody. The big news is the return of Woody, Buzz and friends, ut there ars also assassins, country singers, and killer dolls. Get ready for Toy Story 4, Anna, Wild Rose, and Child’s Play.
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 a perfect run of 100% Tomatometer scores for Toy Story and Toy Story 2, Toy Story 3 had a disappointing dip when it only hit 98%. But I don't see that happening for Toy Story 4. These movies are as perfect as flicks get (animated or otherwise), and not only do I bet that all critics will ultimately feel this way, thus far the postings on Rotten Tomatoes are proving me correct.
After a nine year gap, we get the fourth installment in the Toy Story franchise, and it is currently sitting at 100% with nearly 100 reviews counted. From the trailer it looks like Toy Story 4 is using a formula similar to previous installments (a compliment), and from it alone I looked up and said to Mrs. Rotten Week, “I’m not crying, you’re crying.” The Pixar team looks like they’ve done it again with a story about love and loss, coming to grips with who you are (toy or otherwise) and what it means to truly live for others. It looks beautiful and, again, has a real shot to finish with a perfect score.
You might say director Luc Besson has a thing for making movies about assassins - and also sometimes assassins who are also gorgeous women. His career kicked off thanks to La Femme Nikita (88%), and he's since followed that up with The Professional (72%), scripts for the Transporter and Taken franchises, and, more recently, Lucy (67%). So yeah, the dude likes to come out guns blazing - and we are about to see him do what he does again with the release of Anna.
This "new" eponymous character is a Russian agent/contract killer who appears to spend most of this film breaking necks and cashing checks. It looks like an over-the-top romp with a massive death toll and enough of a story to piece the thing together. While it might be entertaining, however, I don't see it doing much to try and go above-and-beyond in the story department, and critics tend to dislike that kind of thing.
“An ex-con Scottish woman wants to become a country music star” sounds like the premise of a faltering comedy movie. But that isn’t the case with Wild Rose, a musical drama that is already crushing it with critics - praising it for both its humor and jagged story about fulfilling your dreams while coming to grips with your demons.
While the story and script seem to fire on all cylinders, critics are also lauding the performance of relative newcomer Jessie Buckley in the lead role. She’s playing a woman fresh off a jail stint, with two kids being raised by grandma, working a dead end job and struggling with the pull to become a famous singer. It looks both funny and painful at the same time. It's already sitting at 89%with 64 reviews posted, and I doubt it drops much over the course of the week.
What is old being new again is something of a theme this week, with Chucky also making his return to the big screen. It’s been a few years since we’ve seen the little guy action and this marks 21 years since the original Child’s Play hit the big screen. This is a brand new version of the classic horror franchise, however, as Chucky is now brought into the modern world as a cloud-connected doll that is marketed as being able to control devices in the smart home. It’s not enough you’ve purchased a homicidal doll that will butcher anything in sight; now the little fucker has full network access.
This new version of Child's Play looks like your standard horror fare, with a bunch of innocents slow to come around to the evil that’s terrorizing the town around them. Each of them pay the price for their horror naivety until we probably get some kind of final battle between kid and doll. It appears entertaining if not all that original, and I don't ex[ect many professional reviewers will respond to it well.
It was merely an okay week for the Rotten Watch last time around, with both predictions missing the mark, but one coming darn close to a win. I should have been a bit more bearish on Men in Black International (Predicted: 51% Actual: 24%) considering the trailer really didn’t look all that promising. But a new cast and some decent visual effects ended up swaying me more toward the middle rather than in the basement. It finished closer to the latter, with critics panning the script and its inability to add to the movie's potentially expansive universe.
Shaft (Predicted: 24% Actual: 35%) was a near-miss, and with one more negative review it could end up falling within 10% and be called a win. It was very easy to see that critics would give this mostly thumbs down. The trailer gave the suggestion of hamfisted writing bent on one-liners and an out-of-touch narrative, and that ended up being the case.
Next time we’ve got Yesterday and Annabelle Comes Home. It’s gonna be a Rotten Week!
