Is it just us, or is the week after Daylight Savings is always a little rough? Like that dog who can’t even manage to catch any food in its mouth? Anyway, now that we’ve finally made it through, it’s time to celebrate with some good, clean movie-viewing fun! Whether you want to be swept away by epic action-adventure, glued to your seat by high-stakes drama based on terrifying true events, or charmed by a coming-of-age (and coming-out) story from the producers of The Fault in Our Stars, we’ve got you covered with your guide to this weekend’s newest releases. Here’s what’s now in theaters:
Tomb Raider
We’re going to call the award for “least politically correct career title” of 2018 early and say it goes to… this hot white lady and her daddy issues! Cultural (in)sensitivities aside, from what we can surmise this globe-trotting, butt-kicking blockbuster is a pretty loyal-to-the-source-material situation, and we’re not fans of Alicia Vikander, who recently was both an Oscar winner for her role in The Danish Girl and the “Machina” in Alex Garland’s Ex Machina. As we’ve noted, Vikander has some big shoes (and tiny shorts) to fill, but we think she’ll do the character proud. And while we’re not exactly expecting Tomb Raider to top anyone’s best-of lists come end-of-year, it’s got an intriguing angle on the franchise in its dive into Croft’s origin myths, and it looks like a whole lot of fun besides.
7 Days in Entebbe
Who doesn’t love a good hostage crisis? Proving that sometimes the truth is way, way more enthralling than fiction, 7 Days in Entebbe is also a powerful reminder that the present tense doesn’t have a monopoly on global tensions if you catch our drift. This story has everything: plane-jacking, idealistic revolutionaries, children’s lives on the line, daring and sneaky rescue machinations, and seemingly timeless moral quandaries. Plus, from a historical perspective, it’s an important chunk of the complex morass that is Israeli-Palestinian relations. Of all of this weekend’s new box office offerings, it’s the one that promises the most to chew on. Just watch that you don’t squeeze your date’s hand too hard during the heart-pounding parts!
Love, Simon
Remember how mean the teen movies were in the 80s and 90s? It was all emotional violence, public humiliation mixed with physical comedy, and virgin mocking. Maybe it’s a good thing that teen movies these days seem so painfully earnest, or maybe it’s just a sign of the times. Either way, it’s also pretty great that the mainstream teen dramedy genre has started to widen its depth of field to include slight, slight, slightly more of the spectrum of sexuality because not everyone in the world is going to want to watch Call Me By Your Name or But I’m a Cheerleader or even Lady Bird. Us, we’ll watch it all. At the end of the day, though, is the message of Love, Simon really meant for kids, or is it meant for their parents? Go see this with your kids. Talk about it.
