Paper Towns – Another romantic drama adopted from a book, I guess it has been a while since one of those came out. Quentin (Nat Wolff) and Margo (Cara Delevingne) are complete strangers. He is focused on living a boring life and she’s all about adventure. Until one night they go out on an adventure together and Quentin learns what fun really is. Suddenly she disappears somewhere in the night, but leaves behind clues on sheets of paper. Gathering his most skilled friends, Quentin goes on a journey through the town to solve the mystery of his mystery-loving crush, and learns about friendship and love at the same time. This seems like a movie for teenagers, especially in the female demographic.
Pixels – Be careful when sending messages to different places because we don’t all speak the same language. In this supposedly funny flick, NASA has sent a video feed consisting of some footage of 80s video games. The aliens somehow bring these game characters to life and send them to invade Earth because they thought the message was “Bring video games to life and test us, you galactic freaks”. If side-scrollers are considered a threat to aliens, I’d hate to think what RPGs or FPS would be interpreted as. Anyways, a team of hardcore gamers from the 80s, now grown up, goes to face these giant pixelated monsters and save the world from being destroyed by space invaders, Pac-Man and other well-known games. They didn’t even invite the Angry Video Game Nerd, he would’ve handled all those 8-bit abominations singlehanded. This would be a funny film for gamers, but I’m not sure how funny because not many people really like Adam Sandler. Yes, he’s in the movie. No, I don’t have hopes for humour.
Southpaw – An action drama about boxing, Jake Gyllenhaal plays Billy “The Great” Hope, a middleweight champion with tactics powered by his feelings of wanting to be loved, admired, and famous. He soon wins “greatest dad” and “homeowner” as well as his boxing title, until his wife dies and things go downhill from there. He loses his daughter, his house and everything. A former boxer known as Tick agrees to help Billy get his life back on track, taking him through some very intense and strict training. This seems like a good film for the boxing demographic and adults mostly. Tells a motivational tale of becoming the best under tough instruction. Actually, that kind of story has been told before . . .
