Now that we’re knee-deep in fall movies and Oscar contenders, with stellar indie flicks like Steve Jobs, Room, Suffragette and bigger movies like Bridge of Spies, The Martian and Goosebumps doing well at the box office, I’m surprised there have been just as many flops, especially in the past few weeks. This is supposed to be a time when studios laser-point their efforts to release quality movies with big-name director/actors.
But Joe Wright’s Pan was panned (and rightly so — they just can’t get a live-action Peter Pan movie right), while Guillermo del Toro’s Crimson Peak failed to peak the interest of moviegoers with its lack of scares (although I appreciated the Gothic romance of it all). Then there was the completely dismal week of openers, including Jem and the Holograms, The Last Witch Hunter and Rock the Kasbah (so sad since I really wanted to laugh with Bill Murray again).
Now we have the openers for Halloween week, with the highly anticipated political drama Our Brand Is Crisis taking the lead (there’s also the chef drama Burnt with Bradley Cooper). Sandra Bullock once again turns in a great performance as a former political strategist, hanging by a thread of sanity, whose dragged back into it and the lunacy when she agrees to help a presidential candidate win an election in Bolivia. It’s based on a true story, and while it had its moments, it still failed to leave any lasting impact. Rather, it fell into some typical scenarios, including the one in which politicians are inherently all liars and sneaky and so the puppet master who puts him charge has to wrestle with some moral dilemmas. Yeah, yeah.
Anyway, I discuss with two of my fellow ScreenPicks guys, who were more into it because of their love for political machinations (they both studied the subject in college). Take a listen!
