Each Thursday we look at what is going to be coming out in theaters this weekend, show you the trailers for the big releases, predict the box office winner and just generally give you enough of a carrot to pull you through the rest of the work week. September 2nd looks to be the only weak opening weekend in an odd year where the quality in September (usually the elephant graveyard of studios) is better than October. At least we’ll hope it is. Five subpar movies try to knock Don’t Breathe out of the top spot.
Look: unless your a/c is broken or you’re ducking the police, you don’t need to go to the movies this weekend unless you want to catch up on something you missed or are lucky enough to live close to a theater where you can catch Hell or High Water. Your BY FAR best option is to stay at home and binge-watch the second season of Netflix’s Narcos, which chronicles the rise and fall of drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. The only film of the five released this weekend that has a positive score on Rotten Tomatoes (and that’s at 63% at time of writing) is The Light Between Oceans. That film, based off the best selling novel, and starring Michael Fassbender and Alicia Vikander, was -I think- supposed to turn out much better than it apparently did and dominate the other new films, which I’m not going to even take the time to run down. Except, remember when Kevin Smith made cool, funny films that made you think. He directed Yoga Hosers. There’s also a Jackie Chan/Johnny Knoxville team-up movie. Queueing up Narcos already, aren’t you? Told ya. Trailers for the new ones and Narcos Season Two below.
The 9th Life of Louis Drax (Sarah Gadon, Jamie Dornan, R, 1hr 30min)
The Light Between Oceans (Alicia Vikander, Michael Fassbender, PG-13, 1hr 40m)
Morgan (Kate Mara, R, 1hr 32min)
Narcos Season 2 (Wagner Moura, 10 episodes, TV-MA, Netflix)
Skiptrace (Jackie Chan, Johnny Knoxville, PG-13, 1hr 47m)
Yoga Hosers (Harley Quinn Smith, Lily Rose Depp, R, 1hr 28m)
HOW DID WE DO LAST WEEK?
KT picked the thriller Don’t Breathe to knock Suicide Squad off it’s three-week reign atop the box office, and the little film about the dumbest kids to ever mess with a blind man did just that. Don’t Breathe opened to $26.4 million, which is very strong considering the low cost of making the film. Suicide Squad dropped to #2 with another $12.2 million and is inching closer to $300 million domestic. In our weekly gleeful updates on the disaster that is Ben-Hur’s third incarnation, the totally unneeded film dropped to 10th with $4.6 million (Lifetime prediction record 23-3).
WHO WILL WIN THE WEEKEND?
Labor Day weekend, though you think it would be (and I think it’s only a matter of time before a studio tries to establish a beachhead here) is NOT a movie weekend for people. People go to the beach for the last time, they hit amusement parks, or do whatever normal, happy families do. If I had one I’d expound. Given that none of our openers are getting critical raves, and Don’t Breathe has strong word-of-mouth among thriller fans and teens, I think it repeats at the box office.
