OCTOBER 19
This is the lightest weekend of the month in terms of the number of films released, but it’s got some titles worthy of notice beginning with Paranormal Activity 4 a franchise that has owned the Halloween timeframe for the last three years and hopes to do it once again.
It’s a franchise that snatched away the October horror circuit from Saw and has made $296.7 million domestically with three films and over $576.6 million worldwide with a collective budget of just over $8 million with the first film costing only $15,000 to produce. The return on investment with this franchise is staggering and after a stumble with the second film the third was a marketed improvement. Here’s to hoping the fourth film continues the trend.
One question mark for me is to wonder how much interest audiences will have in Alex Cross, a film based on the central character from the novels of James Patterson following the D.C. detective as he tracks a rapist who may have murdered his pregnant wife years earlier. Tyler Perry stars in the title role with Matthew Fox playing the film’s villain. I see there being potential interest here, but the big question mark is director Rob Cohen whose films such as Stealth and The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor don’t exactly exhibit quality.
Finally, another film I was able to see at Cannes in Andrew Dominik‘s Killing Them Softly starring Brad Pitt as a professional enforcer who investigates a heist that occurs during a high stakes, mob-protected, poker game. The film is drenched in political and societal commentary of which I found endlessly fascinating, but I wonder how it will resonate with audiences. Here’s the teaser blurb from my review:
After The Assassination of Jesse James it has taken four years for us to get a second film from Andrew Dominik. It was worth the wait. Killing Them Softly is not only a bullets and bloodshed gangster film told with a visual panache you won’t find in many films, but it’s also a straight-forward commentary on the state of America and it holds nothing back.
Check out the trailer below and you can read my full review right here.
