A busy weekend at the movies with three wide releases, several expansions, and of course Oscar nominations announced in the morning.
Here is a brief look at the top two films at the box office this weekend.
The box office champ this weekend was “Underworld: Awakening” – the fourth installment of the popular vampire vs. werewolves sci fi series. This is one of the better entries in the series, but still not good enough to play beyond its loyal fan base.
Kate Beckinsale, who did not appear in the last installment, returns as vampire assassin Selene. As the movie begins the government is in the midst of an operation to exterminate all vampires and lycans (that would be the fancy name for werewolves here). Selene is captured, but keep alive frozen in a chamber for 12 years, she awakens to discover that the battle has shifted with the humans now the enemy.
It all speeds by in a brisk 88 minutes, with the plot about as complex as your standard video game.
Beckinsale does look great in black leather and there are a few decent action sequences, but the film gets sillier and sillier with each passing minute. This is the kind of film that will appease its fans and bore everyone else.
Grade: C-
The other big release of the week is the ambitious, but ultimately flawed “Red Tails.” This George Lucas produced drama based on the Tuskegee airmen, the African American fighter pilots who fought in World War II, has plenty of high points, but fails to deliver a movie worthy of these brave soldiers.
“Red Tails” is at its best in the air, with director Anthony Hemingway crafting some dogfights that feel like a raid on the Death Star. The problem is that most of this film takes place on the ground, where these characters are barely given any sort of depth or development.
The cast tries hard but are stuck with roles that are cliches. You can pretty much set your watch by what will happen to these men – which include a hot shot pilot (David Oyelowo) who strikes up a romance with an Italian beauty and the squad leader (Nate Parker) with a drinking problem – with the screenplay based more on predictable war plot points than a historical account of what happened to this group of soldiers.
There are also small roles by Terrence Howard and Cuba Gooding Jr., who basically chews on a pipe and wrinkles his forehead.
“Red Tails” biggest problem is that it never gets too deep into the racial struggles these soldiers had, not with the enemy, but with fellow American soldiers. The film does gloss over it in a couple of scenes, but seems like it wants to play it safe – thereby undermining how significant a part of history this really was.
The Tuskegee Airmen certainly deserve a better film than “Red Tails.”
Grade: C+
mcompton
