There are seriously too many movies opening this weekend. I feel like we should file an injunction or something.
Already Tomorrow in Hong Kong: In which Jamie Chung and Bryan Greenberg walk and talk their way around Hong Kong, and writer-director Emily Ting demonstrates that she’s learned the right lessons from Richard Linklater’s trilogy.
Deadpool: Ryan Reynolds’ fourth crack at the superhero thing finally gets it right — mostly because he’s the guy driving the property this time. (It’s great to see the increasingly calculated Marvel formula get a firecracker up the butt, too.)
How to Be Single: Go in expecting a Valentine’s Day romcom and you’ll be disappointed; go in expecting a wacky Girls Behaving Badly romp, and you won’t be happy either. But this ungainly studio whatsit has a real soul inside it, and it peeks out whenever its focus turns to Dakota Johnson and Leslie Mann.
Nina Forever: The Blaine Brothers’ prickly take on eternal love has been scratching at my brain since I caught it at After Dark last fall. It’s likely to stick with you in much the same way, if you give it a chance.
Portrait of a Serial Monogamist: Susan finds things to enjoy in John Mitchell and Christina Zeidler’s Toronto-centric comedy, which I missed when it played Inside Out last year.
Rams: Grímur Hákonarson’s deadpan study of Icelandic brothers in a lifelong feud grows deeper and more humane as it unfolds. Also, Kate says the sheep are very cool.
Snowtime!: Quebec’s biggest commercial hit of 2015 — a CG remake of The Dog Who Stopped the War — makes it to English Canada in a dubbed edition; Rad enjoyed it, but warns that they’ve kept the ending intact, which means I will never see it.
Southbound: Some of the creators of V/H/S reunite for another conceptual horror anthology — and, once again, they’ve delivered a package that’s less than the sum of its parts. A couple of those parts are really effective, though.
Star Men: Astronomers re-create a road trip they took half a century earlier in Alison E. Rose’s high-concept documentary, which Rad enjoyed as much as I did.
Zoolander No. 2: Word-of-mouth on Ben Stiller’s latest has been downright toxic, which doesn’t really surprise me; this was a one-joke premise fifteen years ago, and these characters don’t seem to benefit from age. Rad‘s not a fan, either.
That’s everything! And now, to navigate a city overrun by the machinery of the NBA All-Star Game. It’s like TIFF times ten out there, and also freezing. Pray for me.