New Releases: April 25,2014

1. The Other Woman (Fox, 3,204 Theaters, 109 Minutes, Rated PG-13): This film looks pretty brutal.

First off, it appears to be a Costco version of The First Wives Club, only with just one husband to get revenge upon instead of three. Cameron Diaz plays a woman who is shocked to find out that her boyfriend is already married to another woman (Leslie Mann). When the pair finds out that a third woman (Kate Upton) has also fallen prey to the philanderer, the trio join forces to gain their revenge.

Of course, it isn’t very logical that the three women would actually want to be in the same room as one another, let alone work together on something. Diaz is coming off the surprisingly successful bad Teacher, but she’s hit or miss. Mann is usually good in her husband Judd Apatow’s movies, butusually is not outside of those films. And you have Kate Upton rounding out the group, who might be the woman least likely to give a good performance if it wasn’t for Nikki Minaj having a supporting role in the film. Neither of the two have all that much experience.

Hey, I’m all for a female based comedy to do well at the box office. I just wish it was a better one than this.

2. Brick Mansions (Relativity, 2,647 Theaters,90 Minutes, Rated PG-13): The tough part about how Hollywood works is that when a tragedy takes the life of an actor, like it did with Paul Walker, there could be any number of films in the can starring the actor, so the world has to relive his passing over and over again as those films are released. Here is a case in point.

In a crime-ridden Detroit of the near future, one that cannot afford RoboCop, bad sections of town are walled off to keep the bad guys in and the good guys out. However, when a drug lord is making noise he is going to expand his business beyond those walls, it’s up to the police to infiltrate the area to bring him down.

This is a remake of the French film, District 13, so if the plot sounds good to you but you can’t bear seeing Walker in one of his last roles, you can rent that instead.

3. The Quiet Ones (Lionsgate, 2,027 Theaters,98 Minutes, Rated PG-13): One the one hand, it’s a PG-13 horror film, which I consider weak. On the other, it’s a Hammer Films horror movie, one of the biggest and best names in horror for all time. So, where will this film land, on the side of good, or bad?

The plot revolves around a university professor (Jared Harris) who is trying to find some proof of the supernatural. He’s onto something when he finds Jane (Olivia Cooke), who is haunted by an evil spirit named Evey. However, when one of the professor’s assistants (Sam Claflin) finds out that Evey was real and that she died a macabre death, the research becomes that much more sinister–and dangerous.

Not the most original of plots, but one that could be good depending on how its executed.