1. If I Stay (Warner Brothers, 2,907 Theaters, 106 Minutes, Rated PG-13 for thematic elements and some sexual material): So, if Harry Potter beget Twilight, The Hunger Games beget Divergent, I guess The Fault in Our Stars beget this film.
Well, filmwise that is. The YA tearjerker novel that this film was adapted from came out three years prior to John Green’s opus. But surely the zeitgeist that book and film generated played a role in this film getting made.
This is the story of a young girl who is having an outer body experience after being put in a coma by a car accident that killed her family. She must decide whether or not to stay amongst the living or join her family in death.
2. Frank Miller’s Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (The Weinstein Company/Dimension Films, 2,894 Theaters, 102 Minutes, Rated R for strong brutal stylized violence throughout, sexual content, nudity, and brief drug use): It has been nine years since the first Sin City, and we are finally getting a sequel. And this one adapts one of the better stories from the comics.
Once again, the film is an anthology of several different stories with different levels of interconnection. Some stories this time around act as a prequel to the last film, others as a sequel. You might need a score card to get the proper enjoyment from this film.
The first film was revolutionary in its style and subject matter. It was one of the best comic book adaptations of all time. Hopefully, this one can live up to its predecessor.
3. When the Game Stands Tall (TriStar, 2,673 Theaters, 115 Minutes, Rated PG for thematic material, a scene of violence, and brief smoking): I am getting a We Are Marshall vibe from this film. It is a period football movie featuring a team that wears green and white who must regroup after being struck with a tragic loss.
However, this team is a high school team, one that won 151 straight games, and the tragedy is the death of one player, not a team full of them, but it still fits in formula found in pretty much every sports film in the last half century.
This is the most poorly reviewed film this week and the one released in the least amount of theaters. In other words, this is a film that the studio is trying to bury by leaving it out there on the dog days of August to die.
