Past the Popcorn film roundup—A Thin Holiday Weekend
Each week, Past the Popcorn offers a thorough look at the latest round of films opening on big screens.
Hollywood must know what its doing. We have a long holiday weekend coming up, which would sure seem like a good bet for boffo boxoffice; but ticket sales are as low right now as they’ve been all summer. So maybe it makes sense that the studios haven’t given us anything to get excited about this weekend.
One indie house has released a small comedic gem—as long as you’re not easily offended. Ping Pong Playa “isn’t your standard late-summer dumper,” says Greg Wright “The star of this movie, Jimmy Tsai, has invented a truly hysterical character in C-Dub Wang—a Chinese ranconteur who’s equal parts Spike Lee, Quentin Tarantino, Charles Barkley, and Larry the Cucumber—and director Jessica Yu knows how to milk every setup for maximum laughs.”
Wright also recommends the wake-up-call documentary I.O.U.S.A.—playing on only 21 screens around the country this weekend—describing it as “required viewing for every American. Helmed in an admirably restrained fashion by Wo for raising theordplay director Patrick Creadon, the documentary I.O.U.S.A. is PGP’s first salv level of public awareness about what a 60 Minutes report dubbed “the dirty little secret everyone in Washington knows: a set of financial truths so inconvenient that most elected officials don’t even want to talk about them.” Heavy—but important—stuff.
Michael Brunk was not so impressed with Traitor, the only big-name release this week. “I enjoyed the first two thirds of this movie,” he says, “and if the production team could have brought it home with a fitting final act, I think this would have been halfway decent film. But instead of a powerful message about belief and sacrifice we get a climactic moment that left the audience I watched with literally laughing out loud.”
Also reviewed this week: the self-describing Disaster Movie.
