Movies Opening This Weekend – April 21st, 2017 [videos]

If you’re a fan of documentaries, this weekend is for you. Our favorite choice for documentary is a film called ‘Citizen Jane: Battle for the City,’ which serves as a harbinger of things to come in our urban struggles. Katherine Heigl appears on screen after a long respite, a surprise we didn’t see coming!

There is an animation film the whole family will love and a thriller that will make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. There are no franchise films or mega-stars this weekend, but the movies are intriguing and engaging, worthy of your time and money. Our pick of the weekend is the movie/documentary that pulls back the curtain on the Panda Bear called ‘Born in China,’ a movie you will want to see for the beauty and inner peace.

Enjoy the movies this weekend, we always do!

Citizen Jane: Battle for the City (2016)
(NR) 92 min – Documentary
Director: Matt Tyrnauer
Stars: Thomas Campanella, Mindy Fullilove, Alexander Garvin, Paul Goldberger

Our cities were designed to be the economic and cultural epicenters of all that is good, shining examples of the free market ideologies. There was a voice in the 40s and 50s that warned other dangers of cookie cutter cities, and that voice as ‘Citizen Jane.’ This documentary is a primer for all those that have yet to fully understand our combustible relationship between economics and ergonomics. [watch trailer]

Leap! (2016)
(PG) 89 min – Animation
Directors: Eric Summer | Éric Warin
Stars: Elle Fanning, Carly Rae Jepsen, Maddie Ziegler, Terrence Scammell

An orphan girl does whatever every other character does when given the chance to live someone else’s life; she passes for someone else to rise in the Grand Opera house. This is a different kind of animation, but one the whole family will love. [watch trailer]

Born in China (2016)
(G) 76 min – Documentary
Director: Chuan Lu
Stars: John Krasinski, Xun Zhou

We travel in the wilderness of China to shoot a documentary about the panda bear and her cubs and detail the hardships of being an animal in the jungle. It’s not as easy as it looks. [watch trailer]

Unforgettable (2017)
(R) 100 min – Thriller
Director: Denise Di Novi
Stars: Rosario Dawson, Katherine Heigl, Geoff Stults, Whitney Cummings

A woman’s scorned love sets her sights on her divorced husband’s new wife. This is one of those ‘No fury like the scorned woman things…’ [watch trailer]

Free Fire (2016)
(R) 90 min – Action
Director: Ben Wheatley
Stars: Sharlto Copley, Brie Larson, Armie Hammer, Cillian Murphy

If you enjoyed the Daniel Day Lewis “Gangs of New York” a few years ago, this movie depicted in Boston in 1978, will remind you of how two gangs take an incident and turn it into a game of survival. [watch trailer]

The Promise (2016)
(PG-13) 132 min – Drama
Director: Terry George
Stars: Christian Bale, Oscar Isaac, Shohreh Aghdashloo, Angela Sarafyan

Way back during the final days of the Ottoman Empire, a love triangle between students emerges as the civil unrest provides a backdrop for this tangled love story. [watch trailer]

Phoenix Forgotten (2017)
(PG-13) 80 min – Sci-Fi
Director: Justin Barber
Stars: Florence Hartigan, Luke Spencer Roberts, Chelsea Lopez, Justin Matthews

Three teenagers see lights in the sky over their homes in Arizona and decide to check it out. The three disappear, causing the city to panic. Think ‘The Blair Witch Project’ meets a much scarier ‘man meets alien’ script, and you have ‘Phoenix Forgotten.’ [watch trailer]


Photo Credit: Kzenon / Shutterstock.com