Movies With Butter

After several weeks of high-profile summer releases, this week gives us a break from summer-film-mania, and introduces a set of diverse films befitting a weekend during just about any time of the year other than summer.

One of this week’s releases is an action film from a franchise that never seems to exhaust its repertoire—which is impressive in its own way, since it’s mostly cars and explosions—Fast & Furious 6. This installment, the Fast and Furious crew is reunited—most notably including Dwayne Johnson and Vin Diesel—to take on a team of mercenary professional drivers, the reward for which is returning to their homes after being on the run after the last film.

The film, oddly enough, was reasonably well-received—it currently sits at 74% on the Tomatometer. Critics generally agree that the reckless action is balanced somewhat with some snappy dialogue, and even a little bit of a storyline—just enough to make the action worthwhile. The film is set to earn $102.2-$105 million over the weekend, according to HSX.

Also opening today is another sequel to a popular franchise—the final installment to a comedic trilogy, in this case: The Hangover Part III. The usual suspects—Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms, Zach Galifianakis, and Ken Jeong—return to Vegas one last time, for another romp filled with shock-laughter and raunchy humor.

Unfortunately, this film is kind of the odd man out this week, in terms of ratings—Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a 21% rating. The film is less funny than it is dark—the formerly-lovable characters, according to critics, are displaced in a film that smacks more of B-list action than actual comedy. Fortunately, the film is still set to pull in a considerable amount of money over the weekend: $60-$67.7 million.

Finally, rounding up this interesting variety of releases is the animated film Epic. The film tells of a micro-scale battle of good and evil, where the fate of nature itself will be decided, and the human who is shrunk down and plays a big role in the epic battle.

This film currently has the respectable rating of 63% on Rotten Tomatoes. The film is a little trite and formulaic in its message—some critics are going so far as to even say insincere—but, at the end of the day, it’s a solid family film. Its opening weekend gross is predicted to be between $38.5 million and $42 million.

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