Top 10 WORST Films of 2015: #10-5

Well here we are at the end of the year so you know what that means… it’s time for the annual lists of our favorite and least favorite films of the year. Of course I’m starting off with the ‘Worst of the Year’ list simply because I want to end the year on a good note and talk about the good stuff. However, I’m fully aware that at the end of the day, this list is going to be the more popular of the two because the internet just LOVES to talk about the bad stuff. But not me; in fact, I’m kind of getting tired of the internet’s constant cynicism and mean-spirited nature. Right now online film culture is dominated by things like Honest Trailers and CinemaSins. And while I’ll admit to being a ‘fan’ of them in the past, nowadays I feel like these shows only ruin the reputations of perfectly good films. So with that said, don’t expect to see me rage that much about these films no matter how bad they are. I’m just going to be straight and to the point when it comes to talking about these films and their issues. Because this is the ‘End of the Year’ list, I will be discussing some of the more spoiler-y details of these films. But because this is the worst list, I’m not even going to bother to warn you guys about it because obviously I can’t recommend any of these films in the first place. So with all that said, here is Part 1 of my Top 10 list for the Worst Films of 2015. Today I’ll be listing films 10-5.

Kicking off this year’s list is a film that I had originally given a 3/5 rating to when I reviewed it this past April. However, as time has gone on, my opinion of the film has changed quite a bit. It is by no means the worst film that I’ve seen this year but it’s also one that I’m not keen on re-watching anytime soon.

10. UNFRIENDED

In the months since I saw this film, I realized that I appreciate it more for its technical merits than I do as far as it being a horror film is concerned. To its credit, it does have a pretty novel idea for a horror film. The film is set entirely within the confines of the computer of the main character Blaire and she and the other main characters communicate with one another via Skype. The terrors that they go through all occur as a result of a mysterious source that ‘hijacks’ their conversation whom they can’t remove no matter what they try. Again, to the film’s credit, I haven’t really heard of any other horror film like this before and the film definitely succeeds in sticking to its internet based setting, right down to the lag issue that can plague Skype conversations, something of which I’m familiar with through the podcasts that I have recorded with my friends. Obviously just having the whole film take place on Skype would’ve been rather boring so the film interjects these scenes with moments of Blaire using other applications like Facebook and Instant Messaging. And in certain parts, there is some genuine tension that comes from Blaire frantically trying to do something on her computer before something bad happens, like downloading virus removal software whose installation process is momentarily halted at one point due to some other application that is running at the same time or not showing a note that came from her printer that reads that one of her friends will die if she shows the message. And while not a ‘horror’ moment, I have to say that my favorite scene in the film is when the friends all get into an argument over secrets that are being revealed during a forced game of ‘Never Have I Ever’ and the killer trolls them by playing a song about lying on Spotify. Now that was hilarious!

However, those are really the only major positives that I can give this film because as an actual horror film, it’s rather subpar. The deaths are very traditional and the jump scares are, as usual, annoying. As for the characters, they’re both incredibly stereotypical and really, really unlikable. For you see, the main plot of the film revolves around an incident a year before where one of their classmates, Laura Barns, killed herself after receiving endless abuse from her classmates over an embarrassing video of herself drunk and passed out at a party that was posted online. And as we learn over the course of the film, the main characters all had a hand in her torment so it’s pretty much impossible to sympathize with any of them. So that would mean that we root for the killer, right? Well yes in this case we do but even then we actually never learn who the killer really is. I mean, I guess you can say that the killer is meant to be the ‘ghost’ of Laura but the film never explicitly states that this is the case. In fact, at one point during the film, Blaire messages her boyfriend Mitch and tells him that Laura had an uncle and when I saw that, I thought that this was the give-away; that Laura’s uncle was the ‘killer’ looking to enact revenge upon his niece’s classmates for causing her death. However, that’s not the case and we’re left to assume that it is the ‘ghost of Laura’ that’s haunting her classmates. So in short, ‘Unfriended’ is a fairly original horror film as far as its concept is concerned. However, in execution, it ends up being another fairly clichéd entry in the genre.  

My Number 9 pick is a film that I really wanted to like. I didn’t care that it was a prequel, which many argued was unnecessary, but ultimately the film ended up being a fairly disappointing take on a classic story.

9. PAN

Like I said, I really wanted to like this film. Given the fact that, nowadays, most big-budget live-action films are usually rated PG-13 or higher, I was happy to see that we were getting a PG-rated big-budget fantasy film, one that the whole family could see. And despite my overall thoughts on this film, at the end of my review I still recommended it to families as I felt that, at the very least, kids might enjoy it for the colorful visuals and stuff like that. But as for adults, their mileage will vary on this, unfortunately, misguided attempt at telling the prequel story to Peter Pan. Again, I didn’t judge this film too much for being a prequel nor did I judge it for its heavy use of CGI. At the end of the day, this film’s biggest problem is the writing. There are two main reasons as to why this is. First off, the references made to ‘future events’ in regards to the story of Peter Pan are very obvious and lack subtlety. When Peter talks to one of the fairies during the finale, of course it has to be Tinker Bell. And when Peter, Hook, and Tiger Lily are rafting down a river of crocodiles, Hook notes his dislike of them, obviously referencing the crocodile that would end up taking Hook’s hand, hence the name ‘Captain Hook’. But then another issue is the fact that the plot feels rather rushed as it feels like the film is trying to breeze through moments that would constitute any sort of character development in favor of zany visuals. And while the film’s visuals are rightfully surreal in design, as one would expect from something like Peter Pan, the pacing is still very messy and the characters are very dull and underwritten. There’s also quite a few weird things in this film as well, like scenes where a bunch of characters, for no real reason, start to sing Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ and the Ramones’ ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’. Simply put, Baz Luhrmann’s ‘The Great Gatsby’ this isn’t…

Peter himself probably gets the worst of the general lack of character development as he spends most of the film rather cowardly not wanting to live up to the prophecy about him saving Never Land from Blackbeard. Thankfully, Levi Miller sort of manages to get around this when he does have the chance to convey the playful and cocky attitude of the character. As for Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily, I didn’t pay much attention to the controversy over casting a Caucasian actress in the role of the native American character and to her credit, she’s the most straight-faced and down-to-earth of the four main leads; in other words, not over-the-top. But in a film like this that is very much over-the-top in tone, maybe this wasn’t such the best idea. By contrast, Hugh Jackman is incredibly over-the-top as the main villain Blackbeard. In my review I actually pinned him as the ‘weak link’ of the cast but looking back on it, I do realize that Jackman’s ridiculously campy turn is very fitting for the film. And with that said, while Garrett Hedlund might have been a bit too over-the-top as the Han Solo-esque Hook (and yes, this is a very fitting reference because the film very much feels like ‘Star Wars’ in both plot and characters as far as the main trio of Peter (Luke), Hook (Han), and Tiger Lily (Leia) are concerned), I still thought he was fine. But despite the best efforts of the four main leads, ‘Pan’ ultimately feels like a weirder and campier version of the ‘Star Wars’ prequels, even though I will give this film credit in that its heart definitely was in the right place.

Speaking of the ‘Star Wars’ prequels, my Number 8 pick is another film that feels a bit too reminiscent of those prequels. It’s another film that I didn’t want to dislike but unfortunately it didn’t do much for me.

8. JUPITER ASCENDING

I think it’s safe to say that as soon as this film’s first trailer was released, many people were expecting the film to bomb, even after it got moved from its initial Summer 2014 release to February of this year. And ultimately it did bomb, making that three in a row for the Wachowskis, whose careers have been in steady decline since hitting big with ‘The Matrix’ in 1999 and will probably now hit a major wall, in terms of films, after this box-office bomb. In other words, who knows when they’re going to get another chance to direct a big-budget film? Like ‘Pan’, this film feels very much like the ‘Star Wars’ prequels in terms of its overall tone and while I’ve admitted in the past to actually liking the prequels, I don’t view other films being like that as a ‘good thing’. As I noted in my review for the film, this was basically the 2015 equivalent of ‘Attack of the Clones’; a sci-fi film with minimal action that’s pre-dominantly exposition-based. In other words, this film really does drag at times. And the sad thing about all of this is that, despite the film’s shortcomings from a writing perspective, the film’s visuals are genuinely amazing. Clearly a lot of effort went into the art design of this sci-fi world. After all, that was the main reason why the film got pushed back from its original summer 2014 release date; so that more time can be given to finish the effects. But at the end of the day, that’s all for nothing as a result of a plot that’s pre-dominantly dialogue driven and fairly messy.

The film’s main character, Jupiter Jones, is a pretty poor sci-fi female lead. Literally all she is in the film is a damsel in distress, despite the fact that she’s supposed to be the reincarnation of the matriarch of the most powerful alien dynasty in the universe. To her credit, Mila Kunis at least does her best even though she has very little to work with. By comparison, Channing Tatum and Sean Bean, the latter of whom actually doesn’t die for once in a film (in fact he also doesn’t die in the next film on this list), both get more to work with as soldiers Caine Wise and Stinger Apini, respectively. And then there’s Eddie Redmayne as the main villain; Balem. It’s a good thing that Redmayne did win the Oscar for his work in last year’s ‘The Theory of Everything’ because his performance here is likely going to get him a Razzie nomination. There are two levels to his performance here; either he’s whispering in a raspy Voldemort-like voice or he’s RANDOMLY YELLING AT SOMEONE! Thankfully he actually isn’t in the film that much. Seriously, he actually disappears for the entire middle half of the film while his character’s siblings, played by Douglas Booth and Tuppence Middleton, basically take his place as the ‘villains’. Though I use that term loosely because, when their scenes are over, they’re never seen again. Nothing is ever done about them by the end of the film which is, again, a sign of the messy nature of the screenplay. Like Joe Wright with ‘Pan’, I can clearly see how passionate the Wachowskis are about their work but in the end they all ended up biting off more than they can chew as both of their films ended up being major commercial flops. Yeah aside from ‘Fury Road’ Warner Bros did not have a really good year at the box-office.

My Number 7 pick is a film that I was actually looking forward to despite the various aspects of the film that would make others not want to go near it with a 10-foot pole. But in the end, it’s another dud for its lead star.

7. PIXELS

Oh Adam Sandler… here you are again in another one of my ‘Worst of the Year’ lists. As I’ve stated before, I don’t hate Adam Sandler. He seems like a really nice guy in real life and I do like his earlier films like ‘Happy Gilmore’ and ‘Billy Madison’. But as many of us know, he’s been experiencing a lot more duds recently; ‘Jack and Jill’, ‘Grown Ups 2’, and now ‘Pixels’. As strange as it may sound, I actually was looking forward to this film but not because of Sandler. The main reason why was due to the film’s video-game based storyline. And while most video-game based films tend to be terrible, that usually isn’t the case for films that only have a storyline inspired by video games like ‘Scott Pilgrim vs. the World’ and the ‘Tron’ films. As many of you know I’m also a big fan of video games, especially retro games, so I was intrigued by this film’s use of classic characters like ‘Pac-Man’ and ‘Donkey Kong’ in the context of aliens using these characters as weapons against the Earth after an intended message of peace sent by us in 1982 was misinterpreted by them as an act of war. And for once it wasn’t a Sandler film that wasn’t directed by one of Sandler’s regular directors like Dennis Dugan. Sure Chris Columbus hasn’t had a hit in years but I will always remember the great films that he has made in the past; the first two ‘Home Alone’ films, ‘Mrs. Doubtfire’, and of course the first two ‘Harry Potter’ films. 

I’ll just be perfectly blunt here; this film’s biggest weakness is that it isn’t funny. Almost all of the jokes fall flat. There’s been a lot of talk about the film’s poorly written female characters and I must say that this is very much true. Michelle Monaghan is severely underused in the main female role and is constantly being called a ‘snob’ by Sandler’s character basically because she doesn’t accept any of his romantic advances on her (at first). Jane Krakowski literally has nothing to do in the role of the First Lady (and yes Kevin James plays the President… I was never bothered by this so moving on…). And as for Ashley Benson in the role of the warrior Lady Lisa, a character from an in-universe arcade game, she may be touted as a badass warrior but ultimately she’s just the love interest for Josh Gad’s character. But at the end of the day, this is far from being my ‘worst’ of the year because there are still a few redeeming qualities to this film. While I may not have grown up during the 80’s, the filmmakers clearly have a lot of affection for the era and that’s clear through the film’s many, many 80’s references. The pixel-like visuals for the alien creatures are pretty cool as are some of the action set-pieces that pay homage to these classic games. I won’t lie… the ‘Donkey Kong’ finale was actually pretty cool. And despite the fact that his character is really nothing more than just a jerk to the other characters, Peter Dinklage is easily the most memorable part of the film. So that’s ‘Pixels’ in a nutshell for you. If you’re still a fan of Sandler’s films, you’ll probably like this. But as for me, this was quite a bit of a disappointment. Though considering that this is a Sandler film, I guess you could say that I should’ve known better at this point.

(P.S. And no I did not even bother with his Netflix film ‘The Ridiculous 6’)

It may surprise some of you to see this next film ranked as low as #6. While it definitely is bad, it’s actually not the worst film I’ve seen this year.

6. FIFTY SHADES OF GREY

Well this isn’t that much of a surprise for some of you, is it? I mean seriously, who out there was actually expecting anything good out of this? However, I’m not here to complain about how this film ended up being a big commercial hit when it was released in February, grossing over $500 million worldwide. I don’t complain about that kind of stuff given all the talk about the film industry’s declining ticket sales, regardless of the quality of films that are either commercial hits or duds. And as you can see, this isn’t even my #1 worst of the year. But don’t worry, that doesn’t mean that I’m going soft on this film… far from it. As you all know, this film was based off of a book that was fan-fiction spawned from ‘Twilight’, so you can get an idea as to how poorly written it is. But at the very least, ‘Twilight’ at least had a few vampire/werewolf action sequences to kind of (though not really) hold the attention of non-fans. ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ doesn’t have that same luxury. It’s just regular people doing regular things and speaking horrible, horrible dialogue, from ‘Laters Baby!’ to ‘I’m 50 shades of f***ed up!’. Though I will say that the one line in the film that had me laughing the most was when Christian tells Anastasia that “I don’t make love… I f*** hard!” If any of you internet people recall the scene in the Nostalgia Critic’s review of ‘Saved by the Bell’ where the Critic goes on an epic laughing fit after seeing Zack Morris dressed up like, as he put it, ‘Vanilla Ice’s bitch’, that’s how much I was laughing at that line.

But it’s not just the dialogue that’s bad. Another noticeable thing about the writing is how indecisive the characters are, specifically Anastasia. Sometimes she loves Christian, other times she doesn’t, and so on and so forth for pretty much the entirety of the frigging film. At the end, even after all that he had put her through to make her question why she’s with him, she still tells him that ‘she’s fallen in love with him’. And as for Christian, it seriously raises the question of why any girl would fall for someone like this; a total psycho/sadist/any other similar word you can think of that frequently stalks his romantic interests and tries to control their lives; how much they eat, how much they exercise, etc. So even though this film has terrible dialogue and characters, you’d think that it’d at least deliver on the one thing that made the books so controversial; the BDSM sex scenes. And believe it or not, it doesn’t. I’m guessing this is due to the film trying not to go as far as an NC-17 rating but aside from the fact that sex/nudity actually shouldn’t be that much of an issue for MPAA ratings, the sex scenes in this film are extremely bland for what was an extremely controversial and ridiculous book. At the very least, Dakota Johnson at least tries her best with the terrible material she has to work with as Anastasia, though I can’t say the same for Jamie Dorman as Christian. There’s no denying that ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ is exactly what you’d expect from something that originally spawned from another terrible book/film franchise… nothing more, nothing less.

That’s the end of Part 1 of my Top 10 Worst of the Year list. Check back tomorrow for Part 2 and my Top 5 worst films of 2015.

Unfriended (2015) review

The recent advancements in technology over the past few years have allowed us to further connect with people in ways we never could before, especially with the creation of social media networks like Facebook and Twitter. However, this isn’t always a good thing. If I haven’t said it before, I’ll say it now; sometimes the internet can tend to be really negative. I’ve seen that plenty of times when it comes to film discussions but then you also have something much, much worse like cyber-bullying. As if bullying wasn’t bad enough, now bullies are able to torment their victims online, in many cases anonymously meaning that the bullying victim could potentially have no way of finding who’s doing it to them. This whole practice sets up the plot of Blumhouse Productions’ newest film, ‘Unfriended’, in which an extreme act of cyber-bullying comes back to haunt a bunch of teenagers who were at the forefront of it all. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m really not the biggest fan of horror films. I don’t really go see horror films in the theater unless the premise intrigues me. Hence why last year, around this exact time in fact, I went to go see the film ‘Oculus’ which, if you recall, I wasn’t the biggest fan of (though I do promise that I’ll give that film a second chance in the future). So ‘Unfriended’ was another case of a horror film that actually did interest me based on its premise; either that or I’ve been inundated with its ads online for the past month, which sort of made me obligated to check it out.

It is established that, a year before the events of the film, a high-school student named Laura Barns (Heather Sossaman), committed suicide after being mercilessly tormented by her peers after an embarrassing video of her passed out drunk at a party was posted online. Exactly one year after this, a bunch of her former classmates; Blaire (Shelley Hennig), Mitch (Moses Jacob Storm), Jess (Renee Olstead), Ken (Jacob Wysocki), and Adam (Will Peltz), have a group chat on Skype. Everything seems to be going well until they realize that there’s another person in the chat with them; ‘billie227’. They soon realize that this anonymous account belonged to Laura and despite all of their efforts, they have no way of getting rid of this mystery caller. Soon enough, the caller starts to become much more threatening towards them, demanding them to tell it who was responsible for posting the video of Laura and threatening to kill them if they sign out of Skype. As time goes on, and the mysterious force begins to take them out one by one, the friends’ dark secrets begin to be uncovered. Not only do these reveals test their friendship, but it’s shown that they actually played a major part in Laura’s harassment, including the fact that one of them was the one responsible for posting the embarrassing video of her in the first place.

So the idea behind this movie is that it all takes place on Blaire’s computer screen as the main characters are chatting on Skype. As gimmicky as that sounds, and let’s be honest it sort of does, it is actually done to pretty great effect here. It’s not like it all takes place on Skype, which definitely could’ve become really boring after a while. Throughout the film, we see Blaire do other things on her computer, like watch videos online, send messages to her boyfriend Mitch and later ‘Laura’, and so on. And because it centers on Blaire more than the other main characters, we do definitely see the whole situation from her point of view, like how sometimes she re-types some of her responses to people online. The film also does a good job establishing a sense of ‘realism’ (you know, as ‘realistic’ as a horror film can get) through the way the Skype conversation is presented. Having used Skype many times before to record podcasts with my group ‘The Feature Presentation’, we have experienced problems such as lag and audio/video cut-offs. In any other movie, the ‘call’ that the characters are in probably would’ve looked ‘perfect’ without any issues arising with the technology. But that’s not the case here, as we do frequently see the video lag and cut off video and audio at times. Technically speaking, this is sort of along the lines of being a ‘found-footage’ film. As such, it actually does do something new with the genre, which I think we can all agree has been generally overdone in the past few years.

I loved the ways that ‘Laura’ messed with her victims, like in one scene she has them play the game ‘Never Have I Ever’ and as the game goes on, some of their dirty secrets are brought up, from rumors that they’ve spread about each other to affairs that they’ve had behind their friends’ backs. Heck, at one point, as they start to argue, ‘Laura’ starts playing a song about liars that can’t be turned off, which I thought was pretty funny. The film does highlight why cyber-bullying is a bad thing, but that also results in some of the film’s shortcomings. Because the thing is, being that this film is about a bunch of teens who are being targeted by a supernatural force because of their participation in the bullying that one girl had to deal with, the main characters aren’t exactly likable. But then again, they’re basically just your standard horror film character stereotypes so we don’t really care about them anyway. This is one case where you do actually find yourself rooting for the killer. But ultimately, we don’t ever really learn anything about this ‘killer’ either. I mean I know the film is implying that it’s Laura but at no point do we ever get an official answer on that or how this is all being done. Heck, at one point, I thought it was going to be that the killer was revealed to be Laura’s uncle, who’s mentioned at one point in the film during a conversation between Blaire and Mitch. I’m not spoiling anything when I say that it isn’t.

In the end, I guess you can say that I admire this movie more for its execution than I do in regards to the writing. Because while this film does show why cyber-bullying is just bad on all accounts, this also means that the main characters, who are all horror stereotypes, are unlikable because they played a part in the cyber-bullying of their classmate Laura, who ended up killing herself because of it. And as much as this is a case where, given the situation, you’re actually rooting for the killer due to what happened to her, we never get a clear idea of who this killer is supposed to be or how this is even happening in the first place. Without the whole ‘online/Skype’ angle, this would’ve just been your run-of-the-mill clichéd teen horror flick. It still is, but because of the inventive direction they took with telling the story, as well as its solid establishment of realism primarily though portraying the typical Skype conversation, it’s not as big of an issue here compared to a film like ‘Annabelle’ or ‘Ouija’. Of course keep in mind I’m not a fan of horror films so these aren’t the kind of movies I usually see. But even with that said, I did like ‘Unfriended’. I may not have been ‘scared’ by it, per se, but I will give it credit for actually doing a really good job in terms of suspense and paranoia through its solid execution of its online-themed set-up. As far as horror films go, I can’t say that this is an absolute ‘must-see’ but given some of the other horror films that have come out over the past few years, this one does have more to offer.

Rating: 3/5

2015 Preview: April

Welcome back to Rhode Island Movie Corner’s year-long preview of the films that will be hitting theaters in 2015. This is Part 4 of 12 and today we’re looking at the upcoming releases for the month of April. While the summer movie season technically starts in May, many people believe that it’s slowly beginning to move back a month or two considering the fact that a lot of big-name blockbusters are starting to get released in the months of March and April. However, to be perfectly honest, this month’s lineup is a little light in terms of new releases. There’s literally only one major wide release each for the first two weeks of the month. But that’s not going to stop us from taking a look at what’s coming out this month, so let’s get started as we look into the films of April 2015.

APRIL 3- Only one wide release this week, but it’s a big one with a lot of buzz surrounding it. Unfortunately, not all of it for the right reasons.

*James Wan (‘The Conjuring’, ‘Saw’, ‘Insidious’) takes over directing duties from Justin Lin for ‘Furious 7’, the seventh entry in the highly successful ‘Fast and the Furious’ franchise. In this film, Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel) and his crew find themselves being hunted by Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham), the brother of ‘Fast and Furious 6’ villain Owen Shaw, who seeks revenge for his brother’s death. The main cast of the series (Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez, Ludacris, Tyrese Gibson, Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, among others) reprise their roles from the previous films, joined in this film by Lucas Black (reprising his role as Sean Boswell from the third entry, ‘Tokyo Drift’), Nathalie Emmanuel, Ronda Rousey, and Kurt Russell, among others.

Of course, as you all know, this film was marred by tragedy in November 2013, when star Paul Walker died in a car crash while on break from shooting this film. Since then, production was put on a short hiatus before filming resumed, with this film now set to retire his character Brian O’Connor.

APRIL 10- Yet again, only one wide release but I’ll also throw in another noteworthy film coming out this weekend.

*The newest adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks novel, ‘The Longest Ride’ stars Britt Robertson and Scott Eastwood as a college student and ex-champion bull rider, respectively, who fall in love and end up helping an older man (Alan Alda) when he ends up in a car accident. Their lives become connected to the man when he starts to reminisce about his wife.

*Also hitting theaters this weekend (though not listed as a ‘wide’ release on Box Office Mojo) is ‘Ex-Machina’, the directorial debut of writer Alex Garland (‘Dredd’, ’28 Days Later’). The film centers around a computer programmer (Domhnall Gleeson) who is selected to come to the reclusive mountain home of a famous tech CEO (Oscar Issac). While there, he is informed that he going to perform a ‘Turing Test’ on a humanoid android A.I. named Ava (Alicia Vikander).

APRIL 17- Seems like this was the prime spot this month as four (!) new wide releases debut.

*Based on the novel of the same name by Tom Rob Smith, ‘Child 44’ stars Tom Hardy as an MGB agent in the Stalin-era of the Soviet Union who investigates into a series of child murders. The film also stars Noomi Rapace, Joel Kinnaman, Jason Clarke, and Gary Oldman.

*Disneynature’s newest film, ‘Monkey Kingdom’, centers on a family of monkeys who must find a new home when their old home is overrun by another tribe of monkeys. The film is narrated by Tina Fey.

*Kevin James reprises his role of mall cop Paul Blart in ‘Paul Blart Mall Cop 2’, the sequel to 2009’s surprise commercial hit ‘Paul Blart Mall Cop’. In this film, Blart and his daughter Maya take a vacation to Las Vegas where Blart once again finds himself in the middle of a takeover situation, this time of the hotel that he and his daughter are staying at.

*The newest horror film from Blumhouse Productions (their second in three months following February’s ‘The Lazarus Effect’), ‘Unfriended’ takes place a year after a high school student named Laura Barns killed herself after being mercilessly mocked online over a video of her passed out while at a party. When six of her former classmates have a Skype conversation on the anniversary of her death, they soon find themselves having to deal with a mysterious 7^th person who joins the conversation on Laura’s old account. This mysterious stranger then proceeds to threaten them with death if any of them log out of Skype.

APRIL 24- And finally we have a pair of dramas to close out the month.

*Blake Lively stars in ‘The Age of Adaline’ in which she plays a woman who, following a car accident, ends up being stricken with ‘immortality’, never aging past 27 for eight decades. The film also stars Ellen Burstyn and Harrison Ford.

*Finally there’s ‘Little Boy’, in which a young boy tries to find a way to end World War II so that his father can come home. The film stars Kevin James, Emily Watson, and Tom Wilkinson.

And those are the films set to come in April 2015. Thanks for reading and check back next month for Part 5 of this year-long preview as we officially start off the summer movie season with the films of May.