Meat at the Movies: ‘Geostorm’ vs. ‘The Snowman’
First up this weekend, we've got Geostorm, a new disaster movie starring Gerard Butler as a satellite technician who develops satellites that can control the Earth's weather... until they malfunction and the weather starts going nuts. This looks incredibly silly, not very good, and at the same time... kind of awesome? It seems like it might make a good "have a few beers before watching it on TNT at 2 in the morning" kind of movie - bad, but the kind of really enjoyable, cheesy bad that might just be worth watching.
Also out this weekend is The Snowman, which I was really looking forward to until the reviews came in this week and they were pretty uniformly rough. It's a crime thriller with a great cast led by Michael Fassbender, and a good director who made movies like Let the Right One In and Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, and it is just getting savaged by critics. Apparently a good chunk of the script was never actually filmed for budgetary reasons, and so the movie doesn't make a ton of sense, and it's just relentlessly bleak. I remember seeing the trailers and thinking it looked like Season One of True Detective, but it turns out it's more like Season Two of True Detective, which is a bummer.
Your best option this weekend is likely Only the Brave, a film based on the true story of the Granite Mountain Hotshots, a group of firefighters who battled a wildfire in Arizona a few years ago. It's got an ensemble cast that includes Josh Brolin, Miles Teller and Jeff Bridges, and reviews have been pretty strong, indicating it sort of plays like an old-school Hollywood war film - it's straightforward, thrilling, and tells its story well.
Finally, this weekend has also got Tyler Perry's Boo 2! A Madea Halloween, and I feel like you already know if this is something you want to see or not. This is the tenth time Tyler Perry has played Madea in a movie and a direct sequel to last year's Boo! A Madea Halloween. There aren't any reviews for this yet, but the reviews don't matter - I'm sure there will be another Madea movie by this time next year.
So of the choices this week, I'd say go see Only the Brave. I'm Meat Sandwich and until next time we'll Meat at the Movies.