Meat at the Movies: It’s All-Out War With Free Fire

So there's actually quite a few movies opening up this weekend, so I'll just mention what I think the biggest ones are. The first is the new Disneynature documentary, called Born in China. Disney has been releasing these documentaries pretty much once a year for the last ten years, almost always on the weekend of Earth Day. This one focuses on rare animals that can only be found in China, including the panda bear, a golden monkey, and a snow leopard. These movies always look incredible, with gorgeous cinematography and jaw-dropping imagery; they're the kind of movies you'll see playing at Best Buy to show off the capabilities of their HDTVs. Plus, it's narrated by John Krasinski from The Office, so you can imagine him doing the Jim face to the camera anytime a panda does something silly.

Then there's a movie I'm pretty excited about, and that's the new movie from director Ben Wheatley, called Free Fire. Wheatley's a guy who's a pretty divisive figure among film geeks, but he definitely has his fans, and Free Fire looks like his most mainstream work so far. This is essentially an action movie focused on one movie-length gunfight featuring a ton of cool actors like Brie Larson, Cillian Murphy, Armie Hammer, and Sharlto Copely. Many reviews are saying it's fun, others are saying it gets tedious after a while. I think the trailer makes it look pretty awesome. And hey, the action's supposed to be good, the dialogue's supposed to be funny, so I'd say definitely try to see this if you can.

Finally, there's a movie that I thought was playing in limited release but turns out it's going wide, and I'm very happy about that, and it's called The Lost City of Z. This is from director James Gray, who directed an incredible movie called The Immigrant a few years ago with Marion Cotillard and Joaquin Phoenix. This movie is about an explorer played by Charlie Hunnam who travels to the Amazon in the early 1900s and discovers evidence of a lost civilization - but nobody believes him, so he keeps going back, until one day in 1925, when he mysteriously disappears. Reviews for this have been stellar, and some have even been comparing it to classic epics like Lawrence of Arabia and Bridge on the River Kwai. It also stars Robert Pattinson, Tom Holland and Sienna Miller, and I think by the end of the year, a lot of people are going to point to this movie as one of the best.

So I'd say definitely see The Lost City of Z if you can, but if you're in an action mood, than Free Fire should have you covered, and if you just wanna look at pandas, then hey, you're covered too! Until next time, we'll Meat at the Movies.