Movies in Theaters This Friday, January 17, 2014: Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit, Ride Along, Devil’s Due, and More
Maybe it’s because we’ve been down on new releases the last couple weeks, or (probably more likely) it’s because we’re celebrating a long weekend. Either way, January 17th looks like a wide-ranging weekend for new movies. Not only are there a few scheduled re-releases (Gravity and 12 Years a Slave), but there are four scheduled wide releases as well.
In my opinion, the biggest release is Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit. The Tom Clancy-based movie stars Chris Pine (Star Trek Into Darkness) and Keira Knightley (Pirates of the Caribbean). The action-thriller was originally supposed to be a Christmas release but was pushed back late into this year. This could mean it is a diamond in the very rough January landscape…or it could mean the movie sucked and was pushed back. We’ll find out this weekend.
Jack Ryan’s biggest competition will be the buddy cop comedy Ride Along. The two movies share little in common, so it’s weird to call it a competition. Still, Ride Along will use its comedic starpower (Kevin Hart and Ice Cube) to lift its box office prowess.
To round out the wide releases, the film industry is rounding out all the genres with the very unlike films Devil’s Due (a supernatural horror) and The Nut Job (a family animated comedy). I feel like there could be a funny mashup between these two movies.
In limited theaters, there are plenty of choices as well. The eye-popper is probably Life of a King, which tells the true story of an ex-con (Cuba Gooding, Jr.) who starts a chess club in Washington, D.C. for inner-city troubled youths.
The rest of the list includes movies like Back in the Day, Big Bad Wolves, Freezer, G.B.F., Jamesy Boy, Like Father, Like Son, Maidentrip, Reasonable Doubt, and Summer in February.
Scroll for trailers and synopses for each and every release this week.
Oh, and enjoy the long weekend!
After a mysterious, lost night on their honeymoon, a newlywed couple finds themselves dealing with an earlier-than-planned pregnancy. While recording everything for posterity, the husband begins to notice odd behavior in his wife that they initially write off to nerves, but, as the months pass, it becomes evident that the dark changes to her body and mind have a much more sinister origin.
Based on the CIA analyst created by espionage master Tom Clancy, “Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit” is a blistering action thriller that follows Ryan (Chris Pine, “Star Trek”) from his quiet double-life as a veteran-turned-Wall Street executive to his all-out initiation as a hunted American agent on the trail of a massive terrorist plot in Moscow.
Ryan appears to be just another New York executive to his friends and loved ones, but his enlistment into the CIA secretly goes back years. He was brought in as a brainy Ph.D. who crunches global data – but when Ryan ferrets out a meticulously planned scheme to collapse the U.S. economy and spark global chaos, he becomes the only man with the skills to stop it. Now, he’s gone fully operational, thrust into a world of mounting suspicion, deception and deadly force. Caught between his tight-lipped handler Harper (Academy Award-winner Kevin Costner), his in-the-dark fiancée Cathy (Keira Knightley) and a brilliant Russian oligarch (Kenneth Branagh), Jack must confront a new reality where no one can seem to be trusted, yet the fate of millions rests on his finding the truth. With the urgency of a lit fuse, he’s in a race to stay one step ahead of everyone around him.
Surly, a curmudgeon, independent squirrel is banished from his park and forced to survive in the city. Lucky for him, he stumbles on the one thing that may be able to save his life, and the rest of park community, as they gear up for winter – Maury’s Nut Store.
Fast-talking security guard Ben joins his cop soon-to-be brother-in-law James on a 24-hour patrol of Atlanta in order to prove himself worthy of marrying Angela, James’ sister.
Sometimes in order to move forward, you have to go back. And in this raunchy comedy, Jim Owens does just that when he heads home for his high school reunion. In an attempt to relive the glory days with his boys and explore an old romance, he nearly destroys his hometown and friendships.
A series of brutal murders puts the lives of three men on a collision course: The father of the latest victim now out for revenge, a vigilante police detective operating outside the boundaries of law, and the main suspect in the killings – a religious studies teacher arrested and released due to a police blunder.
Dylan McDermott stars as Robert Saunders, a New York City mechanic who is knocked unconscious at his birthday dinner and wakes up to find himself locked inside the restaurant’s walk-in freezer. But why he’s there – and how he’ll survive – will reveal a chilling nightmare of mistaken identity, the Russian mob, a missing $8 million, and a wounded cop (Peter Facinelli) who may hold the key to it all. The temperature is dropping. The fear is growing. And for a man caught between frozen death and vicious thugs, what happens next may lead to the most cold-blooded twist of all.
The acronym G.B.F. stands for “Gay Best Friend” which has recently been deemed the hottest new fad at North Gateway High School; the Queen Bees need a G.B.F.! But there is one big problem: none of the gay guys at their posh suburban high school are out of the closet. The vicious lady monarchs of the school, a.k.a. the three lead prom queen candidates, are not going to let this minor glitch get in their way; a G.B.F. is just what they need to give them that edgy, high-fashion appeal and win over the ultimate prize: the high school popularity crown.
A young gang member turns his life around in prison, thanks to the friendship he forms with a convicted murderer who becomes his mentor.
Ex-felon, Eugene Brown, establishes a Chess Club for inner city teenagers in Washington, D.C.
Would you choose your natural son, or the son you believed was yours after spending 6 years together? Kore-eda Hirokazu, the globally acclaimed director of “Nobody Knows”, “Still Walking” and “I Wish”, returns to the big screen with another family – a family thrown into torment after a phone call from the hospital where the son was born… Ryota has earned everything he has by his hard work, and believes nothing can stop him from pursuing his perfect life as a winner. Then one day, he and his wife, Midori, get an unexpected phone call from the hospital. Their 6-year-old son, Keita, is not ‘their’ son – the hospital gave them the wrong baby. Ryota is forced to make a life-changing decision, to choose between ‘nature’ and ‘nurture.’ Seeing Midori’s devotion to Keita even after learning his origin, and communicating with the rough yet caring family that has raised his natural son for the last six years, Ryota also starts to question himself: has he really been a ‘father’ all these years…
14-year-old Laura Dekker sets out—camera in hand—on a two-year voyage in pursuit of her dream to be the youngest person ever to sail around the world alone. In the wake of a year-long battle with Dutch authorities that sparked a global storm of media scrutiny, Laura now finds herself far from land, family and unwanted attention, exploring the world in search of freedom, adventure, and distant dreams of her early youth at sea. Jillian Schlesinger’s debut feature amplifies Laura’s brave, defiant voice through a mix of Laura’s own video and voice recordings at sea and intimate vérité footage from locations including the Galapagos Islands, French Polynesia, Australia, and South Africa.
Up-and-coming District Attorney, Mitch Brockton is involved in a fatal hit-and-run, but Clinton Davis, is found with the body and charged with murder. Believing that Davis is innocent, Brockton is compelled to throw the trial. Soon after, Brocton’s perfect life begins to unravel as he realizes that the man he set free is hiding a secret that will destroy him.
Dominic Cooper (The Devil’s Double) stars as AJ (Later Sir Alfred) Munnings, with Emily Browning (Sucker Punch) as Florence Carter-Wood and Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey) as Gilbert Evans, in SUMMER IN FEBRUARY, based on Jonathan Smith’s novel about love and loss among a bohemian colony of artists which flourished in the wild coastal region of Cornwall before the First World War.
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