Leave your brain in the car for this flock of upcoming flicks. Coming soon to a theatre near you, a very-serious, poorly coiffed Vince Vaughn, an episodic highway horror, a murderous porcelain doll, Mike Tyson fighting the inventor of Wing Chun and bros with terrible brogues braving the sea.
Term Life
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Genre: Father-daughter drama in a mobster thriller
Director: Peter Billingsley (yes, Ralphie from A Christmas Story)
Stars: Vince Vaughn, Hailee Steinfeld, Bill Paxton
Release: March 1, 2016
Rocking a truly terrible set of bangs, Vince Vaughn stars as a heist planner who gets framed for a murder and becomes the target of vicious, green-eyed drug empresario (Jordi Mollà). Somehow, Vaughn escapes the baddie’s clutches and goes on the run with his daughter who isn’t super thrilled about being roped into it as Daddy picked a pretty poor time to rekindle familial bonds. Vaughn just needs to stay alive long enough for his life insurance to kick in (I woooonder hooow it will end) and some affection grows as the duo run from mobsters and dirty cops (bespectacled Mike Epps). Luckily, they receive aid from batshit bonkers actor Terrence Howard cast as a beige-clad state trooper.
Southbound
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Genre: Bizarro horror anthology
Directors: Radio Silence, Roxanne Benjamin, David Bruckner, Patrick Horvath
Stars: Kate Beahan, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin, Chad Villella
Release: February 2016
This indie horror flick follows five interlocking stories of unlucky travelers on a deserted highway to hell. A descendant of the loony terror of The Twilight Zone, we follow two bloody brothers, an estranged pair of siblings, a band picked up by impossibly knowledgeable fans, masked intruders of a going-away-to-college party and a husband who strikes a woman with his car while helping his wife pick out a dress over text. Shit looks bananas. Nutty things in this trailer: ghoulish meatloaf, malicious levitating shrunken heads, clown chuckles in an abandoned hospital corridor, a toilet covered in blood vomit and the creepiest set of pockmarked twins in cinema history.
The Boy
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Genre: Porcelain doll horror
Stars: Lauren Cohan, Rupert Evans
Director: William Brent Bell
Release: January 22, 2016
An American nanny takes a job at a decrepit, gothic English Mansion. When she arrives, she realizes that the boy she is meant to care for is actually a life-sized porcelain doll. The Victorian-stiff parents treat it like their own flesh and blood as the original youngster perished in house fire. After failing to abide by the house’s many rules, the marionette begins acting up, as they do when left alone with strangers. He rattles the floorboards, disappears from locked rooms and supernaturally reaches through stoic portraits, giving The Walking Dead’s Lauren Cohan plenty of chances to flash her world-class array of terrified reactions.
IP Man 3
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Genre: Martial arts with Mike Tyson
Director: Raymond Wong
Stars: Donnie Yen, Mike Tyson
Release: January 22, 2016
We’ve been trying too hard to make Mike Tyson an actor. We cast him in deep Broadway one-man shows and brow-furrowing supporting roles in comedies, but neglected his god-given gift of lead fists. Finally, we stopped overthinking it and put Tyson in a fight-centric picture. In this, he plays a crooked developer who terrorizes the unflappable Ip Man, inventor of Wing Chun and teacher to Bruce m’fing Lee. The plot functions as scaffolding for Yen and Yip to compose masterful, superspeed fight sequences—one of which comes when Tyson wagers Yen won’t be able to last three minutes against his punches. Bruh, I’m down.
The Finest Hours
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Genre: Patriotic rescue mission
Director: Craig Gillespie
Stars: Casey Affleck, Chris Pine, Eric Bana, Ben Foster
Release: January 29, 2016
Armed with heinous Massachusetts accents, a bunch of hunky dudes wrangle with the tempestuous sea. The plot follows a somehow true story that makes the Coast Guard seem like an incredibly difficult way to make a living. After Casey Affleck’s oil tanker has been split in half by a blizzard-inducing Nor’Easter, Chris Pine and his crew embark on the undulating ocean in a uncovered dinghy that gets tossed about like a leaf in a frothy jacuzzi. The sea is dope and it appears to be in especially fine form in this film about the lengths Americans will go to for the fossil fuel industry.
