It’s St. Patrick’s Day and I can’t think of a better way to avoid the insensitive and overt cultural appropriation that this Friday is going to bestow upon us all than running into your nearest theater for some of these ‘gems’.

Beauty and the Beast

The latest in live action remake/cg extravaganza/cash grabs being cranked out by the Disney machine, Beauty and the Beast looks poised to again remind us how perfect Emma Watson was as Hermione Granger. Add Ewan McGregor, who’s doubling up at the box office this weekend, in what I’m sure will be a movie filled with gorgeously orchestrated song and dance numbers, add in the controversy surrounding what will prove to be another unsuccessful boycott by the let’s-give-it-a-rest-already anti-LGBTQ crowd, and Beauty and the Beast might just be okay.

 

T2 Trainspotting

If you’re like me, Trainspotting has been really high on your “why hasn’t this had a sequel” list, right alongside Space Jam and Schindler’s List. The tagline for T2 of “First there was opportunity, then there was betrayal!” does as much to suck me into what will likely be a nostalgia driven narrative as the fact that I remembered that America’s Sherlock will be in this movie. Sadly, no Lucy Liu.

 

Song to Song

What La La Land set out to do for Hollywood hipsters Song to Song appears to be doing for indie hipsters from Austin. In yet another movie where we’re bound to see Ryan Gosling continue his run of playing the exact same character, Song to Song looks to pull you in with the overlapping of two, count ’em, two love triangles! I would assume that means five people but I was promised no geometry in films after Donald Duck tried to teach me the Pythagorean Theorem in middle school.

 

The Belko Experiment

This is a movie that I’ve had on my list for a while now and I even took the time to explain the premise to a lady standing wide eyed in front its poster after seeing Logan. She didn’t seem to be swayed after I spun her a tale of what appears to be a mix between Battle Royale and Office Space but she did like that the guy from Scrubs is going to be in it. I’m not sure if she knew which guy from Scrubs though because when I mentioned that he was also in Office Space, she said “I think he was too young to be in that movie.”

 

Frantz

A black and white film that’s mostly in German? Sign me up! In what most assuredly is the early contender for most dour movie of the week and a shoe in for best World War I film, Frantz just looks… depressing. I can see how it will attempt to bring a bit of lightheartedness based on what I’ve gathered of the plot but one can assume that the prevailing adjective for this movie will be either solemn or blarg.

 

They Call Me Jeeg

In this Italian Sci-Fi comedy, young Enzo falls into the Tiber river and emerges with super powers he’s sure to use in a hilarious montage that will be much funnier to Italian folks. As far as foreign films that are released on this day, I’d say Jeeg would get my vote on name alone, and it does appear interesting enough, even going as far as to cast a makeup-less Jared Leto as the Joker from the Academy Award Winning (for makeup) Suicide Squad. They even make sure to hit us with a now standard hero-standing-right-at-the-edge-of-the-roof-of-a-building shot, so you know these are some serious film makers.

 

Betting on Zero

In yet another documentary set to expose that capitalistic money making machines wrought upon the poor, Betting on Zero is the tale of hero billionaire Bill Ackman attempting to take down Herbalife. If you liked fictional depictions of real life hedge fund mangers and Wall Street types making millions of dollars of the economic crisis that crippled the American economy, you’ll love this crusade made cinematic that reminds us all that there are literally an infinite number of ways for people to take advantage of our collective stupidity as a species. Luckily, Bill Ackman is here to save us all?