some of the films being released in August.
August 5th
AUGUST MOVIE PREVIEW
By Lori Vernon
Nine Lives
A
s we begin the final phase of the
summer movie season a couple of
things have become obvious: presummer releases still hold more weight and
monetary impact than anything that has
opened since the second weekend in May,
and we are officially in a box office slump.
With only a few, highly anticipated potential heavyweights opening this month
(Suicide Squad, Nine Lives, and the oftdelayed Max Steel), will this summer be a
financial flop? Suicide Squad looks to be the
prime candidate to salvage the season.
According to Forbes contributor Mark
Hughes, “Tracking suggests an opening in
the range of $115-125 million, which is good
enough to make it the largest August
domestic release of all time and potentially
the 22nd biggest freshman weekend in history as well. That would also make it the
fourth-highest opening of 2016 so far, just
behind Captain America: Civil War ($179 million), Batman v Superman ($166 million),
and Finding Dory ($135 million).” Can
Suicide Squad kill it at the box office and
save the world? Will it be enough to turn
things around for Summer 2016? We’ll
know soon enough. Here’s an overview of
14 illinoisentertainer.com august 2016
Suicide Squad
Directed by David Ayer, Rated PG-13
"Worst. Heroes. Ever." "In Squad We
Trust." "Justice has a bad side…" or so say
the taglines for the new adaptation of the
DC Comics Super Hero film - and I use the
term “super hero” lightly. The Suicide
Squad is more a rag-tag band of dangerous,
despicable and disparate incarcerated Super
Villains with nothing left to lose, recruited
by Intelligence officer Amanda Waller (Viola
Davis) for a top-secret government mission.
Given an arsenal of the latest weapons, the
squad is sent off to defeat a mysterious
criminal force while also dealing with the
diabolical Joker (Jared Leto). We meet
Deadshot (Will Smith), Harley Quinn
(Margot Robbie), Captain Boomerang (Jai
Courtney) and a host of other DC stars that
soon realize they’ve been chosen not for
their abilities, but so that in the event they
don’t succeed the government can deny culpability. Realizing they’ve been set up to fail
on a mission that will most likely end in
their deaths, each member of the team must
decide whether or not to stand together and
fight. T