What's opening on the Big Screen this weekend

Jack Reacher

The film follows Reacher as he races to uncover the truth about active duty soldiers, once under his command, who are being killed. Years after resigning command of an elite military police unit, the nomadic, righter-of-wrongs Reacher is drawn back into the life he left behind when his friend and successor, Major Susan Turner (Cobie Smulders), is framed for espionage. Reacher will stop at nothing to prove her innocence and to expose the real perpetrators behind the killings of his former soldiers.

Based upon Lee Child’s 18th novel in the best-selling ‘Jack Reacher’ series, that has seen 100 million books sold worldwide, the film was directed by Edward Zwick from a screenplay by Richard Wenk and Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz. Appropriately, director and co-writer Edward Zwick previously worked with Tom Cruise in 2003’s The Last Samurai.

Hands of Stone

Robert de Niro steps back into the boxing ring again, this time as celebrated trainer Ray Arcel in ‘Hands of Stone’, the true story of how the legendary Roberto Duran, who is considered a national treasure in Panama, and Arcel, his celebrated trainer, changed each other’s lives.

De Niro stars as legendary trainer Ray Arcel, a Jew from Harlem who became the first boxing trainer to be elected into the Boxing Hall of Fame. He trained more than 2,000 fighters in his 70 year career, and none of them were ever seriously hurt. The movie captures his comeback after a retirement forced by the Mafia. Arcel agrees to train Duran for free, risking his own life, and beginning a journey that will change him forever.

Golden Globe Best Actor Nominee Edgar Ramirez stars as Roberto “Hands of Stone” Duran. The son of an American Marine who has an affair with a local girl while occupying Panama, Duran grows up with the will to avenge his nation’s pride. He fights the top American boxers in the most important arenas in North America. Next to him, Ray Arcel, an American, gives intelligence and strength to his rage, teaching him technique and strategy, ultimately leading Duran from rise and fall to redemption.

De Niro came on board early in the process and worked closely with writer-director Jonathan Jakubowicz on the screenplay.

Boo! A Madea Halloween

Tyler Perry’s ‘Boo! A Madea Halloween’ heralds a fresh turn in the Tyler Perry/Madea franchise: a movie that blends Perry’s distinctive humour with elements of horror.

“Ghosts and goblins — that’s just not my thing,” says Perry, the director, producer, writer and star of the blockbuster franchise.

“So I came up with an idea I thought would be hysterical and wouldn’t take Madea too far out of her lane,” he says. “This is not your typical Halloween movie — there are so many pee-your-pants moments. Anyone who sees this movie should bring Depends.”

As the film begins, divorced dad Brian (played by Perry) must leave his rebellious teen daughter Tiffany home alone on Halloween. He enlists his aunt Madea, Uncle Joe (both also played by Perry), and friends Hattie and Aunt Bam to keep an eye on her. Determined to meet her girlfriends at a nearby frat party, Tiffany tricks her four gullible chaperones with a frighteningly realistic ghost story that convinces them to stay in their rooms so she can sneak out. All hell and hilarity break loose when Madea, Hattie and Aunt Bam crash the party to bring their baby girl home. And when the women call the cops to break up the Halloween rager, the brothers of Beta Psi Alpha dress as ghosts and ghouls to terrorise them. But of course, the boys soon learn that they are messing with the wrong woman.

Trolls

From the creators of Shrek comes DreamWorks Animation’s ‘Trolls’, a smart, funny and irreverent comedy about the search for happiness, and just how far some will go to get it.

The film transports audiences to a colourful, wondrous world populated by the overly optimistic Trolls, who have a constant dance in their step and a song on their lips, and the comically pessimistic Bergens, who are only happy when they have Trolls in their stomachs.

After the Bergens invade Troll Village, Poppy (Anna Kendrick), the happiest Troll ever born, and the overly-cautious, curmudgeonly Branch (Justin Timberlake) set off on a journey to rescue her friends.