#OnTheBigScreen: A book club, a love story, and a heist

Book Club

Four lifelong friends have their lives turned upside down to hilarious ends when their book club tackles the infamous Fifty Shades of Grey. Diane (Diane Keaton) is recently widowed after 40 years of marriage. Vivian (Jane Fonda) enjoys her men with no strings attached. Sharon (Candice Bergen) is still working through a decades-old divorce. Carol’s (Mary Steenburgen) marriage is in a slump after 35 years. From discovering new romance to rekindling old flames, they inspire each other to make their next chapter the best chapter.

Book Club is a definitive choice for Bill Holderman’s directorial debut. A film about women in their 60s breaking both self-imposed and relational barriers – carried by a cast of Oscar-winning legends - is an atypical choice for a younger male director who co-wrote and co-produced it as well. Even better, he co-wrote and co-produced it with his friend and colleague Erin Simms, an intrepid female filmmaker, who like the narrative’s characters, is emboldened to break any ‘no’. It’s a debut for Simms too – the first film she wrote and produced.

Love, Simon

Everyone deserves a great love story. But for 17-year old Simon Spier (Nick Robinson), it’s a little more complicated: he’s yet to tell his family or friends he’s gay and he doesn’t actually know the identity of the anonymous classmate he’s fallen for online. Resolving both issues proves hilarious, terrifying, and life-changing.

Directed by Greg Berlanti with a screenplay by Elizabeth Berger and Isaac Aptaker, and based on Becky Albertalli’s acclaimed novel, Love, Simon is a funny and heartfelt coming-of-age story about the thrilling ride of finding yourself and falling in love.

Hurricane Heist

Under the threat of a hurricane, opportunistic criminals infiltrate a US Mint facility to steal $600m for the ultimate heist. When the hurricane blows up into a lethal Category 5 storm and their well-made plans go awry, they find themselves needing a vault code known only by one Treasury agent (Maggie Grace), a need that turns murderous. But the Treasury agent has picked up an unlikely ally, a meteorologist (Toby Kebbell) terrified of hurricanes but determined to save his estranged brother kidnapped by the thieves. He uses his knowledge of the storm as a weapon to win in this non-stop action thriller ride charged with adrenaline throughout.

This tense action-packed heist-thriller was directed by Rob Cohen and written by Jeff Dixon and Scott Windhauser.

Tag

For one month every year, five highly competitive friends hit the ground running in a no-holds-barred game of tag they’ve been playing since the first grade. To hold onto their youth and their friendship, they risk their necks, their jobs and their relationships to take each other down with the battle cry: “You’re it!”

This year, the game coincides with the wedding of their only undefeated player, which should finally make him an easy target. But he knows they’re coming and he’s ready. Based on a true story, the New Line Cinema comedy Tag shows how far some guys will go to be the last man standing.

It is directed by Jeff Tomsic with a starring ensemble cast led by Ed Helms, Jake Johnson, Jon Hamm, and Oscar nominee Jeremy Renner. The screenplay was written by Rob McKittrick and Mark Steilen and is based on The Wall Street Journal article entitled ‘It Takes Planning, Caution to Avoid Being It’, by Russell Adams.

Duck Duck Goose

In this computer-animated comedy, Peng rejects the community of his tight-knit flock of geese in an attempt to live life on his own terms, but when he narrowly rescues two young ducklings from an eccentric but deadly cat, the two latch on to Peng like a parent. The makeshift trio embark on a beautiful and dangerous journey through mountains and lakes, bamboo forests, marble caves and deep river valleys to reach their respective flocks.

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