September movie preview: 'Mass' of movies
From dirty weekends to hostage situations, it's all happening in September at the movies.
The week-by-week highlights:
SEPT. 2
A Walk in the Woods
Stars: Robert Redford, Nick Nolte, Emma Thompson
Director: Ken Kwapis
Plot: Redford portrays travel writer Bill Bryson, who hikes the 2,200-mile Appalachian Trail with his old friend (Nolte).
SEPT. 4
Before We Go
Stars: Chris Evans, Alice Eve, Mark Kassen
Director: Chris Evans
Plot: Evans' directorial debut follows two strangers (Evans and Eve) stuck in New York City; they grow into trusted confidants when a night of unexpected adventure takes place.
Break Point
Stars: Jeremy Sisto, David Walton, J.K. Simmons
Director: Jay Karas
Plot: Two estranged brothers come together to make a miracle run at winning a Grand Slam tennis tournament.
Dirty Weekend
Stars: Matthew Broderick, Alice Eve
Director: Neil LaBute
Plot: LaBute's dark comedy focuses on work colleagues (Broderick and Eve) discovering each other's secrets during a business layover in Albuquerque.
Steve Jobs: The Man in the Machine
Director: Alex Gibney
Plot: Documentary offers a critical examination of the iconoclastic genius and barbed-tongued tyrant who was Apple's Steve Jobs.
The Transporter Refueled
Stars: Ed Skrein, Ray Stevenson, Loan Chabanol
Director: Camille Delamarre
Plot:The Transporter franchise moves on without Jason Statham but keeps the hot cars, the hot women and a bank heist as Frank Martin (Skrein) outruns a Russian kingpin.
SEPT. 11
The Perfect Guy
Stars: Michael Ealy, Sanaa Lathan, Morris Chestnut
Director: David M. Rosenthal
Plot: After a breakup with her boyfriend (Chestnut), Leah Vaughn (Nathan) meets the seemingly perfect guy (Ealy), who is actually a psycho.
Sleeping With Other People
Stars: Jason Sudeikis, Alison Brie, Adam Scott
Director: Leslye Headland
Plot: Two serial cheaters (Sudeikis and Brie) try to maintain a friendship when they meet by chance 12 years after hooking up.
The Visit
Stars: Kathryn Hahn, Deanna Dunagan, Peter McRobbie
Director: M. Night Shyamalan
Plot: Shyamalan teams up with horror producer Jason Blum and tries to rediscover the successful formula he lost after 1999's Sixth Sense with a tale of two kids sent to their creepy grandparents' Pennsylvania farm.
Wolf Totem
Stars: Shaofeng Feng, Shawn Dou, Ankhnyam Ragchaa
Director: Jean-Jacques Annaud
Plot: Based on the best-selling novel, the French director follows a Beijing student, who views the impact of the Chinese cultural revolution on the nomadic herdsmen of Inner Mongolia and wild wolf packs.
SEPT. 16
Pawn Sacrifice
Stars: Tobey Maguire, Liev Schreiber, Peter Sarsgaard
Director: Edward Zwick
Plot: American chess prodigy Bobby Fischer (Maguire) challenges the Soviets and finds himself caught, even a pawn, between two superpowers.
SEPT. 18
About Ray
Stars: Naomi Watts, Elle Fanning, Susan Sarandon
Director: Gaby Dellal
Plot: Ray (Fanning) realizes she isn’t meant to be a girl and decides to transition to male, while her family deals with the fallout.
Black Mass
Stars: Johnny Depp, Joel Edgerton, Benedict Cumberbatch
Director: Scott Cooper
Plot: The story of notorious gangster Whitey Bulger of South Boston, who becomes an FBI informant to take down the mob.
Captive
Stars: Kate Mara, David Oyelowo, Michael Kenneth Williams
Director: Jerry Jameson
Plot: Based on a true story, a single mother (Mara) taken hostage in her own apartment uses the Rev. Rick Warren's The Purpose Driven Life to gain enlightenment and freedom from her captor (Oyelowo).
Everest
Stars: Jason Clarke, Jake Gyllenhaal, Keira Knightley
Director: Baltasar Kormákur
Plot: In a story based on a real-life disaster in 1996, two groups of climbers are stuck on the world’s tallest mountain in a snowstorm.
Maze Runner: The Scorch Trials
Stars: Dylan O'Brien, Thomas Brodie-Sangster, Kaya Scodelario
Director: Wes Ball
Plot: In the next Maze Runner chapter, the surviving Gladers journey through a desolate landscape known as the Scorch.
Sicario
Stars: Emily Blunt, Benicio Del Toro, Josh Brolin
Director: Denis Villeneuve
Plot: An idealistic FBI agent (Blunt) joins a special task force which includes a mysterious consultant with a dark past (Del Toro) as they fight the war on drugs.
SEPT. 25
A Brave Heart: The Lizzie Velasquez Story
Director: Sara Hirsh Bordo
Plot: A documentary following the journey of 26-year-old, 58-pound Velasquez, who has a rare condition which prevents her from gaining weight, as she journeys from cyberbullying victim to anti-bullying activist.
The Green Inferno
Stars: Lorenza Izzo, Ariel Levy, Daryl Sabara
Director: Eli Roth
Plot: Roth's return to horror directing features a group of college students who take their humanitarian protest from New York to the Amazon jungle only to be taken prisoner by the indigenous tribe they came to save.
Hotel Transylvania 2
Voices: Adam Sandler, Selena Gomez, Mel Brooks
Director: Genndy Tartakovsky
Plot: Tartakovsky brings the animated monstrous hotel back as Dracula (Sandler) calls on "Vampa" Drac (Brooks) to help with his half-human son.
The Intern
Stars: Robert De Niro, Anne Hathaway, Rene Russo
Director: Nancy Meyers
Plot: A 70-year-old widower (De Niro) tries to get back in the business game, as an intern at a fashion website founded and run by glamorous Jules Ostin (Hathaway).
Mississippi Grind
Stars: Ryan Reynolds, Ben Mendelsohn, Sienna Miller
Director: Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck
Plot: A down-on-his luck gambler (Mendelsohn) meets a highly-charismatic poker player (Reynolds) and the two travel to a high-stakes card game in New Orleans.
99 Homes
Stars: Andrew Garfield, Michael Shannon, Laura Dern
Director: Ramin Bahrani
Plot: A construction worker (Garfield) tries to regain his family’s foreclosed home by doing dirty deeds for a ruthless real estate-broker (Shannon).
Stonewall
Stars: Jeremy Irvine, Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Ron Perlman
Director: Roland Emmerich
Plot: A fictional look at a young man (Irvine) caught up during the 1969 Stonewall Riots in Greenwich Village.
SEPT. 30
The Walk
Stars: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ben Kingsley, James Badge Dale
Director: Robert Zemeckis
Plot: High-wire artist Philippe Petit (Gordon-Levitt) prepares his next death-defying stunt: walking a tightrope between the World Trade Center towers.