YOUR GUIDE TO THIS WEEK'S NEW CINEMA RELEASES

Good movies are in very short supply this week as far as new releases go...

TOP PICK TO SEE

The best movie on the list is LIFE in which Robert Pattinson (Twilight) plays a photographer for Life Magazine who is assigned to shoot pictures of James Dean who was the lead star in just three films. But in his short life he became a Hollywood legend. While LIFE is the top pick for the week, that doesn't mean it's brilliant. It's just better than the other options! indieWIRE says, It's not a terrible film, and succeeds in giving us a play by play of an alleged dynamic between two individuals, but as a whole feels like a missed opportunity.

MAYBE/MAYBE NOT

You are going to have to decide whether you want to risk seeing MAZE RUNNER: SCORCH TRIALS. This is the second episode in The Maze Runner series which have been adapted from the popular books. After having escaped the Maze, the Gladers now face a new set of challenges on the open roads of a desolate landscape filled with unimaginable obstacles. The general public are rating this around ***1/2 stars - which is what I rate it - and will post my review shortly. I found it quite enjoyable given the genre. But The Hollywood Reporter's Justin Lowe describes, The second installment [as one] which reveals some of the reasons behind their imprisonment, [but] lacks a similar sense of originality and urgency, undercut by overly familiar characterizations and dilatory pacing.

TO AVOID

PIXELS is the movie to avoid this week. Yet another Adam Sandler flop in which aliens misinterpret video feeds of classic arcade games as a declaration of war so they attack the Earth in the form of the video games. For Slant Magazine's Christopher Gray, This is a Happy Madison production, and as such it's exhaustively lazy, outside of its righteous dedication to the valorization of the man-child. Give it a miss.

That's it for this week. See you at the movies!

*NOTE* Movie summaries are adaptations of movie summary on IMDB. Opinions are mine unless credited. These updates are written from an Australian perspective so openings of the movies in cinemas may vary in other parts of the world.