Based on information provided by the Box Office Mojo and some internet research, here are just some of the movies you can expect to see in the movie theatres in December:
A Girl Like Grace
Opens: December 2
Raised by her single mother (Garcelle Beauvais from Grimm), a bullied 17-year-old (Ryan Destiny, who will soon star in the new FOX series Star) seeks guidance from a new and savvy student (Meagan Good from Minority Report) at school. The cast includes Raven-Symone (The View), Blair Redford (Switched at Birth and Satisfaction) and Romeo Miller (Empire).
Jackie
Opens: December 2
The film follows Jacqueline Kennedy (Natalie Portman) in the days when she was First Lady in the White House and her life following the assassination of her husband, President John F. Kennedy, in 1963. It focuses on Theodore H. White’s Life magazine interview with the widow at Hyannis Port, Massachusetts. The cast includes Greta Gerwig, Peter Sarsgaard, Billy Crudup, John Hurt and John Carroll Lynch.
La La Land
Opens: December 9
In the heart of Los Angeles, aspiring actress Mia Dolan (Emma Stone) serves lattes to movie stars in between auditions while dedicated jazz musician Sebastian Wilder (Ryan Gosling) plays in dingy bars in order to scrape by. The two meet and fall in love, but, as success mounts, the dreams they worked so hard to maintain threaten to tear them apart. The film also stars John Legend, Rosemarie DeWitt, J.K. Simmons, Tom Everett Scott and Damon Gupton.
Sugar Mountain
Opens: December 9
Two brothers, down on their luck, fake a disappearance in the Alaskan wilderness so they’ll have a great survival story to sell, but the hoax turns out to be more real than they planned. The cast includes Cary Elwes, Jason Momoa, Drew Roy, and Melora Walters.
Collateral Beauty
Opens: December 16
When a successful New York advertising executive (Will Smith) suffers a great tragedy, he retreats from life. While his concerned friends try desperately to reconnect with him, he seeks answers from the universe by writing letters to Love, Time and Death. But it’s not until his notes bring unexpected personal responses that he begins to understand how these constants interlock in a life fully lived, and how even the deepest loss can reveal moments of meaning and beauty. The film stars Edward Norton, Kiera Knightley, Michael Pena, Naomie Harris, Kate Winslet, Helen Mirren and Enrique Murciano.
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story
Opens: December 16
After the formation of the Galactic Empire, the Rebel Alliance recruits Jyn Erso (Felicity Jones) to work with a team including Cassian Andor (Diego Luna) to steal the design schematics of the Death Star plans. The cast also includes Ben Mendelsohn, Mads Mikkelsen, Alan Tudyk and Forest Whitaker.
The Space Between Us
Opens: December 16
The first human born on Mars, whose astronaut mother was discovered pregnant on the voyage (carried out by the Space Launch System) and died in childbirth because of Mars’ gravity, travels to Earth for the first time, experiencing the wonders of the planet through fresh eyes. He embarks on an adventure with a street smart girl that he video chatted with while on Mars, to discover how he came to be, and they fall in love. At the same time, other members of the space program race to return him to Mars due to his body not being used to Earth’s environment, thus putting his life in danger. The film stars Asa Butterfield, Britt Robertson, Gary Oldman, Carla Gugino, B.D. Wong and Janet Montgomery.
Assassin’s Creed
Opens: December 21
Career criminal Callum Lynch (Michael Fassbender) is rescued from his own execution by Abstergo Industries, the modern-day incarnation of the Templar Order. He is forced to participate in the Animus Project and relive the memories of his ancestor Aguilar de Nerha, an Assassin in the time of the Spanish Inquisition. As Lynch continues to experience Aguilar’s memories, he begins to gain the knowledge and skills necessary to confront the Templars—age-old enemies of the Assassins—in the present day. The film also stars Marion Cotillard, Jeremy Irons, Brendan Gleeson and Charlotte Rampling.
Passenger
Opens: December 21
The spaceship, Starship Avalon, on its 120-year voyage to a distant colony planet known as “Homestead II” and transporting 5,259 people has a malfunction in two of its sleep chambers. As a result, two hibernation pods open prematurely and the two people that awake are stranded on the spaceship, still 90 years from their destination. Aurora Dunn (Jennifer Lawrence) is a journalist from New York City who is interested in cosmic travel. Jim Preston (Chris Pratt) is a mechanical engineer from Denver who wants to leave Earth and bought the ticket for the journey. The two soon discover that the malfunction that caused them to be awoken prematurely is not the only problem afflicting the huge spaceship, and as they try to find a way out, they soon find themselves falling in love. The film includes Michael Sheen, Laurence Fishburne and Andy Garcia.
Patriot’s Day
Opens: December 21
The film is about the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing and the subsequent terrorist manhunt led by Boston Police Commissioner Edward F. Davis (John Goodman). The film also stars Mark Wahlberg, J. K. Simmons, Michelle Monaghan, Kevin Bacon, Michael Beach, Rachel Brosnahan, Melissa Benoist and Khandi Alexander.
Sing
Opens: December 21
In a world populated by anthropomorphic animals, a koala named Buster Moon (Matthew McConaughey) works to keep his theater from closing down. To this end, Buster and his sheep friend Eddie (John C. Reilly) hold a singing contest to raise money, and the entire town auditions for a part in the show. The leading five are an overworked pig named Rosita (Reese Witherspoon) with her pig partner named Gunter (Nick Kroll), an arrogant and gambling white mouse named Mike (Seth MacFarlane), a punk-rock porcupine named Ash (Scarlett Johansson), a timid teenage elephant named Meena (Tori Kelly), and a British gorilla named Johnny (Taron Egerton), who wants to sing instead of following his father’s criminal footsteps. The voices will also be provided by Nick Offerman, Leslie Jones, Jennifer Hudson and Rhea Perlman.
A Monster Calls
Opens: December 23
Conor O’Malley (Lewis MacDougall from Pan) is a young boy who tries to deal with the terminal illness of his mother (Felicity Jones) and the attacks by local school bully Harry. One night, Conor encounters a “monster” (Liam Neeson) in the form of a giant humanoid yew tree who has come to tell him stories and soon begins to help Conor fix his unhappy life. The cast includes Sigourney Weaver and Toby Kebbell.
Fences
Opens: December 28
Set in 1950s Pittsburgh, a former Negro league baseball player (Denzel Washington), now working as a waste collector, struggles to provide for his family and come to terms with the events of his life. The cast also stars Viola Davis, Russell Hornsby and Mykelti Williamson.
Gold
Opens: December 28
Kenny Wells (Matthew McConaughey), an unlucky businessman, teams up with geologist Michael Acosta (Edgar Ramirez) to find gold deep in the uncharted jungles of Indonesia (Borneo). The film will also include Bryce Dallas Howard, Toby Kebbell, Rachael Taylor, Corey Stoll, Bruce Greenwood and Stacy Keach.
Hidden Figures
Opens: December 28
The film recounts the story of the African-American mathematician Katherine Johnson (Taraji P. Henson) and her two colleagues, Dorothy Vaughan (Octavia Spencer) and Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae), who helped NASA catch up in the Space Race. Using their calculations, John Glenn became the first American astronaut to make a complete orbit of the Earth. The cast includes Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst, Jim Parsons, Mahershala Ali and Aldis Hodge.
Live By Night
Opens: December 28
Set in the 1920s and 1930s, the story follows Joe Coughlin (Ben Affleck), the prodigal son of a Boston police captain. After moving to Ybor City, Tampa, Florida, he becomes a bootlegger and a rum-runner, and, later, a notorious gangster. The film also stars Elle Fanning, Brendan Gleeson, Chris Messina, Sienna Miller, Zoe Saldana, Chris Cooper, Scott Eastwood and Titus Welliver.
Movies coming out in January will be posted at the end of December.
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Rueben's Ramblings 
PITCH: Shifting the Narrative
Posted in Commentary, News, Sports, Television on December 30, 2016| Leave a Comment »
As a young girl in August, there was Little League Baseball Championship to watch as the end of the summer dawned and school was about to start.
Depending on the summer, I would watch with family friends and we’d marvel at the twelve to thirteen year old boys who played baseball with heart.
Mo’ne Davis (Photo Credit: Brian Garfinkel/Getty Images)
In 2014, I watched again. That summer, the world met Mo’ne Davis, who was one of two girls in the final tournament.
Mo’ne Davis wowed the world, pitching a shut-out and getting a hit as a batter.
She turned heads and raised the bar about women in male-dominated sports.
Soon after that summer watching Mo’ne play with the boys, FOX had Pitch hit the small screen. What I feel in love with with Mo’ne Davis was given a few face: Ginny Baker [as portrayed by actress Kylie Bunbury.]
While Mo’ne played with pre-teen boys, Ginny Baker plays with the men. Men of Major League Baseball. It’s no easy task to be the lone girl in the room, testosterone all through the clubhouse.
What happens?
Ginny succeeds. It’s not easy, to be sure, but for a woman watching another woman play with the guys, getting there is the success.
Kylie Bunbury as Ginny Baker in Pitch
As in most of my life, there are guys who don’t trust Ginny for her skill or her finesse, but as the end of the season closed, Ginny was so close to a no-hitter.
She was just like every other pitcher who had gone through a game without a hit.
In a world where life wants to throw lemons at everyone from left and right, Ginny Baker’s success showed the world that half the population isn’t lesser than these men who hit balls over three hundred feet and throw a ball over one hundred miles an hour.
Pitch is a show that allows women to finally see that in sports, we don’t just have to play with the other girls. Mo’ne Davis and Ginny Baker are two women (one real and one fictitious) who defy odds and make it clear that just maybe the glass ceiling’s ready to be smashed in every part of society.
The message of Pitch didn’t reach as many people as I’d like, but I still hope that the ratings are good enough for another season. Ginny’s recovery from her injury is too important (and too real for sports fans) to not root for her and hope for a longer narrative.
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