Summer movie season is upon us, ladies and gentlemen. Let's take a look at some of the big blockbusters on the horizon (along with some of the smaller movies which will be quietly pleading for your attention).
| Actor Tom Wilkinson, seconds before snapping into a violent rage after a nosy photographer interrupted his afternoon prayers. |
Summer kicks off in grand fashion with Joss Whedon's The Avengers. Most of the Marvel movies have essentially been feature-length trailers for this star-studded spectacle, so expectations are understandably high. Happily, early buzz is quite strong and many are suggesting that Whedon has managed to keep his own distinctive voice intact. I'm looking forward to it, even if we're now on our third big-screen Bruce Banner of the 21st Century. A smart piece of counter-programming is being offered in the form of The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, a romantic comedy for viewers of a certain age who would much rather watch Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson, Bill Nighy and Maggie Smith wander around India than witness Iron Man and Thor punching each other. Seriously, it does look like a nice movie. And for the people who no interest in either of those, there's a movie called LOL which stars Miley Cyrus as a heartbroken teen named Lola. And the sequel will probably be called LOLA, and the trailer guy will say, "Get ready to Laugh Out Loud Again!" And I will sigh heavily.
May 11th
| Because nothing says "deadly psychopath" like a pony sweater. |
Tim Burton returns with Dark Shadows, a goofy updating of the moody vampire-themed soap opera. I can't exactly say that I'm excited about it, but it at least looks like a step up from Alice in Wonderland. The Danny Elfman score is enjoyable and the cast is talented. We'll see. Not much of note competing in wide release, though in limited release we'll see the lightweight Eva Mendes vehicle Girl in Progress and the hotly-debated-even-though-most-people-haven't-seen-it-yet comedy God Bless America, in which a middle-aged man and a teenage girl wander across the country murdering people who annoy them. In other words, it looks a bit like the movie an internet message board might make if internet message boards were people who made movies.
May 18th
| A scene from the forthcoming epic Battleship: The Musical |
The world has already decided that Peter Berg's Battleship will not be good, and early reviews have drawn unfavorable comparisons to Michael Bay's recent work. Eeesh. Then again, Michael Bay's recent work has done quite well at the box office, so maybe Berg and John Carter star Taylor Kitsch shouldn't start crying into their beer just yet. What to Expect When You're Expecting looks terrible in an entirely different way, though that's not really a surprise: no one other than Woody Allen should be permitted to make movies based on self-help books. Sacha Baron Cohen returns to theaters with The Dictator, which is his first traditional feature. Cohen's a talented guy, though his material does a lot less for me than it does for many critics (I found Borat overrated and pretty much hated Bruno). He's subtler and funnier in his more reserved turns in Hugo and Sweeney Todd. Finally, we have the period comedy Hysteria, which stars Maggie Gyllenhaal and documents the invention of the vibrator. Expect many scenes in which elderly British actors (hey, Jonathan Pryce!) raise their eyebrows in astonishment.
May 25th
| Because nothing says "terrifying cinema" like the letter R printed backwards. |
Hey, here's Men in Black III! This probably would have been a huge hit in 2005 (y'know, instead of a full decade after the last Men in Black movie), but now? I dunno. This should be a valuable indicator of whether Smith is still an unstoppable force at the box office (some people said that Seven Pounds proved otherwise, but c'mon, no actor on planet earth could have turned Seven Pounds into a megahit). The trailer doesn't exactly look promising, but I must admit that casting Josh Brolin as young Tommy Lee Jones was a smart move. Also: where else are you going to find Michael Stuhlbarg and Lady Gaga in the same movie? Chernobyl Diaries looks like straight-to-DVD material to me, but one can rarely predict what audiences will go for when it comes to horror (remember how The Devil Inside made a killing at the box office earlier this year?). In limited release, we have Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom, which I can't wait to see. Anderson's twee, formal style is easy to mock, but the sheer soulfulness of his movies is often overlooked. He's an enormously gifted director who seems to grow just a little bit more with each new effort, and this one looks like another winner.
Picks of the Month
3. Men in Black III/Dark Shadows (Because one of these has to be decent, right?)
| Actor Will Smith, revisiting Men in Black II for the first time in years and realizing that it really wasn't his finest hour. |
| Actor Johnny Depp explains how he used Roseanne Barr, Count Basie, Andy Warhol and a beetle he found behind the sofa as models for his latest performance. |
2. The Avengers
| A forgotten classic returns to theatres in 3-D! |
1. Moonrise Kingdom
| Actor Bruce Willis, using glasses as a way of denoting that he is actually making an effort to act. |
Back at ya later
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