Here is what I am thinking so far, and what I am on the fence about. I think I'll go in order of release date (also listed in parentheses. Dates are current as of today. If the studio changes them, don't you come bitchin' to me.)
- Drag Me to Hell (May 29)--To be honest, I could use some opinions on this one. It looks scary, and it's Sam Raimi returning to the horror genre that gave him a name. On the down side, it's scary, although as far as that goes, I have a pretty high scare threshold. If anything, it may be a matinee. You know, so I come out of the theater into the daylight. That might be a little less scary and minimize my need to have a "Brownstain moment" (think about the meaning, and you should be able to figure out how scary I think this might be. I can't actually take credit for the term though, it's actually courtesy of my friends Shane and Alley).
- The Hangover (June 5)--just because it looks freaking hilarious. I mean, the movie has Mike Tyson air drumming to Phil Collins. Oh, and Bradley Cooper's in it. We've been tight since his Will Tippin days on Alias. I won't get into too much detail in my little tangent here, but there are times I view myself as that character in a few respects.
- The Taking of Pelham One Two Three (June 12)--I've got to be honest with you, I don't want to see this one for John Travolta or Denzel (ok, maybe him just a little. He IS a good actor). To be honest, this one makes my list on director alone. Tony Scott has become a great filmmaker in the past few years, and I am curious to see how this turns out. I would say that he and his brother are easily my favorite directors out there right now, but the nod would go more to Sir Ridley. Oh, and a screenplay by Brian Hegeland (L.A. Confidential, which is in my personal top 10) doesn't hurt either.
- Public Enemies (July 1)--this is actually a definite for a few reasons, namely Michael Mann. I am a fan of his visual look of his films, specifically his use of digital cameras (to find out what I mean watch Ali or Collateral sometime), as well as his music choices in movies. I would even go so far as to say, he is the best director in terms of being able to choose music or a movie (sorry Cameron Crowe, but you run a very close second.) Oh yeah, and the movie features Christian Bale and Johnny Depp (t, who unlike the vast majority, who like them for their looks, are great actors. They are on my "Read the Phone Book" list. In other words, if you made a movie where they read the phone book for two hours, I would watch it. Oh yeah, and (another of my favorite actors) Billy Crudup as J. Edgar Hoover doing some horrible accent that I doubt Hoover had. It's going to be fun watching the three of them just act the hell out of things.
- G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra (August 7): I must admit that I am very much on the fence about this one. Let's see how many reasons I can come up with. We'll start with that it is really like the cartoon. That's fine, since I don't expect it to be, but I would like it to look a little like the damn show, and not just like every other damn action movie involving military out there. Secondly, Stephen Sommers (The Mummy, Mummy Returns, Van Helsing) is directing. The man is a hack. I would go so far as to say that he makes Rob Cohen (The Fast and the Furious, XXX, Stealth) look like Sir David Lean (he directed Lawrence of Arabia. If you haven't seen it, stop reading and go spend four hours watching. This movie is where the term epic originates from), and I think Cohen is a bit of a hack. If Sommers would stop trying to be Michael Bay, his films might not be half bad. Oh, and now for the most important reason: the trailers for this film leave me underwhelmed. At the risk of giving too much information, when I saw the trailer for Iron Man, it gave me a bit of a chubby. I saw that movie the night it came out and loved it a lot. The trailer during the Super Bowl left me pretty much not caring and not being very impressed. I think I thought it actually didn't look very good at all.
- District 9 (August 14)--aliens are kept in prison camps in South Africa. I must admit that I am curious about this one based on the trailers alone. The fact that people who have seen the movie are raving only whets my appetite even more.
- Inglorious Basterds (August 21)--mixed reviews from the premiere at Cannes aside, I want to see Tarentino's take on World War II. That, and quite frankly, Eli Roth looks he is getting off beating up on Nazis with a baseball bat in the trailers. Oh, and the fact that Quentin has a headlining actor still at the height of his powers career wise (Brad Pitt) in this movie, I am curious to see what he does with him.
- The Boat that Rocked (August 28)--this is about as "art house/indie film" as I go during the summer. The movie talks about the pirate radio that pervaded Britain in the late 60's/early 70's. The fact that Nick Frost (Simon Pegg's cohort in Hot Fuzz and Shaun of the Dead) is in it doesn't hurt either. To be honest, it's an ensemble cast that might just make things work well, because of the direction of Richard Curtis, who did the ensemble thing quite well with Love Actually. Yes, I actually just admitted that I like that movie.
- Pandorum (Sept. 4)--depending on your definition of summer movies, this might not fit, but since it opens on Labor Day, which generally is regarded as the end of summer, I put it in anyway. In the movie, two crew members on a space ship, played by Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster (Tangent alert: see 3:10 to Yuma, not for Bale or Crowe, but for his portrayal of psychopathic outlaw Charlie Price, is as fucking brilliant as I've seen anyone play psychotic in a long time. The fact that he didn't get nominated for acting awards for this role is a travesty), who wake up in space with no memories of who they are. Director Paul W.S. Anderson does well with space. His last movie set there, Event Horizon, scared the absolute shit out of me, when I saw it in the theaters. And yes, I went to a matinee showing of that.
There you have it. A look at the movies I will take a gander at, after I consult my list of reviewers. I think I will talk about that in the next entry, whenever that may be.
No comments:
Post a Comment