The dog days of summer, and yet they are more exciting than July, at least to me – and not just because of the Samuel L. Jackson vehicle that the internets have been bubbling about for…can it really be ten months now? And it’s finally here!
4.8.2006
I’m curiously unashamed that I’m looking forward to the new Will Ferrell comedy Talladega Nights: The Legend of Ricky Bobby. I’m not a huge fan of the man, and I’d not intended to see this, but something about the trailer speaks to me – perhaps just the ineffable mystery of seeing a man wrestle with a fake cougar.
For the second August in a row, we have a “people stuck in a cave” horror movie – The Descent – and while I really should know better, it has to be better than Lady in the Water (actually, the trailer is genuinely interesting) and I have a sneaking , or not so sneaking, love of genre pictures. But I still doubt I’ll see The Night Listener, which is being marketed as a scary Robin Williams film, something that I have no problem believing whatsoever.
The requisite ugly cartoon of the month is Barnyard, and if you’ve heard me complain about gross character design before? Well, I’m doing it again! Plus, Kevin James is the voice of the main character, which is even grosser. The week’s indie film is QuinceaƱera, which actually looks pretty good, I think; a Mexican-American girl on the eve of her fifteenth birthday gets thrown out of home for being pregnant, and heartwarming things happen. I like heartwarming things much more when they’re independent.
9.8.2006
Four months after United 93, and it’s still too soon for my tastes, but I respect those who disagree: Oliver Stone’s (non-conspiracist) World Trade Center. Pro: unlike the first film, its lack of documentary realism will make it somewhat less “real” and therefore less unpleasant. Con: it will be crappy. Have you seen that goddamn trailer? What is Nicholas Cage doing with that accent?
11.8.2006
Kristen Bell is real purty, and that’s the only possible reason I can think of to see Pulse, a J-Horror remake so toothless that they had to delay it for reshoots because a PG-13 rating couldn’t be whittled out of the footage they already had. I’m sorry, when you’re that scared of an “R,” you shouldn’t be making horror films.
Also up: Zoom, a film that was almost sued out of theatres by Fox for being too much like X-Men, even though it stars Tim Allen, which should tell your right away how very, very little is like X-Men. And: Step Up, a dance movie directed by an actual choreographer, which means awesome dance sequences with an even worse story than usual (con in community service as a janitor is nurtured by a ballet dancer). And: Accepted, a really bad looking college comedy with an anti-learning bent that I’ve seen the trailer for way too many times.
(Surveying where we’ve been and where we’re going, I judge this to be the worst single weekend for new films of summer 2006).
18.8.2006
The first of the year’s two period magician thrillers (beating Christopher Nolan’s The Prestige by two months), The Illusionist looks to be the worse, as well – Americans playing Brits never, ever works as well as the other way around. Although those Americans are pretty great: Edward Norton and Paul Giamatti. And Jessica Biel. Why Jessica Biel? I cannot possibly say. Elsewhere, there’s Trust the Man, a little indie comedy with a great cast (Julianne Moore! Not in a “missing child” thriller! Hurrah!) and a better trailer. A typical looking urbanite relationship dramedy, and I know that there’s a depressing sameness to that genre, but I’d rather see a hundred of them than one of Zoom. And the Sisters Duff in a film whose concept I can’t even find the heart to retell. Nor its title.
On this day there also will be Snakes on a Plane, a movie about snakes on a plane. I am aware that there exist people in this world for whom “snakes on a plane” is not an endlessly fascinating concept. I pity such people. The appeal, to me, is that it is an honest film; it communicates directly what it shall be about. And because it is so direct, it inoculates itself against charges of low quality. Flight 121 could have been a bad film; a Sci-Fi Channel level production of cheap effects and sickening high concept. But a film titled Snakes on a Plane knows that it’s bad. It tries for nothing. “You want to see snakes of a plane? ’cause that’s what we got. Motherfucking snakes on a motherfucking plane,” this title says. It will not be awesome, but it will be awesomely bad – the cinema equivalent of “We Built This City.” This is my most-anticipated film for the remainder of 2006.
25.8.2006
I know only two things about Idlewild: that it is a ’30s period musical and that it stars OutKast. Which, you have to admit, is a really compelling mix.
Otherwise, it’s late-summer dull all the way down: Invincible an underdog sports movie with two actors (Mark Wahlberg and Greg Kinnear) whose presence isn’t quite enough to trick me into thinking there’s a “there” there; Corey Yuen’s video game sell-out, DOA: Dead or Alive; a new adaptation of the kiddie lit chestnut How to Eat Fried Worms; and Jay “I worked on Arrested Development but I also made The Dukes of Hazzard” Chandrasekhar directs Beerfest, which is by Broken Lizard and so cannot possibly suck so mightily as those Duke boys did.
My least-favorite actress of 2006, Camilla Belle, will be appearing in The Quiet, a reputedly-good thriller; my understanding is that she plays a mute, so perhaps.