Good news! We’re only about four week away from officially being able to declare this this worst summer movie season of the 21st Century.
(I’m not actually certain that I’d go that far. But it’s clearly in the bottom third, at best).
On the other hand, it’s August, and I’ve grown to admire August as a release window: the movies that are a little too weird and broken for a proper push, but still have the aspiration to do more than the absurd trash that lands in September. And this looks like… an okay August. Not a great one, but in this summer, okay is better than nothing, by a long shot.
4.8.2017
Case in point, Sony’s long-gestating adaptation of Stephen King’s seven-part Western fantasy epic The Dark Tower, coming in at all of 95 minutes long, which is kind of hilariously insufficient to do anything with. I’ve spent the summer reading the book series, and have progressed from “this movie could be pretty okay, and Idris Elba looks great”, to “this movie will be utter garbage, and thank God that Idris Elba will at least be there” in my expectations. But at the same time, it’s sort of darling to me that this is what’s come of this dream project for so many people: this sweaty little cobbled-together nothing of a film. It has the charm of a child’s inept summer camp project. I dunno. Elba does look great, and Matthew McConaughey is perfectly cast, so maybe there’s more here than meets the eye.
Elsewhere, we have close to the maximum possible range of what can swing a wide release in U.S. theaters: first is Kidnap, which looks like a stylistically anonymous paint-by-numbers story (with a wholly generic title, as I need hardly mention), something that could easily have been done as a direct-to-Netflix burner, if not for Halle Berry still had a good enough agent to guarantee a theatrical. And second is Detroit, a politically charged true story that puts the violence surrounding American racism front-and-center in the raggedy docu-fiction style of director Kathryn Bigelow and writer Mark Boal. It seems obvious to me that if Detroit was actually any good at all, it would have been given a more Oscar-friendly release berth (and the low-heat distribution pattern – it was given a last-minute platform release at the end of July to start building up some of buzz that it has otherwise lacked), but Bigelow’s name is enough for me.
Only in limited release for now, but I have to mention it: Wind River, Carrie’s #4 most-anticipated film of the summer, comes out in certain special places. I’ll admit that Taylor Sheridan’s first film as both writer and director catches my attention, though I’m going to have wait on being openly enthusiastic for a little bit yet.
11.8.2017
Now, this is an August movie weekend, all right: both The Nut Job 2: Nutty by Nature, sequel to the most beloved animated film of January 2014, and Annabelle: Creation, the prequel to a prequel to a hit horror film. And for at least the latter of these, given that Annabelle is one of my least-favorite films of the decade, my enthusiasm level is somewhere between “none” and “would rather dunk both of my arms in industrial-grad acid”. I’ll have to reserve judgment on TNJ2:NBN till I have seen the original. “Have to”.
I don’t think I really have any clue what The Glass Castle is, but it’s my most-anticipated film of the weekend pretty much by default.
Lastly, in limited release, just a couple of months after Baby Driver, the Simon & Garfunkel Cinematic Universe continues to grow with The Only Living Boy in New York.
Yes, I will be making that exact same joke in my eventual review of the movie.
18.8.2017
Well look at that, a film about which I have not one solitary reason to withhold my excitement! Steven Soderbergh’s very busy retirement from making feature films takes its strangest turn yet with Logan Lucky, which includes two of the most important things a Soderbergh film could: A) a heist plot; B) Channing Tatum. The trailer says “Coen brothers knock-off” more than “the triumphant return of Soderbergh”, but I only care a very little bit. And if we are to have Coen knock-offs, I can hardly think of a director I’d rather see make one.
Meanwhile, Ryan Reynolds and Samuel L. Jackson exchange vulgar quips in The Hitman’s Bodyguard. Gary Oldman is apparently in the film as a Russian mobster, which is an odd thing for the ad campaign to have hidden, as it’s the only reason I could possibly find myself interested in watching this.
Lastly, I don’t think The Adventurers, a Chinese import with Jean Reno, is actually getting anything like a wide release, but it’s on the source list I use, so in it goes.
25.8.2017
First things first: some of the six films currently scheduled for wide release on this last weekend before Labor Day are obviously not going to be released. That just cannot happen, end of story. But since they all look equally uninteresting and unnecessary, I can’t guess which will end up moving. Let’s anyway scan through them real quickly:
–All Saints, an inspiring, spiritually uplifting biopic of a pastor who turns his dying church around with an influx of Myanmar refugees. Hard pass.
–Birth of the Dragon, which is either a Bruce Lee biopic, a remake of a Bruce Lee film, or an homage to the cinema of Bruce Lee, I cannot tell which. Soft pass, unless the reviews suggest some much better action than seems to be the case.
–Crown Heights, a legal drama set in a poor African-American community, I think? Pass, pending more information.
–A Gentleman, an Indian action-romance. If it actually swings the wide release, I would certainly mull the possibility of going to this, for the novelty of seeing a Bollywood film on the big screen, if nothing else.
–Polaroid, about a haunted Polaroid camera. Sadly, I am well aware that I’ll be seeing this, unless the start of the school year gets in the way.
–Tulip Fever, a love story set against the tulip-driven speculation bubble that walloped the economy of 17th Century Amsterdam, directed by the man behind The Other Boleyn Girl. Sounds too daft and misconceived to pass up, though I am sure it will be boring as hell.