I am a crank – I know this, and if you’re a regular reader, you probably know this. And I’ve been left rather bored by a lot of this summer’s movies, including one that everybody else loved and one that is raking in godpiles of money even as I type. So it makes me feel word to observe how many of the movies coming out this month are things that I’m actually really excited for.
1.7.2009
Exhibit A, of course is Public Enemies, the movie I was so excited to see that I arranged a month-long marathon on this blog to celebrate it. Hard to say if I’m still as excited, or more excited, or what. But with the wait over in hardly more than a day, I’m feeling pretty good about how I spent my June.
Then there’s Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, which I’m so not-excited for that I keep forgetting it exists.
3.7.2009
Nia Vardalos, absent for five years, has her second movie in two months, I Hate Valentine’s Day, in which she reunites with John Corbett of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, to the cheers of I suspect tens of movie fans across the country.
10.7.2009
Okay, so Brüno could go a hell of a lot of different ways. Like everyone, I loved Borat, but Brüno isn’t as good a character to start with, and the trailer is full of moments that look like shit-stirring for its own sake, hold the comedy. And then I hear stories about the content that we don’t see in the trailer, and I get excited again. Somebody help me with this: anticipation or dread?
And then I look at the rest of the week and find that Chris Columbus, who I had just assumed was dead or retired to the Caymans, or something, has a new movie, I Love You, Beth Cooper, a stupid-looking teen comedy throwback “long night of the soul” sex comedy. Which will probably therefore be Columbus’s best movie ever. And Brüno seems much more exciting.
Limited releases: stylish vampires-with-swords thriller Blood: The Last Vampire, and yes I think I will have a slice. Or, Humpday, a mumblecore gay porno comedy. I’m okay with every part of that except one word. Guess which one? Hint: it’s not “gay”, “porn” or “comedy”.
15.7.2009
I’m still waiting on the summer tentpole movie that I enjoy, but I really honestly do think that Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince ought to do it. The film series is doing pretty well, it’s one of the best books in the series, and the trailer looks gorgeous and creepy.
17.7.2009
No other big release to counter the boy wizard, but (500) Days of Summer, though hampered by a clichéd indie-romance scenario, has the kind of trailer that makes you want to pace back and forth in front of the theater for days until it opens, so you can find out – among other things – why Joseph Gordon-Levitt has an animated bird on his hand.
24.7.2009
It looks like a weekend full of counter-programming, only there’s nothing to counter. We’ve got Orphan, a “scary little girl” movie with a wicked scary trailer, The Ugly Truth, a retrograde romantic comedy starring second-stringers Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler, and G-Force, a Bruckheimer-produced action-adventure about sentient guinea pigs.
Oh, holy shit, I just figured out that G-Force is meant to be the E-ticket movie of the weekend. Good fucking Christ.
Limited: Kevin Spacey stars as a celebrity psychiatrist with problems of his own in Shrink, no idea how that could slip into unbearable preachy awfulness, and something called The Answer Man, which appears to have the exact same plot, only a self-help author instead of a psychiatrist.
29.7.2009
No idea why it’s getting a Wednesday release, but Adam looks to be made of epic failure: a quirky romantic comedy about a fellow with Asperger’s. I would rather use this movie to fuel a cookout than watch it.
31.7.2009
Judd Apatow is back with a movie about a man-child and his buddy who learn to grow up and be adults! Ah, but Funny People has dramatic elements, and will maybe not be as routinely tedious as the Apatow Family Cinema has become in the last two years.
Next up, family sci-fi adventure, and we know how I feel about contemporary family films, Aliens in the Attic; a documentary about dolphin abuse, which I’m sure will be very good, but yay for fun summer films, The Cove; and the irresistibly-named Janky Promoters.