The first month of the summer = bust. Let us see what the future will bring!
1.6.2007
There is nothing – NOTHING – better than a 2+ hour sex comedy. Okay, I tease a bit. I’m looking forward to Knocked Up, especially after seeing the international trailer for the first time. That said, writer-director Judd Apatow’s The 40-Year-Old Virgin nearly didn’t survive its perilous runtime, and the new film is almost 15 minutes longer.
Meanwhile, the Russian sci-fi fantasy action thriller Day Watch is coming out, and if you think that sounds exciting, you clearly missed out on the maddening Night Watch, which deftly combined a hideously confusing plot with two hours of the most aggressive audio-visual assault that you ever did see.
The little films: Mr. Brooks, a serial killer film that weirdly enough stars Demi Moore, Kevin Costner and William Hurt; and Gracie, a massively nepotistic pseudo-autobiography for costar Elisabeth Shue.
8.6.2006
I was one of the eight or so people in North America who really loved Ocean’s Twelve, and therefore I have absolutely no reason whatsover to assume that Soderbergh & Co.’s Ocean’s Thirteen will be anything less than a shimmering delight. I even love the trailers for that film, that’s how much of a mewling jackass I am. Besides, we’re overdue for a third film to actually work this summer.
Also: a bit of the ol’ torture porn in Hostel, Part II, this time with girls instead of boys, and there’s just not much you can do about that. Looking torturous in a different way, we have the second animated penguin movie in seven months, Surf’s Up. Why penguins and surfing? Why not, I say.
Plus, La vie en rose or La Môme for us pretentious fucks, a biopic about Edith Piaf
15.6.2007
In a summer packed with something like 15 sequels, the one that stands out as the most wasteful is surely Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. Yes, the original was a successful film, but perhaps you will recall that in the summer of 2005, there were very few big hit films, and by mid-July there was really no other game in town. It was a glass of water in the desert. 2007, by contrast, and despite the insufficiently obscene takes of the third Spider-Man and Pirates films, is a right ocean of soulless blockbusters.
Even so, it will outgross all over poor little Nancy Drew, a film that is very specifically being pitched at people who are not teenaged boys, and is therefore doomed.
20.6.2007
So, Danny Boyle’s Sunshine is to open this day? Let us wait and see. I’ve watched this release date get battered around far too often to believe it.
22.6.2007
Steve Carrell is better than Evan Almighty. End of discussion.
Leaving us with: John Cusack in a Stephen King vehicle, 1408. A bit more girl-centered torture porn, Captivity – that film with the notorious promotional campaign, directed by the producer of Super Mario Bros. And A Mighty Heart, the film about Daniel Pearl, which is, admittedly, directed by Michael Winterbottom and so might be at least a little bit tolerable.
But still, fuck summer.
27.6.2007
There is just no chance at all that Live Free or Die Hard will be even a tiny bit good, but I can’t help but be excited anyway. A terrible ’80s action movie is still leaps better than a mediocre ’00s action movie.
29.6.2007
Pixar, thank you for saving June. As directed by Brad Bird and Jan Pinkava, I will acknowledge no possibility that Ratatouille might possibly fail even a little bit, and that mentality has been biting me on the ass a lot recently, but still. Keep the faith.
Indies all ’round: a dreadfully quirky looking English romantic comedy, Eagle vs. Shark; Michael Moore’s latest, Sicko, an attack on the US health care system; Death at a Funeral, Frank Oz’s twee little attempt to make us forget his last film was a complete boondoggle; and Evening, as writ by Michael Cunningham, and co-starring a girl that I once took a class with, and that freaks me out a wee bit every time I see the trailer.