It seems disingenuous to talk about the start of traditional blockbuster season when what’s likely to end up the year’s biggest superhero movie is already going strong, but that’s the giddy world we live in today. So anyway, here’s the kick-off to one of the more peculiarly quiet-looking summers we’ve had in a long while.
2.5.2014
Having already showed up in most of the world, The Amazing Spider-Man 2 hits the States. And if you know anybody who’s excited about that fact, you’re one up on me. Whatever fans The Amazing Spider-Man was able to gin up back in 2012 seem to have faded back into the woodwork, and the opening film of the new summer is, I would say, indisputably the blandest looking.
9.5.2014
The weekend where movies go to die is led by Neighbors, a dirty comedy with Seth Rogen and Zac Efron, who is just enough of a weird casting choice that I’m kind of intrigued. The rest is all silence: Jon Favreau’s Chef is an obvious metaphor for the pain of being forced to receive large sums of money to direct Iron Mans, Moms’ Night Out is yet another of those Christian-themed movies that have been doing such astounding business in 2014, and Legends of Oz: Dorothy’s Return, which from the footage available so far looks like the ugliest animated movie ever made. Like, literally ever. I kind of can’t wait.
16.5.2014
(and Million Dollar Arm, some tediously sweet Disney sports movie about Indian kids being dazzled by Jon Hamm and the United States, nothing sociologically terrible about that. But it has Lake Bell, and I would cross broken glass in my bare feet for Lake Bell).
23.5.2014
I, for one, have largely abandoned hope for the X-Men franchise, but if nothing else, X-Men: Days of Future Past has Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen again. But really, at this point I feel the series has nothing left to prove one way or the other, and we all know exactly what we’re getting into.
I feel the same way about the Adam Sandler/Drew Barrymore romcom Blended, which is shaping up to be the most obnoxious movie of the summer, and without a single CGI robot to its name.
30.5.2014
The sole justification for Maleficent is obviously Angelina Jolie’s presence as the title character, though it’s quite a hell of a justification. Still, the “dark fairy tale that explains the villain’s point of view” shtick is one of the most unbelievably tedious in the world, and as the directorial debut of the production designer of Alice in Wonderland, so I don’t see room for even a sliver of optimism.
Seth MacFarlane brings his whole deal to the Wild West with A Million Ways to Die in the West, with an extraordinary cast, and based on the trailer, a grand total of one joke, repeated infinitely, till we all die.