Sumer is icumen in! A summer that is surely going to be a Much Bigger Deal than last year, and probably Not As Good, though the latter point is of course subjective. But seriously, it was terrific few months, and 2015 looks to be… franchisey. Even by normal standards.
1.5.2015
And what could be more franchisey than a new Marvel film that’s pretty much earmarked to sail to some of the biggest box-office numbers ever? Here comes Avengers: Age of Ultron, Film #11 in a franchise also including five short films and three televisions series, and at a certain point I simply ran out of any ability to give a fuck. “I remember when I saw that exact thing but it was funnier and more entertaining the last time, and I barely liked it then” is not by any means the kind of headspace that one wants as one heads into a ridiculously crowded opening weekend theater crowd. But hey, you gotta pay your pop culture bills.
8.5.2015
Faced with the ugly prospect of counter-programming what will surely be an enormous second weekend, the best the studios could come up with for a wide release is Hot Pursuit, which actually makes great marketing sense: a woman-driven action comedy feels just about right for all the various needs the film must fill. But ye gods, that trailer is dire…
Not wide release, but the fact that Arnold Schwarzenegger plays Abigail Breslin’s dad in the low-key indie zombie film Maggie is, at any rate, fascinating.
15.5.2015
Two sequels to cult hits! Having not seen the original, I have no real sense of what we should expect from Pitch Perfect 2, but the ads promise a lot of broad humor about how fat girls are gross, which doesn’t seem to fit the “empowering!” motif I’ve heard. But then there is Mad Max: Fury Road, and I know exactly what I expect, based on the two-thirds of the original movies that are awesome, and the best trailers currently in circulation. I expect the best movie of the summer, is what I expect. In fact, the best popcorn movie of this year and probably next. It’s going to be ugly on this blog that weekend if the film is less than perfect.
22.5.2015
So there’s a new Brad Bird movie coming out. And that’s the only thing that appears to be working in Tomorrowland‘s favor, given the almost complete lack thus far of plot specifics in the ad campaign, or even a solid sense of what the movie is even going to look like. So Brad Bird. A man who has comfortably gone four-for-four on his movies to date. Working with the notorious screenwriter Damon Lindelof, who has fucked up some very unfuckable properties in his career. I really, really wish I could be excited for this one, but it’s not working.
Also, Poltergeist remake, because why not.
29.5.2015
If a gifted director can’t get me onboard with a movie, a goofily entertaining star surely shouldn’t be enough. And yet there’s even less reason to be excited for San Andreas – not just a disaster movie, but a disaster movie in the most dubious of all disaster movie subgenres, the earthquake picture – but the mere presence of Dwayne Johnson is literally all I need to put this in my #2 slot for the month. Not a great month, sure, but a month.
Sharing space with it: Aloha, which finds Cameron Crowe doing the Cameron Crowe romcom thing, with a breathtakingly splendid cast, and hopefully that’s enough to compensate for a story that can’t even by synopsised in a two-minute ad without every damn beat of the plot being totally obvious.