I think it's official, at this point: this has been a pretty solid (in some ways very surprisingly so) summer movie season. I don't believe I've ever said that in all my years of blogging. So hurrah for all the good films that have been, and let's hope that we can add one or two titles to that pile before fall comes and brings with it all the burn-off movies of September.
1.8.2014
The implacable march of Marvel Studios to dominate all popcorn cinema continues with Guardians of the Galaxy, which achieved something that not a single Marvel picture to date has managed: an ad campaign that made me want to see the thing. And admittedly, the more we've seen, the more it looks like a formula-driven "more of the same" type of thing, but it's been too long since we had a good big-scale space opera, and the Chris Pratt Moment in pop culture has been hugely enjoyable so far.
Rather adroitly noting that GotG is tailor-made for white male nerds, Universal has positioned as counter-programming Get on Up, a biopic of James Brown. Starring Chadwick Boseman, who has rather randomly established himself as the guy who plays the lead in movies about famous black people, even those who have as little in common as James Brown and Jackie Robinson.
8.8.2014
They really can't make enough awful Step Up movies for me to stop looking forward to them, after the holy majesty that was Step Up 3D. So I will, thank you, continue to look forward to Step Up All In right up until I emerge, squinting, from the auditorium, depressed about the money I just wasted.
Warner is basically remaking its 18-year-old Twister as Into the Storm, the first honest-to-God disaster movie in years. It's a film I'm going to primarily because I think it will be a nice thing to do with my mom, and I'm 100% not kidding about that. Also, because the first trailer as much as claimed "the sound design is great! the rest, not so much", and I admire the bluntness of that. For those of you with more conventional moms than my own, there's The Hundred-Foot Journey, with Helen Mirren as a sassy French chef squaring off against Indians, as directed by Lasse Hallström, modern cinema's greatest creator of pointlessly inoffensive fables. This one's giving me a Chocolat vibe, which is one of the worst things you could say about anybody.
Lastly, Michael Bay is producing a Jonathan Liebesman film that has to do with turtles. Let's not talk about it.
13.8.2014
How to tell you've aged out of pop culture: watching the trailer for Let's Be Cops, starring Damon Wayans, Jr. and Jake Johnson as two bros pretending to be policeman, and realising that not only do you not have the god-damnedest idea who either of them are, despite the trailer's clear assumption that you do, this lack of knowledge does not bother you in the tiniest degree. Fun fact: it's the only wide release of the month that I'm already entirely sure I won't be seeing.
15.8.2014
FINALLY, Stallone has decided with The Expendables 3 to bring in the action star to end all action stars in one of his big old action ensemble jobs: Kelsey Grammer. As somebody named "Bonaparte".
The cast and director of The Giver tell me that it's got bit more meat on it than most YA adaptations. Tell me in comments if I should read the much-beloved and highly regarded book that I hadn't heard about until earlier this year.
22.8.2014
Speaking of YA, Chloë Grace Moretz, who I increasingly can't stand, headlines an out-of-body teen love story called If I Stay, which whatever, but the trailer is hilariously sober. And after the campy excess of her out-of-control crack whore in Sabotage earlier this year, I will follow Mireille Enos anywhere she wants to go.
Sports movies aren't my bag at all, so if I say that "the longest winning streak in American sports history is snapped, and the high schoolers and coach involved process what that means to them" is literally one of the least-compelling ideas for a movie I've heard all year, I hope you'll take it with a grain of salt. Also, When the Game Stands Tall is a goofy title.
After nine long years in development hell, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For finally is happening, and my 23-year-old self is very confused why my 32-year-old self is so immensely dubious about that fact.
27.8.2014
Pierce Brosnan playing an old spy, as he does in The November Man, is the worst kind of obvious stunt casting. But then, The Matador and The Tailor of Panama were both better than three-quarters of his stint as James Bond, so let's wait and see.
29.8.2014
Between the extremely serious tone with which it appears to treat generic horror content, the ham-handed dialogue in the ads, and above all the catastrophically pretentious title of As Above, So Below, I am not at all too mature to confess that I'm looking forward to hate-watching this one more than anything I've seen in a long, long time.
30 July 2014
21 comments:
Just a few rules so that everybody can have fun: ad hominem attacks on the blogger are fair; ad hominem attacks on other commenters will be deleted. And I will absolutely not stand for anything that is, in my judgment, demeaning, insulting or hateful to any gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religion. And though I won't insist on keeping politics out, let's think long and hard before we say anything particularly inflammatory.
Also, sorry about the whole "must be a registered user" thing, but I do deeply hate to get spam, and I refuse to take on the totalitarian mantle of moderating comments, and I am much too lazy to try to migrate over to a better comments system than the one that comes pre-loaded with Blogger.
What a dull month.
ReplyDeleteAny chance we'll be seeing your Boyhood review soon?
Not soon enough. I'm hoping to see it Saturday.
ReplyDeleteOh dear Lord, A Dame to Kill For. On one hand, I've recently watched Sin City on Blu-Ray and it still looks every bit as marvellous as when I watched it years and years ago. On the other hand, I'm really not interested in Frank Miller's new material and unless Jessica Alba's acting has significantly improved over the last nine years (cos dammit she was the single biggest liability of the original movie), a whole storyline revolving around her is going to be cinematic death.
ReplyDeleteBut at least it has Eva Green?
After her stint on "Penny Dreadful", I am 100% prepared to shriek "HolyShitEvaGreen!!!" whenever she shows up in something. Hell, I'm even prepared to watch the "300" sequel.
ReplyDeleteI honestly can't believe "Into the Storm" is actually getting a theatrical release. Everything about it, including the cast (headed by Lori from "The Walking Dead") screams SyFy Original. Although the VFX look nice I guess, so there's that.
It's "Twister" meets the "shot by bystanders with camera phones" genre. Yay.
Re The Giver: I read it before I learned to, you know, process themes and stuff, but I didn't think it was too bad. And it's a pretty quick read.
ReplyDeleteI'll watch GotG on dvd, but will put my derriere in a movie seat after watching the leaked teasers of Batman v. Superman and Deadpool.
ReplyDeleteChiming in to say read The Giver. Its a pretty fast read that has earned its recognition as a good book.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely read The Giver. It'll take you one night and it's undoubtedly going to be a better experience than seeing the movie.
ReplyDeleteWow, my mother and I actually watched Twister together (and Dante's Peak, and a bunch of of other disaster/courtroom drama stuff. Man, the 90s). That brought a nostalgic tear on me.
ReplyDeleteI am only one year your senior but I must be way more out of touch with pop/youth culture because I never really figured out what the demographic for the Step Up movies was (which probably means I've been thinking like an old person for a long time). Like, I know they are aimed at teenagers in theory, I just can't grasp the popularity of this specific subgenre, which is also regularly distributed here in Italy. Oh well.
ReplyDelete(I also secretly cheered at your annoyance about Chloe Moretz - an actress that was largely indifferent to me, but the metaphorical and not so metaphorical boner many film blogs I follow seem to have for her kind of soured me on the subject.)
I might be a curmudgeon, but the moment I saw the CGI raccoon fondle his junk in the trailer, I knew I would never watch Guardians of the Galaxy. Bring on Expendables 3 though!
ReplyDeletePoggy- I actually don't have any idea what the target audience for the Step Ups either. I gather it is not "people who really REALLY love trashy 3-D effects and find ways to justify it in sloppy formal analysis", though that is the niche to which I belong.
ReplyDeleteGranted I haven't read THE GIVER in a good 15 years, but early-adolescent me thought it was an exceptionally smart and gripping book, and Lois Lowry is one of the great authors in the Young Adult genre (and she did it before it was the massive cash cow it is now). Definitely give it a read.
ReplyDeleteOh man, The Giver fucking owns. It's also the case that one of the central things about The Giver, that's supposed to be a huge revelation, is something that by its very nature could never, ever translate to film, no matter what. Bah.
ReplyDelete"After nine long years in development hell, Sin City: A Dame to Kill For finally is happening, and my 23-year-old self is very confused why my 32-year-old self is so immensely dubious about that fact."
ReplyDeleteYou and me both (right down to the specific ages...)
On one hand, my tolerance for Frank Miller has decreased massively over the last near decade. On the other, A Dame to Kill For was, by far, my favorite of the Sin City graphic novels.
On one hand, I have almost no interest in this new story with Nancy. On the other, I damn near went to see 300: Rise of an Empire just because Eva "the best Bond girl ever" Green was in it.
Also, holy fuck can I not wait for Guardians of the Galaxy.
Oh, and, as a point of no interest whatsoever, my very first ever date was watching Twister.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first read The Giver in junior high, I finished it and turned right back to the beginning and read it again. I think I've only done that one other time.
ReplyDeleteThe movie does not look good to me. The book is small and intimate, why are they trying to make the movie an epic???
Y'all have sold me, the book is in my possession even now.
ReplyDelete@Regular GeoX: Well, technically you could, it would just be mind-blowingly stupid. I'm guessing the movie version involves unpleasant levels of DI.
ReplyDeleteFor the record, er, If I Stay is also a pretty good YA book, while we're talking about the genre. Though Jesus Christ, when "Say Something" started playing in that trailer, I sort of burst into hysterical laughter. That song is just comically sad.
ReplyDeleteWell, apparently they went the simple-but-brutally-obvious way. And have an explanatory opening narration. And action scenes.
ReplyDeleteYup, not going to watch.