August is a strange month. It’s not quite the dumping ground
that January is for movies but it’s the end of summer so there’s maybe like two
movies coming out this month that studios are banking on. The rest are smaller
films that might have a chance of being a sleeper hit or bigger films that didn’t
turn out that great and an end of summer release is the best chance they have
at getting an audience.
Many of our favorite comic book heroes are anti-heroes of
sorts. They break the rules and disobey authority and live by their own moral
code for some sort of greater good. Well, the members of the Suicide Squad are not like those guys.
They are all villains that have crossed the law and/or Batman and have been
placed in a government prison for their deeds. Now the government has some
problems of their own and for one reason or another they can’t get help from
Batman, so they decide to put these imprisoned baddies to work. With a cast of
colorful characters with names like Deadshot, Harley Quinn, Katana, Slipknot,
Killer Croc, El Diablo, Enchantress and Captain Boomerang you might think this
is all very strange. You’d be right. This is all very strange. It’s from a
director known for making gritty, hard “R” cop movies, so the fact that he is
tackling a quirky super villain ensemble cast has me very excited, and confused,
but mostly excited.
Kevin Spacey, Christopher Walken and Jennifer Garner have
all been in good movies, but I don’t think Nine
Lives will go down in history as their greatest film. Spacey stars as an
over-worked businessman and distant father who needs a last minute birthday
gift for his daughter and walks into a weird shop owned by, of course, Walken,
who gives him a cat. On his way home to his wife, Jennifer Garner, and daughter
he becomes trapped inside the cat. Now, curiosity got the best of me (but I didn’t
care enough to turn this into a pun) so I wanted to know exactly how he got
trapped inside the cat. The film description simply says ‘a bizarre turn of
events’ so yeah, this is a thing.
We’re long past the days of an animated cartoon character
being edited into a live action film, and that’s a bummer because I’m a huge
fan of Roger Rabbit. I was not such a
big fan of Pete’s Dragon which I
continually mix up with Puff the Magic
Dragon. Pete’s Dragon is getting
the big budget remake but this time instead of a pink animated smiling dragon,
it’s a photorealistic (well, as realistic as you can make a dragon at least) CG
dragon that hangs out with a kid named Pete and the two go on an adventure of
some kind. Robert Redford pops up in this one. Either they had money lying
around because CG is getting cheaper and cheaper these days or it’s a good
script and he wanted to be part of it. He doesn’t need the work right?
Seth Rogen must be having the time of his life right now and
somehow he has not spread himself too thin and had some sort of public
breakdown - so good for him. He’s had recent forays into Academy Award
nominated movies like Steve Jobs, unnecessarily
controversial films like The Interview, strange
television like Preacher and now he’s
taking a stab at writing and starring in the animated feature Sausage Party. He plays Frank, a hot dog
in a pack of hot dogs, who spends his days sitting on a shelf waiting for the
day when he gets purchased and can go onto the great beyond. One day he and the
love of his life Brenda, a hot dog bun voiced by Kristen Wiig, along with
several other food items voiced by a good chunk of Hollywood, get picked up - and
boy are they excited. That is until they finally come to discover exactly what
it is that humans do to food. I briefly thought this movie might be a comical
film pushing a vegetarian message but the first food item seen comically
slaughtered is a potato, so there goes that theory. This just looks to be a
hilariously profane adventure about food items trying to stay alive in a world
where they all share the same possible fate.
A southern crime flick with a title like Hell or High Water has my attention. Then
there’s the added bonus of Ben Foster and Jeff Bridges, who are no strangers to
the crime genre, and I’m even more excited. Then you toss in Chris Pine, who is
mostly new to this genre, and I’m very excited. Foster and Pine play brothers
who, in an attempt to save the family business, start robbing banks and catch
the attention of the local law. It doesn’t sound like anything too new but all
you need to make a film like this interesting is a decent cast who is up for
some shoot outs and tension. I think this film will deliver.
The director of The
Hangover, Road Trip and Old School really enjoys putting
man-children into stupid and over the top scenarios and have them walk away
mostly unscathed. He’s been pretty successful with it and I like those movies
for the most part, although I haven’t seen the latter two Hangovers. This time around his man-children have a whole new
situation to tackle: weapons dealing. In War
Dogs, Miles Teller, an actor who is so good at being a pretentious jerk
that I’m convinced he truly is one, and Jonah Hill, an actor who is pretty good
at being a pretentious jerk but can also be the laid back guy and can also be
the best friend, play two guys who find a loophole that allow them to bid on
U.S. weapons contracts so they can cash in on the war in Afghanistan. It’s
based on a true story but I have to imagine what happens on film might be a bit
more fantastic than what happened in real life.
I never saw Ben Hur,
but I did see Gladiator and I thought
that was a remake of Ben Hur or Spartacus. Turns out it isn’t a remake
at all - it’s just that I can’t tell sword and sandal epics apart. This new Ben Hur stars John Huston’s nephew, Jack,
who will take over the role played by Charlton Heston. And while I don’t know if
John Huston and Charlton Heston ever worked together, I’m sure they bumped into
each other at Hollywood parties. This has nothing to do with the movie. The
story is about a prince being falsely accused of treason and then returning
years later to seek revenge and become a champion on a chariot, or so the
pictures lead me to believe. Because we
live in a post 300 world, you can’t
just have people fighting with swords and riding chariots, you need to make it
flashy. This remake is coming to us from the director of Wanted and Abraham Lincoln:
Vampire Hunter and he likes to shoot his action scenes with an unnecessary
flair that I feel sometimes works. But I can’t see it working in a period piece
that features Jesus as a character (the actor portraying Jesus played the
antagonist in 300- that’s my last bit
of useless trivia).
I’ll watch any action movie with Jason Statham. He’s a
personal favorite of mine, but one film I wasn’t crazy about was The Mechanic starring him, Ben Foster
and Donald Sutherland. With a cast like that my expectations were high but it
wasn’t that great, didn’t make all that much money yet, somehow, we’re getting Mechanic: Resurrection. With a hackneyed
sub-title and a plot that involves him being forced to kill targets and make
the deaths look like accidents (which is the exact plot to another Statham film
called Killer Elite) it gives me
cause to worry, but it’s got Jessica Alba and Tommy Lee Jones in it so I’m kind
of excited. The action scenes in the trailer look pretty cool and like I said,
I will watch any Statham action film.
Say what you will about Mel Gibson but the man is a great
actor. He may be a crazy person but a great actor none the less. Fortunately
for us Gibson fans he saw the writing on the wall and hopped on this ‘older
hard edged loner has to rescue daughter’ craze that Taken kick-started. In Blood
Father, Gibson plays and ex-con (it’s either a con or a spy, there’s hardly
any middle ground) who has to protect his daughter from criminals. Why are they
trying to kill her? Well I don’t know, but I imagine the film will not be very
plot heavy. William H. Macy is in this as well and apparently Gibson and Macy
play old friends. Even if this wasn’t an action film I’d watch this.
So that’s August, anything you’re interested in?
