May movies

With the release of a new Guardians film it’s officially summer! There's also a new Alien movie! For some reason a new Pirates movie. Baywatch is another in a long line of reboots BUT WITH THE ROCK! And Snatched  is Goldie Hawn’s first film in 15 years. Happy May!

A few years ago there was this movie called Prometheus. It was a sci-fi feature that dealt with the origins of humanity BUT it also tied into the Alien franchise. I found it to be great looking but confusing. Hopefully, Alien:Covenant will clear up some of the confusion. These films are supposed to be part of a trilogy that leads up to the first Alien film. If you're unfamiliar with Alien it goes like this: a space ship crew comes across a creature that decimates nearly all on board. That's over simplifying it and I could go on about the rest of the series but it would take up too much of your time. Covenant deals with a new space crew that ventures to a beautiful planet, but when they discover the origins of said planet and come across a new Alien things go terribly wrong. Surviving character's from Prometheus will appear but I'm not sure on the how or why. It's all part of the mysterious approach they've taken with this film.

With two westerns and one massive hit, 2015 was probably Kurt Russel's biggest year in film and 2017 might just top that. It's only two films this time around but one is last month’s Fate of the Furious and this month it's Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and it reunites him with his Tango and Cash co-star, Sylvester Stallone. 80's action movies fans rejoice! Of course they might not even share a scene and this isn't the reason this movie will make a billion dollars (that's not even an overestimation, can you believe that?!). People will see this one because the first time Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista and two creatures voiced by Vin Diesel and Bradley Cooper teamed up it entertained the entire galaxy, so they might as well do it again! Vol. 2 will focus on Star Lord, Pratt, finding out who his father is and this will take them on a whole new fun and destructive adventure.

 

The first Pirates of the Caribbean movie is a pretty long but very fun adventure film. When the sequel came out I was excited, until I saw it. I don't remember exactly what I disliked about it but I never re-watched it and haven't seen another once since. That's not to say I'm not interested. The very first film dealt a lot with Jack Sparrow, Johnny Depp, and who he's running away from, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales seems to be very similar. It seems he's angered a lot of people and Disney will keep mining these stories. This is a lot of material to come from a boat ride at an amusement park. Javier Bardem plays ghost pirate Salazar who, like all ghost pirates, has a grudge against Sparrow. While evading everyone who wants him dead Sparrow searches for Poseidon's Trident, which will grant its owner rule over the seas.

 

The reboot of 21 Jump Street worked because of the game cast and writer/directors who knew how to surprise the audience. There were plenty before that film, but after that particular film I feel reboots have become more prevalent. Power Rangers was a moderate hit because it looks like fun for a younger audience but failed to attract an older audience and CHIPS was a moderate failure because it was for a niche audience but it betrayed the PG feel of the original by making it a hard R and there was hardly any marketing. Now Baywatch may look a bit different than the David Hasselhoff starring NBC drama from over 25 years ago, so die hard Baywatch fans might be turned off, but the film stars Dwayne Johnson, Alexandra Daddario and Zac Effron - and that's enough to fill the seats. I'm a fan of the director and some of the writers and can't help but laugh any time I see the trailer. This will be a very silly movie and I am looking forward to it a whole lot.

 

I was surprised to learn that Goldie Hawn was in her 70's, but what surprised me even more was that she's only been in about 30 movies. Some actors do 30 movies in a decade and they can't achieve the level of fame she has. It looks as if she won an Oscar for her first leading role in a film, so it seems she had a good start. Between 1969 and 1992 she was making movies pretty frequently and then it got less frequent and by 2002, she seemed to have retired from acting. So after 15 years she's back in Snatched, playing Amy Schumer's mother in a comedy-adventure where the duo play mother and daughter on the run from kidnappers while on a dream turned nightmare vacation. It's written by Katie Dippold ( Parks and Rec, The Heat and Ghostbusters) and directed by Johnathan Levine (50/50, Warm Bodies and The Night Before) and being released Mother's Day Weekend, so this might do pretty well for an R rated comedy.