april

There’s always a couple of fun of movies in April and that means I have something fun to watch on my birthday. This year it'll be the one where The Rock goes up against giant monsters.

After John Cena appeared in Trainwreck, producers realized they've been using the wrestler all wrong. He may look the part for an action movie but, he's better used in comedic roles. A bit role in Sisters also proved to be pretty funny so now it's time for him to headline a comedy with Blockers. Originally titled something a bit more inappropriate, it's about parents played by Cena, Leslie Mann and Ike Barinholtz who join forces to stop their children from having too much fun on prom night. These three are funny people so that basic plot should provide them enough raunchy material for a silly movie.

Thanks to his charming personality and role as Jim in The Office, John Krasinksi seems like a nice guy. In recent years he's tried to distance himself from this persona a bit by taking on some tough guy roles like 13 Hours and the upcoming Jack Ryan series (if that names sounds familiar it's because Alec Baldwin, Harrison Ford, Ben Affleck and Chris Pine have all played him before). The move to star, write, produce and direct A Quiet Place is another step in his distancing himself from Jim. The film follows him and his wife (played by his actual wife Emily Blunt) as they live in solitude, trying to stay 100% silent because there is something out there and it is dangerous and it hunts by sound. The trailers have been mysterious and eerie.

Are there any happy films about the Kennedy's? There's JFK, which is about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. There's Bobby, which is about the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy. There's Jackie, which is about hardships Jackie Kennedy and her family faced following the JFK assassination. Now there's Chappaquiddick, which is about Ted Kennedy being responsible for the death of a young woman in 1969 and the fall out from that incident. So no, it seems there are no happy films about the Kennedy's.

After the success of Transformers, producers began mining their old toy boxes to come up with other ideas. This lead them to board games and we got Quija and Battleship now it seems they've gone even further and they want to make movies out of the most basic games like the upcoming Tag and Truth or Dare. If you're unfamiliar with the rules: someone asks you 'truth or dare?' if you say truth, they ask you a question and you tell the truth, if you say dare they dare you to do something and you do it. Simple. Some people choose to lie or not carry out the dare because who cares it's just game, right? Well not in this movie! If you cheat, you die and there may be some supernatural forces at work here. This sounds dumb but should prove to be a bit edgier than the very dull Cry Wolf, another horror from this director and one that bothered me a whole lot because of a very lame twist ending.

At BEST a film based on a video game will receive middling reviews (from critics and audiences) but that hasn't stopped companies from buying up the rights to nearly every single video game I've ever heard of in hopes of creating a successful franchise. Fortunately for critics and audience members there's one actor that seems to entertain everyone: Dwayne Johnson. He's been brought in on several sequels to inject life in a franchise (Fast and Furious, Jumanji, G.I. Joe just to name a few) and now he's been brought in to star in Rampage to inject life into an entire sub-genre. The video game is a simple sidescroller where giant beasts crash their way through a city decimating all in their path. In the film, these beasts are victims of a genetic experiment and only an ex-special forces primatologist can save the day. One of the beasts is his pet gorilla, George, and he intends to save the humans from the rampaging monsters and save George from the government agents out to kill him. It's so goofy. I can't wait.

With her last few films including entries like Mad Max: Fury Road, Fate of the Furious and Atomic Blonde, it took me a moment to recall that Charlize Theron wasn't always an action star (but her filmography is not lacking in the action department). A few years ago she teamed up with writer Diablo Cody and director Jason Reitman and they created the cringe worthy dramedy Young Adult and the team is back with Tully. Theron is a mother of with young kids, a new born and a baby on the way. Needless to say she is constantly exhausted and that's when Tully comes in to her life. Tully is a night nanny who helps out at night with the kids so the parents can sleep. These movies often have some sad moments but for the most part this looks sweet.

When I was a freshman in high school my friends and I bought tickets to see the Britney Spears movie Crossroads and proceeded to walk into a showing of Super Troopers. 16 years later I'm happy to say I do not need to sneak into Super Troopers 2, a movie the creators have been promising for about a decade, maybe more. The plots to these films really don't matter but I think these guys are geniuses. The first has to do with corrupt cops, the 2nd has to do with a Canadian border dispute. I don't know that all the jokes will land but if this is anything like the last few films they've created, the jokes will come flying so fast that the ones that do land will warrant the run time.

10 years and 18 movies ago, Iron Man flew onto the screen and brought casual movie goers and comic book fans together. That was the first in the now hugely popular Marvel Cinematic Universe. It seems cliché to say but it really has all been building to Avengers: Infinity War. Throughout the series we've seen glimpses and references to Thanos, a big evil world destroyer guy, and his sought after Infinity Stones, fancy stones that when placed into a cool glove makes him super powerful. Infinity War shows Thanos visiting earth to mess things up and battle the Avengers, who are currently experiencing a bit of a break up. The team have to put their petty (well, not too petty since they destroyed an airport last time they argued) differences behind them and save the world. This movie is going to be HUGE. It contains so many stars, the trailer alludes to so many key scenes and I can't imagine how they're going to pull all of this together but the MCU folks are on a hot streak. If they went ahead with this I can't imagine they didn't put in a lot of effort.