March movies

A Disney cartoon and a massive superhero movies being released in March marks some strange times for the movies.

A cop and a fugitive must team together to tackle a conspiracy that has made them both targets. Now this sounds like the plot to any number of action films and that’s what excites me most about Zootopia a non-Pixar film from Disney about life in a city populated by walking, talking animals. The cop is a bunny and the fugitive is a fox. Not sure what the conspiracy is because each time I read a plot synopsis it just says there is in fact a conspiracy. I figure it’s based around polluting. That’s a very PG conspiracy. The only trailer I’ve seen features the two leads trying to get information from the DMV but all of the DMV employees are literal sloths and the scene hilariously drags on. Funny for kids until they grow up and realize how awful a trip to the DMV really is.

With a poster featuring Big Ben on fire and a tattered Union Jack plus a tagline that reads ‘prepare for bloody hell’ you can see that London Has Fallen does not have subtlety high on its list of priorities. The sequel to the crazy violent Olympus Has Fallen brings back our heroic Secret Service agent Mike Banning, played again my Gerard Butler, who is accompanying the POTUS, played again my Aaron Eckhart, to the Prime Ministers funeral. While there Banning uncovers a plot to assassinate all world leaders attending so he takes the battle to the streets of London. The original was released before White House Down, the other Die Hard in the White House film but that one did not fare so well, even though it had Channing Tatum, Fallen was greenlit for a sequel where Down will not get a sequel even though I feel it is the more entertaining one. I’ll still have to see this one and, please fact check me, but I believe this to be the first sequel to a Die Hard wannabe to be released since Speed 2: Cruise Control. So that’s something.

The first movie my wife and I saw before we started dating was Cloverfield so I’ve got some sentiment towards it. It’s a small scale monster movie where a creature destroys New York and we the viewer follow T.J. Miller as he runs around with a camera with his friends and they try to stay alive. It doesn’t answer a lot of questions about the creature or its origins and it ends rather abruptly, but it’s pretty fun. Most thought it was a one and done horror adventure until a few weeks ago when a trailer appeared online. It featured a group of people in what appeared to be a bunker, the details were vague but there was a sense of danger and then the title reveal: 10 Cloverfield Lane and people were like whaaaaaaat?! Is this a sequel to Cloverfield? Well since this film was made in secret details are delightfully scarce and producer J.J. Abrams has only stated that it is a ‘blood relative’ and I have no idea what that could mean, but I have my theories.

I’ll wind up seeing any action comedy, the only question is whether I see it in theaters or not. I can make assumptions and I’ve been wrong before but a lousy trailer can really prevent me from spending money in a theater (besides tickets I’ll always end up getting popcorn and soda, I just can’t help it) and the trailer for The Brothers Grimsby is pretty lousy. Starring Sacha Baron Cohen and Mark Strong as the titular brothers, Strong is a secret agent and Cohen is his hard partying football hooligan brother. Circumstances arise and the two must team together, it being a Cohen starring film there will undoubtedly be some gross out gags, here’s hoping the action helps balance out the lunacy.

I usually shy away from topical dramas at the theaters but Eye in the Sky is Alan Rickman’s last live action performance (he will voice the Caterpillar in Alice Through the Looking Glass) and features Helen Mirren in charge of military drone missions. The film focuses on her given a kill order on a terrorist target right as a child enters the blast zone. Yeah stuff like that is not for me, probably because I don’t really enjoy watching versions of sad reality put on screen but it is Rickman’s final performance so I will most likely end up seeing this eventually. 

On the lighter side of wartime films we have Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, I could tell you what that means but it’s inappropriate, which is about real life reporter Kim Barker and her time on the ground as a journalist in Afghanistan and Pakistan. I can’t tell if this focuses on one big story or several small ones but I know that Margot Robbie and Martin Freeman are fellow reporters and Billy Bob Thornton plays a general. The book it’s based on is called The Taliban Shuffle: Strange Days in Afghanistan and Pakistan and apparently the real life Kim Barker always tried to maintain a sense of humor even while reporting on heavy topics.

The Divergent Series is another in a long line of young adult action series and Allegiant is the third. In a post Hunger Games world this seems to be the leading YA series out there. I saw the first one, it’s a serviceable action/sci-fi movie that, like most YA films features some young up and comers like Shailene Woodley and Miles Teller along with better known folks like Jeff Daniels and Naomi Watts. This third one has our heroes dealing with the Bureau of Genetic Welfare which sounds like a generic company out of any sci-fi action film, we’re a long way from Weyland/Yutani.

Jeff Nichols is quietly taking over the indie drama genre with actor Michael Shannon, the two have made 4 movies together (working on 5) and they all look good so I am jumping on this bandwagon so I can catch up with the previously released movies. Midnight Special is the fourth and features Shannon as a father on the run with his son after it is discovered that his son has strange and dangerous powers. People seem to take an interest in these powers and that’s never a good thing, especially if these powers are harnessed by a small child unaware of consequences. It sounds like I’m describing Looper and that’s not a bad thing. Smaller budget sci-fi thrillers made by directors with an appreciation for the genre usually yields good results.  

I’m not sure why a film about exposing Lance Armstrong’s doping is called The Program, but it is. This is a sports story that I’m aware of so I guess it was a big deal, I’m usually unaware of matters involving sports. After journalist David Walsh (played by the usually hilarious Chris O’Dowd who probably has to turn it down here) suspects Armstrong (played by the usually intense Ben Foster who probably has to turn it up here) of using banned substances he begins a search for the truth that eventually lead to it being discovered that he had used performance enhancers to win the Tour de France several times. I don’t think that’s a spoiler, the tagline on the poster is ‘Champion Hero Legend Cheat.’

Tom Hiddelston has had an interesting career. He had some small roles, then appeared as Loki in Thor then stole the show as Loki in The Avengers which was no small feat. All the while rather than taking pay check jobs he’s been working with directors like Woody Allen, Jim Jarmusch and Guilmero Del Toro. He also has a few interesting films coming out this year, the first of which looks to be his first starring role where he will play country music legend Hank Williams in I Saw the Light. Will he be able to pull off the role? No idea, I just appreciate that he’s trying.

The word Dawn has been used in A LOT of movies titles: Red Dawn, From Dusk til Dawn, Dawn of the Dead, and Rescue Dawn. Then there’s several sequels with Dawn in the title: Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, The Twilight Series: Breaking Dawn, The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, and Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. In some cases it means the beginning of something, in some cases it literally means the morning and in the case of Dawn Treader, well, I have no idea. In the case of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, the follow up to Man of Steel, it means that this is the beginning of The Justice League. Much like with Captain America: The First Avenger this is a standalone film that precedes a big team up movie bringing many characters from the comics together. One major difference is Marvel had several films leading up to their big team up while DC had Man of Steel and now this. This and the fact that it’s being released in March as opposed to Summer shows a lack of patience on their part but they are way behind Marvel as far as their filmographies so the time for solo adventures will have to come later. A promo poster for Dawn has the title and the two heroes, who are beloved by children everywhere, grimacing at each other with ‘#WhoWillWin’ at the bottom. It’s bizarre marketing because another trailer already showed when a bigger threat reveals itself and the two have to stop fighting and team up, which takes all significance out of the v in the title.

The State, Wet Hot American Summer, The Baxter, Stella, They Came Together, and now Hello, My Name Is Doris are all TV shows or movies (both in the case of Summer!) that Michael Showalter has been involved in as an actor and/or writer and/or director. Each of these is a spoof of something like a sketch show, or a summer movie or a romantic comedy but the movies are always self-aware, hilarious and poke fun at the genre while also using the genre to tell an entertaining story. This is why I am excited for Hello, My Name Is Doris starring Sally Field as a 60ish year old pursuing her younger co-worker Max Greenfield. Normally I would probably ignore something like this but it’s written and directed by Showalter so it has my attention.

Every time I check the March releases it seems they’re adding more and more but this is what I got so far, what are you interested in seeing?

 

February movies

February is a weird month for movies. Let me go through the top two February movies from the last 10 years to illustrate my point.

2015 – Fifty Shades of Grey, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water

2014 – The LEGO Movie, Non-Stop

2013 – Identity Thief, A Good Day to Die Hard

2012 – The Vow, Safe House

2011 – Just Go With It, Justin Beiber: Never Say Never

2010 – Valentine’s Day, Shutter Island

2009 – Madea Goes to Jail, Friday the 13^th

2008 – Hanna Montana/Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert Tour, Jumper

2007 – Ghost Rider, Norbit

2006 – Madea’s Family Reunion, When a Stranger Calls

So on that list we have: 

4 romanticish films. I add ish because I don’t know if Grey is considered to be romantic and I only assume Just Go With It is a romance film. The Vow is the film where Rachel McAdams gets into a car accident and forgets she was married to Channing Tatum, right? I saw Valentine’s Day, it’s exactly what you think it is.

4 movies aimed at kids. Those concert films are for kids right? SpongeBob and LEGO are also for kids but you better believe that I saw them in theater.

5 action films. Jumper is a pretty forgettable movie to most but it was the film my wife and I saw on our first Valentine’s Day together so I’ll always love it. Oh and A Good Day to Die Hard is horrible but of course I saw it. Non-Stop is another Liam Neeson action film so of course it’s awesome (well not of course, but it really is good). Safe House was a surprise hit that began to show a turn-around in the quality of films released in February and Ghost Rider is Nicholas Cage as a comic book motorcycle rider from Hell- not figuratively, that’s the actual plot. 

4 comedies, two of which are Madea films. Tyler Perry seems to be the only person capitalizing on February, releasing two films in the early oughts. Norbit was another Eddie Murphy film seeing him play numerous roles, which was something that helped him shoot to fame in the 80’s.  Identity Thief is like the last film starring Melissa McCarthy that wasn’t a summer release.   

3 horror films, one featuring DiCaprio and two remakes. Shutter Island was a big hit but, spoiler alert, it had the ‘it was all in his mind’ twist ending that all too many thrillers utilized since, spoiler alert, Fight Club. When a Stranger Calls is like the perfect February release for teens who wanted to be scared on Valentine’s Day as it stars a babysitter being stalked and Friday the 13^th was another film featuring the hockey mask wearing Jason who kills all that come near his lake side resting place.

So as you can see, over the past 10 years there have been some films that make one think, “yeah, I could see that as a date film,” and some films that make very little sense at all.

This year the choices are:

Hail, Caesar – a new Coen Brothers film starring George Clooney, Josh Brolin, Frances McDormand, Channing Tatum, Scarlett Johansen and many more. It’s about a Hollywood star, played by Clooney, who gets kidnapped and the ‘fixer,’ played by Brolin, hired to find him, and all of the others – portrayed by pretty much the rest of Hollywood - he has to deal with in trying to solve the case. Coen Brothers at their best churn out some of my favorite crime-comedies of all time and this one looks great, too. The February release doesn’t bother me because their films are rarely huge hits so it makes no sense for a company to release it during the summer months. I can’t wait to see this.   

Zoolander 2 – This film was going to be made one way or another. The first one was a huge hit. People are still familiar with Ben Stiller’s character. After 15 years was a sequel necessary? Probably not but it looks to be in the same vein as the first one, so that’s a good thing. The first one dealt with evil Mugatu, Will Ferrell, brainwashing stupid male model, Derek Zoolander, to kill the Malaysian Prime Minister to ensure Mugatu’s cheap labor can continue in Malaysia. Derek gets help from a reporter, played by Stiller’s wife Christine Taylor, and his male model nemesis Hansel, played by Owen Wilson. I actually hated the first one when I first saw it but I watched it again and again and learned to love it - so much that I am able to recite the entire plot from memory. Now 15 years later, Derek and Hansel are washed up and no longer relevant, which I’m sure will be played up for meta-hilarity, but when ‘beautiful’ people like Justin Beiber and Usher start turning up dead they are leaving only one clue behind: they are each wearing Derek’s signature facial expression, Magnum. So then a high stakes, worldwide chase begins that I’m sure will have dozens of cameos. Watch the first one again to familiarize yourself with the formula and to see a great appearance from the late David Bowie.

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies – The Jane Austen classic has taken many forms. It’s been a film, a miniseries, a short film, another film, another miniseries – okay so not that many forms but people won’t stop retelling this story on film. So why not update it? Well from the writer of Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter and directed by the guy who Samuel L. Jackson shoots on the couch in Pulp Fiction - which is followed by the line ’I’m sorry did I break your concentration?’ - comes a new version of the story, but this one features the people in 19^th century England fighting off zombies. It sounds like a cool idea, but Vampire Hunter didn’t quite work so I’m skeptical. Still it’s probably a good movie for young people to see when they can’t get a ticket to see anything else and don’t know what Zoolander is because they weren’t even born when the first one came out. 

How to be Single – Now this to me sounds more like a fun party movie than your typical date movie. It’s about single women in the city partying and having fun. The partier Rebel Wilson, whose presence in any film guarantees a rise in ticket sales, shows the quiet Dakota Johnson, who starred in last year’s top grossing Valentine’s Day movie 50 Shades of Grey, how to have fun while single. This is my assumption from a trailer I watched a few weeks ago. It does not sound like a date film so I imagine people on dates thinking they’re seeing an old school typical cheesy Valentine’s Day film will be in for a surprise. 

Deadpool­ – The fact that this film is being released is pretty mind blowing. Studios rarely take chances with an R-rated comic book film because the PG-13 ones make billions at best and 100 million at worst. So why risk it when the R-rated ones rarely come near those numbers? Well here’s one reason, you can potentially have a better film if you make an R-rated movie. Deadpool is a foul mouthed killer who can’t be restrained by the editing board and from what I’m hearing this film goes above and beyond to be over the top- reportedly it’s already banned in China. Ryan Reynolds is the lead here and he already played a PG-13 version of Deadpool’s alter-ego Wade Wilson in Wolverine which, for my money, is the worst X-Men film to date. But Reynolds wanted to do the character again and he wanted to do it right and he did not give up.  He campaigned for this film for years and this Valentine’s Day we will finally have it. Many people will see it and many kids will buy tickets for that Zombie movie or that Zoolander movie and sneak in. Or they’ll do something stupid like make a petition just a month before the film gets released and request that a PG-13 version be released instead (this actually happened). 

So my question to you is do any of these strike you as Valentine’s Day films? The only one, as far as I’ve seen, pushing a Valentine’s Day marketing scheme is Deadpool and that’s what I’ll be seeing.

January Movies

The time to get your 2015 Oscar hopeful into theaters has passed. See the trick is, films like The Revenant and The Hateful Eight might not be out in every theater across the U.S.A. until mid-January but as long as they are released to some theaters in December 2015, they are eligible for the 2015 Oscar run. Films that are not released in December sometimes get stuck in the film dumping ground that is January. That means that a lot of films coming out this month will have an aura of ‘who wants to see this?’ However some studios have caught on. They know that people will still want to go see a movie so they are putting out big releases this month in hopes of capturing a big audience that cannot find anything else to watch. 

For those Game of Thrones fans out there we have The Forest, starring Natalie Dormer. In the film she ventures off to a Japanese forest that is famous for being a location where people go to end their lives. So we’re starting with heavy material here. She hears that her twin sister went off into the forest and goes in after her. After learning the sad history of the place she is told that if she is to go in she is not to leave the path. So of course she immediately does just that and gets attacked by the spirits haunting the forest. I saw a string of horror movie trailers recently and all of them included people being instructed to do something and doing the exact opposite. I know that happens in many horror films but why make the protagonist look so careless in the trailer? 

It disappoints me when sequels to hit films come out and the producers just tack a number on the title. Unfortunately this is the case with Ride Along 2. I’ve always been a fan of Ice Cube and I’m warming up to Kevin Hart. In the first one, which is pretty entertaining, wannabe cop Hart wanted to marry tough detective Cube’s sister and had to prove he was worthy by joining Cube on the titular ride along which became a messy situation of police corruption, criminals and ridiculousness. In the end they learned to tolerate each other. Fast forward a few months, it is right before the big day and the duo head to Miami to take down a drug dealer. If goofy action-comedy is your thing this movie will surely provide.

The name Michael Bay has become a joke in the movie world. If a film is made by Bay, it is more often than not considered to be an over the top stupid movie and if a film is too over the top and stupid, then it is considered to be too much like a Michael Bay movie - which most consider a bad thing. His movies are big and expensive looking, but that a good movie does not make. Okay, so all that said it looks as if Bay is making an attempt to turn all of that around with 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi. This is based on the true story of an attack on a U.S. compound in Libya and the military contractors who fought back. Now some people take issue with Bay doing a ‘true story;’ lest we forget the action-romance extravaganza that was Pearl Harbor. Recently he has made a toned down crime-drama. Maybe he learned a thing or two and will turn down the insanity that he usually provides. 

When a piece of trivia for a film includes the fact that the film was supposed to be released straight to DVD it causes me to worry for the quality of the film. Then toss in the fact that it is a global warming propaganda cartoon about a polar bear voiced by Rob Schneider and I worry this may be the worst film ever. There are several films that have an agenda and sometimes the message gets in the way of a good film. This isn’t the place to get into a discussion about global warming but if you have something to say, there are better ways to go about it. So about the movie, it’s called Norm of the North and is about a displaced Arctic bear who goes to New York City and gets on the path to saving the world, probably.

Robert De Niro hails from The Godfather series, Zac Efron hails from the High School Musical series so it only makes sense to put them in a film together. Neighbors proved that Efron could be funny in that he plays a frat boy and really plays it up to hilarious levels. It’s very entertaining, but in this one he is the more reserved one and De Niro is playing his Dirty Grandpa. This film is directed by the writer of Sacha Baron Cohens films Bruno and Borat and helped out on his show Da Ali G Show, so the potential for raunchiness is high with this one.

The Hunger Games is over, for now anyway until producers convince the writer to make prequels, so Hollywood is looking for the new young-adult-novel-female-lead-sci-fi-drama series which brings us to The 5^th Wave. Aliens have invaded earth and after 4 waves we’re pretty beat and now have aliens taking the form of humans. This causes a young woman, Chloe Grace-Moretz, no stranger to action films as she played Hit-Girl in the Kick-Ass series, to rise up and start to fight back. I’m concerned with this one as it has all the makings of a Hunger Games or Divergent film, but with a January release as opposed to summer so we’ll see how this goes. 

No matter how bad it is I always have an appreciation for any film that features a doll coming to life. It terrifies me to such a degree that I can ignore how bad it might be and enjoy it. The best of the bunch is Childs Play. The worst of the bunch is Pinocchio’s Revenge, which is the actual title of a lousy Childs Play knockoff. The Boy sounds like a more subtle approach to the sub-genre of killer dolls but it’s from a horror director, so either the trailer is misleading or I’m in for a surprise. In it a woman is hired by a family to watch their son while they are away. When she gets there she finds that the child in question is a life-sized doll and the parents take caring for him very seriously - that is until they leave a stranger in his care for some reason. They give her a list of rules, which include never leaving him alone and feeding him, which she totally ignores, and this leads to some bizarre events that lead her to believe the doll is alive and out to kill her. 

I’m not a fan of all cartoon series that come out but one that I really enjoy is the Kung Fu Panda series. The first and second both have a lot of heart, action and comedy - plus that added bonus of Jack Black, Jackie Chan, Seth Rogen, Lucy Liu, David Cross and others as voice actors. It makes for a pretty fun time so I am excited for Kung Fu Panda 3. The whole series was built on the fact that a lonely (there’s a sad backstory where he is the only panda left) giant panda has no place kung-fu fighting alongside more nimble creatures like a monkey, a snake or a crane, but he learns and becomes a master and saves the day, twice. In the end of the second one he finds there are more pandas in hiding so this one finds him joining his long lost family, and he has to teach them to fight as a new threat is on its way. This series has a knack for getting great actors to play villains. The first was Ian McShane, the second was Gary Oldman and now it’s J.K. Simmons. I am concerned about the release date but I will see this anyway.

Taking a break from spoofing horror movies, Marlon Wayans has decided to spoof another series and he has chosen 50 Shades of Grey as his next target. If you’ve seen the Scary Movie films (the first two are great) and have a basic understanding of what Grey is about you probably have a good idea where Fifty Shades of Black is headed. If you don’t I’ll just say it’s going to be goofy and very crass.

I’m sure Star Wars will be number 1 at the box office throughout the whole month but hopefully there is something for you in here! Happy 2016!