May Movies

It’s versus month at the movies! Many characters are going head to head in several films, two of which feature super hero teams battling  (which is more interesting than a 1 on 1 fight- looking at you Batman and Superman) but none of that excites me as much as a new film by Shane Black! Summer is here and I couldn’t be more excited. 

Versus film #1:

Captain America and Iron Man are both born leaders. Trouble is, when you’re a part of a crew like The Avengers it’s tough to have two people with that attitude and eventually things are going to come to a head. That brings us to Captain America: Civil War. The reason this isn’t called Captain America v. Iron Man: Dawn of Whatever is because that’s a stupid title and it’s a lot more than just one hero fighting another hero, plus it’s predominantly a Captain America story. In The Avengers and Avengers: Age of Ultron, our titular heroes caused a whole lot of damage saving the planet and in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, the subtitular (per Merriam-Webster, it’s a word) Winter Soldier was responsible for destroying much of the D.C. area and the dismantling of S.H.I.E.L.D. Now a new government oversight committee, using Iron Man as their muscle, is coming for Captain, his crew and The Winter Soldier. Captain has a problem with that because he doesn’t like the idea of an all-powerful government keeping an eye on anything, let alone him and his crew. This was a main plot point to The Winter Soldier. So the battle begins and some heroes join Captain while others join Iron Man, including Spider-Man, who is being rebooted again! 

Versus film #2:

Ever since I obtained a phone with the capability to do so I have played a socially unacceptable amount of Angry Birds. I’ve played several versions and I’m on my 2^nd or 3^rd go around on the main game. It’s addictive and I can tell you that in all of my years of playing I have NO IDEA what the ‘plot’ to the game is. You toss birds at pigs, that’s it. But it made a lot of money so someone had to try and make a movie out of it because....well, because money, that’s why.  The film deals with a happy island of birds that gets invaded by pigs. The outcast birds are the only ones who see there’s a problem and start fighting back by slinging themselves at the pigs. I imagine kids will love the birds v pigs action, plot or not, and I laughed pretty uncontrollably at the trailer so I’ll have fun too.

Versus film #3:

Seth Rogen, Rose Byrne and Zac Efron made for an unlikely group in the first Neighbors that pitted new parents v. frat guys, but in the end they made a really funny and kind of sweet film. In Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising, Rogen and Byrne are planning to sell their house and are expecting a 2^nd child right as a sorority full of hard partiers moves in next door. They need the sorority evicted if they are ever to sell their house and move on with their lives. Chloe Graze Moretz plays the head of the sorority and she’s just as tough as Efron was, so Rogen brings Efron back to help him out. Most of the cast and jokes from the first one are returning and that’s a good thing. The trailer is hilarious and I imagine the parents and ex-frat guy v. sorority will make for a great R-rated summer time film.

Versus film #4:

We’ve come a long way with these X-Men films and then the most recent one did a whole time travel thing that was seemingly created to erase the mess that was X-Men: The Last Stand, which came out 10 years, ago but some still remember it and it stinks - so we’re better off without it. So for those not caught up with the series this will be the 6^th in the X-Men series, then there are 2 standalone Wolverine movies and a Deadpool movie that exist in the same world. In the last film, X-Men: Days of Future Past, the present is in rough shape so Wolverine gets sent to the 70’s, makes amends (that’s a real over simplification of the plot), goes back to the present and everything has changed for the better, but drastically, so he needs to get caught up on what the heck happened in the 80’s. That brings us to X-Men: Apocalypse. In this new timeline, the mutant Apocalypse has awoken from a 1000 year nap and doesn’t like the world he sees. He was the world’s first mutant and when he reigned he was worshipped and he wants to live in that world again, so he starts messing things up, recruits some mutants, including Magneto, and goes to war with Professor X and the X-Men. The Magneto v. Professor X has been done again and again in these movies but this time there are A LOT more mutants involved so it should prove to be exciting. 

Many trailers these days give away the whole movie.  It’s a marketing tactic that I hope will fade. The trailer for High-Rise does the exact opposite and gives nothing away and I am very interested. I know very little about the film but what I do know is that it focuses on Tom Hiddleston as a well off doctor living in a fancy high rise tower that supplies its inhabitants with enough commodities, like its own school and supermarket, so there is no reason to leave the high rise except to go to work. It’s a wonderful place but not all is perfect. Power failures and class tension are just a couple of the issues that lead to life in the luxurious towers to begin to get out of control. I’ve seen one of the films the director made before this and he knows how to make a very dark yet fascinating film so I’m real excited. 

Heavy handed, topical films are ones that I tend to ignore but with the star power behind Money Monster it’s hard to ignore it completely. Directed by Jodie Foster, George Clooney is the star of a financial TV show and Julia Roberts is the producer. Those are some pretty famous people, with 14 Oscar nominations between them and 5 wins, so even if this isn’t an Oscar contender it will probably have some decent acting and directing. Clooney plays a man on the top of his game and his show is quite popular but his financial advice hasn’t helped everyone and one man who feels like the system ruined his life has had enough. That man is played by the almost famous Jack O’Connell (he’s been in some critically appreciated films but he hasn’t quite made it yet) and he takes it upon himself to expose the financial system for the corrupt monster that it is.  So he takes Clooney and a co-hostage on live television and forces an investigation into the shady world of financing. 

Now we’re all familiar with Alice and the insanity that ensued when she fell down a rabbit hole and was transported to Wonderland with crazy people who drink tea and stuff. In the end she becomes a warrior, saves Wonderland from the Red Queen and escapes. It did really well in theaters so Disney felt there were more Alice stories worth telling so we have Alice Through the Looking Glass. In her second adventure she wakes up in a hospital and the orderlies believe her to be mad. She escapes, walks into a mirror and, instead of getting cut by shards of glass, finds that it’s another door to Wonderland. She learns there is a new threat to Wonderland and wants to help her old friends like the White Rabbit, Mad Hatter and Blue Caterpillar( voiced by Alan Rickman in his final film role and the real reason I’ll see this). The new threat is the evil Lord of Time, played by Sacha Baron Cohen, who wants to mess with time and turn Wonderland into a wasteland. Will Cohen’s Time be able to out crazy Johnny Depp’s Hatter? Time will tell. That’s the worst pun I could come up with. I’m glad I went for it. 

When nearly all reviews for a film contain the word ‘weird’ or ‘bizarre’ it’s hard for me to ignore it and the description for The Lobster sure fits the bill. Colin Farrell stars as a man whose wife recently left him. To make matters worse he lives in The City run by a society that sends you to The Hotel where you must find a romantic partner within 45 days. And if you don’t’? Well, here’s where things get really weird. If you are unsuccessful in finding a companion you get turned into an animal and released into the forest. Fighting society’s rules, he escapes and forms a friendship with members of The Loners, those like him who could not find love or didn’t want to abide by the rules. This might be one of those films that some find amazing while some just find it really strange, but it’s also apparently charming, I’ll give it a shot. 

I could go on about writer/director Shane Black for a long while but I’ll try to condense it. He created Lethal Weapon, he created some of the best Christmas time action films (but not Die Hard), he is creating a new Predator film and had a small role in the original, he rebooted Robert Downey Jr’s career with Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and rebooted his own career as director of Iron Man 3. He’s one my favorite people of all time involved in movies and this month he has a new film called The Nice Guys. It’s a 70’s detective story starring Russel Crowe and Ryan Gosling who are caught up in a dangerous conspiracy that has them bickering while dodging the bad guys and it looks like a whole lot of fun. Black knows how to write awesome characters, great dialogue and create exciting action set pieces. This film looks to have it all.

What are you looking forward to this month?

April movies

April is my birthday month and each year I am treated to something great, usually in the form of a Fast and Furious film. No FF this month but there’s still a lot to look forward to.

I never saw Boyhood but I’ve seen Dazed and Confused like 20 times. Does that make me well versed in Richard Linklater’s filmography? No, no it does not - but my appreciation for Dazed and Confused does get me excited about his newest film, Everybody Wants Some!! (with 2 exclamation marks which, grammatically, goes against everything I believe. It’s either 1 or 3). This new film is a spiritual sequel to Boyhood because at the end of that film the lead goes off to college and it is a spiritual sequel to Dazed because that was a fun 70’s high school period piece and this is a fun 80’s college period piece. The term ‘spiritual sequel’ really just means that it is not an actual sequel, it just reminds you of another film. Everybody Wants Some!! focuses on a group baseball players and all the good times they have in college. Kurt Russel’s son, Wyatt, plays one of the guys and he is certainly looking like a late 70’s Kurt Russell, so that’s awesome.

Go-Pros are nifty little cameras that people can attach to their heads so a viewer can see the footage from the wearer’s point of view. It can be pretty cool if they’re doing some sort of extreme sport but if they’re just sitting down it can be pretty darn boring. Fortunately the folks behind Hardcore Henry managed to come up with a way to shoot a full length action movie using the camera. You are Henry and you are about to have a very rough day. You wake up in a lab, your wife is operating on you, giving you a new leg and a new arm. She begins to explain that you are stronger now but then you get attacked and she gets taken away. You then meet up with a guy named Jimmy who explains that there are people trying to kill you and you can fight back because whatever happened to you made you faster and stronger. Now it’s your mission to drive, shoot and punch your way through all of the waves of bad guys to get to your wife. If this sounds like a video game it’s because it is supposed to. That might not work for some but the trailers I’ve seen show off some crazy stunt work and what this director can pull off with a Go-Pro makes me happy the thing was invented in the first place. The First Person Movie experience will either die with this film or it’ll become another fad like the found footage movie. Either way I’m happy this one is out and can’t wait to see it.

There’s a guy who appears in pretty much every Melissa McCarthy movie. His name is Ben Falcone and he also happens to be Melissa McCarthy’s husband. The two of them wrote Tammy together and he directed and the same goes for The Boss, where McCarthy plays a rich and powerful business woman who loses it all after being arrested for insider trading. Her old assistant, played by everyone’s favorite person ever Kristen Bell (I can’t hide my appreciation for her, I think she’s awesome), helps her get back on her feet and the two tackle the ugly, cruel world of selling girl scout cookies, which takes them from arguments in school halls to street brawls. McCarthy has shown off some solid skills in the R-rated comedy department and there’s something about the manner in which she uses profanity that I find wonderfully entertaining.  

Occulus is a horrifying movie that came out a few years ago about a killer mirror. It deals with kids whose parents were killed by the evil mirror years ago and now they are trying to fight it. Any more details would be too much because the movie is not an easy watch - images of it haunt me. So one horror film based around kids deserves another, apparently, and the creator has made Before I Wake, which I feel is a much less original title than Occulus. In the director's newest, a couple adopts a young boy and realize that his dreams literally come true.  It’s wonderful and magical, that is until he has nightmares and those come true, too, and everything goes horribly wrong. This might be the kind of film I’ll watch in the comfort of my own home with all the lights on and a blanket to hide under.

Marvel alumni Jon Favreau, Scarlett Johansson (I’ve been misspelling that name forever), Idris Elba and Ben Kingsley joined with greatest actors ever Bill Murray and Christopher Walken to bring a new version of The Jungle Book to the big screen. The trailer looks like a decent adventure and it is fun that Bill Murray is voicing the ever optimistic Baloo, singing about his bear-necessities. But man, the CG is mind blowing. If I were in a Rip Van Winkle scenario where I’ve been asleep for decades or centuries or whatever and when I awoke the first thing I viewed was this trailer I would assume I was in a world where animals can talk. It looks that good. It’d probably also freak me out. But yeah, this looks pretty solid for yet another remake and, for some reason, it’s one of two Jungle Book movies we’re getting in the near future. Slated for an October 2017 release is Jungle Book: Origins, directed by the king of motion capture Andy Serkis. He’s Gollum/Smeagol in The Lord of the Rings/Hobbit films, the titular King Kong, Caesar in the Planet of the Apes films and Snoke in the new Star Wars. So there’s that to look forward to. 

A few years ago a little thriller came out that featured Jan from The Brady Bunch and Buzz from Home Alone in the quiet, eerie and violent crime drama Blue Ruin. Sticking with color in the title the director brings us Green Room, which features Maybe Funke from Arrested Development and Chekov from new Star Trek being hunted by Jean-Luc Picard from Star Trek: The Next Generation. This director likes putting likeable people into violent scenarios. This film involves a punk band looking for any gig they can get so when they get one at a sketchy bar they take it. Things don’t go well though, when they witness a terrible crime and the leader of a group of criminals, played by Patrick Stewart, orders his people to kill the witnesses. It is not going to be an easy watch. Blue Ruin is tough at times but this looks like a brutal film through and through. I want to see it but even without watching this I can’t recommend it to the faint of heart.

I haven’t seen Snow White and the Huntsman (known in my household as Snow White and the Hemsworth, for some reason this has become a running joke) but this prequel, entitled The Huntsman: Winter’s War, looks pretty cool. Chris Hemsworth is back (can you be back if it’s a prequel?) as The Huntsman and Charlize Theron is back (?) as the evil queen who is apparently named Ravenna. Not sure if that is canonical but I guess since this is a prequel they couldn’t call her evil if she was not yet evil so best to give her a name. Jessica Chastain and Emily Blunt are joining the cast, which is great because they are no strangers to action films. Chastain isn’t usually in on the action but Blunt has shown off her action skills in Looper and especially in Edge of Tomorrow, so this should be fun to see.

Ice Cube is probably the most successful rapper/actor - maybe even more so than Mark Wahlberg (he’d prefer you not remember the rapping part of his career). Mr. Cube is part of several film series including Friday, 21 Jump Street and Barbershop and this month he is revisiting the latter with Barbershop: The Next Cut. The first one dealt with Cube selling the shop only to realize that wasn’t the right thing to do and the second one dealt with bigger companies coming in and shutting down mom and pop shops.  This most recent one features other artists turned actors like Eve, Common and Nicki Minaj and the film will balance humor with real world issues like violence in the neighborhood.  It’s up to the folks at the barbershop to bring the community together. 

I learned a piece of history from the Elvis and Nixon trailer and that is that the most requested picture from the national archives is the image of Elvis Presley with President Nixon. Apparently there’s more to the story than just one of the most famous musicians ever wanting to take a photograph with the president at the time.  Nixon was not known for being cool but Elvis was literally the king of cool so this was probably seen as a great PR boost. I haven’t read much more on it because I am very excited to see it since Elvis is portrayed by Michael Shannon and Nixon is played by Kevin Spacey. These are two great actors and this should be a pretty entertaining film right here.

Garry Marshall has been involved with film and television for decades, he was a producer/writer for Happy Days, Mork & Mindy and The Odd Couple. He also made a few films and it seems that in all his years he has learned one thing: audiences will flock to a star studded film named after a holiday. Recently he has found success with New Year’s Eve and Valentine’s Day, which are both films focusing on different groups of people celebrating said holiday. They’re simple, corny and mildly charming so why not continue it with Mother’s Day? This film comes out on my birthday. I will not be seeing it for my birthday.  

Sometime last year an action masterpiece hit theaters-it was called John Wick. It’s the coolest film and lots of people enjoyed it, including Keegan-Michael Key and Jordan Peele, better known as Key and Peele. The basic plot is that an ex-hit man who recently lost his wife but gains a dog then loses his dog after an attack by criminals. He then vows to destroy the criminal element that caused him such emotional and physical pain. In Keanu, Peele is a recently dumped man who gains a cat but then that cat is stolen by local criminals, so he and his friend, played by Key, team up and pretend to be hardened gangsters to try and get the cat back. This leads them down a hilarious path that they are not cut out for. The trailers for this are amazing and this is what I will be seeing on my birthday.

What are you looking forward to seeing?

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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?