I don't think anyone will argue with me if I proclaim that the summer movie season of 2010 hasn't gotten off to a great start:
Iron Man 2 - every single person who's seen it agrees that it's not as good as the first one, and really doesn't have much going on besides being a pleasant way to see CGI. Barely outperforming at the box office relative to the first one at the same point.
Robin Hood - each and every last review says the exact same thing, "too long, too dull, too serious", and the PR folks found themselves trying to describe $36 million as an acceptable opening weekend for a $200 million film.
Shrek Forever After - everyone agrees that even if it sucks, it's better than the last one. Underperforming at the box office relative to the last two in the series at the same point.
Sex and the City 2 - receives the most outlandishly angry reviews of the year, has become a national punchline. Underperforming at the box office relative to the first one at the same point.
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time - apparently, this movie does not actually exist.
So, June can't help but be an improvement, right? Please, God, right?
4.6.2010Wrong. There is now a feature film based on the comic strip
Marmaduke.
Also filling in the corners of what I believe to be the most crowded weekend of the summer, with four new releases, we have
Splice, a "tampering in God's domain" horror film that might actually be decent if it gets played right, and Sarah Polley in the cast is a
huge indication that we can be carefully optimistic.
Less likely to induce optimism is
Get Him to the Greek, whose title keeps feeling like a really weak play on "Get Me to the Church on Time" from
My Fair Lady, but maybe I'm just really over-thinking it. Anyway, it's a spin-off of
Forgetting Sarah Marshall featuring that film's best element, the obnoxious British rocker played by Russell Brand, which almost sounds appealing, if the trailer weren't so stunningly terrible. Besides, the sparkle has definitely worn off of the Apatow brand name by now.
And I'm personally feeling least-optimistic (I mean, besides
Marmaduke, unless maybe that film is awesomely bad) for
Killers, the first of two "romantic comedy + guns" movies this summer. It shall be the worse of the two, for it stars Ashton Kutcher and Katherine Heigl, the former of whom is a shrieking terror of anti-charisma, and the latter of whom is just annoying.
11.6.2010There as many reasons to be angry at the new
Karate Kid remake as grains of sand on the beach, but since I don't have much affection for (or memory of)
the original, the ones I'm going with are: Jackie Chan is better than making tepid kids' movies; "karate" is a Japanese art that is absolutely not the same thing as the Chinese art of "kung fu"; and it's fucking irritating that Will Smith bought his son a movie to show off his martial arts skills when Jaden Smith is - I'm sorry - deeply uncharming and untalented. If you're going to remake a nostalgia-laden classic, at least try to make sure you've found the best star for the job.
Over here, meanwhile, it's a feature-length remake of
The A-Team, because why the hell not.
18.6.2010Pixar Animation Studios enters the scary and unprepossessing "let's make lots of sequels" phase of its existence (three of their next four movies - how upsetting is that?) with
Toy Story 3, a movie that has me sick with worry and anticipation. I mean first, it's a new Pixar feature. Plus, it's a new
Toy Story. It's like finding a basket of unpublished Shakespeare plays.
But then, the doubts come in, and they are hideous: it's a third movie! third movies always, always suck! Or there's the concern that John Lasseter isn't directing, but handing over the reigns to Lee Unkrich, who has never been the primary director on a Pixar film before. And then there are the trailers, which pretty much consistently hit the wrong note with me.
About this last point, I have a rationalisation: perhaps you recall that Pixar's ad campaigns used to be just atrocious. It was only with
The Incredibles that they started to regularly put out trailers that actually made the films involved look appealing in any way. I clearly remember, in fact, that their movie right before
The Incredibles had trailers so impossible bad that I was seriously considering not bothering to watch the movie. That movie, of course, was
Finding Nemo, and we know that turned out well.
Anyway, leave it at this: I am more excited about
Toy Story 3 than anything else in the next six months; I am dreading
Toy Story 3 more than anything else in the next six months, as well.
There's also a comic book adaptation called
Jonah Hex. It must really suck to be the counterprogramming to a Pixar movie. Oh, and some half-way mainstream thing by the Duplass brothers called
Cyrus.
25.6.2010They're not making us wait very long for the other "romantic comedy + guns" movie, either, for here it is:
Knight and Day, with Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz. James Mangold is directing, which might be a good sign; it's hard to say.
In a coup for fans of aggressively unfunny comedy, Adam Sandler, Kevin James, David Spade, Rob Schneider, and Chris Rock - oh, Chris, what the hell happened to you, anyway? - all team up in one place for
Grown Ups, and if your juices aren't flowing yet, just wait till I mention that Dennis "
Chuck & Larry" Dugan is directing.
Posts
13 comments:
A couple of thoughts:
On Get Him to the Greek -- this is the problem with the spinoff mentality. What the producers fail to understand is that Brand was so funny in Forgetting Sarah Marshall because he was used sparingly. A whole movie of his will be just as unbearable as the man's stand-up. It's the Jack Black syndrome: do we want to see someone THAT hyper for a full length film? No...however, when used sparingly like Black in Orange County or High Fidelity these comic actors can be great, and even make a career out of being character actors.
On Splice -- Has Andrien Brody fallen further than any other Best Actor winner? I mean between this, Predators, and the-never-to-be-released-in-the-U.S. Giallo (and The Jacket before that) it seems that Brody just can't get good work. Weird, because I remember him being a pretty significant force in things like Summer of Sam.
On the Karate Kid -- Wasn't the whole point of the original Karate Kid that Ralph Maccio was an everyboy-type character who played the new kid in town and got picked on...so he sought the advice of Mr. Miyagi to learn how to defend himself? And because of this wasn't Maccio's character supposed to be sympathetic because him learning karate was the only thing that made him feel "at home"? How can we feel those things when we're watching Will Smith's kid. Yes, I understand there's this thing called acting, but the trailer proves to me that this film is seeking to do nothing but remind us that we're watching the very privileged childhood of a kid who has a rich and powerful dad who is a major player in Hollywood. Blech.
Did you like the Duplass Brothers' Baghead? I've heard mixed things. I did find myself liking Puffy Chair...a film that I found more refreshing and worthy of belong the "voice" of my generation than something like Garden State.
Grown Ups...ugh.
Sorry for the rant, hehe, apparently I needed to vent.
"Iron Man 2 - every single person who's seen it agrees that it's not as good as the first one, and really doesn't have much going on besides being a pleasant way to see CGI. Barely outperforming at the box office relative to the first one at the same point."
I personally know people who think it is much better than the first. Yes, that is as revealing about them as it sounds.
"In a coup for fans of aggressively unfunny comedy, Adam Sandler, Kevin James, David Spade, Rob Schneider, and Chris Rock - oh, Chris, what the hell happened to you, anyway? - all team up in one place for Grown Ups, and if your juices aren't flowing yet, just wait till I mention that Dennis "Chuck & Larry" Dugan is directing."
That is just horrifying.
Some counter-programming:
June 11--Winter's Bone
June 18--The Killer Inside Me (maybe)
June 25--Wild Grass
Of course, they're all limited release and I only really have a lot of confidence in Winter's Bone, but anything's better than Marmaduke.
Looking through the list, I can't help but feel you missed out one particular future cinematic abomination.
My feelings on Toy Story 3 can be best summed up by this Saved By the Bell clip:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljtuGoIIKGs
Third movies don't always suck! Indianda Jones and the Last Crusade was great. Better by far than the middle one. And there was also....um....well, there's got to be at least one more right?
Prisoner of Azkaban (HP #3) was better than the first two Harry Potter movies.
You may enjoy this AV Club summer movie preview, in which every film is weighed against Marmaduke.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III was better than TMNTII. And that, my friends, is the precise definition of "damning with faint praise."
"It's the Jack Black syndrome: do we want to see someone THAT hyper for a full length film?"
Black was outstanding in The School of Rock...but I see your point.
...and in Brutal Legend!
My feelings about Toy Story 3 are pretty much the same, and it goes to 11 when it comes to Cars 2 :/
Wednesday, 30th of June...I'm surprised myself that one of the Signs of the End of Western Civilization was left off the preview...wonder what it could be...it's as if all the blood were drained from teenage girls' minds...wonder whatever it could be...
Post a Comment