It’s that time of year! Long in-your-face-action sequences! Woo! 3D! IMAX! Over-the-top comedies with that outrageous cast! The latest computer animated installment in a franchise your coworkers kids love!
Sorry that was more sarcastic than I intended. Let’s start again.
Movies. I love them. Like a lot. Every year about this time, I start keeping score (which I usually forget around July 4th) on what films are hits and what are flops. Some years it’s hard to tell who the real winners are, because the film will do really well at the box office, but everyone that saw it said it wasn’t any good. Which is probably why I start losing count around Independence Day.
Last year the films I liked were pretty evenly spaced: The Avengers, Snow White and the Huntsman (What? I’m not a Twi-hard at all, I’m a sucker for good fantasy film production design), Prometheus (Clearly more of a scifi movie than an Alien movie), Brave, Ted, The Dark Knight Rises. The big flop that summer (that I saw) was Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. My brother, Sister-in-law and I were at the newly renovated (previously crappy) movie theatre by our house and were the only ones in our screening. We totally riffed on it the entire film, (have I mentioned my favorite tv show of all time is MST3K?)
The one I was really waiting for already came out (Star Trek. Did you really need to guess after my previous post?) and this year I’ve some high hopes for the rest of the summer. Monsters University, World War Z, The Way, Way Back, Elysium, The World’s End, and (yes) Kick-Ass 2. I’m gonna see The Lone Ranger, but honestly, my hopes aren’t too high. I’m really just a really big fan of The William Tell Overture *shrugs*. Some other films I’ll have to see a different cut of the trailer before I decide to see it, i.e.: The Wolverine and Pacific Rim.
We could talk indie films a moment too. For example, Frances Ha and What Maisie Knew open here this weekend. I’ll probably end up seeing both, though I was kinda vanilla about The Squid and the Whale. I’m also looking forward to The East and The Bling Ring, both of which were the only films that peaked my interest from indiewire’s ‘coming soon’ list (that I hadn’t seen) .
Anyone have any thoughts on anything coming out this summer?
Redheaded Rewrites 