Miscellaneous Debris, December 2010 Edition

Closing the year with our roundup of news and observations that didn’t get a full post.

This year ends with a whimper in entertainment, the way most years do. Like too many of the previous years, we doubt 2010 will go down in the books as a particularly rewarding year for film or television, the occasional bright spots like The Social Network and The Fighter, and Terriers notwithstanding. (We’ll have our review of that second film up next week.) There was plenty to dissent about though, including The American and The Girl Who Played With Fire.

As this year shudders to a conclusion and the new one lurks just around the corner (beginning with the date 1-1-11, no less), here’s the news and other items we didn’t get around to blogging about this month. All opinions are our own, of course.

You gross 7.6 million opening weekend. That's how you know.

1. If 2010 concludes the decade, its last month in a sense ought to serve as a closing bell for the comic actors of the late 1990s. Both Jack Black and Owen Wilson had films that flopped this month – Gulliver’s Travels and How Do You Know, respectively – while Ben Stiller’s Meet The Fockers is making money but not fooling anyone about quality.

Ignoring for a moment that all three became paycheck actors years ago, each needs to start taking greater risks with their film choices again. (a couple of qualifiers: Greenberg was too mannered and too self-conscious by half; we’re not sure Black ever took risks.) By way of contrast, Luke Wilson has been quietly making offbeat work for several years now, even if most of his recent films (Middle Men, Henry Poole Is Here) have been neglected by the general public. We hope his contemporaries follow suit.

Surely they can't be serious.

2. The Library of Congress announced its list of 25 inductees into the National Film Registry this week, including no-surprise cultural heavyweights The Empire Strikes Back and Saturday Night Fever but making room for a few dark horses, too. This year’s list of inductees includes  The Exorcist, McCabe and Mrs. Miller, and Malcolm X. Perhaps the most surprising addition, however, was 1981′s disaster spoof Airplane!

Films included in the registry are preserved for future generations in environmentally controlled vaults. Librarian of Congress James H. Billington selected the movies from a list of 2100 films and short films suggested by the public. The complete list of 2010 inductees can be found here.

Bale in The Fighter

3. Speaking of films and awards, we’ll go ahead and start making our Oscar predictions now: The Social Network for Best Picture and David Fincher for Directing; Christian Bale for Best Supporting Actor in The Fighter, Nathalie Portman for Best Actress in Black Swan.

The spirit of this year’s Oscars will no doubt reflect youth and change, with hosts James Franco and Anne Hathaway presiding over a ceremony that will likely include potential nominees Jesse Eisenberg, Mila Kunis, Amy Adams, and Ryan Gosling, among others. We’ve said before the torch is overdue to be passed – maybe this year’s ceremony will signify as much.

Oswalt's Wikipedia photo

4. Sooner or later, we think Patton Oswalt’s going to get some kind of Oscar of his own. It’s a strange world, and he’s a very smart guy. We came across his eulogy for geek culture in this month’s issue of Wired and want to pass it along. While we can’t agree with his tastes in all things geek, he’s pretty spot on about where fan culture and subcultures as a whole are heading, and (more importantly) where they need to go. As usual, he’s funny and candid too, rewarding geeks who’ll get his arcane cultural references but not making them necessary for his arguments to work.

5. We’re not sure where Kenneth Branagh’s film version of the Marvel comics hero Thor fits into the overall scheme of “all things geek” – like next year’s Green Lantern, the viking godling come to Earth is a perennial top-of-the-second-tier character. The trailer debuted on the Internet and in theaters this month, just slightly exceeding our fickle expectations.

On the plus side, star Chris Hemsworth seems to have natural leading man chops, and the production design looks like goofy fun in an Excalibur kind of way. On the downside, Nathalie Portman in a superhero movie is the answer to a question nobody asked, and the fight scenes seem suspiciously like standard action movie fare. At worst,  the film can still serve as the warmup to The First Avenger: Captain America, which debuts later that summer.

Thor arrives in theaters nationwide May 6.

So money: Lightyear, Woody

6. We’re reminded of a quote from the late, great Tip O’Neil: “A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking about real money.”  Despite the second highest box office gross in history, 2010 will go down as something of a disappointment when compared to initial estimates by industry analysts. Entertainment Weekly‘s Keith Staskiewicz blames the letdown on a summer of disappointing tentpole attractions and an equally weak winter; much of the year’s first quarter, too, was buoyed by the carryover success of Avatar.

Final box office estimates for 2010: 10.55 billion dollars, down slightly from last year’s $10.6 billion. The highest grossing film, by the way, was Toy Story 3 with $415 million in ticket sales.

7. We’ve talked it up it a couple of times already, so we feel a little obligated to mention that Matt Damon’s The Adjustment Bureau is now scheduled for a March 4 release. Based on a short story by Blade Runner author Philip K. Dick and with a supporting cast that includes Emily Blunt, John Slattery and Terence Stamp, the film tells the story of star-crossed lovers engineered to remain apart by a team of reality mechanics, despite their best efforts to come together.

Universal had previously scheduled its release for last September, around the same time as advance promotion for Damon’s ultimately underwhelming Hereafter.  We’re always in the mood for brainy, stylish sci-fi, and the delay is only fueling our expectations.

8. We’ll end the year with the same plea we made last year, to ask everyone to seek and demand better entertainment across the media spectrum – film, television, online, and so on. It seems to us that the general feeling, more and more, is that our culture is on the decline, becoming “schlocky and superficial” (to quote Boston Legal) while focusing increasingly on the regressive and the reductive. But that’s not going to change until we all agree to do something about it.

As a new year’s resolution, swear off the junk of reality television and other “guilty pleasures,” and resolve to see one classic film and read a classic book each month – twelve classic books, twelve classic movies in 2011. We promise you that you’ll feel good about it, and that the old junk will seem so much more meaningless in comparison. If you need a place to start, here’s a list of the American Film Institute’s Greatest 100 Movies.

Thanks for reading. We’ll be back in the new year with more reviews and features each week than we had in 2010. Have a great holiday weekend.

- Michael Kabel

Miscellaneous Debris: July 2010 Edition

Our end-of-the-month wrapup of reviews, news, and observations that didn’t get a full post.

Here come the dog days of summer, but it’s not a complete loss. For as blah as the summer has been so far - and it’s been a giant yawn, by and large – the coming weeks show plenty of promise. In the meantime, last weekend’s San Diego Comic-Con and the upcoming fall television season has given probably half the Internet several weeks worth of blogging and complaining fuel.

Some of our own complaints and blogging fuel are listed below. All opinions are our own, and as always they’re presented in no particular order of importance.

1. Actually, first things first: Mad Men‘s fourth season premiere was a virtuoso bit of television, as good if not better than the series’ vaunted pilot and a jump ahead in quality from the season three debut. With its characters entering the post-JFK era – some leaping, some getting pulled along by the undertow of changing times – the show seems at once re-energized and recommitted. Jon Hamm continued to bring new range and depth to Don Draper, as Matthew Weiner’s script stood the character on his handsome head, while Pete Campbell (Vincent Kartheiser) and Peggy Olson (Elisabeth Moss) finally emerged as the confident grown-ups fans have waited for them to become.

Weiner made some comments last spring that the show would only run six seasons, and it’s not hard to see this ep as the halfway point in the story’s evolution. This coming week’s episode reveals – just in time for summer – the first-ever Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce Christmas party.

2. It’s fun to get what we want. After complaining last year that we wished some former A-list leading men deserved and were due for comebacks, two of our picks have movies opening this week and next. Kevin Kline’s indie comedy The Extra Man, co-starring Paul Dano and John C. Reilly, opens in limited release this weekend. Next week’s The Other Guys, starring Mark Wahlberg and Will Ferrell, co-stars Michael Keaton; we’ll mention again that The Merry Gentleman, Keaton’s directing debut, remains one of our favorite films released since this blog began a couple of years ago.

In the meantime, here’s the trailer for The Extra Man:

3. Nothing came out of the San Diego Comic-Con that really amazed us, but a few things surfaced that sort of disappointed. We’ve made the case before that Joss Whedon isn’t the best choice to write or direct the upcoming Avengers movie, but now that he’s confirmed to do both we’ll give him an even chance. Mark Ruffalo (Zodiac) is a trade-up in replacing Edward Norton as the Hulk, and it’s good to see Jeremy Renner finally confirmed as Hawkeye. All the same, it’s still a bummer to hear that Avengers founding member and mainstay Hank Pym will not appear in the film. The full cast list was revealed at the convention’s panel.

For no good reason, here’s an episode of The Avengers: United They Stand cartoon from the late 90s. Actually, it’s so painfully 90′s it might as well be sporting a pair of Doc Marten’s and a Friends haircut.

4. Better late than never: we’re happy to report that The Unusuals, the exceptional police comedy-drama that Renner headlined last year, has been available on DVD for a while now. Co-starring Terry Kinney, Amber Tamblyn, Adam Goldberg and Harold Perrineau, the show mixed black humor with sometimes surreal drama and plot twists, creating something unlike anything else on network television. Naturally, it lasted just ten episodes before ABC pulled the plug. Renner immediately went on to acclaim in The Hurt Locker, so hopefully the network regrets its cancellation. Nine episodes are available for streaming on Netflix.

5. October sees the release of The Social Network, which except for its pedigree might seem cause for suspicion; still, an Aaron Sorkin script directed by David Fincher is too good to pass up, and anyway a film that’s intelligently made about current events is seldom a bad thing, if ever.

Based on Ben Mezrich’s book The Accidental Billionaires and starring Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield and Justin Timberlake, the film chronicles the rise of Facebook. By the way, please join our Facebook group.

The film opens nationwide October 1.

6. In previous installments of Miscellaneous Debris we chastised both Rescue Me and Leverage for their egregious product placement, devoting too much time to mentioning or in some cases outright singing the praises of their commercial sponsors. Happily, both shows have toned that down quite a bit in their current runs. After a hit-or-miss second season, Leverage seems to have found its legs, with each episode by and large more entertaining than the last. Meanwhile Rescue Me, though too quick once again to fall back on the Tommy Gavin (Denis Leary)-as-human-trainwreck plotlines, has returned to ideas from earlier seasons that worked well before getting abandoned. In particular, the ace comic chemistry between firefighters Sean Garrity (Steven Pasquale) and Mike Silletti (Mike Lombardi) and the reappearance of slain firefighter Jimmy Keefe (James McCaffrey) improve every episode in which they’re used.

7. Ten years ago, Ang Lee’s martial arts epic Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon caused something of a quiet sensation, re-defining how audiences (particularly sci-fi and fantasy audiences) thought about the limits and potential of the action film genre. The  film’s luxurious cinematography and eye-googling special effects, combined with a simple but moving story of revenge and deferred love, made larger Western franchises including the then-popular Matrix and Star Wars prequel trilogy seem instantly cumbersome and outdated. Subsequent imitators and similar wuxia efforts trickled through Western multiplexes for years afterward.

A Blu-Ray edition was released this month (a previous edition was available in a three-film wuxia box set), and though we haven’t seen it yet we can only imagine how Lee’s incredible vision appears in high-definition. If you haven’t seen the film, you should. If you have, it might be time to revisit it.

8.  Criterion has officially announced the Blu-Ray and two-disc DVD release of Terrence Malick’s The Thin Red Line. Set to debut September 28, Criterion’s edition includes a new digital transfer supervised by Malick, thirteen minutes of outtakes, interviews with cast members, newsreels of the actual fighting on Guadalcanal and the Solomon Islands, and audio tracks of the Melanesian chants heard throughout the film.

To reiterate what we said a couple of months ago: Upon its 1998 release the film was unfairly ignored by a public that preferred the more simplistic jingoism of Saving Private Ryan (released earlier that year) or felt leery of its sorrowful, meditative tone. Nevertheless, Malick’s eye for arresting imagery didn’t dull one bit after an almost twenty year hiatus from filmmaking; the trailer alone is more picturesque than the entirety of most films, and also more moving. 

Our annual summer hiatus runs through next week. We’ll return Tuesday, August 10 with more of what you come here for. Thanks for reading.

- Michael Kabel

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Our (Rest Of The) Summer Movie Guide

Quick previews of nine films premiering in July, August, and September.

How’s your summer going? Enjoying the heat wave? The first official day of summer was just a couple of weeks ago, June 21, though of course it felt like that time of year, both in the climate and in our culture, for weeks before that. The summer movie season continues to go through its ups and downs, with slam dunk hits like The Twilight Saga: Eclipse and Toy Story 3 raking in cash hand over fist, with more predictably lucrative fare like Grown Ups and The Last Airbender also making bank.  

We still believe it’s been a paltry summer for film, with not even a surprise like last year’s Moon to break up the doldrums. Still, there’s hope on the horizon. The following films all come out in the next few weeks, some in limited but most with wide release schedules planned. We’ve tried to include a range of tastes.

Salt - (July 23) When CIA covert operative Evelyn Salt (Angelina Jolie) is accused by a Soviet defector of plotting to kill the president, she goes on the run to try and clear her good name and get to the truth. Directed by Philip Noyce (The Quiet American) from a script by Kurt Wimmer (Street Kings) and Brian Helgeland (L.A. Confidential).  Our take: This is the third time in five years Jolie has played a spy/assassin, and we kind of think she could slink her way through a part like this in her sleep. Also on familiar ground are the always-welcome Liev Shreiber as Salt’s colleague and the ubiquitous Chiwetel Ejiofor as a fellow agent. We’re lukewarm at best about this one: for all our complaints about wanting more films for grown-ups, this seems like an auto-pilot effort by all involved.

Get Low (Limited July 30) – A notorious mountain man (Robert Duvall) plans to attend his own funeral with the help of a wily funeral director. Old secrets and grudges come to light as the event turns into a local sensation. Our take: High hopes for this one, as we suspect it could be the oddball surprise of the year given the talent both veteran and emerging involved. We’re anxious for more Murray after cracking up at his beyond-meta cameo in last year’s Zombieland, and Duvall all but owns the copyright on these kind of grizzled roles. Academy Award-winning short film director Aaron Schneider (Two Soldiers) makes his feature debut, with a script co-written by C. Gaby Mitchell (Fallen Angels) and Chris Provenzano (Mad Men) from a story by newcomer Scott Seeke. Read our full preview here.

Middle Men (August 6) Set in the far-flung past of 1995 (We were in college!), the based on a true story reveals  how an otherwise upstanding businessman (Luke Wilson) started the first online billing company to deal exclusively with the adult entertainment industry. Along the way he gets involved with porn starlets, Russian gangsters, federal agents, and any variety of con artists. Our take: We are shocked to learn that pornography is available on the Internet. Seriously, with a cast full of underseen stars – including  James Caan, Kevin Pollak, and the mighty Robert Forster – and an offbeat subject, there’s no end to the Boogie Nights-like potential of director George Gallo’s (Midnight Run) latest effort. Wilson is a natural for roles such as this, and anything to get him off those embarrassing cell phone ads is all right by us. The following trailer is redband, meaning it’s NSFW.

Eat, Pray, Love (August 13) – Based on the gargantuan best-selling memoir by Elizabeth Gilbert, the story centers on a newly divorced woman (Julia Roberts) who embarks on a journey around the world to find happiness and contentment. Our Take: We imagine August multiplexes including the twi-hards viewing Eclipse for the third time while their moms check out this sort-of comeback for Roberts one theatre over. Glee mastermind Ryan Murphy is likely exactly the right choice to adapt the material, while the supporting cast including Javier Bardem, James Franco and Billy Crudup means plenty of eye candy for its target demographic.

The Expendables (August 13) – A team of mercenaries is sent to a South America country on a mission to kill its ruthless dictator, even as other forces including a traitor in their midst conspire against them. Our take: Overkill is the name of the game for Sly Stallone’s latest trifecta effort, both in the plot and special effects and also in the tough-guy roundup casting. A good thing, too: pretty much everyone involved could use a career tune-up, and a group effort like this makes good sense. Too, it’s irresistable for anybody that grew up watching action movies on cable. One question, though: Was Chuck Norris busy?

The American (September 1) - A professional hitman and weapons maker (George Clooney) flees to the remote mountains of Italy before awaiting his next, final assignment. While holed up in a tiny village he befriends a priest and romances a local girl, either of whom might offer salvation. Our take: The flip side to The Expendables in so many ways, Anton Corbijn’s second feature effort looks to be a more deliberate and cerebral take on some familiar genre tropes. Clooney has our attention as usual, though much like Jolie it wouldn’t hurt him to lay off the spy and smooth criminal parts for a little while. Read our full preview here.

The Adjustment Bureau (September 17) – A rising politician (Matt Damon) begins a fledgling but powerful romance with a ballerina (Emily Blunt), even while shadowy and mysterious forces rearrange reality so as to keep them apart. Loosely based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, adapted and directed by George Nolfi (The Bourne Ultimatum.), and co-starring Anthony Mackie, John Slattery, Terrence Stamp, Daniel Dae Kim and Shohreh Aghdashloo. Our take: Damon has as much claim to the title  ”America’s Leading Man” as anybody else right now, Blunt is a rising star worth watching, and brainy, romantic science fiction is always a welcome sight. Nevertheless, if Inception disappoints this film could likewise fail to connect with audiences.

The Town (September 17) – The leader of a gang of thieves (Ben Affleck) struggles with feelings of responsibility and attraction for a bank manager (Rebecca Hall) traumatized by one of his heists. Meanwhile an FBI agent (Jon Hamm) pursues her as well, all the while closing in on the thieves. Our take: Has Affleck made a modern-day, grittier Tequila Sunrise? Damon’s former partner returns to their hometown of Boston for this character drama that opens the same day and also features a Mad Men star in a prominent role. Affleck’s earlier writing-directing effort Gone Baby Gone was a pleasant surprise, but for no good reason we’re less enthused about him directing himself. Jeremy Renner (The Hurt Locker) also co-stars as Affleck’s henchman.

Buried (September 24) –  A civilian truck driver working in Iraq (Ryan Reynolds) is taken hostage by terrorists and buried alive with only a knife, a cell phone, and a lighter. Initially suffering from amnesia, he begins to piece together his fragmented memories as his day’s worth of air slowly runs out. Our take: This effort by Spanish director Rodrigo Cortes seems an unusual choice for Reynolds, who up until now (and the upcoming Green Lantern) has stayed largely away from heavier concepts. There’s a Hitchcockian feel even to just the basic story pitch, and Cortes has reportedly followed that muse towards including plenty of innovative camera angles and perspectives to help tighten the tension. If audiences are willing to buy the former Van Wilder in such grim surroundings the film could be a surprise hit.

- Michael Kabel

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Miscellaneous Debris, June 2010 Edition

Our monthly roundup of news, reviews and speculation that didn’t wind up with a full post.  

It's hot outside.

 The problem with movies is that they’re too often interrupted by the more meager demands and rewards of real life. We meant to go to the movies this weekend but never got around to it, busy instead with one dreary thing after another, and anyway there’s nothing playing at the local theatres that seems exciting (We’re not twelve years old, and as aging Whedonites we don’t care for Twilight).  

Actually, we’re taking the rest of this week off for the Fourth of July holiday weekend, returning Tuesday, July 6. In the meantime, here’s all the stuff we thought mostly worth discussing over the month of June, items that didn’t rate an entire blog post of their own but nevertheless seem noteworthy for one reason or another.  

1. Besides the ignominy of so many thuds, maybe the nastiest thing about this summer of woe for the box office isn’t the quantity of flops but rather the media’s glee in pronouncing several films as failures. We haven’t crunched the numbers, but we don’t imagine 2010 necessarily has more or bigger turkeys than most other summers; without a giant tentpole movie – like the kind Toy Story 3 is shaping up to become – the desperation at the box office has just seemed worse.  

If The A-Team, Prince of Persia, and a few others have underwhelmed, it’s not necessarily a comment on their quality or on the public’s shifting tastes. It means audiences ignored them for whatever reasons normally affect such things, not a little of which inevitably seems to have something to do with marketing. Actually, The A-Team has good word of mouth, as did Prince of Persia. Some of the bombs, admittedly, were odious: both Jonah Hex and Sex and The City 2 were answers to questions nobody asked, efforts apparently massaged into oblivion by studio meetings and conferences. Elsewhere the sharks have circled the Tom Cruise – Cameron Diaz vehicle Knight and Day for weeks; our guess is that the film will quietly make a modest profit.  

2. The idea that such older-skewing films as Knight and Day and Sex and The City 2 should fail echoes a topic that’s gone around for a couple of years now: the idea that the time of the movie for grownups is in its twilight. This summer the two biggest successes so far, The Karate Kid and now Toy Story 3 – are both distinctly kid-friendly. Not to over-simplify, but this is partly because children don’t go to school in the summertime and these two products – both reminders of beloved films from other eras – are likely irresistable to thirty-something parents who remember the one film from their teens and the other from their 20′s.  The films aren’t kids’ movies so much as entertainment that’s palatable all the way around the SUV.  

3. Steve Carrell says he’s leaving The Office at the end of the series’ upcoming seventh season in order to spend more time with his family. We lost interest in The Office a while back – the “Dwight always wins” story policy froze us out – but nevertheless we’re curious to see how they handle Carrell’s exodus. Meanwhile his animated feature Despicable Me opens next week, with his adult feature Dinner For Schmucks (in which he seems to combine his Michael Scott schtick with George Clooney’s haircut circa 1994) opening at the end of the month.  

4. Speaking of that film (and its vaguely amusing trailer below), it’s another project to co-star Zack Galifianakis, his fourth released since The Hangover last year. Nothing against him getting rich, but we’re thinking he might start to worry about over-exposure. The industry has made similar mistakes before: taking a promising character actor and throwing him into every project available at the time seldom turns out well, either for the audience or for the performer. For lack of a better term, we call this accelerated career half-life the Zahn Effect.  

  

Yelchin in Terminator Salvation

 5. With rumors that an announcement regarding the next actor to play Spider-Man just around the corner, we want to officially endorse Anton Yelchin for the role. The young Russian actor did great work in both Terminator Salvation and Star Trek, giving better performances than anyone expected. With the upcoming fourth film reportedly a reboot (goodbye, disco-dancing hipster Spidey), Yelchin is exactly the rising talent that a fresh take on the franchise needs. Now, who to play Mary Jane Watson? Hopefully, Easy A’s Emma Stone.  

6. Mad Men, the best show on TV, makes it season four debut in just under four weeks, on July 25. The sleek new preview poster started showing up online a couple of weeks or so ago, apparently hinting at the wide-open future that Don Draper and his fellow Sterling-Cooper refugees face now that they’ve struck out on their own. We’re also glad to learn, somewhat belatedly, that Jared Harris, who plays sensitive British executive Lane Pryce, has been promoted to regular cast member as of the upcoming season. Plot and story details still remain maddeningly elusive – series mastermind Matt Weiner could/should run the CIA – which makes the wait that much harder. Our own small wish is to see the return of schoolteacher/Barbara Hershey lookalike Suzanne Farrell (Abigail Spencer). 

7. A week later, AMC premieres (or re-premieres, following a June 13 sneak peek) its brainy new thriller Rubicon, starring James Badge Dale as a government intelligence analyst who realizes his bosses take part in a vast conspiracy pulling the strings of world events. Ostensibly a complex, cooly intelligent mind-bender of a serial – think The X-Files without the geeky weirdness – it’s as different from the network’s other two shows as Mad Men and Breaking Bad are from each other. Miranda Richardson, Arliss Howard, and Jessica Collins co-star, with the great Peter Gerety (Homicide: Life On The Street) in a crucial guest-starring role in the pilot. Expect something adrenalin-fueled, like 24 or Alias, and you’ll be disappointed. The show has moodier, slower-burning intentions in mind. 

8. Finally, we can’t think of a better way to celebrate America than with this clip from The Candidate, director Michael Ritchie’s still-topical skewering of politics and the otherwise good people who get drawn into its seductive vortex. Robert Redford plays Bill McKay, the activist running for a Senate seat against a folksy conservative incumbent with the awesome name Crocker Jarmon. Released in 1972, McKay’s exhausted meltdown into a gibberish of buzz words remains hilarious – and relevant – almost forty years later. 

Happy July 4, everybody. God bless America.

- Michael Kabel

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Our June 2010 Movie Guide

Some of the biggest releases of the year’s biggest movie month, and our over/under analysis about them. 

The month of June, maybe more than any other, represents excitement for the future. It’s the first month of summer vacation, the first true month of the summer season, and the favorite time to get married. It’s also, of course, the biggest month of the movie year, in which the studios roll out some of their biggest releases, the better to take advantage of the seasonal movie crowd. Actually going to the movies in the summertime is as much of an American tradition as habit; we look forward to going to the movies in June because that’s when the biggest movies come out. 

June 2010 promises some truly big films, even though each comes with its own problems and reasons for skepticism. The following seven are a random sampling, not meant to show the entirety of any release schedule so much as what’s already got our attention. 

We say that about some of our ex-girlfriends.

Splice (June 4) – The creepy, slick advertisements for this genetic engineering-gone-wrong thriller show us just enough of the lab-created hybrid creature to get our attention, even if the poster gives its apparance pretty much completely away. More enticing for us is the casting of Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley (our college crush after her surly turn in Go, way back when) as the scientists bringing the monstrously exotic Dren to life. Ramping up the chic horror factor, the film’s directed by Vincenzo Natali, who made a stir sometime back with his low-budget mindfuck Cube, while Guillermo Del Toro serves as executive producer. 

We hope the film will be: exactly what Natali has claimed, an intelligent look at the consequences of a rapidly emerging science. We’re afraid it will be: Vacuous, over-stylized fluff, much like Del Toro’s own Hellboy II: The Golden Army. Watch the embedding-proof trailer on YouTube here. 

Get Him To The Greek (June 4) – A record company intern (Jonah Hill) struggles to get a washed-up, debauched rock star (Russell Brand) from London to Los Angeles’ Greek Theatre in seventy-two hours. Awkward, but hilarious, hijinks presumably ensue. Brand reprises the role he played in 2008′s Forgetting Sarah Marshall; Hill, who also appeared in that film, does not; Nicholas Stoller directed both. 

We hope the film will be: A pleasantly surprising, deft satire of the music industry that’s more about character than vulgar gaggery; a modern-day My Favorite Year, though that seems like a long shot.  We’re afraid it will be:  Shrill mugging from two actors too quick to fall back on familiar shtick. Overall, we’re expecting this summer’s Year One.  Watch the embedding-proof trailer on YouTube here. 

The A-Team (June 11) – An elite group of soldiers looks to clear their name with the U.S. military after getting framed for a crime they didn’t commit. This adaptation of the beloved 80s television series, co-written and directed by budding action auteur Joe Carnahan (Smokin’ Aces), updates the group’s tour of duty from Vietnam to the Iraq War. Liam Neeson plays team leader Hannibal Smith, with Bradley Cooper as Face, Rampage Jackson as B.A. Baracus and Sharlto Copley as Howling Mad Murdock. Jessica Biel and Patrick Wilson co-star. 

We hope the film will be: A throwback to the action films of the TV series’ decade, which relied on elaborate stuntwork and a blistering pace to wow audiences. Its inspiration was big, dumb, well-executed fun; the movie should live up to that unpretentious tradition. We’re afraid it will be: something that doesn’t. 

 

Toy Story 3 (June 18) – When their owner leaves home for college, Woody (Tom Hanks), Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen) and the gang are shipped off to a daycare center, where they must survive a whole roomful of rambunctious kids. Pixar mainstay Lee Unkrich returns to direct, with a screenplay by Michael Arndt (Little Miss Sunshine). 

We hope the film will be: Even half as entertaining as the first two installments of the franchise. Still, we’re skeptical. Pixar hit their first true misfire with last year’s Up, and if the trailer below is any indication this time around the emphasis is on sentimentality and slapstick noise over true whimsy and smarts. We’re afraid it will be: an indication that Up‘s mawkishness and mean-spirited violence were only the beginning of a trend for the formerly infallible studio. 

 

That the poster takes pains to hide Hex's scars is a bad sign.

Jonah Hex (June 18) – Wild West drifter and sometime bounty hunter Jonah Hex (Josh Brolin) is offered a deal that he can’t refuse: in exchange for clemency from the multiple warrants on his head, the U.S. Army wants him to kill the terrorist (John Malkovich) planning to unleash an army of undead upon the Earth. Megan Fox co-stars as Hex’s prostitute love interest and sidekick. Warner Bros has the same sequel hopes that have become standard operating procedure for comic book movies. 

We hope the film will be: At least somewhat faithful to Hex’s DC Comics adventures in the 70s, but we doubt it: the original Hex was a pretty transparent Man With No Name/Outlaw Josie Wales… ahem, “homage” who proudly wore his Confederate Army uniform and killed without hesitation. The zombie aspect to the plot is also pretty disappointing. We’re afraid it will be: Another misbegotten comic-to-screen-adaptation that went off the rails when they changed too much about the subject matter. Judging by the trailer, they changed everything that wasn’t nailed to the ground. 

 

Cyrus (June 25, limited) – A recently divorced man (John C. Reilly) romances a lovely, lonely single mother (Marisa Tomei), only to encounter resistance from her teenaged son. Mumblecore auteurs Jay and Mark Duplass make their (by and large) mainstream crossover, including their trademark frenetic camerawork and reliance on improvised dialogue. Catherine Keener co-stars. 

We hope the film will be: another smart character showcase for Reilly and Tomei, who besides their higher-profile roles have been creating quieter but much more substantial work in smaller pictures for going on two decades. We’re afraid it will be: yet more hipster piffle along the lines of Greenberg.  The trailer alone reminds us of any number of other works, ranging from films including Punch-Drunk Love, Step-Brothers and The 40 Year Old Virgin to at leat one plot thread from probably every family melodrama ever put on television. Still, a film like this is all about performance, and we can see the chemistry between the two stars already. 

 

Knight and Day (June 25) – When a secret agent (Cruise) crosses paths with a hapless civilian (Diaz), he’s forced to drag her into the hunt for a battery that may contain the source of unlimited energy. An international chase ensues, putting them at odds and in alliances with any number of competing groups. 

We hope the film will be: another throwback. These kinds of big-star, big-stunt spectacles used to be the norm for summer movie seasons, back in the 90s heyday of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mel Gibson. Nothing wrong with that; after all, you shouldn’t need a comic book collection to want to go to the movies. 

We’re afraid it will be: an effort by two fading stars to shore up their careers with a proven formula (see also Killers, the Heigl-Kutcher variation on this same theme arriving June 4.) Director James Mangold’s last effort, the Russell Crowe vehicle 3:10 To Yuma, was deplorable largely because of its dependence on threadbare plot tropes. 

We’ll be back later this week. Thank you for reading.

- Michael Kabel

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