April 17 - State of Play

The previews for this crackle: politics and investigative journalism colliding
with an incredible energy. Is that great marketing, or is that what the movie
is really like? Time will tell, but I have a good feeling about this one.
I'm also excited by the return of Rachel McAdams to the spotlight. The
thriller Red Eye was a good movie thanks to Wes Craven's technical excellence,
but it was Rachel McAdams' charisma that made it so memorable and engrossing.

Curiously, director Kevin Macdonald's background is primarily in documentaries.
He directed the amazing Touching the Void. His last film, The Last King of
Scotland, got Forest Whitaker an Oscar.

April 17 - Crank: High Voltage

"Crank" was a great idea for a ridiculous action movie. A man (Jason Statham,
obviously) is injected with a poison that will kill him unless he keeps his
adrenaline going. So he runs around punching people and crashing cars and
stuff as he tracks his killers down. I know, it sounds hilarious, right?

The movie is excruciating. It's loud, obnoxious, and utterly lacking in any
kind of creativity other than its central premise. Sometimes it doesn't even
get its own joke. Statham does not tend to make good movies, but many of them
are guilty pleasures. Crank is just terrible.

Needless to say, my hopes, therefore, are not high for this sequel, which
alters its premise slightly. Now he's got a battery powered heart that needs
constant jolts of electricity to keep it running. Again: great idea for a
*parody* of an action movie, but not an *actual* action movie. The sequel can
be good only if it knows what it is -- *and* has enough creativity to expand
the joke from a synopsis into 90 minutes.

April 17 - Thick As Thieves

Morgan Freeman is the veteran thief on one last job. Antonio Banderas is the
young hot shot. The Russian mob fits in somehow. I feel like I've seen this
before.

April 17 - Chatham

The world was waiting for David Carradine's first romantic comedy. Funny as
that sounds, the movie actually sounds kind of nice. The IMDb says: "...set
on Cape Cod in 1905, about three 70-year-old retired sea captains who try to
lure an attractive middle-aged woman into marriage." The other two captains
are Rip Torn and Bruce Dern, and the woman is Mariel Hemingway. It's great to
see these folks getting work.

April 17 - 17 Again

A guy wishes he could do it all over again. He gets that wish and finds
himself in high school again. Be careful what you wish for, right? If I woke
up and found myself in high school again, I would not find this a blessing,
but that isn't the worst of it: he comes back as Zac Efron.

April 24 - The Soloist

This was originally slated to open in 2008. There was a lot of anticipation
for this third film by director Joe Wright, as the other two (Pride and
Prejudice and Atonement) were Oscar bait. When the film was postponed, the
media went wild speculating that the film wasn't any good. This is inevitably
what happens when a film doesn't turn out the way the distributing studio
hopes -- for example, a film gets booted out of Oscar season -- but there are
lots of other reasons a film might be delayed, too.

The IMDb synopsis: "A Los Angeles Journalist, befriends a homeless Julliard
trained musician, while looking for a new article for the paper." Catherine
Keener, Robert Downey Jr., and Jamie Foxx star.

April 24 - Obsessed

Fatal Attraction was not a great movie, but it hit some kind of nerve. It
probably wasn't the first movie to do that kind of story, but it surely wasn't
the last: "Obsessed" is the next in a line of countless films that have
emulated it. They succeed or fail mostly on the strength of the actors.
I'm not excited about the actresses, Beyonce Knowles and Ali Larter, although
the former was unexpectedly wonderful in Dreamgirls. But it's great to see
Idris Elba, a stand-out among stand-outs in the HBO series The Wire, snag a
leading role in a feature film.

May 1 - X-Men Origins: Wolverine

If you're a foreign filmmaker, snagging an Oscar may well mean that your next
job is in Hollywood. This year, Marion Cotillard is the leading lady in Public
Enemies, and Gavin Hood (director of Tsotsi, which won the Best Foreign
Language Film Oscar a while back) got handed the reins to the X-Men franchise.
Unfortunately, the trailer is completely forgettable.

May 1 - Ghosts of Girlfriends Past

Matthew McConaughey sure loves the niche he's carved out for himself. Is he
unable to try something different, or merely unwilling? Still, there's no
reason this movie about a cocky bachelor learning to love will be any worse
than any of his other movies about a cocky bachelor learning to love. But
doesn't the whole Christmas Carol thing mean this should have been released
at Christmastime?

May 8 - Star Trek

Reboots are all the craze right now. When a franchise wears out, reboot it!
Well, it's hard to argue with Casino Royale and Batman Begins not being hugely
successful gambles, both artistically and commercially. But Roger Ebert said
this about Steve Martin's reboot of The Pink Panther:

"Inspector Clouseau has been played by other actors before Martin . . . but
what's the point? The character isn't bigger than the actor, as Batman and
maybe James Bond are. The character is the actor, and I had rather not see
Steve Martin, who is himself inimitable, imitating Sellers."

Not that any of the original Star Trek cast deserve comparison with Peter
Sellers, but Ebert's point applies here as well. The Star Trek characters
were not imbued with complicated personalities, but what's there comes from
the actors. The actors and the characters are inextricable. Spock, played by
anyone other than Leonard Nimoy, can scarcely be called Spock at all. And
wouldn't Kirk, played by someone besides William Shatner, either be a stranger
or a parody?

This may be a good movie. But in recasting the original characters instead of
creating new ones, it has steepened, not smoothed, the slope it must climb.

May 19 - Dr. Dolittle: A Tinsel Town Tail (direct-to-DVD)

What entry in the series do you think this is? The second? The third?
Maybe you remember that "Dr. Dolittle 3" was quietly released on DVD in 2006.
But this is actually the *fifth* series entry and the third which stars not
Eddie Murphy as Dr. Dolittle but Kyla Pratt as his daughter Maya Dolittle.
I caught part of one on television, and while it seemed like typical formula
feel-good TV movie stuff, it was about a million times better than the
classless desperation of the Murphy films.

May 21 - Terminator Salvation

Will this be good? Not a chance. It breaks two unbreakable rules:

1. You can't make a Terminator movie without Arnold Schwarzenegger.
2. You can't make a good movie with McG.

May 22 - Dance Flick

You probably weren't wondering about the heritage of the "_____ Movie" movies.
In 2000, following Scream's revitalization of the slasher genre, the Wayans
teamed up with some other dudes to make Scary Movie. Then some of the other
dudes went insane and made Date Movie, Epic Movie, Disaster Movie, and a
kiliton of Scary Movie sequels. They were all crap.

So you might think "Dance Flick" will be more of the same kind of crap. But
you'd be wrong. Because the Wayans brothers did this movie, and the some of
the other dudes were not involved. So actually this will be an ENTIRELY
DIFFERENT kind of crap.

May 22 - Night At the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian

I enjoyed The Night At the Museum a lot and was pleased to hear that a sequel
was in the works. But I dunno. Doesn't it feel like exactly the kind of movie
that would get a *bad* sequel? Sometimes unexpected successes are unexpected
because the filmmakers themselves don't entirely understand what made the story
work. If the stars aligned for the first movie, who's to say they'll align for
the second?

Moreover, this isn't a "naturally" episodic story. There will always be more
international crime for James Bond to foil, but A Night At the Museum doesn't
suggest a natural continuation.

May 25 - Book of Ruth

I was reading the book of Ruth just the other day and thought it would make
an interesting movie. Perhaps it will.

May 29 - Up

I keep waiting for Pixar to screw up (no pun intended), and they keep not
doing it. Not only have their two most recent films, Ratatouille and WALL*E,
been their two best (and the fact that that is arguable is that much more to
Pixar's credit), but they've rubbed off on the Disney animation unit, too.
Disney animation, which had an outstanding run in the nineties, was sputtering
out with stuff like Brother Bear and The Wild. When they Disney-Pixar merge
happened, I feared Pixar would be taken down, even though Pixar's top brass
was put in charge of the Disney unit as well.

But in fact the opposite has happened. Disney's two latest, Meet the Robinsons
and Bolt, were excellent, and Pixar is only getting better. It would almost
be a relief if Up were a step down (no pun intended) to maybe a Cars-level good
movie instead of yet another contender for best film of the year. And maybe
it will be. But if you ARE making premature bets for the best movie of the
year, you won't find a candidate with better odds.

June 1 - Tales of an Ancient Empire

This movie is a promise hilariously if belatedly kept. At the end of the
1982 film "The Sword and the Sorcerer," a title card says, "Watch for
Talon's next adventure: 'Tales of the Ancient Empire,' coming soon."

27 years is a liberal definition of "soon," but here it is.

The sequel, despite being a cult hit on video, never went into production
until Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy made the genre popular again.
(My use of "again" is generous, but there WAS a small surgence of low budget
swords and sorcery flicks in the early 80s: besides The Sword and the Sorcerer,
there was Conan the Barbarian, Dragonslayer, Ladyhawke, Excaliber, and others.)
That opened the door for the director Albert Pyun to put his long overdue
sequel into production. (Yes, the sequel has the same director!)

Of course, it cannot possibly feel like the 80s cult favorite we remember.
It'll have cheesy CGI instead of cheesy puppeteering, and that will rob it of
some of its charm. But let's face it. The original movie wasn't that good
anyway. Even among other fantasy films of the period -- and precious few were
worth the time of day -- it was mediocre.

The cast for this movie? So hilariously predictable, you'd never predict it.
Christopher Lambert (Highlander) and Kevin Sorbo (Hercules). I'm convinced
the casting director was a computer algorithm.

June 5 - Land of the Lost

Here, however, is a less welcome return to a cult hit of the past. The
television show Land of the Lost is inextricably part of its time. I saw it
at just the right age (five or six) when men in lizard suits were utterly
terrifying. If you know what I'm talking about, you'll agree that this movie
is wrong, wrong, wrong. If you don't know what I'm talking about, why would
you care about it in the first place?

Maybe you'll care because you like Will Ferrell. He's the star of this thing,
and while I initially hated Ferrell, I've since come around. Elf was a lot
of fun, and Stranger Than Fiction might be in my Top 10 list for the decade.
But CGI and a star are all wrong for this. Just like how Spock without Nimoy
isn't Spock, Land of the Lost without rock bottom budget 70s-era production
values isn't Land of the Lost.

I've always had fond memories of the show. While most of what I watched at
that age is forgotten or reinforced by later memories, Land of the Lost stands
out as something special. But I never saw it again after age six. Sometimes
I sought it. When a DVD of three random episodes cropped up in Netflix, I
rented it. But I never watched past the opening credits, which amused me by
how terrible the back-screen work was despite how convincingly I remember the
opening trip down the waterfall. I might watch it again someday. I'm hugely
curious to view my childhood memories with an adult mind. But is it worth it?

There are no doubt a number of people my age who hold the original show in the
same regard. But here's the thing. Unless it's sentimental to you, in which
case a modern movie would have zero appeal, there is NO WAY you could POSSIBLY
care about it. There's nothing is about it to value.

So why, Why, WHY does this movie exist?

Curiously, the tagline on the advertising sums up my feelings exactly: "Right
place. Wrong time."

June 12 - Imagine That

Down and out businessman Eddie Murphy discovers that his career can be
revitalized by his daughter's imagination. This seems like it covers the same
type of ground Bedtime Stories did. Murphy is a talented comedian who has made
far too many unwise choices for me to rely on him.

June 12 - The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3

This is a remake of a movie from 1974 that starred Walter Matthau and provided
the basis for the color-based codenames in Quentin Tarantino's Reservoir Dogs.
The movie is coarse and uneven but shines in spots. In other words, the best
kind of movie to remake. Remakes, as I find myself saying a lot in these
movie preview posts, are not inherently bad: the problem is that the wrong
things get remade. There's no point remaking something that cannot be
improved upon. But this material could be the basis of a great modern thriller,
especially with such iconic powerhouses Denzel Washington and John Travolta
in the leading roles. Travolta looks shockingly grungy in the previews.

Tony Scott is the director, so expect it to be unnecessarily hyper and
frenetic.

June 19 - Year One

The IMDb synopsis: "When a couple of lazy hunter-gatherers (Jack Black and
Michael Cera) are banished from their primitive village, they set off on an
epic journey through the ancient world." Harold Ramis directs.

June 24 - Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Michael Bay's first Transformers movie was better than I expected it to be, but
come on. It was not great or lasting entertainment. Still, it's not like
Michael Bay would have made something great if a Transformers sequel had never
gotten a green light, so it's hard to bemoan this.

June 26 - My Sister's Keeper

This looks fantastic. From the back of Jodi Piccoult's book: "Anna is not
sick, but she might as well be. By age thirteen, she has undergone countless
surgeries, transfusions, and shots so that her older sister Kate can somehow
fight leukemia that has plagued her since childhood. The product of
preimplantation genetic diagnosis, Anna was conceived as a bone marrow match
for Kate-a life role that she has never challenged . . . until now. Like
most teenagers, Anna is beginning to question who she truly is. But unlike
most teenagers, she has always been defined in terms of her sister-and so
Anna makes a decision that for most would be unthinkable, a decision that
will tear her family apart and have perhaps fatal consequences for her
sister she loves."

Smart movies are rare, especially in the summertime. Of course I don't
know that this will be good, or even smart, but the raw materials are here.
It occurs to me that adapting books into movies is a really healthy practice
for the film industry. Ever notice how most of the cardboard cut-out movies
are original screenplays? Of those titles I've mentioned here so far, don't
Ghosts of Girlfriends Past, Imagine That, and 17 Again just SCREAM out their
superficiality? They all have neat gimmicks, and not a one of them suggest
an exploration of its gimmick beyond the confines of stock formula. But all
the time you need to fill in a pitch meeting with a producer is 30 seconds or
so.

The director, by the way, is Nick Cassavetes, whose The Notebook was a
delightful surprise.

July 1 - Public Enemies

The sets and costumes in this movie look terrific, and Johnny Depp looks right
at home in his 30s gangster role. Michael Mann is usually great for me (Heat,
The Insider, Collateral) although I despised the charmless Miami Vice movie.
This looks like a return to form, something with actual characters in it.
The cast list is a parade of outstanding performers and colorful character
actors that seem like they were born to appear in a 30s gangster flick:
Depp, Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard, Billy Crudup, Emilie de Ravin,
Leelee Sobieski, Giovanni Ribisi, Stephen Dorff, and Lili Taylor.

Then again, shouldn't every talented performer appear in a 30s gangster flick?

July 1 - Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs

This series has some incredibly long-lived characters. A few more sequels,
and our woolly mammoth and saber-toothed tiger friends will be teaming up with
the North American buffalo in their quest for survival, then maybe hanging out
in city parks with the Madagascar crew.

I'm kind of neutral on this series, although I like the squirrel. What I don't
like is the obsession over 3D. 3D is kinda cool, sure. But it's not more
immersive than 2D, as studios and producers are desperate to convince us
(because a public embrace of 3D would widen the ever-narrowing gap between the
theatrical and home-viewing experiences as well as set piracy back). 3D is a
fun gimmick, but it's a distraction from real storytelling. Moreover, most of
the 3D we're seeing now desaturates colors and blurs sharp lines. Ironic,
that 3D can't even deliver everything 2D does!

July 4 - Killer Biker Chicks

A sublime character-oriented study of existentialism and the morally-conflicted
society in which we live.

While this is director Regan Redding's first feature film as director, his
filmmaking credentials are already quite mature, as he was the carpenter on
1993's Carnosaur.

(Cue rimshot about wooden performances.)

July 17 - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

The funniest thing ever occurred late last year. It was the reaction of
whiny Harry Potter fans when they heard this was being postponed from the
Christmas season to the following summer. Warner Bros cruelly destroyed many
lives that day. Fans hated Warner Bros forever and swore to boycott the film.
We'll see how many don't show up for this.

I know I'll be there. But for the first time since the series started, I will
be very, very wary. After loving the first four films, and especially the
third and fourth, I hated hated hated the fifth (although there were lots of
individual elements to love, first and foremost Imelda Staunton as Dolores
Umbridge). The problem is simply that it was so rushed that very little had
the required emotional impact. Example: Ron's father almost gets killed and
still might die -- do we give Ron half a second to react to that? Nahhhh,
ON WITH THE PLOT! It is telling that the fifth book is the longest of the
series, while its movie is thus far the shortest.

For now, I blame the director, David Yates, who unfortunately is going to
return to direct all of the remaining films in the series. I shudder to think
that my penultimate favorite book of the series will be done by him rather than
Cuaron or Newell. Still, there is hope: the other reason the fifth movie
might have fallen short was the absence of the series' regular screenwriter,
Steve Kloves. A scheduling conflict, I believe, meant he had to opt out of
the fifth movie, but he's back for the sixth. If his absence was what went
wrong, rather than Yates' direction, we'll be back on track.

(The other problem I had with the fifth movie was avoidable: I saw it on an
IMAX screen, which had the climactic fight at the end in 3D. The 3D process
was *horrible*: dark, blurry, and misproportioned. My emotional involvement
with the film, already on shaky ground, shattered, and it was a relief when
I could take the glasses off again. I recommend against the IMAX 3D version
of the next movie.)

July 24 - G-Force

IMDb: "A specially trained squad of guinea pigs is dispatched to stop a
diabolical billionaire, who plans to taking over the world with household
appliances."

Great. Just what we need: a wacky talking animal movie!

July 24 - The Ugly Truth

A romantic comedy with Katherine Heigl and Gerard Butler. The IMDb synopsis
lies: "A romantically challenged morning show producer (Heigl) is reluctantly
embroiled in a series of outrageous tests by her chauvinistic correspondent
(Butler) to prove his theories on relationships and help her find love. His
clever ploys, however, lead to an unexpected result."

Where's the lie? Come on. How unexpected do YOU think the result will be?

July 31 - Funny People

Judd Apatow directs Adam Sandler and Seth Rogen in a comedy that seems to be a
turn towards more serious material than any of the three are used to. It has
to do with stand-up comedians, one of which (Sandler) discovers he has a
terminal health condition. The trailer is a bomb, in my opinion, but not in a
way that feels reflective of the film. It kind of seems like the marketing
crew didn't know how to sell it.

I'm not a fan of any of Apatow, Sandler, or Rogen and probably won't see this.
But I'm curious if this is indeed a change of pace, and if they pull it off or
not.

August 7 - Shorts

Robert Rodriguez apparently only makes two kinds of movies, and they couldn't
be more different from each other. Here he's in kid-fantasy mode: a boy
discovers a magic rock that grants wishes, and everybody else schemes to steal
it from him. William H. Macy appears as "Dr. Noseworthy."

August 7 - Julie and Julia

Nora Ephron directs this biographical film starring Amy Adams and Meryl
Streep.

August 7 - G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra

Transformers made some money, so, hey, how about a G.I. Joe flick? Stephen
Sommers is the man behind the camera. Sommers made a good movie (The Mummy)
once.

August 14 - Ponyo On the Cliff

Fortunately for us all, Hayao Miyazaki has yet to make good on promises that
his latest film will be his last. His latest last film is "Ponyo on the
Cliff," which opened in Japan last year. Miyazaki's track record is as solid
as Pixar's, though their filmographies couldn't be more different. "Spirited
Away" is one of my top 10 films from this decade.

August 14 - The Time Traveler's Wife

Rachel McAdams and Eric Bana in a fantastical romance: a man has a rare
genetic condition that causes him to time travel involuntarily. This wreaks
havoc on his marriage. I hate it when that happens.

August 21 - Inglourious Basterds

Who turned Tarantino into a parody of himself? Remember Pulp Fiction and
Jackie Brown? Those had all of Tarantino's sharp, extreme style, but they were
also stories about real people. Since those days, he's dumbed himself down.
Yes, I liked Kill Bill. I even liked Death Proof, when many did not. But
Tarantino can do better. Both Jackie Brown and Death Proof recapture the
spirit of early 70s B-movies, but only the former transcends it.

With this film, I was hoping Tarantino would hark back to the great war movies
of the late 60s and early 70s (The Dirty Dozen, The Guns of Navarone, Where
Eagles Dare, Kelly's Heroes) and transcend that genre as Jackie Brown did with
blaxploitation. The trailer dashed those hopes in one fell swoop. It looks
like we're really going to get "300" with speeches and swastikas. Not a brain
in its ugly little head.

Although the trailer fills with me disgust, realistically there's a good chance
I'll like this. But it kills me to know how great Tarantino can be and see him
continually settling for cheap thrills when he could be telling great stories.

August 28 - H2: Halloween 2

Whoever came up with that title needs to be punched. Anyway, hey, it turns
out that that "Halloween" movie from a couple years ago had franchise
potential. Who'd have thought? Rob Zombie returns to the director's chair.

August 28 - Final Destination: Death Trip 3D

Here's a case where the 3D can't hurt.

August 28 - The Boat That Rocked

Richard Curtis has been writing British comedy since Blackadder in the 80s.
His credits include Mr. Bean, Bridget Jones, Notting Hill, and Four Weddings
and a Funeral. But this is only his second film as director, the first being
Love Actually. It's "an ensemble comedy in which the romance takes place
between the young people of the '60s and pop music," so says the IMDb.