AFTER EARTH
Release Date: May 31, 2013
What it’s about: A father and son find themselves stranded on Earth, roughly a thousand years after humanity abandoned the planet. With dad injured, son must find a way to brave the strange and dangerous new/old world to ensure their survival.
What it’s got working for it: It’s scifi and we all love scifi, don’t we?
What’s it’s got going against it: Just because it’s SF, doesn’t mean it’s good. In fact, more often than not, it isn’t. Also, these father-son outings (starring real life father and son Wil and Jaden Smith) inevitably play like Disney adventures where the threats and suspense are muted by the foregone happy ending. ALSO, it’s directed by M. Night Shyamalan who hasn’t delivered a good movie since The Sixth Sense.
NOW YOU SEE ME
Release Date: May 31, 2013
What it’s about: An elite FBI team faces off against the world’s greatest illusionists turned bad.
What it’s got going for it: An impressive cast.
What it’s got working against it: Despite the out-there premise, it isn’t a comedy.
THE INTERNSHIP
Release Date: June 7, 2013
What it’s about: A couple of out-of-work salesmen land internships at Google. Hilarity ensues.
What it’s got going for it: Will Ferrell is part of the cast. He’s pretty funny.
What it’s got working against it: Didn’t someone declare a moratorium on these Owen Wilson/Vince Vaughn movies?
THE PURGE
Release Date: June 7, 2013
What’s it about: In the not too distant future, the government deals with crime by allowing criminals one annual 12-hour state-sanctioned reign of terror. Just to get it all out of their systems, y’know? On one such night, a family has their lives upended by an intruder who breaks into their gated community.
What it’s got going for it: An intriguing, albeit somewhat silly, premise.
What’s it’s got working against it: An intriguing, albeit somewhat silly, premise.
THIS IS THE END
Release Date: June 12, 2013
What it’s about: Six buddies try to survive the apocalypse, and each other, in this end-of-the-world laugher.
What it’s got going for it: A darkly humorous premise and the always-funny Craig Robison (Daryl from The Office).
What it’s got working against it: I think Seth Rogen is funny too – his movies not so much.
MAN OF STEEL
Release Date: June 14, 2013
What it’s about: Superman.
What it’s got going for it: Brought to you by tremendously talented director Zack Snyder and tremendously talented writer Davis S. Goyer.
What it’s got working against it: I’ve yet to meet a Superman movie I’ve liked.
WORLD WAR Z
Release Date: June 21, 2013
What it’s about: Brad Pitt battles zombies on a world-wide scale.
What it’s got going for it: The book, by Max Brooks, is excellent.
What it’s got working against it: What made the book so great, it’s sequential, multi-voiced narrative, is exactly what makes it impossible to translate to the big screen.
MONSTERS UNIVERSITY
Release Date: June 21, 2013
What it’s about: A young, idealistic Mike Wazowski’s college plans are upended by an all-out rivalry with big-monster-on-campus James P. Sullivan.
What it’s got going for it: I loved Monsters Inc.
What it’s got working against it: It IS a sequel…but I’m cautiously optimistic.
THE HEAT
Release Date: June 28, 2013
What it’s about: A by-the-book FBI agent (played by Sandra Bullock) teams with a loose cannon cop (played by Melissa McCarthy) to take down a drug kingpin.
What it’s got going for it: Melissa McCarthy.
What it’s got working against it: The premise aint exactly fresh.
WHITE HOUSE DOWN
Release Date: June 28, 2013
What it’s about: Terrorists take the White House and only one man – a guy with something to prove and nothing to lose! – can save the President!
What it’s got going for it: I’m going to need more time to think about it.
What it’s got working against it: Didn’t this exact same movie come out a couple of months ago? Only back then, it was called Olympus Has Fallen.
Will Ferrell is funny? Yeah, like root canal.
World War Z: What it’s got going for it: Brad Pitt. 🙂
If you were to combine them all into 1 movie …now that would be IMAX worthy!!!
the only one i’m interested in is monsters university. technically it’s a prequel, but i too am cautiously optimistic.
about white house down; it seems like every year or so there are two (or maybe three movies) that have almost identical plots. so it’s either an amazing coincidence or theft of ideas are involved.
speaking of which; have you ever pitched an idea, got rejected, then they ended doing something suspiciously similar later?
to Deni: i agree about ferrell.
Ok now in defense of M. Knight Shymalan…While “The Lady in the Lake” was awful and “The Village” was so so, “Signs” was a very good movie.
Signs? For real? An alien race with a deadly aversion to water decide to invade a planet that is 70% covered with cover?
Joey, we can no longer be buddies. 🙁
A certain ‘comedy’ actor’s name is forbidden to be mentioned in my house, or within earshot if not in my house. Hearing the name is so repulsive to me that all my girlyparts curl up into a ball and die. Just reading his name here made my eyes bleed. He is NOT funny. His characters are obnoxious and stupid (I realize the man himself is probably a great guy – I am referring ONLY to his presence on the screen). Blargh.
That said, I am not looking forward to any of those films (After Earth is the only one that interests me, but I have to same my money for two others not mentioned), instead I’m looking forward to The Lone Ranger and Simon Pegg’s sci fi pub crawl to The World’s End (Yes, I’m plugging this one here – AGAIN):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQA7HcRcLNg
😀
das
*save – save my money. Spelling is not my forte today. 😛
das
I’ll watch After Earth just because I have yet to hate a Wil Smith movie. I do think he has the chops to refuse whatever movie wouldn’t work for him, but we’ll see if he has been so selective for a movie that seems tailor-written to get one of his kids his big break.
The Purge – When that premise was a Star Trek episode, even an alien, tyrannical computer with some wires loose wasn’t enough excuse for how little sense it made.
Speaking of After Earth, why would humanity abandon the Earth? By the time the technology is around to physically do that, there will be so many people on the Earth that moving everyone would take forever lol. Infact where would we go?
Anyway I’ll probably check out After Earth and Man of Steel. And probably White House Down.
I liked Signs and The Village – so sue me. 😀
das
I won’t sue, but I’ll certainly question your sanity. And taste.
Also, Unbreakable was the second best superhero movie, ever, just behind The Incredibles. There, three M. Night movies I like (they’re also the only ones I’ve seen).
das
Unbreakable? Seriously? That movie was middling at best.
“Will Ferrell is … pretty funny.”
You couldn’t be more wrong on that point.
“I won’t sue, but I’ll certainly question your sanity. And taste.” This coming from the guy who thinks Ferrell is funny…oy.
Gotta agree with Deni, archer, and Das about Will Farrell. Ugh.
Of those movies, I’ll likely only wind up seeing “Man of Steel” at the theatre. I will say that the trailers for it look very good. But… I understand the hesitation. The others seem to range from outright silly to Netflix fare. Well, maybe not Monsters U, that might be good, although Cars 2 makes me a bit leery.
I DID just go see the new Star Trek movie last night. If you can get past the absolutely preposterous opening sequence, it was at least kind of entertaining. It had a generous share of “why did they do that?” moments though, which always pulls me out of the experience. Also, one relationship was handled in a very unfortunate and very uncharacteristic way. It also lacked the more thought-provoking moral centre which has always been a characteristic of the “real” time line Star Trek movies. Just like the last one, this is mostly just an action flick. I also kept thinking of that sequence in SG1’s “200” where the characters were replaced by younger, hipper versions of themselves. So.. yeah.
Speaking of Netflix, I did spend part of today watching the new season 4 of “Arrested Development”. %#@!$ brilliant.
I will watch anything M. Night Shyamalan does. I love his style. I loved Signs and I loved The Village. I’ve seen both several times. I was intrigued with The Happening even though I never did figure out what was happening. M. Night reminds me of a young Steven Spielberg and Alfred Hitchcock with the mood he sets and the way he appears in each of his movies. I remember being surprised with a movie I was watching that I had neve heard of before. It was good then I saw it was an M. Night Shyamalan movie. I should have known.
I have very good taste, Joe. Afterall, I’m HERE, aren’t I? 😉
das
None of these really appeal to me, although I’ll probably end up seeing Superman (because I must, not because I believe it’s going to be any better than the previous versions). As for the rest, we’ll see.
On Will Ferrell, his hit rate with me is somewhere below 25%; sometimes funny, often obnoxious. I’ve learned to read a lot of reviews before I take a chance on a Will Ferrell film.
Now I’m off to prep the Picnic Butt for my midnight smoking run…
unbreakable was better (but not by a lot) than the village, IMHO. my brother guessed the “big twist” of that less than an half-hour in. this was the days just before we got into the internet, so he didn’t find that spoiler there. but i recall the stink over spoilers & posting the script on-line.
and i’m glad to see that other people think will ferrell is not funny. i was beginning to think my brother & i were the only ones.
I have to back das up on this one. I love M. Night’s stuff. I think he gets over-judged. His movies are fun.
“I love M. Night’s stuff. I think he gets over-judged.”
Like the scene in The Happening when a bunch of people try to outrun the wind?
Unbreakable was great! It was the only live action superhero movie that actually felt like it could be real…that made it believable. I think it was excellent – one of the few movies of its type that made me actually think, instead of just mindlessly going along for the ride.
And as regards one’s sanity or taste, yours is just as dubious when it comes to your concept of ‘funny’. (Then again, Cas did say you have a strange sense of humor, so that probably explains a lot. 😉 )
das
Okay, upon further consideration, I may have been too hasty re: the whole Ferrell is funny comment.
I love it. PLEASE make this a monthly feature. This is the greatest thing since the Supermovie of the Week club, with huge potential. May I also suggest a bookending review of the movies that you end up seeing at the end of the month?
I love hearing reviews from a writer’s point of view. My wife always complains when I point out the numerous plot holes in any show or movie.
Joey, Joey, Joey…
You sound like everyone (and by everyone, I mean the Sheldon-esque geek boys) on the internet. You need to stop reading ‘reviews’. 😉
I’ve always gone into M. Night movies ‘blind’. I didn’t even know who he was until I saw The Village. I must agree with DP – he gets way over-judged. And why? The biggest complaint I’ve heard is that the twist in his movies isn’t what the audience wanted it to be. Awww…poor fings. Someone decided to do something a bit different and it wasn’t found in The Rules to Movie Making Guidebook.
What M. Night is experiencing reminds me of what happened to Charles Laughton when he made Night of the Hunter. The movie was not well-received by critics or audiences when it was released, but now – nearly 60 years later – it’s considered one of the great films of the 20th century. Sometimes it takes time before a film is really appreciated. I’m not saying that this will happen with M. Night’s films, but I do think there’s been an undue amount of criticism over them, and that criticism seems to have prejudiced audiences against his films even before they are released, as your blog comment above demonstrates.
das
@ Joey – I admire your humility when it comes to admitting your mistaken view of what constitutes ‘funny’. Now…to work on ALL the other things you’re mistaken about…
😉
das
Hate the acting of Will Ferrell, Adam Sandler, in fact, that whole genre of *humour*
Will Smith is a pod person, have you seen him interviewed lately? Male equivalent of a Stepford Wife…
I think World’s End looks good (thanks for the link Das).
It’s amazing how long someone can ride the coattails of a hit movie, I’m lookin’ at you M. Night…
K
Humor is a very personal thing. I’m not a Will Ferrell fan. Actually, I go out of my way to avoid Will Ferrell. But I understand that other people find him funny.
M. Night screwed up The Last Airbender, something I cannot forgive. I thought Sixth Sense was good and The Village was okay. Actually I haven’t seen any of the others.
For the summer: how could you have skipped Pacific Rim? Mechs and monsters!
I’m looking forward to: Fast & Furious 6, Monster University. and I’ll probably see After Earth. And I still have to see Star Trek.
But what I’m REALLY looking forward to is Ender’s Game. Oh, yes. But that isn’t until later.
Will Ferrell hasn’t been funny in ages… While I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE Sandra Bullock & LOVE Melissa McCarthy (before she became the IT girl) the movie sounds stupid, yes that’s a technical term.
I swear you must have made up these films. They sound atrocious. Why don’t they make good films like Inception?
Joe, what’s the last film you saw with an original idea?
Cheers, Chev
In The Happening, it was a contained wind and you did not want it to catch you. It was evil. If caught in it, it would mess with your mind and make you do bad things. I love scarey movies. You got a better one Joe? Let’s hear it… 😉
I repeat: They attempt to outrun wind. Evil wind!
lol Joe… is evil wind a euphemism for fart?
Cheers, Chev0
Thank you all for the entertaining movie talk. I don’t care for Will Ferrill either.
I must not really care for him; I spelled his name wrong. :p
You’d try to out run a tornado if one was coming at you, wouldn’t you. Same thing.
Still no starships….boohiss
White house down sounds and looks like, Die hard 1 …. And Die hard 2 .. Just different location.
The Superman trailer looked more interesting than I would have expected.
After Earth, This Is The End, World War Z, The World’s End. It’s obviously going to be an apocalyptic summer! I was shocked to see a movie called This Is The End because it looks so similar to what will no doubt be the superior The World’s End. Alas, I’m sure the former will do better at the box office than the latter because North Americans don’t go to see British films in the cinema unless it’s James Bond.
Re: M. Night Shyamalan: I would hazard to say that even The Sixth Sense is overrated. The only thing it had going for it was “The Twist” and once you know it you’ll find it’s actually a pretty pedestrian movie. I own the DVD but I think I’ve only watched it once.
@ Chev – I was thinking the same thing! When we were kids my sis and I used to try to outrun dad’s farts – I remember running up the stairs and hiding in our bedroom to get away from them. They followed. 🙁 (All these years later I now suspect my sister was the evil farter, and not dad. 😛 )
@ Alexis – That’s okay – I refuse to type his name, so I call him Swill Ferret. I know, I know…it’s a terrible thing to do to ferrets. 🙁
@ Ponytail – You forget – Joey is a supervillain in training. He’d figure out a way to capture the wind and use it against his enemies. (Hubby saw the movie and liked it, but I never saw it. Now I want to just to level out the playing ground since I really have no idea what I’m talking about right now. 😛 )
@ Kymm – Did you see Shaun of the Dead or Hot Fuzz? The latter is my favorite of the two, one of my favorite movies, ever. Not sure if the new one will top it for me, but based on the other two I can’t help but feel that it’ll be a great ride nonetheless. I love dry Brit humor, and Pegg & Frost together just tickles me to no end. Have you ever seen this?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5W8EBHNsLc
😆
das
None of those movies look “great” to me. We loved the first Monsters Inc, so we will probably catch the prequel. The movie I’m looking forward to most is Ender’s Game, I’m with you Sparrow_hawk. We went to see Star Trek (it was fantastic!) Saturday and saw a preview for Ender and it looked good.
I know Signs didn’t make any sense but I liked it. It had a lot of Hitchcock tricks, which I love. Yes, the alien recon should have noticed the water but…. In Sci-fi you have to sit back enjoy and not analyze everything to death.
There were some perky people on this blog last night! I was in a cheesecake coma (aka cheesecake heaven). 😀
For The Happening, I don’t recall if I was still checked in that far through that movie. It’s not my favorite of his, more sun-lit gruesomeness than I can stomach, but, wind you say? How’s that for the not sure we can accomplish this, all hope is lost, unsee-able enemy bit of suspense? I think I’ll have to take a second look.
Ok, maybe I do remember being disappointed by that one.
I think his movies are over-judged in how so many people walk out out of them and rush to text the world about whether the ending blew them away like the Sixth Sense did or not. The chatter over his movies becomes about having an opinion relative to the Sixth Sense’s ending and whatever was fun about the rest, or even fine, but not the Sixth Sense, about the ending becomes irrelevant.
So, maybe The Happening was his attempt to make the “what was really happening and how do we wrap this up based on that?” answer so bad that it ruins the game of judging his movies based only on whether the ending was as good as the Sixth Sense. Like when I salt my daughter’s dessert so she’ll eat her dinner next time. Ok, nobody really ruins their work on purpose.
come on, the Sixth Sense is not his last good movie. Unbreakable and Signs were also very good. In fact, only The Happening and The Last Airbender really sucked.
Here’s hoping Superman gets done right at long last 🙂 Hopefully NOT alternate- timelined the way Star trek has been warped.
Re- The Happening. Running from the wind was lots more compelling at the theatre, the small screen view does look sillier. The cold bloodedness of the knitting needles to the neck and the jeep wreck…WOW. It had its moments.
Kudos to the Pitt man. Doubling down on what seems to be the great (argh)money pit of modern times…personally I find the Z trailer better than the gimmicky multi-narrative book.
Arrested Development Lives! Anyone else junk out to it on Netflix?
Cheers & Happy MeMo day!
@ Das – 😆 😆
@ DP – “Like when I salt my daughter’s dessert so she’ll eat her dinner next time. Ok, nobody really ruins their work on purpose.” Hey! That sounds like the next big diet craze. Ruin your food on purpose so you eat less.
@ Tam Dixon – “There were some perky people on this blog last night! I was in a cheesecake coma (aka cheesecake heaven).” I was in cheesecake cooling mode. Waiting, waiting, waiting. Was at the 3 hours cooling in the oven recipe point.
My hubby turned to me this morning and said “The world is doomed.” He was reading the list of movies there were in the theaters this week. When I read the list, I couldn’t believe the numbers.
The top ten (Friday-Sunday totals):
“Fast & Furious 6,” $98.5 million
“The Hangover Part III,” $42.4;
“Star Trek Into Darkness,” $38 million
“Epic,” $34.2 million
“Iron Man 3,” $19.4 million
“The Great Gatsby,” $13.7 million
“42,” $1.2 million
“The Croods,” $1.2 million
“Oblivion,” $815K;
“Oz the Great and Powerful,” $629,000
Can you believe Fast & Furious “6” is first place and Hangover “3” has second!? Star Trek may be a sequel but it stands on its own.
I remember Mr M said something about TV viewing habits it was that producers were looking for superficial. That attitude is bleeding into films as well.
“Can you believe Fast & Furious “6” is first place and Hangover “3” has second!?”
Most definitely. Fans of the Fast and Furious series got exactly what they were expecting and rewarded the movie by making it #1 at the box office. Fans of The Hangover, no doubt burned by the anemic sequel, were reluctant to make the same mistake twice.
When my hubby read your reply he said “But they still beat Star Trek!” I have to agree with him, Star Trek rocked!
Ponytail: You WAITED until it cooled? 😉 I thought it over and realized JeffW gave the best directions to keep the cheesecake from cracking. Then I dug into it, cracks be damned. 😆 The raspberry sauce was delectable. I wanted cheesecake for breakfast this morning.
The huge response to your post proves there’s little the modern world cares about more than movies! That’s as it should be — the rest we’re helpless to fix anyway, right?
I would say M. Night hasn’t made a good movie ever, since I guessed the ending to Sixth Sense a third of the way in. His movies rely too much on gimmicks IMO. I also agree with you about Vince Vaughan. Been burned too often expecting his movies to be clever. Couples Retreat, anyone? I didn’t think so.
I will give the new Superman a chance, and World War Z looks awesome based on previews. I didn’t read the books, so maybe I won’t be disappointed. I love Melissa McCarthy so I’ll give The Heat a try. I trust Jamie Foxx to make good movies and I love the premise of White House Down. I passed on the Gerard Butler version after losing 2 hrs of my life watching his surfing movie.
I’ll pass on Will Smith for the same reason I can’t watch Tom Cruise movies anymore — the creep-out factor of Scientology. I find it affects their acting and makes it all seem overwrought. self-involved, and fake. JMO.
Are you watching the new Season 4 of Arrested Development on Netflix. Very awesome except I honestly didn’t recognize Portia De Rossi and had to look her up on IMDB to make sure it’s her. What did she do to her beautiful face!?
lol Das I think you’re right.
Cheers, Chev
I want to see The Heat, I think Melissa is funny and Bullock is kinda funny, well more funny than the other guy u all are not talking about.. I did see the new Star Trek, uh,, 3-D, I really liked it, Benedict did an excellent job(spoiler) as the bad guy, too bad they deleted the shower scene… rehash or not, its alternate reality, and I did enjoy it.
The Purge = Star Trek (original series): Return of the Archons
Your thoughts on White House Down were exactly mine when I saw the preview.
That is so tragic for Star Trek.
The fact that White House Down looks like a knock off/remake of Olympus Has Fallen is the exact reason my movie group and I are going to see it (a low point in the movie was when the Sec of State is being dragged off by one of the bad guys by her hair she starts crying out the pledge of allegiance, horrible). Olympus Has Fallen was so unbelievably impossible and forgettable that we figure it cannot be worse. Well… I guess it can be, but we are hoping not.
Shana