Summer may not officially begin until late June, but it's already summer in Hollywood. The release of THE AVENGERS two weeks ago officially kicked off the summer blockbuster season. This summer, like every other summer before it, is filled with one big-budget blockbuster wannabe after another. Smaller, modestly budgeted films are the exception, not the norm (the reverse will be true in the fall), but a few, released as counter-programming, offer moviegoers uninterested in or fatigued by big-budget spectacle, a chance to catch their breaths and take a different kind of journey, one with an occasionally challenging narrative or visual style, one with an intensely introspective, personal journey, one where the real-world refuses to go quietly into the night, or even one where the world teeters on the apocalypse, awaiting a six-year old girl to save, if not everyone, then everyone she holds near and dear.
10. ABRAHAM LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER – June 22
Starring: Benjamin Walker, Dominic Cooper, Mary Elizabeth Winstead
Why I'm Excited: The phrase "guilty pleasure" was invented for films like ABRAHAM, LINCOLN: VAMPIRE HUNTER, Timur Bekmambetov's (WANTED, DAYWATCH, NIGHTWATCH) latest sensory and aesthetic assault. Bekmambetov's style is defined by pure, unadulterated excess, the kind of excess even Michael Bay, the King of Hollywood Excess, would think twice about including in his latest mega-budgeted blockbuster. Add to that a screenplay penned by novelist Seth Grahame-Smith (PRIDE & PREJUDICE & ZOMBIES), seemingly camp-free performances by a cast headlined by Benjamin Walker, and the result practically screams "guilty pleasure."
9. SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN – June 1
Starring: Charlize Theron, Kristen Stewart, Chris Hemsworth
Why I'm Excited: Let's be honest here. Who among us was looking forward to not one, but two big-screen adaptations of the Snow White fairy tale? The first, MIRROR MIRROR, directed by the singularly named Tarsem, didn't so much bomb, as fade away quietly into obscurity. MIRROR MIRROR, however, was meant to be a family-friendly satirical comedy. SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNSTMAN takes the entirely different, far more serious-minded approach of a dark fantasy, darker, most likely, than THE LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy, but less dark than the anything-goes medieval fantasy of HBO'S GAME OF THRONES. Every indication suggests that moviegoers are in for imaginative visuals, courtesy of first-time director Rupert Sanders and a top-level production team.
8. PARANORMAN – August 17
Starring: Kodi Smit-McPhee, Anna Kendrick, Leslie Mann, John Goodman, Casey Affleck, Christopher Mintz-Plasse, Jeff Garlin
Why I'm Excited: Stop-motion animation has its die-hard fans, including this writer, but general moviegoers have responded less favorably to stop-motion efforts not associated with a little-known director by the name of Tim Burton. Located in Oregon, LAIKA, Inc. brought us Henry Selick's adaptation of Neil Gaiman's children's novel, CORALINE, three years ago. Selick has since moved on to produce an adaptation of Gaiman's award-winning YA novel, THE GRAVEYARD BOOK for another studio and so has LAIKA. Their second feature-length film, PARANORMAN, seems cut from the Burton cloth. PARANORMAN centers on a preteen whose supernatural talent (he can speak to the dead) initially makes him an outcast. His talent proves useful when all sorts of ghouls and goblins come to visit thanks (or rather no thanks) to a centuries-old curse. If that doesn't sound Burtonesque, it's hard to know what does. Still, the subject matter alone should be enough to get moviegoers interested. That and the stop-motion animation, of course.
7. SAVAGES – July 6
Starring: Aaron Johnson, Taylor Kitsch, Blake Lively, Emile Hirsch, John Travolta, Benicio Del Toro, Salma Hayek
Why I'm Excited: Oliver Stone's career has followed a downward trajectory for the better part of a decade, but SAVAGES, an adaptation of co-screenwriter Don Winslow's novel, promises to return Stone, if not to the Hollywood A-list, then at least back to respectability. SAVAGES' focus on an amoral, pot-growing trio who face off against a Mexican cartel seems an unlikely summer release, but after two straight months of big-budget spectacle, a smaller-scale action-drama with moral heft just might be genius-level counter-programming. The opposite, of course, could turn out to be true.
6. THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN – July 3
Starring: Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Martin Sheen, Sally Field, Denis Leary
Why I'm Excited: How soon is too soon? That's the question Sony Pictures hopes to answer in the negative (as in, it's never too soon) where their big-screen reboot of the SPIDER-MAN franchise is involved. Sony picked up the film rights from Marvel more than a decade ago. Three lucrative films later and the SPIDER-MAN franchise seemed at a creative, if not commercial dead on. Out went director Sam Raimi, Tobey Maguire, and Kirsten Dunst; in came Marc Webb ((500) DAYS OF SUMMER), Andrew Garfield, and Emma Stone. For some, Garfield and Stone are a definite upgrade over their predecessors, but Webb's inexperience helming big-screen blockbusters could result in anything from a genre-best reboot to a genre-worst misfire (and all points in between if we're being honest with ourselves). That alone creates sufficient intrigue to nab THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN a spot on my most anticipated movies of the summer.
5. TOTAL RECALL – August 3
Starring: Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Biel, Bryan Cranston
Why I'm Excited: When word leaked out that a remake of Paul Verhoeven and Arnold Schwarzenegger's 1990 sci-fi actioner was headed into production, directed by Len Weisman (LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD, UNDERWORLD), the usual suspects (i.e., movie bloggers) chimed in angrily. To them, the original TOTAL RECALL is nothing less than a classic that no one, least of all Len Weisman, should attempt to make. How wrong they were (and are). The original TOTAL RECALL has aged poorly (e.g., effects, humor, stereotypes, violence, etc.). It also did a disservice to Philip K. Dick's mind-bending ideas (his short story, "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale," formed the basis of the screenplay). While it's unlikely a contemporary Hollywood blockbuster, especially one reportedly budgeted at $200 million, will do better by Dick, nothing's lost by giving Weisman and his cast a chance. I know I will.
4. MOONRISE KINGDOM – May 25th (NY/LA)
Starring: Jared Gilman, Kara Hayward, Edward Norton, Bruce Willis, Bill Murray, Tilda Swinton
Why I'm Excited: Wes Anderson's latest, MOONRISE KINGDOM, premiered yesterday at the Cannes Film Festival. Typically for Anderson's films, especially anything after ROYAL TENENBAUMS, the response was, at best, mixed. That will do little, however, to dampen enthusiasm for what promises to be a sweet, affecting, and, as always where Anderson is involved, idiosyncratic exploration of young love (as in preteen love), ostensibly set in a nostalgia-laden mid 1960s. Shot with the same obsessive attention to composition as his previous work, MOONRISE KINGDOM also promises visual pleasures few, if any, films will be able to match this summer.
3. BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD – June 27
Starring: Quvenzhané Wallis, Dwight Henry
Why I'm Excited: Writer-director Benh Zeitlin was a virtual unknown before January of this year. What changed? He brought his first feature-length film, BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD, to the Sundance Film Festival. A crowd and critical favorite, BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD focuses on a post-apocalyptic world (a stand-in, we've been told, of post-Katrina Louisiana) and a six-year old girl, Hushpuppy (newcomer Quvenzhané Wallis), struggling to survive, save her father, and quite possibly, find her mother too. The "Beasts" of the title apparently also make an appearance. Where they come and what they look like are just two of the mysteries that BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD explores. One look at the trailer suggests Zeitlin has closely studied Terence Malick's oeuvre and adapted Malick's elliptical style for his own, hopefully thought-provoking, hopefully affecting purposes.
2. THE DARK KNIGHT RISES – July 20
Starring: Christian Bale, Tom Hardy, Anne Hathaway, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Michael Caine, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Aidan Gillen, Juno Temple, Liam Neeson
Why I'm Excited: Simply saying "The Dark Knight Rises," dropping the mic, and walking offstage should be all that needs to be said here, but in case you were out of the country four years ago and somehow haven't heard or seen of THE DARK KNIGHT, then perhaps you should read on. Christopher Nolan, the director of, among others, MEMENTO and INCEPTION, closes out his Dark Knight trilogy (don't worry Warner Bros. will reboot Batman soon enough) with what promises to be an epic confrontation between Bruce Wayne / Batman (Bale), Bane (Hardy), and the forces of chaos and destruction Bane apparently represents. Nolan's never one to shy away from slipping in heavy subtext into ostensibly big-budget entertainment and it's unlikely he'd let that opportunity slip away, especially given THE DARK KNIGHT RISES' status as Nolan's last Batman film.
1. PROMETHEUS – June 8
Starring: Noomi Rapace, Logan Marshall-Green, Michael Fassbender, Charlize Theron, Idris Elba, Guy Pearce
Why I'm Excited: A semi-prequel to ALIEN, the science-fiction/horror film that made Ridley Scott a household name (at least among genre fans) once seemed, if not sacrilegious, then superfluous. Scott and his writing partner, Damon Lindelof, have promised to answer the question so many ALIEN fans have asked, but many weren't sure they wanted answered: Who or what was the Space Jockey inside the derelict space ship? The derelict space ship, of course, contained the alien lifeform that, once released, wreaked havoc across four films (no, we're not counting ALIENS VS. PREDATOR or its sequel). There's a distinct possibility we'll be disappointed with the answer, but even if we are, we'll still have the kind of world-building few directors can offer or provide. And before you leave this post, props to 20th Century Fox for releasing PROMETHEUS with an R-rating as Scott intended and as franchise fans wanted.
