Summer Movies – June 2014

As I really begin to look through the list of upcoming summer movies for 2014, I’m getting the feeling more and more that this summer will really stink. There’s just not a lot jumping out at me for this summer season.

This could potentially be building up to be one of those summers where we’ll be reading tons of articles in September describing what a disappointing summer it was, how the box office dipped since the previous summer and next summer will surely have more exciting offerings.

Whether Hollywood hauls record-breaking cash or not, audiences just want to see a good movie when they pay for their movie ticket. And from what I see so far it doesn’t look too good. Perhaps I’m missing some smaller unexpected films that will be getting released and are ready to surprise everyone or perhaps I’m being a bit too cynical with what’s headed our way, but the majority of stuff does not look very enticing.

June 6, 2014
Edge of Tomorrow

In the not-so-distant future the world is being invaded by aliens. They’re really whooping our asses and things don’t look too good for humanity. Tom Cruise is a military officer inexperienced in combat who’s dropped into an alien battle and is killed within minutes. Even Cruise doesn’t stand a chance against these aliens!

But somehow he wakes up in the past trapped in a time loop experiencing everything again leading up to that big battle. Now with knowledge of what will happen he teams with special forces veteran Emily Blunt to learn how to fight and maybe defeat these pesky aliens once and for all. But how many times will he have to die before he can manage that?!?!

Edge of Tomorrow (I’m not too crazy about the title by the way – it’s very generic sounding) sort of resembles a lot of popular stuff from recent years that has been thrown into a blender, mixed up and poured out. There are armies of guys wearing hi-tech Iron Man-esque armor, resulting in plenty of Transformers-type of battle action scenes, taking place in a bleak dystopian future, all told in one of those cool repetitive time-looping fashions like Groundhog Day.

This sort of looks like something of a ‘push of a movie’. It’s not going to be awful, but it’s not going to be great. Unless there’s something really unique the script and director Doug Liman can do here it looks like an awfully generic piece of summer fluff.

June 13, 2014
How To Train Your Dragon 2

Four years since young Viking hero Hiccup managed to train his dragon he’s back!

I have no idea about any of what happened in the last movie or what to expect from this one. The only thing I can guarantee is that Sean Connery does not do the voice of a dragon in this series.

I did hear some very good things about the first film and should probably check it out at some point. There has been plenty of animated movies that have just become goldmines and How To Train Your Dragon was yet another one. It made boatloads of money, so a sequel is not that surprising to see. I suspect this second one will have more dragons in high flying 3D sequences that kids will be excited to see.

22 Jump Street

Based on the 1987 undercover cop high school show, the movie 21 Jump Street was a surprise hit. At least it was a surprise to me. I didn’t think it looked any good and again I have never bothered to see it. But it ended up being somewhat popular. Well, let’s talk a sequel then huh?

Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum return in their roles of playing whoever their names are. This time I guess they graduate their high school gig and get to go undercover in college. Some spring break antics, parties and girls in bikinis commence. Will fans of the first movie find it as entertaining as the first film? You’d have to ask them – I have no clue about it and still have no interest in this updated Jump Street.

The Signal

A low-budget, trippy, sci-fi story that supposedly begins with three high school students traveling into the remote desert to look for a mysterious computer hacker at which point they black out and wake up in a government facility and things snowball from there.

The plot of The Signal has been left purposely vague by the filmmakers and the studio. The trailer for it doesn’t really offer too much information about what exactly is going on, but the tone comes across as a very hallucinatory, dreamlike-type of movie. It has me intrigued. Perhaps the ideas and story it will reveal will be a refreshing surprise and it could be a small, sleeper of a sci-fi movie. Or this all could just be a pretentious con-job.

June 20, 2014
Jersey Boys

Clint Eastwood directs the story of four young singers from New Jersey detailing their struggles on their path to becoming the famous group The Four Seasons.

We’ve got a lot of music bio pics through the years with characters going through some pretty rough stuff. Drugs, alcohol, physical abuse being demons that many popular singers had to deal with it. The Jersey Boys looks rather quaint in comparison.

That’s not to say it might not be good. Based off the hit broadway show there are plenty of people who love Jersey Boys and will probably be drawn to going to see this. And Eastwood is a pretty reliable director and should deliver a decent movie. Plus, it will be something different in theaters other than big special effects movies.

For me personally, I am sick of Jersey Boys. Being from N.J. I think I have had all that I can handle hearing about this group and those songs. So I am completely bias with this movie. Will it be good – maybe. Will I be seeing it – no because I am just so burnt out hearing about these guys and I never thought the group was interesting enough to sustain a Broadway play and probably not a movie either.

June 27, 2014
Transformers: Age of Extinction

More of the same.

Director Michael Bay returns for a fourth round of bringing Optimus Prime and his metal pals fighting, destruction and explosions raining off the screen, interspersed with hammy acting, terrible humor, a runtime that’s way too long, all wrapped up in a big noisy shiny bow that movie audiences are going to see in droves.

I just don’t get it.

I attempted once to watch the first Transformers and couldn’t get through it. I tried three or four times to make it to the end and just gave up on that movie and this franchise.

Yet, I’m one of the few. Despite many fans complaining how bad these flicks have gotten they continue to rake in dough. They can shake up the human casting, talk about how they want to make them better than previous movies, throw in dinosaur robots, but ultimately with Bay at the helm I suspect this will just be the same nonsense only with a different title. He’s latched onto a winning formula, so why bother to change?

The most I get from these movies are reading and hearing the colorful rants about them from movie fans and reviewers. Out of all the movies this entire summer I think I’m more looking forward to hearing Mark Kermode’s review of this flick.