Culture Blues

August Movie Primer

Welcome to Culture Blues’ monthly cinema primer! Every month, starting now, Jeff Hart studies the next month’s slate of releases and ignorantly pre-judges them. His opinions are solely based on 15 minutes of IMDB research and trailers. Jeff has not seen any of these movies. You’re welcome.

Thanks for nothing, Summer 2009.

With the notable exception of Star Trek, this year’s action blockbuster season has sucked it hard. We opened with Wolverine, the weakest effort in the floundering X-Men franchise, more adolescent make-it-up than movie; a movie so flawed it prompted us to shamefully wish for the halcyon days of Daredevil.

We moved on to Terminator: Salvation and hell subsequently froze over when a movie directed by McG was accused of being overly serious. Next came Michael Bay’s Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen and its mixed reviews, ranging from end-of-western-civilization bad to bloated jingoistic explosion shitshow.

Now we’ve come to August, where summer blockbusters go to die. The tentpoles have been underwhelming at best, it’s been too long since Star Trek, and we desperately need something fresh to wash the taste of Michael Bay out of our mouths (tastes like gun powder and hatred, by the way). What will save the season?

CHANNING TATUM SAVES THE SUMMER BLOCKBUSTER

We must rely on GI JOE to rescue the summer. Oh, I’m sorry. I hope my clever acronym didn’t confuse you. When I say “GI JOE”, I’m actually referring to the Global Integrated Joint Operating Entity. You’ve heard of them, right? They’re our last (but also best!) line of defense against the diabolical rise of the Cabal (for the) Oppression (of) Benevolent Regular Americans, or The Cobra.

Unnecessary acronymizing aside, and also ignoring the presence of Marlon Wayans, rocket-powered body condoms, and an apparent lack of the Dreadnoks, I still have faith that GI JOE can be better than Terminator, score the first annual faint-praise award, and thus become the second best action blockbuster of the summer. Here’s three reasons why:

1)  Snake Eyes vs Storm Shadow – how can this possibly be bad? They are ninjas. They’re fighting each other with swords. I think there’s probably fire involved at some point. I’m already losing my mind with anticipation.

2)  Advance reviews have compared it to the original Street Fighter movie. Maybe I’m out here alone on the frontier of bad taste with my love for Street Fighter, but that’s a fun movie. I’m not expecting much here – just a semblance of a plot that at least isn’t embarrassingly bad to take me from one increasingly awesome action set piece to the next. Is that too much to ask? So far this summer: yes.

3)  Adebisi

MOVIE MOST LIKELY TO MAKE YOU HATE SOMEONE YOU PREVIOUSLY LIKED

The Goods (full title – The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard, Die Hard) is a tragic glimpse into Jeremy Piven’s future. Entourage’s good-will has been squandered, the frat-boy charm used up (if there ever was any), and the days of Vincent Chase are numbered. Piven, perhaps smartly, is transitioning into features. Again. Or did he already transition? Did Smoking Aces really happen?

What better vehicle than The Goods, where the motor-mouthed, Emmy-award winner flexes his chops as a greasy Ari Gold reduction. Expect Piven to plod through an endless muck of hug-it-out one-liners in this remake of Used Cars that nobody asked for. Something tells me that Ari wouldn’t have picked this script. Of course, Ari is a character, and Jeremy Piven is a real person, and the fact that they aren’t interchangeable is something that Hollywood will hopefully learn once Entourage is finally, mercifully, in the ground.

On the other hand, Michael Cera is very much a real person. Cera plays opposite real-life quirkfriend Charlyne Yi in Paper Heart, a quirkumentary about hipster love. Quirk! Where does this one rank on the awkward/adorable scale? Pretty high. I imagine that there’s a lot of stammering, self-deprecating jokes, and meta. And I bet, eventually, Yi falls in love with Cera, and our barf sprays disappointment over the memory of George Michael Bluth.

But, they were already in love. Or dating. Having dirty hardcore mumblecourse twice a day, unprotected. You see, this is a pseudo-documentary. The director you’ll see in the film is actually an actor. And Cera and Yi, a sweet couple of kids for sure, make my teeth sore from saccharine in what feels like a vain, exploitative docsperiment.

I don’t know why I react with such visceral hatred to this pet project. Watch the trailer and judge for yourself.

OH, IS IT YOUR MOM’S BIRTHDAY THIS MONTH?

Take her to see Julie & Julia! It’s based on a blog! What? She doesn’t know what a blog is? Forget it – the movie’s about recipes and cooking! Domestication!  It has Meryl Streep doing some kind of weird accent! It’s got that cute-as-a-button Amy Adams in it! Based on a book you read on the plane that time, remember, Mom? It’s just like The Hours, only easier to follow, I swear.

Or maybe your Mom is really into “classier” book adaptations. Or she’s still talking about that awesome sex scene in Munich (just like us!). If that’s the case, then The Time Traveler’s Wife is out this month, also! It stars Eric Bana as Billy Pilgrim, unstuck in time, and Rachel McAdams (from The Notebook!) as his doting wife.

Make your choice based on how dumb you think your stupid mother is.

A CHARLIE KAUFMAN MOVIE?!

In Cold Souls, Paul Giamatti (Duets) stars as an actor named Paul Giamatti (Big Momma’s House) who has his soul removed, put into cold storage, and then accidentally shipped to Russia. Sound like the plot of the latest Charlie Kaufman head trip? Well, it’s not. Despite being cribbed from one of Kaufman’s cocktail napkin brainstorms, he is not involved in this movie in any way.

In reality, the script is an expanded adaptation of the animated short feature Bart Sells His Soul. In the under-seen original, a young boy sells his soul to his best friend and, later regretting it, must spend a harrowing evening trying to recover his essence. We’re withholding judgment on how first-time director Sophie Barthes’ handles the high-brow source material.

SUMMER SLASHDOWN

What is it about horror movies at the end of the summer? Is there a study somewhere that shows the summer vacation demographic wants to sneak into their slasher films before school starts up again? Find me an explanation to this inexplicable phenomenon.

August features three horror flicks, but only two of them on the radar. Those two? They’re both opening the same weekend. You can blame the geniuses at New Line Cinema for that. They decided to release Final Destination 4…er…THE Final Destination opposite Rob Zombie’s Halloween 2. Clearly, the market won’t support two horror movies on the same weekend and there can be no doubt that the franchise with the recognizable (read: literally visible) psycho-killer and horror-savant-director will prevail with ease.

But the real freaky shit in August happens in limited release a week earlier. In Grace, when an expecting vegan mother loses both her husband and unborn child in a car accident, she insists on still bringing the baby to term. The baby is born, alive but not quite right, with a thirst for human blood. Seriously, I’m scared just typing this. Nothing makes my skin crawl more than babies and vegans. Take a look at the trailer. This might be a good one.

WHAT MOVIE SHOULD I DEFINITELY SEE THIS AUGUST?

Hey, it’s a recession! So if you’ve only got $10 to spend at the cinema this month, what flick should you spend it on? Answer the following true/false statements to find out:

Aliens are preferable to Nazis.

Killing people isn’t funny.

Viral marketing is cool.

I prefer that my science fiction be an allegory for, like, Hurricane Katrina or apartheid or something.

Eli Roth.

If you answered more “true” than “false”, then you should see Neil Blomkamp’s upcoming District 9. I’ll be right there with you. Blomkamp’s Peter Jackson (blah) produced first feature could be the sleeper hit of the summer. From early “humans only”  marketing to the current slew of trailers, District 9 is shrouded in that good kind of Cloverfield-esque mystery where we don’t know what the hell is going to happen, but here’s hoping it’s not shaky-cam and crab monsters. If we’re lucky, D9 can transcend its inherent gimmickry and broad-stroke metaphor to give us some exciting-ass sci-fi.

Now, if you answered more “false” than “true” – congratulations, you answered correctly. The movie of August is going to be Quentin Tarantino’s Inglorious Basterds. This is Tarantino’s labor of love. His fascist stomping juggernaut baby. If you take one thing from this primer, and it really should only be this next one thing because it’s the only piece of substantive information in this article, it should be this: I’ve read the screenplay, this movie is going to be awesome.

Nazis, curse words, stylistic death sequences, baseball bats, non-sequential story-telling, Brad Pitt with a mustache – how have you not bought your ticket yet?

Overall, August isn’t so bad, with two must see studio releases, an indie horror flick perhaps bound for cult status, and the beginning of the GI Joe epic (or epic disaster?). Consider yourself primed until September, when I'll be ignorantly judging a horde of futuristic action flicks and the glorious return of Mike fucking Judge.

HANDY RELEASE DATES

GI Joe:  Rise of Cobra – August 7^th

Julie & Julia – August 7^th

Cold Souls [limited] – August 7^th

District 9 – August 14^th

The Time Traveler’s Wife – August 14^th

Paper Heart [limited] – August 14^th

The Goods:  Live Hard, Suck Hard – August 14^th

Grace [limited] – August 14^th

Inglorious Basterds – August 21^st

Halloween II – August 28^th

The Final Destination – August 28th

Tagged as: August movies, evil vegan, GI Joe, Tarantino