APRIL 2015 MOVIE PREVIEW

We're meant to be warming up for summer, but the whole month feels a little bit empty, from where I stand. Not even any good-looking limited releases, really. But it has the merit of opening big with one of the popcorn movies I'm most excited about all year. And in that respect, it is a good warm-up.


3.4.2015

If you'd asked me as recently as 2009 if I thought that the day would come when a movie in the Fast & Furious franchise could possibly have been one of my most eagerly anticipated films of a year, I'd have found that a totally ridiculous question (I'd also have wondered why in the hell you thought the franchise would still be around six years later). And yet here we are at Furious 7, and after two movies that flawlessly combined Looney Tunes physics, dumbfounding practical effects, and heist movies, I'll be onboard with the further adventures Vin Diesel and family for a good while yet. The one big concern: it's only seven minutes longer than Fast Five and Fast & Furious 6, but 137 minutes is a gross length for what amounts to a live-action cartoon about people punching each other with cars. At any rate, I don't see an outcome where this doesn't prove to be the best wide release of the month.


10.4.2015

The annual Nicholas Sparks adaptation, The Longest Ride, apparently makes the argument that love affairs divided by one man's addiction to rodeo riding are equally as noble as love affairs divided by World War II. Which is an argument that one can make, I suppose.

Meanwhile, Clouds of Sils Maria starts its U.S. arthouse tour, and I would not expect any of you to believe me when I call Olivier Assayas & Juliette Binoche's latest a total flub enlivened only by Kristen Stewart an more than I believed it when I was told it by others.


17.4.2015

In a month notable for its anemic release slate, all of a sudden we get no fewer than four wide releases dropping all at once. The biggest will undoubtedly be Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, because you can never exhaust the possibilities of a fat man falling down. Or being kicked by a horse and turned into a shitty visual effect, a fucking terrible gag lovingly showcased in the film's trailer, which is my current reigning "I can't wait for the film to open so I don't have to see it in front of every movie" pick. Fighting it for dominance, we find the tacky and gimmicky-sounding horror film about social media, Unfriended, and Disney's newest animal documentary, given the dubious title Monkey Kingdom. And then there's Child 44, for which I have not personally seen a shred of advertising, and the hook - chasing a serial killer in the Stalinist era of the Soviet Union - sounds a bit hacky, but Tom Hardy and Gary Oldman headline. And even if we can't always trust either of those men, surely we can trust them both?


24.4.2015

After years of lingering in development hell, the paranormal romantic melodrama The Age of Adaline finally has attained a form where it can be released, and we can all bask in its vaguely Benjamin Button-ey tale of a woman who stops aging, and then falls in love with a man and his grandson. And this is kind of the opposite of a Blart 2: Bigger and Blarter for me, since I've been seeing the trailer for this in front of everything as well, but it's one of those deals where it feels like I have to catch it, just to see what the hell. Also falling into "what the hell" territory: Little Boy, one of those faith-based movies about a little boy (imagine that!) who prays to move a mountain in order to bring his father back from World War II. Presumably, this makes sense.

It's not opening wide and I haven't the slightest intention of seeing it, but it would be remiss of me not to mention that Russell Crowe is making his directorial debut with The Water Diviner, featuring no less a movie star than Russell Crowe.

And since we live in a global world, I will observe without comment that 2015's pre-ordained Biggest Box-Office Smash (Unless That Space Picture This Christmas Beats It), The Avengers: Age of Ultron, shall be available in most of the world that isn't the United States as of this weekend.