June 2008

Hot Fun in the Summertime

As the temperatures rise, the number of awesome movies follows suit. Here’s a handy dandy calendar of when to expect the big summer hits at your local multiplex, minus crap like Sex and the City: The Movie.

May 2, Iron Man: Comic book movies may be rapidly approaching critical mass, but it’s damn near impossible to not get excited about Robert Downey Jr. playing Tony Stark. A safe bet for one of the best movies of the year.

May 16, The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian: The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe made over $700 million and it looks like they spent every penny on this much-anticipated sequel. Notable additions to the cast include Eddie Izzard, Peter Dinklage and Willow himself, Warwick Davis.

May 22, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull: So Spielberg ruined your childhood with the weaponized walkie talkie E.T. re-release and George Lucas did the same with Episodes I-III. You’re still going to end up seeing this. Don’t even front.

June 6, Mongol: This Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nominee from Kazakhstan (insert Borat joke here) is the first part of a planned trilogy about the life of Genghis Khan.

June 13, The Incredible Hulk: Fall asleep to Ang Lee’s Hulk five years ago? Don’t fret, because for this reboot they fired the genius, hired the guy who directed The Transporter 2 and slapped “Incredible” in the middle. Problem solved! Right?

June 28, WALL•E: Pixar follows up last year’s classic Ratatouille with this adorable story from Finding Nemo director Andrew Stanton about a little robot tasked with cleaning up a long-abandoned Earth. Fun fact: WALL•E’s voice was created by Ben Burtt of R2-D2 fame!

July 2, Hancock: After making the rounds for a decade as one of the most notorious unproduced scripts in Hollywood, Hancock finally comes to the big screen as this year’s Will Smith 4th Of July Blockbuster™.

July 18, Dark Knight: Hands down, the most anticipated movie of the summer. Inspired in part by the gritty Long Halloween storyline from the comics, this leaner, meaner sequel to the brilliant Batman Begins stars Aaron Eckhart as a pre-Two Face Harvey Dent and the dearly-departed Heath Ledger as a particularly psychotic Joker.

July 25, The X-Files: I Want to Believe: We’re not sure what to make of this one. Weren’t they filming it, like, a month ago? Ah well, here’s hoping they just had a particularly efficient crew, because we’ll be there. But we’ll have just seen Dark Knight and Hellboy II, so it better be good.

August 8, Pineapple Express: After scoring big last year with Knocked Up and Superbad, Seth Rogen, Judd Apatow and all their friends deliver this stoner action comedy. Entertaining trainwreck or genre classic, we’re there.

August 15, Tropic Thunder: Ben Stiller hasn’t directed a movie since 2001’s cult classic Zoolander, so this would be worthwhile even if he didn’t have Jack Black and Robert Downey Jr. onboard. 2008: The Year of the Downey. Who knew?