Summer Movie Round-Up: June Edition

Despite a big fat hole in the release schedule due to the delay of "Fast & Furious 7", June still pumped out a few winners - and one enormous turd.


Edge of Tomorrow

The last movie from Tom Cruise was the dopey and derivative, but fun and visually stunning "Oblivion".  "Edge of Tomorrow" is also quite derivative, but leaves the dopiness behind.  It's a nearly perfect summer sci-fi movie, full of breathless action, touching human drama, perfectly done humor, and filled to the brim with cool ideas and visual pizzazz.  The only drawback, for me, was the way it ends.  It's slightly unsatisfying, and I'm not even sure I understand exactly what happened, but it's not nearly enough to mar the rest of the film.  I recommend it.

P.S. - Never has Cruise's patented "shit-eating grin" been used to such good effect as it is here.  And Bill Paxton rules all.


The Fault in Our Stars

Oh no, a movie based on a Young Adult novel!  And it's about cancer patients who fall in love with each other!  Alert!  ALERT!!

Okay, it's not terrible, you just need to be an incredible softie to dig it.  And you can't be afraid of sad movies that jigger your waterworks, budge your boo-hoo, or Niagara your nose.  Wait. .  what?  It's overly wide-eyed, filled with hamfisted dialogue and subplots that go nowhere, yet remains surprisingly effective and adult.  The two lead actors (Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort) are capable performers and the director does a good job of (mostly) avoiding the too-obviously manipulative clichés of the genre.  If you have to watch it, don't be afraid - it's not bad at all.


22 Jump Street

The first "Jump Street" was one of my favorite movies of 2012, and this superior sequel will be one of my faves of 2014.  Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill continue their sickeningly sweet bromance in this fantastic, witty sequel which not only parodies action/buddy cop movies (as the original film did) but sequels in general.  It's self-aware and it knows it, yet never becomes too clever for the room, trading pretentiousness for earnest laughs.  Phil Lord and Chris Miller have hit my funny bone square-on four times in a row so far with the "Jump Street" movies, "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs" and "The Lego Movie".  With two of the funniest movies of '14 under their belt, it will be hard for another filmmaker to top their winning streak.  Highly, highly enjoyable stuff.


How to Train Your Dragon 2

Here's another sequel to one of my Favorite Movies, and it is also a very worthy follow-up.  For some reason I can't quite fathom, it isn't doing nearly as well at the box office as its predecessor, but it matters naught  - I wholeheartedly recommend this fantastic fiery fantasy flick to one and all.  What really strikes me about this franchise, aside from its open-heartedness and its showcasing of dragons (which are cool), are the surprisingly mature story and character touches which crop up unexpectedly now and again, much like when the character of Hiccup loses his leg in the climactic sequence of the original film.  There are a couple more in "2" which I won't spoil, but they are emotional beats and themes that you just don't see in mainstream animated fare.  The only aspect which keeps this movie from being as good as the first "Dragons" is the action scenes.  They're not quite as punchy and exciting as the original's, but they're still quite great.  Overall, it's a fine sequel.


The Signal

I won't talk much about this movie, and I suggest you refrain from viewing the trailers if you wish to see this.  I recommend checking this movie out, but with some caveats.  More on those later.

What is "The Signal", you ask?  Well, it's an independent sci-fi film from director William Eubank, if that's any help to you at all.  It starts off as a road movie and then gets all weird and science-fictiony.  There are twists.  There are turns.  In the end, when all's said and done, the movie isn't entirely satisfying.  It's derivative, it's a bit of a cheat, yet still I recommend checking it out if you have some extra time.  Up until the last section of the movie, it's a weird, visually spectacular, surprising ride. 

At any rate, it's better than "Transcendence".  Take that for what it's worth.


Willow Creek

Now it's time to review a found footage horror movie directed by Bobcat Goldthwait.

Yes.  Bobcat Goldthwait.

He's become an interesting director in his own right, but his genre of choice has historically been Dark Comedy, so when I initially heard that he would be making a found footage movie about a couple of people searching for bigfoot, I assumed it would also be Dark Comedy.  While there are certainly some laughs to be found in the movie, it's mostly a serious "Blair Witch" kind of a deal, with a nice slow burner of plot designed to lull you into forgetting that it's supposed to be scary - then makes you crap your pants with fear.  Okay, maybe it's not that scary.  It's a modest, solid little flick with some very well done sound design and a couple of decent lead performances (from Bryce Johnson and Alexis Gilmore), but it won't change your world or anything.  It's a nice little low budget diversion from all of the flashy science fiction films assaulting your summertime senses, and I recommend it for horror fans who like their scares implied rather than in-your-face.  Bobcat done good.


Transformers: Age of Extinction

Two words to describe this movie:  Aggressively Stupid.

This is Michael Bay's final Transformers movie, thank the gods.  I loved the cartoon series from the '80's (and the toys that inspired it) and I always thought that the characters and mythology from the show could, in the right hands, result in a truly great modern retelling.  Instead, we have this crappy new franchise (produced by Steven Spielberg, for shame), chock full of indecipherable action sequences, overstuffed plots, paper-thin characters, unfunny humor, overly human-centric stories, and more casual racism/sexism than you can shake a sexually frustrated frat boy at.  To be fair, "Age of Extinction" isn't the worst movie in the series - that honor goes to the second movie "Revenge of the Fallen" - but I did find AOE to be the most frustrating movie in the series, for a few reasons.  It's three hours long and full of extraneous characters and absolutely useless "plot" (just kill the bad guys already!).  The blatant product placement and the obvious pandering to China is, well, stupidly amusing, I must admit, but ridiculous.  The Dinobots (my #1 reason for seeing this movie) don't even show up until the final half hour and are completely mishandled.  Heck, I'm not even sure what they're supposed to be in this series.  Prime mentions something about them being ancient knights of Cybertron or some crap, but it's all very badly written and I don't understand what was wrong with using the same origins they had in the cartoon.  Plus, they never talk and have no discernible character traits.  Auuggh.

The movie does have good points - it's true!  The aforementioned indecipherable action sequences basically improved with the introduction of 3-D in the third movie "Dark of the Moon".  I had no problem following the action in AOE.  Then there's the villain named Lockdown.  He is, I feel, the best, most fully realized Transformer character in the new series, which is admittedly faint praise, but whenever the guy was off screen I was waiting for him to return.  He's like Boba Fett, but with a personality.  He's far more enjoyable to watch than Bay's Optimus Prime, who's still a grumpy asshole.  Finally, we have Shia LeBoef's replacement, Mark Wahlberg - he's far less annoying, but pretty much just a blank slate with muscles.

I haven't even mentioned the many gaping plot holes or terrible lines of dialogue.  My Favorite Line of Crappy Dialogue:  When Walhberg's family farm is invaded by black-clad government agents, Wahlberg asks Lead Agent if they have a warrant to search his place.  Lead Agent replies, "My face is my warrant."  Son of a bitch, that's awful.  That's it.  I'm done with these Transformers movies.

Until the next one, because Unicron and the Quintessons are probably going to be in it.  I'm so hopeless.


- The Movie of June -

It's "22 Jump Street".  "Edge of Tomorrow" is a very close second, but "Jump Street" has a better ending.