Dear Stephen,
The latest Marvel movie invaded our pop-consciousness last weekend and thereby marks the beginning of Summer Movie Season. Although buzz is quite good, The Advengers movies are just not my thing (Begin rant: yes, I have tried watching them, and yes, I ride hard for Robert Downey, Jr., please just let me enjoy every other type of movie on the planet, I JUST DON’T LIKE THEM, OK? End of rant). This doesn’t mean that I don’t like summer movies. I find that 50% of the time it’s a film released between May and August that is my overall favorite at year end. 2013 was one of my least favorite Oscar Seasons to date, but that summer included such gems as Blue Jasmine, The Bling Ring and The Way Way Back. Without further rambling (I shouldn’t say that because we all know there will be more rambling), I give you Part I of my Summer Movie Preview:
Prestige Summer Film or Most Likely to Still Be Discussed in December: I originally thought I would name this category “Prestige Drama” but looking about at past nominated films that debuted in the warmer months, it usually isn’t a prestige drama that captures our hearts. Looking at the nominated summer films of the past few years include: Mad Max Furry Road (2015), Boyhood (2014), The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014), Beasts of the Southern Wild (2012), The Help (2011), Midnight in Paris (2011), The Tree of Life (2011), Inception (2010), The Kids are Alright (2010), Toy Story 3 (2010), and Winter’s Bone (2010), the only thing that can be said is that you can’t lump them into one genre of film.
With all that said, I’m picking The Founder as 2016’s Prestige Summer film. This is actually a more interesting pick than it appears on the surface. Yes, it is a bio-pic of an American businessman, starring an older white Academy Award nominated actor (Michael Keaton), but when was the last time a film like this was released in August? Either it’s terrible and Harvey Weinstein (The Weinstein Company is the distributors, not producers of this film) wants to hide it in the doldrums of summer vacations or after Carol failed to get a Best Picture nomination Harvey is sick competing in the fall and wants to try something new or he doesn’t want it to compete for attention with The Weinstein Company’s Lion, which comes out this fall. In a way it reminds me of 2012’s The Master, which came out in early fall, in that it is about an anti-hero that we have a preconceived notion that what he has accomplished is bad.
Pre-Season Favorite: In contrast to the Prestige Summer Film, this category is for the movie that I can already tell you will be my next favorite movie, even if it doesn’t have award pedigree. It might be because I have an extreme personal interest in the topic of the film (musicals, costume dramas, favorite books, food, ect.) or because it is from a filmmaker and/or writer whose works I consider to be must-see-no-matter-what (Sofia Coppola, Joe Wright, Aaron Sorkin). The best examples in recents years of this would have been Midnight in Paris or The Bling Ring. There was no way that I was not going to see those movies opening weekend and there was no way that I wasn’t going to enjoy myself (and no way that I wasn’t going to own hard copies once they came out on blu ray/dvd).
This summer brings quite a whammy for me. It’s a costume drama, of a Jane Austen novel, directed by a filmmaker I adore: Love & Friendship. I’m not going to talk about this too much now because I hope to make you suffer through a much more in depth conversation later, but I am so excited for this film. It’s an adaptation of the lesser-known Lady Susan and reunites Whit Stillman with his The Last Days of Disco leading ladies Kate Beckinsale and Chloe Sevigny. I admit that Stillman films are not everyone’s cup of tea and that there could be some VERY, VERY bad accents on display, but I won’t hear any of it, I am there opening day.
Fresh Popcorn: Can you smell it? That’s the distinct scent of fresh, but soon to be irritating, movie theater popcorn. This category might not win any awards, but people will know the film you are talking about because previews were shown during the super bowl. As I stated above, I don’t particularly like Marvel films, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t like franchises or big-blockbusters (or as they are now referred to: tent poles).
In 2016 Matt Damon will make his return to the Bourne franchise and I’m as happy as Julia Stiles’ agent cashing the check. The trailer for Jason Bourne tells us almost nothing, but we do know that writer and director Paul Greengrass is back along with crazy car crashes and mystified government agents in suits. What I like about the Bourne movies is that they are made for adults, something that I am finding rarer by the minute. Its a cohesive world building franchise that you actually have to pay attention and engage with to follow the plot. My honorable mention goes to the lady-version of Ghostbusters, which I am eagerly anticipating and will absolutely be seeing in theaters.
Summer Sleeper: Summer has a long tradition producing “sleeper hits” or good films that movie studios made but didn’t promote because they forgot that adults/women like to go to the movies too. For our purposes this can be a film that people don’t think will make any money and will be a “sleeper” hit (Bridesmaids) or a sleeper prestige film that might not make any money, but will be too good to be ignored (Boyhood).
As my pick, I’m going to choose a likeable sleeper, that I hope will be good enough for us to be talking about in December, but I’m not quite willing to say it will get nominated for anything. I don’t know if I stated this when we discussed Everybody Wants Some!!, but baseball movies are my favorite of the sport genre (followed by hockey and football). It is this reason that I am choosing Undrafted as my likable sleeper film. Joseph Mazzello (the annoying little kid from Jurassic Park) wrote and makes his feature-length directorial debut about collegiate baseball players coming to grips with not becoming professional baseball players. It stars EWS hottie Tyler Hoechlin and fellow Ithaca College Theatre Arts Alumni Aaron Tveit.
So what are you looking forward to? In Part II I’ll discuss some of the films I’m less than enthusiastic to see.
Your Friend,
Hil
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