June Preview

I want to begin this monthly preview with an apology. I made the rather grandiose claim in last month’s May preview that Age of Ultron fired the blockbuster starting gun into robot James Spader’s face; in essence, the race was on. If Utron was a starting pistol, Mad Max: Fury Road is a howitzer that blew up the racetrack, everybody on it and then ramped over the bomb-site in a suped-up muscle car covered in spikes screaming something passionately about equal rights. It’s hard to tell though, it could also have just been an excitable whoop. My point is all action movies this year are going to be sitting in Fury Road’s nuclear shadow, so I think we’re all due for a sit down with some chamomile tea and together let’s take a calm look ahead at June, shall we?

Listen Up Philip – 5^th June

Warning, the following film is about as indie as indie gets. We’re not just talking low budgets and introspective naval-gazing over relationships and novels, we’re talking Jason Schwartzman level of indie, we’re talking “Indie-ana Jones and The French Literature Bookstore You’ve Never Heard Of Because It’s Just Some Guy’s House In Unmapped Manhattan”. Listen Up Philip’s tale of frustrated novelist Philip Lewis Friedman (Schwartzman) seeking refuge at his idol’s summer house is obviously not going to be for everyone, but it does co-star Elisabeth Moss, Jonathan Pryce and Krysten Ritter, so no matter what happens it’ll be acted by the best.

Spy – 5^th June

What’s to say about Melissa McCarthy? I don’t want to call her marmite or baconnaise (that’s bacon-flavoured mayonnaise, folks) or some other divisive spreadable, because that’s lazy content writing. What I will say, though, is that in Bridesmaids she just the right amount of screen-time and just the right kind of script. With that, I’d like you to fill in the blanks with regards to my views on The Heat and -shudder- Tammy. Now, with that idea now in your heads, I’d like you to project the possibility of my finding good things to say about Spy, her upcoming CIA-office-worker-turns-spy-comedy with Jason Statham, Jude Law and Miranda Hart. But that’s just me, check out the trailer below and see for your own fine selves.

Jurassic World – 11th June

The Jurassic Park franchise brings out a lot of strong reactions in people, it’s either “Oh my flip I LOVE the first one”, “The sequels ran it into the ground for me” or “It’s very scientifically inaccurate and laughably executed, also I have no taste in movies, a terrible case of piles and am irreparably impotent”. It feels like forever since we last had Jurassic Park on our screens, but in truth it’s only been 14 years, which under new temporal legislation is actually now classified as “almost forever”. Jurassic World sees John Hammond’s (the late Richard Attenborough) dream realised, but when park executive Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) greenlights a daring new attraction, it’s down to Chris Pratt’s gamekeeper to un-bugger the situation. It wouldn’t be a Jurassic Park film if everything went smoothly, now would it?

Knock Knock – 16^th June

In short, Knock Knock sees Keanu Reeves living peacefully in a fashionable home with his puppy until intruders make his life a lot more complicated, where have we heard THAT before? Fortunately for Mr Reeves, the intruders aren’t fugly Russian gangsters but are instead Lorena Izzo and Ana de Armas. Unfortunately for Mr Reeves, they happen to be deranged psychopaths with a peculiar moral compass. Fortunately for us, we get to see Keanu test out his recently-reacquired chops in the realm of single-location home-invasion horror. Unfortunately for us, it’s directed by Eli Roth, one of the most inconsistent men operating in Hollywood. That said I do still like his Donny Donowitz.

Entourage – 19^th June

What is with television shows turning into movies? In the past year-and-a-bit alone we’ve had Veronica Mars, 22 Jump Street, The Inbetweeners 2, and Shaun The Sheep to name a few and now this? What is going on? Send your answers to us through the usual means. In the meanwhile, I’ll tell you about the cinematic continuation of another TV series I didn’t watch. ‘Entourage’ sees our boys Vincent, Eric, Turtle and Johnny riding high on a wave of success, and, be it fate or otherwise, are once again drawn back into work with their agent Ari Gold (Jeremy Piven). Now to go watch eight seasons’ worth of telly to find out what that really means…

Mr. Holmes – 19^th June

Is it weird that Ian McKellen has never played the world’s greatest detective? For our younger readers that title originally pertains to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, not Batman. An Ian McKellen Batman can’t be any more odd a choice than Ben Affleck’s, though, am I right? Ahem. Anyway, the marriage of McKellen to Holmes is finally made solid in Bill Condon’s Mr. Holmes, which sees a 90-year-old Sherlock living out his final days as a beekeeper in the countryside, reflecting on his life and ruminating on his final case, one that he hopes to finally solve before his time runs out.

Minions – 26^th June

Don’t act like this is any kind of surprise, ever since the first Despicable Me movie there’s been talk of a spin-off for the Minions and given their global popularity, endless marketability and constant invasion of our screens with trailers and TV spots you’d have to be very unobservant to not notice. But then again, there’s something about the Minions’ brand of Looney-Toon antics that unexplainably sits just right with everyone. Despite the vocal appearances by Jon Hamm, Sandra Bullock, Steve Coogan and Jennifer Saunders this time around, you’ll still be watching this for those little yellow fellas in the blue dungarees.

The Overnight – 26^th June

You should be so lucky as to get two appearances by Jason Schwartzman in the same month! That is, if the continued visage of Jason Schwartzman on a massive theatre screen is something you’d pay money to see more than once in a while. I can’t say, I only occasionally browse his fan forums. In any case, Adam Scott and Taylor Schilling are newly-moved parents to LA when they bump into fellow LA-dwelling parent Schwartzman, who invites them over to their house for a play-date-sleep-over between their kids. But this is LA, gang, and things don’t stay quite so kid-friendly for very long.

Slow West – 26^th June

Man, you really know where you are with a Western, and whilst the poster for Slow West looks like it’s promoting a hipster hair salon or vintage clothing shop it did walk away with the Grand Jury Prize at this year’s Sundance. Slow West follows a young Scotsman’s (Kodi Smit-McPhee [a name I unapologetically enjoy saying out loud]) journey across America to find the woman he loves, aided by the outlaw Michael Fassbender and countered by Ben Mendelsohn’s gang of nogoodnik bounty hunters. Expect lush scenery, big hats, and gunfights and people not taking ‘no’ for an answer. That’s what a Western is in essence, right?