StaticBlog and BAM Present Summer Movies 2010
By early May, having been through the serious art of Oscar season, a switch flips in moviegoers’ collective brains, and they start craving adrenaline surges. It’s summer, and even the most self-serious critics start salivating over the latest Pixar movie, or the one gazillion-dollar effects extravaganza that doesn’t treat audiences like illiterate chumps. Fun is in order, stadium-seating style.
The bitter pill to be choked back and washed down with a $5 soda is that this summer is chockablock full with sequels, remakes and adaptations. This might be the most market-tested movie season in cinematic history.
That still doesn’t diminish expectations for “Iron Man 2,” mainly because director Jon Favreau is not some Michael Bay-style hack, taking pleasure-center readouts from Maxim subscribers and front-loading them into big, dumb, computer-generation-heavy flicks. And there’s more — much, much more. It’s a summer movie explosion, and Bay has nothing to do with it.
So, check out this special StaticBlog and BAM crossover edition, and note the most promising potential blockbusters on your calendar. But remember that movie studios often shift release dates, so check your local listings before heading to the theater.
Today
Robert Downey Jr. returns as the man in the red suit in “Iron Man 2,” doing battle with Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke) and undercover spy Black Widow (Scarlett Johansson) in what is possibly the most anticipated movie of the summer.
For something a lot cuddlier, there is “Babies,” a documentary following the first year in the lives of babies in Mongolia, San Francisco, Tokyo and Namibia.
May 14
Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe tromp into Sherwood Forest for yet another retelling of the “Robin Hood” saga, with Cate Blanchett as Marian, and Matthew Macfadyen (“Pride and Prejudice”) as the Sherriff of Nottingham.
That bow-and-arrow fest is counterprogrammed by “Letters to Juliet,” in which a young woman (ingenue du jour Amanda Seyfried) finds one of the many notes left for William Shakespeare’s fictional heroine at her Verona home.
In “Just Wright,” a physical therapist (Queen Latifah) falls for NBA all-star Scott McKnight (Common) but has to compete for his affections with his childhood friend (Paula Patton), who has trophy-wife dreams.
May 21
Now picking his ears in 3-D, Shrek (Mike Myers) returns in “Shrek Forever After,” only to find his fairytale home in shambles and waging war with Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz) in what is expected to be the final chapter — unless it just rakes in tons of green.
Meanwhile, Will Forte takes his “MacGruber” character from “Saturday Night Live” to the big screen, where he attempts to recover a nuclear warhead stolen by his arch nemesis (Val Kilmer, of course).
May 27
There might be a wedding — or not — but Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker), Samantha (Kim Cattrall), Charlotte (Kristin Davis) and Miranda (Cynthia Nixon) encounter shoes, sexual hijinks, an Abu Dhabi getaway, Liza Minnelli and possibly a flashback sequence in “Sex and the City 2.”
May 28
Dastan (Jake Gyllenhaal), a former street urchin adopted by royalty, must recover some mystical dirt from an evil overlord (Ben Kingsley) in the video game adaptation, “Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time.”
Then, zombies invade a bucolic island refuge as powerful factions argue over whether to kill or cure the rotting brain masticators in George A. Romero’s “Survival of the Dead.”
June 4
In “Get Him to the Greek,” a sorta-kinda sequel to “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” music business flunky Aaron Green (Jonah Hill, not playing his “Sarah Marshall” character) must ferry uncontrollable rock star Aldous Snow (Russell Brand, playing his “Sarah Marshall character”) from London to Los Angeles.
Then, Katherine Heigl reteams with her “Ugly Truth” director, Robert Luketic, for “Killers,” in which desperate lonely heart Jennifer (Heigl) meets Spencer (Ashton Kutcher), a spy with a best friend (Rob Riggle) trying to kill him.
If those sound too wacky, check out “Splice,” a sci-fi thriller starring Adrian Brody and Sarah Polley as scientists creating human-animal mutations, or Owen Wilson as the voice of a big dog in “Marmaduke.”
June 11
Joe Carnahan (“Smokin’ Aces”) engages in ’80s schlock nostalgia but possibly to super-cool effect in “The A-Team,” with Bradley Cooper as Faceman, Liam Neeson as Hannibal and, best of all, Sharlto Copley (“District 9”) as Murdoch. We pity the fool that isn’t excited.
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