Summer 2005 Movie Preview

Darth Vader, the Dark Knight and Willy Wonka Come Back to Life

By Sara Michelle Fetters

An astounding 40% of the box office revenue generated by theaters happens between May and August every year. It’s an astonishing figure, and one the studios hope holds up in what has, at least so far, been a dismal year for all the majors in Hollywood. By conservative estimates, only about 380 million tickets have been sold through April. At the same time last year 407 million had been sold, and while it’s easy to assume the majority of that upswing was due to the unanticipated success of The Passion of the Christ not every ticket out there went to Mel Gibson’s bloody Biblical epic.

Thus explains summer’s usual assortment of bloated big budget sequels, remakes, special effects spectaculars and family flicks. Even if a movie is only a smash for three weeks before fading away (hello Van Helsing and The Village), it’s still a solid $150-million-plus in the bank for Hollywood, and that’s money they’re counting on. Of course, this also means studio’s tend to play down to an audience’s lowest expectations, very rarely risking big ideas, complex moralizations or tragic consequences on filmgoers looking only to come out of the theater smiling.

But just because something doesn’t defy genre conventions doesn’t mean it still can’t be exemplary. In fact, three of last year’s best pictures (Spider-Man 2, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and The Bourne Supremacy), all sequels, came out during Hollywood’s silly season, none of them really wanting to do more than keep their audience’s blissfully entertained for two-plus hours. So great things can happen in the summer, and almost always it’s never right where you expect it to be.

This year’s assortment of warm-weather features basically isn’t that altogether different than what we’ve seen before. We’ve got sequels (Star Wars Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith, Batman Begins), theatrical remakes (The Pink Panther, War of the Worlds, The Longest Yard), television remakes (Bewitched, The Dukes of Hazzard), big budget star vehicles (Mr. and Mrs. Smith with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, The Island with Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson) and gross-out comedies (The Wedding Crashers, The 40-Year-Old Virgin) to spare.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith - Photo © Copyright Twentieth Century Fox

Still, the law of averages states at least a few of these will hit home in one way or another. It also states that some independent or small-scale surprises will emerge as a box office dynamo. (Personally, I’m sort of pulling for George A. Romero’s return to the world of zombies, Land of the Dead, but then I’m a z-grade horror sentimentalist.) No matter what, it’s sure to be interesting. It all starts this very weekend with two utterly different films (Ridley Scott’s crusade epic Kingdom of Heaven and Warner Bros. gross-out horror remake House of Wax), and I for one can’t wait. Summer is a popcorn and Diet Coke filled lollapalooza, and with Batman returning, Darth Vader being born and dead people running around eating intestines I’m ready to get this party started.

The following are the ten films I’m most excited about seeing this Summer, along with some random thoughts about a few of the other features coming our way in the next four months.

MAY

Crash (Starring Don Cheadle, Sandra Bullock, Matt Dillon, Thandie Newton, Brendan Frasier, Ludacris and Ryan Phillippe. Written by Paul Haggis and Robert Moresco. Directed by Paul Haggis. Opens May 6.)

How I’ve not seen this is still beyond me, but it’s an oversight I’ll definitely be rectifying come this weekend. Haggis, responsible for the excellent screenplay of Million Dollar Baby, makes his directorial debut here, and if you believe all the hype it’s one of the strongest and most self-assured debuts to come along in ages.

Kingdom of Heaven (Starring Orlando Bloom, Eva Green, Liam Neeson, Jeremy Irons and Ghassan Massoud. Written by William Monahan. Directed by Ridley Scott. Opens May 6.)

I actually see this film today, and I must admit the anticipation is killing me. Ridley Scott is probably the single best visualist (maybe Terrence Mallick could give him a run, but we’ll have to wait until November’s The New Land to start that discussion) working today, and his canvass this time is the gosh darn Crusades. With the state of the world right now, if Scott’s epic is even remotely even handed in its approach to Christian-Muslim relations than it could start a much-needed dialogue everyone should be having. Of course, the director could always forget about the politics and opt for a Gladiator redux. Here’s hoping that’s not the case.

Star Wars: Episode III - Photo © Copyright Twentieth Century Fox

Star Wars Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith (Starring Ewan McGregor, Natalie Portman, Hayden Christensen, Ian McDiarmid, Samuel L. Jackson, Anthony Daniels, Christopher Lee and Frank Oz. Written and Directed by George Lucas. Opens May 19.)

There isn’t much to say here. Lucas either pulls it off, and we all stop talking about all the silliness that’s left a bad taste in our mouths since Return of the Jedi, or he completely blows it, and the Star Wars saga ends up becoming a sci-fi afterthought much in the same way the two Matrix sequels unfortunately sullied the legacy of the brilliant 1999 original. I refuse to think negative; I’m betting he pulls it off.

OTHER MAY TITLES OF INTEREST

Jane Fonda returns from a 15 year absence to star as Jennifer Lopez’s potential Monster-in-Law (May 13), while a flock of New York Zoo animals try to break free to the wild in DreamWorks’ newest animated comedy Madagascar (May 27). Everyone’s talking about the ‘70’s-style retro gangster cool of Matthew Vaughn’s Layer Cake (May 13), so I guess that means I’m going to have to as well. Mindhunters (May 6) and Unleashed (May 13), a couple of long-delayed action flicks, might prove to be interesting (if only from a so-bad-they’re-good angle), and both Mick Davis’ Modigliani (May 13) and Isabelle Huppert’s racy sounding (and NC-17) Ma Mère (May 13) look like they have potential. Most interesting of all, Paul Schrader’s Exorcist Dominion (May 20), his version of the prequel originally shelved by Warner Bros. and re-shot by Renny Harlin as Exorcist: The Beginning. If it’s as good as the those European reviews make it sound then the studio’s decision to do it all over again is going to seem extra silly.

JUNE

Howl’s Moving Castle (Voices by Emily Mortimer, Jean Simmons, Christian Bale, Lauren Bacall and Billy Crystal. Written and Directed by Hayao Miyazaki. Opens June 10.)

Acclaimed director Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke) returns with another epic sounding tale of a bizarre homestead that walks around on chicken-like legs and the saga of a young girl whom magically morphs into a 90-year-old (voiced by the legendary Bacall). Any feature from Miyazaki is time for a celebration, and once again I’ll be first in line to see if he can keep his legendary streak of animation classics going.

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Article Posted: May 4, 2005

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