Courtesy of movieweb.com
It’s never easy choosing what movies to watch, especially when financial constraint and limited time are thrown into the mix. Below are a few upcoming June movies that I feel show promise. Hopefully the list will help inform your decision this summer season.
“The Fault in Our Stars”
June 6 (wide)
Admittedly, the trailer looks less than promising. Often, dialogue translated verbatim from book to screen sounds stilted, and early ads for the “The Fault in Our Stars” portend this exact fate for the film adaptation of John Green’s beloved novel.
But my was the book a dazzler, and misleading trailers are hardly unheard of in the entertainment industry. My advice? If you’ve never read the novel, get on that first. Lose yourself in Green’s mile-a-minute wit, his full-blooded characters, and the way he interlaces comedy and tragedy into a gorgeous tapestry of humanity. As for the movie, well, why not go check it out? Worst case scenario, you’re disappointed by a film that failed to do justice to the book. You’ve lost two hours of your life along with $11.00, but you still adore the book, maybe even more now that you’ve realized how resistant the novel is to adaptation – it is that good. Best case scenario? You get a movie that syncs with the novel’s beating heart, that explores life in the context of mortality, and that tells a “romance with a capital R,” as Green himself has described the book. For a chance at the latter, I’d say two hours and 11 bucks is not much of a sacrifice at all.
“22 Jump Street”
June 13 (wide)
After refashioning the buddy cop formula with swagtastic immaturity in “21 Jump Street” and rediscovering the spirit of innovation with “The Lego Movie,” Phil Lord and Christopher Miller deserve the hype that’s all over “22 Jump Street,” reprising the now-legendary Tatum-Hill duo but this time in the drugged-up, boozed-up, pressure-cooker jungle that is college. It promises to be a goofy send-up to the American collegiate experiencethus making it essential viewing for university students nationwide. For the general public, the movie looks to be a self-parodying showcase of the actors’ charisma: Jonah Hill and his motor-mouthed neuroticism, and Channing Tatum with his Adonisian physique and pretty-boy status. The way Hill and Tatum both embraced and transcended their public image in the first film was what made the movie stand out, and “22 Jump Street” appears to follow suit. In this case, more of the same is a good thing.
“Snowpiercer”
June 27 (limited)
There’s nothing like a good ’ol dystopian yarn to temper seasonal braindeadedness with a bit of science fiction qua sociopolitical discourse, but neither is an overbearing lecture on societal ills the kind of thing people want interfering with their summery ideal of relaxation (e.g. a repeat of Neill Blomkamp’s “Elysium”). Director Joon-ho Bong, whose “Memories of Murder” straddled mirth and macabre with aplomb and whose creature flick “The Host” acted as a campy counterpoint to the eerie majesty of “Mother,” is a master at controlling tone. Some of this mastery is suggested in the latest ads for “Snowpiercer,” an action movie set entirely on a high-speed train whose various compartments represent society’s socioeconomic strata turned lengthwise, a kitschy narrative detail that ditches dramatic pomposity in favor of a baroque fascination with genre. Navigating through a diversity of styles (e.g. film noir, steampunk, the martial arts movie), the early ads suggest a film on the move, in terms of both the ideas it introduces and the way it chooses to talk about them through the rough-and-tumble language of action cinema. Hop aboard.
Jeng is a member of the class of 2016.
