Reverend's Preview: Hangovers, Heroes & Hunks

The heat is on, not only outdoors but on the big screen as Hollywood rolls out its biggest, priciest and most heavily-hyped movies over the next three months.  While Iron Man 3 may have gotten a jump start at the cineplex, there is plenty more to look forward to below.  Note: All release dates are subject to change.

The Hangover Part III - Opens May 24:

The “Wolfpack” comprised of stars Bradley Cooper (fresh off his Oscar nomination for Silver Linings Playbook), Ed Helms and Zack Galifianakis take a road trip this time around.  Their numerous adversaries, inadvertent victims and/or allies are played by Heather Graham (returning from the first Hangover), Melissa McCarthy, John Goodman and The New Normal’s Justin Bartha.  And, of course, Ken Jeong is once again on hand as the oft-naked Mr. Chow.

Fast & Furious 6 - Opens May 24:

Musclemen Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Dwayne Johnson (who seems to be in every other movie nowadays), Tyrese Gibson and Jason Statham and their muscle cars once again crash onto the big screen.  Michelle Rodriguez also returns as tough yet sensitive car thief Letty.  Few fans likely go to the Fast & Furious films for their plots, but are instead drawn by the admittedly cool spectacle of flying, rolling, cartwheeling roadster mayhem. This one definitely looks like it will fulfill their expectations.

The Kings of Summer - Opens May 31:

A big hit at January’s Sundance Film Festival.  Three teenaged boys, seeking to escape their repressive home lives, decide to build a house in the woods for themselves and live off the land.  They face unexpected environmental and relational challenges along their coming-of-age path.  Karen Walker herself, Megan Mullally, appears as the mother of one of the boys.

This Is the End - Opens June 12:

James Franco, the hardest-working man in movies after Dwayne Johnson, teams up with funny guys Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, Michael Cera and Jason Segel.  They and a host of other celebs play themselves, who unfortunately have to confront the end of the world while attending a party hosted by Franco.  Reportedly, the gay-curious Franco (see his recent turns in Milk, Howl, The Broken Tower and Interior. Leather Bar; no, Oz The Great and Powerful doesn’t count) is raked over the coals about his sexuality in this comedy.

Man of Steel - Opens June 14:

Super-stylish director Zack Snyder (300, Watchmen, Sucker Punch) teams up with the Dark Knight producer-writer team of Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer for this new, darker take on Superman’s origin and exploits.  Henry Cavill (The Tudors, Immortals) stars in the title role, with Oscar nominee Michael Shannon opposite him as evil General Zod.  The all-star supporting cast includes Russell Crowe as Jor-El, Kevin Costner and Diane Lane as Pa and Ma Kent, Amy Adams as Lois Lane and Laurence Fishburne, in colorblind casting, as news editor Perry White.  Gay fave Christopher Meloni (Oz) also appears as a military bigwig.

World War Z - Opens June 21:

Brangelina’s male half, Brad Pitt, produced and stars in this apocalyptic chiller.  He plays a United Nations worker and family man who races around the world in order to stop an unknown virus that is rapidly turning humanity into flesh-craving zombies.  The film’s trailer showing the creatures literally crawling over themselves like ants to scale walls and catch their prey is truly unsettling.  These aren’t your traditional, slo-mo walking dead.  Lost hottie Matthew Fox co-stars.

I’m So Excited - Opens June 28:

Pedro Almodóvar’s latest looks like a return to all-out comedy form after the gay filmmaker’s more serious, recent endeavors such as The Skin I Live In and Broken Embraces.  Almost entirely set on a passenger jet forced to keep circling Mexico City due to a malfunction, it sounds like a delirious spoof of the old Airport disaster movies.  A healthy dose of bisexuality, a drug-fueled orgy and Pointer Sisters songs are reportedly thrown into the mix.  Almodovar regulars Antonio Banderas and Penelope Cruz head the cast. 

The Heat - Opens June 28:

The potentially hilarious teaming of Oscar winner Sandra Bullock and Oscar nominee Melissa McCarthy has definitely piqued my interest.  Here, they play a mismatched FBI agent and a Boston cop assigned to work together in order to take down a ruthless drug lord.  Directed by Paul Feig, whose last film was the estrogen-powered monster hit Bridesmaids.

White House Down - Opens June 28:

Gay director Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, Godzilla, 2012) is not one to be outdone when it comes to large-scale destruction on screen.  Although the similarly-plotted Olympus Has Fallen beat it to theaters, this action-thriller about bad guys attacking 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and attempting to kidnap the President (played by Jamie Foxx) will probably leave the earlier movie in the dust.  Channing Tatum (Magic Mike) stars as the Commander-in-Chief’s studly, tank top-clad bodyguard.

The Lone Ranger - Opens July 3:

Armie Hammer (The Social Network, J. Edgar) stars as the masked do-gooder of radio, TV and a flop 1981 big-screen take on the legend.  Johnny Depp is at his side as devoted Native American partner Tonto.  The new version recounts the hero’s beginnings while pitting him against arch-enemy Butch Cavendish (William Fichtner) and other miscreants played by Oscar nominees Tom Wilkinson and Helena Bonham Carter.  Hi-yo, Silver, away!

Pacific Rim - Opens July 12:

In what may well be this summer’s most original adventure, the human race is forced to battle massive monsters from another dimension who invade Earth by creating giant robot warriors.  Charlie Hunnam, who played the original twink Nathan on the British Queer as Folk and now appears on Sons of Anarchy, has his first lead action movie role as the robots’ chief pilot.  Written and directed by Guillermo Del Toro of Hellboy and Pan’s Labyrinth fame.

The Hot Flashes - Opens July 12:

I've actually already seen this sports-tinged comedy, which could emerge as the sleeper hit of the summer.  The stellar, menopausal quintet of Brooke Shields, Daryl Hannah (in a lesbian role), Camryn Manheim, out comedian Wanda Sykes and Oscar nominee Virginia Madsen are former high school athletes who re-group to save their deceased friend's mobile breast cancer clinic.  It is hilarious, heartfelt and, most significantly during a special effects-dominated season, human. 

The Wolverine - Opens July 26:

Our favorite adamantium-clawed hero returns, once again played by one of our favorite leading men of screen and stage, Hugh Jackman.  His latest adventure, which reportedly takes place after the events of 2006’s X-Men: The Last Stand, finds Logan in Japan fighting ninjas, gangsters and the villainous female mutant, Viper.  Famke Janssen is also slated to make a re-appearance as Jean Grey/Phoenix.  Of course, the main draw for many will be Hugh taking his shirt off.

The Smurfs 2 - Opens July 31:

Oh no!  Smurfette (voiced by Katy Perry) has been abducted by that nasty Gargamel (Hank Azaria).  The Smurfs’ human friend, gay poster boy Neil Patrick Harris, must come to their aid.  Other gay actors or community favorites in this sequel’s voice cast include AlanCumming, Christina Ricci, Modern Family’s Sofia Vergara and the late, great Jonathan Winters.  With so much GLBT energy in these family films, I’m surprised the Smurfs don’t change colors from blue to rainbow!

Elysium - Opens August 9:

Matt Damon and out actress Jodie Foster (she did finally come out at the Golden Globes, didn’t she?) headline this sci-fi opus from the writer-director of the terrific District 9.  Set in the year 2159, Damon plays a lower-class, earthbound worker who becomes contaminated by radiation and must break into the space station community of the wealthy to find a cure.  Foster is the amoral Corporate Authority out to stop him.  It sounds like it will play with class issues the way District 9 potently did with race.

Lovelace - Opens August 9:

A big-screen biography of 1970’s porn star Linda Lovelace.  Though she suffered greatly, Lovelace’s popularity helped legitimize the adult industry and arguably helped to empower women at the height of the sexual revolution.  Amanda Seyfried (Mamma Mia!, Les Miserables) takes on the title role, with Peter Sarsgaard as her abusive husband and James Franco (again!) making a cameo as Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner.  Co-directed by gay filmmakers Rob Epstein and JeffreyFriedman (The Celluloid Closet, Howl).

Review by Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest, Rage Monthly Magazine and Echo Magazine.

Happy Mother's Day!

Love, MOVIE DEAREST

Reverend’s Reviews: A Great Gatsby

Roadsters roar, flappers flap and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s words often leap literally from the page — in 3D no less — in Baz Luhrmann’s flashy new take on the classic novel TheGreat Gatsby.  Livelier than any previous screen version (notably the sleep-inducing 1974 iteration that starred Robert Redford and Mia Farrow), it is now playing nationwide and will open the Cannes Film Festival next week.

If, like me, your primary exposure to Fitzgerald’s work was back in high school, there may be an initial, understandable hesitance to revisit it now.  I didn’t remember much of the writer’s lauded prose nor the plot’s details, and other pieces of required reading (notably Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Orwell’s 1984) made more of an impression on me at the time than The Great Gatsby.

The stylish-to-a-fault Luhrmann has had some great successes (Strictly Ballroom, Romeo + Juliet, Moulin Rouge!) but his last epic, Australia, was a big flop everywhere but Down Under.  He definitely redeems himself artistically with his immersive, visually spectacular approach to the achingly romantic saga of Jazz-age gazillionaire Jay Gatsby’s love for married debutante Daisy Buchanan.  Luhrmann doesn’t direct the film so much as he meticulously choreographs it, from every large-scale dance sequence down to the opening and closing of dining hall doors, and even seemingly the individual steps Gatsby takes during walks out onto his pier.  The director receives superb support in this regard from choreographer John O’Connell and director of photography Simon Duggan.

As he did in Moulin Rouge!, Luhrmann employs a soundtrack of modern-day dance and hip-hop tunes plus a few period songs all supervised by Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter (aka Mr. Beyonce Knowles, whose hit “Crazy in Love” makes an appearance here).  Most of them are used effectively to accentuate the racial and class distinctions of the 1920’s.  They aren’t as pervasive nor are they arranged as frenetically as songs by Madonna, Fat Boy Slim and other contemporary artists were in Moulin Rouge!  Luhrmann also wisely discards the winking, camp spirit that infused much of his earlier, Oscar-winning hit.

While the adapted screenplay by Luhrmann and regular collaborator Craig Pearce takes some liberties with Fitzgerald’s text (I don’t recall so many automobile races in the source material), it remains absolutely faithful to the ultimately tragic main storyline.  Gatsby’s readiness to spare no expense in his obsessive effort to reclaim Daisy’s affections and, subsequently, the past is heightened by CGI elements added to Catherine Martin’s already-lavish sets and costumes.  Of note, the screenplay and lead performances underscore a long-debated homoerotic dimension to the relationship between Gatsby and his neighbor, writer/narrator Nick Carraway.  This is fairly subtle in the new movie, even if Gatsby seems unusually intent on getting Carraway into his under-used swimming pool.

Speaking of the performances, Luhrmann has cast his Great Gatsby splendidly.  Leonardo DiCaprio, who looks better and better with age, has never been better as an actor than he is here.  As Gatsby, he runs the full gamut of personas and emotions.  He is by turns suave, insecure, aloof, desperate, omnipotent, vulnerable, childish, triumphant and broken.  It is hard to decide whether his best scene in the film is when he rages at Tom Buchanan in their over-heated room at the Plaza Hotel or when he nervously waits for Daisy’s tea-time arrival at Nick’s cottage.

Former Spider-Man Tobey Maguire, still charmingly boyish at the age of 37, is an excellent foil as Nick, while Carey Mulligan conveys suitable innocence but is morally devastating in the end as the conflicted Daisy.  Relative big-screen newcomer Joel Edgerton (Warrior) may make the biggest impression as brutish, unfaithful Tom Buchanan.  Terrific supporting performances are given by Elizabeth Debicki as Jordan Baker, Isla Fisher as the doomed Myrtle Wilson, Jason Clarke (recently seen in Zero Dark Thirty) as George Wilson and Aussie vet Jack Thompson who, in perhaps this version’s biggest departure from the novel, plays a kindly psychiatrist tending to a post-traumatic and “morbidly alcoholic” Nick.

Whether The Great Gatsby will redeem Luhrmann commercially will be known within a few weeks.  If nothing else, his invigorating vision of the literary classic should go over great in high school classrooms after it is released on DVD, maybe even better than the book itself.

Reverend’s Rating: A-

Review by Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest, Rage Monthly Magazine and Echo Magazine.

Reverend’s Reviews: Man of Mettle

That Tony Stark, a.k.a. Iron Man, is capable of saving the world from mass destruction has already been proven in Iron Man, IronMan 2 and The Avengers, not to mention his popular 50-year run in Marvel Comics.  What the superhero hasn’t always been shown capable of, at least not in the hit movies, are the more mundane but equally beneficial roles of serious romantic interest, partner/husband and father or father figure.

Iron Man 3, now playing worldwide to the tune of nearly $600 million in a little over two weeks, devotes as much time to Stark’s growth in these relational areas as it does to his evil-defeating heroics.  Indeed, Iron Man spends much of the new movie without his armor.  Stark (once again played winningly by Robert Downey Jr.) is largely forced to rely on his own, more limited physical strength in his fight against The Mandarin, a seemingly all-powerful mega-terrorist intent on destroying the good ol’ U.S. of A.  Oscar winner Ben Kingsley makes The Mandarin a truly frightening specter, aided by very disturbing videos.

The Mandarin is hardly Stark’s only foe in Iron Man 3.  Aldrich Killian (an initially unrecognizable Guy Pearce), a scientist rebuffed by Stark fourteen years prior, has developed a well-intentioned physical therapy called Extremis that enables lost limbs to regenerate.  The therapy, however, has some unique side effects that pose a serious threat.  To the extent that the plot’s potency hinges on Extremis, I found it the least explained and ultimately somewhat silly dimension of an otherwise taut screenplay by Shane Black and Drew Pearce.  Still, Extremis run amok makes for a visually impressive, wham-bang finale that also involves dozens of remotely-operated Iron Man suits.

I have found each of the Iron Man films a marked improvement over its immediate predecessor (not including The Avengers, which outshines pretty much every superhero movie to date) primarily due to the trajectory of Stark’s relationship with Pepper Potts (returning Gwyneth Paltrow) and the series’ more fearsome recent villains.  Many critics would disagree with me but I encourage them to re-view 2008’s Iron Man and witness how woefully insipid most of the banter between Tony and Pepper is, as well as how weak a nemesis Jeff Bridges’ deceitful (and laughably named) Obadiah Stane turns out to be even with his own hulking iron casing.  Largely thanks to co-writer and director Black, working on the franchise for the first time, Iron Man 3 makes Potts a smart and strong equal to Stark.  The Mandarin and Killian, meanwhile, nearly reach the pinnacle of big-screen bad guys currently occupied by Darth Vader, Hannibal Lecter and the Wicked Witch of the West.

The beating (magnetized?) heart of Iron Man 3, though, is Stark’s embrace of his humanity.  Already suffering anxiety attacks in the wake of The Avengers’ battle with alien invaders, Tony has to further endure the destruction of his sea-side Malibu pad by The Mandarin’s forces and finds himself banished to (gulp) rural Tennessee.  In his friendship there with a fatherless boy and separation from Potts, who thinks him dead, Stark begins to accept that what matters most in life is not money, pride, power or superheroics.  Rather, he learns that sympathy, compassion, eye contact and loving self-sacrifice can be the best attributes for any man — iron or otherwise — to possess.

Reverend’s Rating:

Iron Man 3: B+

Review by Rev. Chris Carpenter, resident film critic of Movie Dearest, Rage Monthly Magazine and Echo Magazine.

Monthly Wallpaper: May 2013: Cinematic Striptease

Summer may be a month away, but May is going to get hot with this month's Movie Dearest Calendar Wallpaper salute to Cinematic Striptease!

From the burlesque bump and grind of Gypsy to the oiled-up pecs and abs of Magic Mike, movie strippers -- both male and female -- can always be counted on to turn the silver screen red hot! Get your dollar bills ready!

Just click on the picture above to enlarge it to its 1024 x 768 size, then right click your mouse and select "Set as Background", and you're all set.