With summer finally starting to wind down, it’s always around August we have to prep ourselves for the oncoming genre films. It’s now all just a matter of biding our time waiting for the year’s Oscar bait to finally pounce. From comedies to horror to action, there’s always something for everyone before some head back to school while the rest of us just get through the work week. Let’s take a gander and see what the end of summer has cookin’.
August 5th
After six films and a TV series, not even Tim Burton and Marky Mark could properly reboot the Planet of the Apes franchise. Now Twentieth Century Fox is at it again with a little help from Peter Jackson’s Weta Digital which is hilariously trumpeted in the first teaser trailer for Rise of the Planet of the Apes. Now we get to see how a more modern take on Pierre Boulle can take on the rest of the series, now with James Franco, John Lithgow, Brian Cox, and Freida Pinto, and Andy Serkis as the new “Caesar” leading the way. With only a prison break film under his belt and working again with Cox, we’ll just have to see if director Rupert Wyatt can lead these apes to a new box office revolution. All signs point to greatness so far and clocking in at well under two hours is an instant plus. Here’s hoping Wyatt and the writer’s of one of my favorite guilty pleasures (The Relic) can provide us the summer of “Hail!”
On the lighter side of things, David Dobkin is back to his R-rated stomping grounds with The Change-Up to prove that Wedding Crashers was no fluke and that hopefully Fred Claus was. Along with the writer’s of the original Hangover (Jon Lucas, Scott Moore) we can only hope that they’ve still got some funny in them. From the previews, this has to be better than The Hangover Part Douche because that was essentially a hugely unfunny remake of their original success. Maybe they figured they were too good for the sequel and wanted to focus on more original things, even if it’s just a body swap feature. But with Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds in the leads we should be able to expect some hilarity to ensue even if it may be off the written path.
August 10th
Opening all on its lonesome mid-week comes writer/director Tate Taylor’s adaptation of author Kathryn Stockett’s The Help. Another popular book found on coffee tables across the country gives us our third helping of Emma Stone goodness in less than a month. The movie gods are surely smiling upon us right now. I suppose this is all just to tide us over until she’s gets to be Spidey’s girlfriend next summer but in the meantime she’s still got her (mostly) red hair on as future writer “Skeeter” Phelan. Skeeter decides she wants to start interviewing the local titular help and turn a Mississippi town upside down in the process.
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