Film
Spring Arts 2013
MAY
IRON MAN 3 — The first surefire blockbuster of the season. At this point, we all know the drill: Robert Downey Jr.’s sarcastic wit, the best special effects money can buy, and a handful of mind-numbing action sequences. That doesn’t make it any less riveting. (5/3)
THE ICEMAN — Michael Shannon stars as Richard Kuklinski, a notorious Mafia hit man who killed more than 100 men between 1948 and 1986 while raising his family in suburban New Jersey. Ray Liotta, Winona Ryder and Chris Evans co-star. (5/3)
THE GREAT GATSBY — Baz Luhrmann is the perfect director to adapt F. Scott Fitzgerald’s metaphor-thickened ode to the American dream. Seriously, both of these guys are about as subtle as a train wreck — which is appropriate, to say the least. Leonardo DiCaprio, Carey Mulligan, Joel Edgerton and Isla Fisher star. (5/10)
STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS — J.J. Abrams returns to the USS Enterprise for a victory lap before switching his nerd allegiances to Star Wars. Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto and Benedict Cumberbatch star. (5/17)
STORIES WE TELL — This is an odd, wonderful sort of documentary. Filmmaker Sarah Polley turns the camera on herself and her family — namely, the complicated marriage from which her family sprouted. Polley’s insistence on making her private life so public invigorates the portrait of her family, which has helped make Stories We Tell a darling of the festival circuit last year. (5/17)
FAST & FURIOUS 6 — The Fast and the Furious came out 12 years ago. Since that first movie’s debut, the series has grossed more than a billion-and-a-half dollars. The lesson? It pays to be mediocre, so long as you look good while you’re doing it. (5/24)
THE HANGOVER PART III — Are you excited to see this? You must be drunk. (5/24)
BEFORE MIDNIGHT — It’s that time of the decade. Eighteen years after Before Sunrise, and nine years after Before Sunset, Richard Linklater, Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy return to play our hearts like harpsichords. This movie will be supremely important to anyone who saw the first two, and supremely inconsequential to everyone else. I encourage you to be a part of the former group. (5/24)
THE EAST — An environmental terrorism thriller heavy on political commentary, The East appears to be a radical fantasy about punishing the corporations who poison the planet and its most vulnerable inhabitants. Zal Batmanglij (Sound of My Voice) directs; Brit Marling, Ellen Page and Alexander Skarsgård star. (5/31)
NOW YOU SEE ME — Louis Leterrier directs this slick-looking heist mystery about a Las Vegas super-group of magicians who rob a bank on a different continent during a magic show. Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Isla Fisher and Woody Harrelson star. (5/31)
JUNE
AFTER EARTH — Centuries after humanity abandons Earth, a father and son (played by Will Smith and Jaden Smith) crash land on the now unrecognizably hostile planet during a scouting mission. The catch? After Earth is directed by infamous director M. Night Shyamalan. The surprise? It doesn’t appear to be as terrible as his last few movies. (6/7)
THE INTERNSHIP — Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson play a pair of salesmen who apply for internships at Google after finding themselves unemployed in the digital age. Insensitive jokes about a weak job market in the wake of a recession, an anachronistic fear of technology, and an awed reverence for Silicon Valley? Yikes. (6/7)
MAN OF STEEL — Forget the Superman you’ve seen in movies for years. Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel aims to rekindle the chief conflict of the world’s most famous superhero: How can humanity trust an outsider to defend it? This is easily the most intriguing mainstream movie of the season. If it works — and many have a hunch that it will — it will do for Superman what Christopher Nolan’s ”Dark Knight” trilogy did for Batman. Henry Cavill and Amy Adams star. (6/14)
THIS IS THE END — What would happen if a group of Hollywood’s funniest young actors were stuck in an apartment together during the apocalypse? Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, James Franco, Jay Baruchel, Danny McBride and Craig Robinson play vaguely fictional versions of themselves in this ironic sci-fi comedy. (6/14)
MONSTERS UNIVERSITY — Pixar’s favorite scary beasts return in this prequel to Monsters Inc., which tells the story of how Mike Wazowski (Billy Crystal) met Sulley (John Goodman). The original movie was one of the most inventive in Pixar’s impressive collection, so while the studio doesn’t have an excellent track record with sequels, the returning cast and stellar crew suggest this will be a worthy exception. (6/21)
WORLD WAR Z — Based on a bestselling book by Max Brooks, this bloated-looking globetrotter of a zombie movie stars Brad Pitt as a United Nations employee interviewing survivors of the undead plague. While Brooks’s book told a thrilling, complex story, the early trailers for World War Z suggest that director Marc Forster may not be able to tie it all together as adeptly. (6/21)
THE HEAT — A buddy cop movie starring Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy, directed Paul Feig. Leave it McCarthy and Feig — two of Hollywood’s funniest, who made magic together in Bridesmaids — to make a tired comedy premise seem worthwhile. (6/28)
WHITE HOUSE DOWN — Remember when I told you that there are two action movies out this season about terrorists seizing the White House? Well, this is the other one. It’s directed by blockbuster king Roland Emmerich, so it’s also the one you’ll want to see. (6/28)
I’M SO EXCITED — Very little is known about Pedro Almodóvar’s first comedy in seven years, but on the strength of his name alone it will be worth catching. So, what do we know about it? The movie is almost entirely set on an airplane, it stars Almodóvar regulars Penélope Cruz and Antonio Banderas in minor roles, and it looks utterly delightful. (6/28)
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