Summer Movie Preview: Best/Worst Case

I know, I know. It’s not even summer, you say! It’s April! It’s thirty-nine degrees with a chance of snow! How can it be “The Summer Movie Season”? Well, the summer movie season waits for no weather report. The summer movie season is a season unto itself, one that begins in late April and ends in mid-August, give or take, depending on how much expired product major studios have left sitting in their stock rooms and need to unload, thereby transforming the eighth month of a year into a dumping ground for perishable motion pictures that have, rest assured, perished. So suck it up. This is the once-great mattress we threw down underneath an on ramp and we have to sleep on it.

Happy Summer Movie Season!

The summer movie season of 2016 looks no different than any other summer movie season. Sequels, remakes and reboots, oh my, and something called The Angry Birds Movie, which I do not understand and will not address. Even so, summer movie season is a way of life whether we like it or not, and so we here at Cinema Romantico, as we do each and every “summer”, examine a few of the more extensive tentpoles from the viewpoint of what their best and worst scenarios could be. Join us, won’t you?

Summer Movie Preview: Best/Worst Case Scenarios

Money Monster (May 13). Best Case: The preview was just another infamous Clooney prank! Ha ha ha! The “Money Monster” refers to the name of Clooney’s yacht at his place on Lake Como where he and Jules film a Cary Grant/Grace Kelly-ish heist-ish trifle remarkable for its fluffy revelry. People wonder why in the hell these two have not been fronting films together for years. Twenty-five more George/Julia movies are commissioned. Worst Case: True to the trailer’s terrifying word, despite finally getting these two true blue movie stars back in a movie together, they are barely ever allowed to be on screen together at the same time.

The Nice Guys (May 20). Best Case: Shane Black proves to really be onto something with this “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” pseudo-sequel, every ten years releasing another one with a new leading duo, beginning with the 2025 release of “Hayride with Dracula”, starring Nicole Kidman and Naomi Watts because finally someone grasps that these two need to be in buddy cop movie together. Worst Case: The film is so successful that Black is hired to helm the inevitable “Central Intelligence” (see below) sequel, “Federal Bureau”, starring Kevin Hart and Kevin Nealon.

The Buddy Cop movie of my dreams.

Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising (May 20). Best Case: Rose Byrne renounces Seth Rogen to join forces with Chloe Grace Moretz and Kappa Kappa Nu as the sorority crushes the fraternity. Worst Case: Seth Rogen & Zac Efron stop the Sorority’s Rising with minimal help from Rose Byrne, eliciting a “Neighbors 3” which functions as a crossover with “Old School” which becomes required viewing for all Skulls initiations.

X Men: Apocalypse (May 27). Best Case: It actually is the Apocalypse – the Superhero Movie Apocalypse, that is, and the screen will split apart like a scroll when it is rolled up, and every superhero and every superhero movie’s director were moved out of their places. For the great day of their wrath will have come, and who will be able to stand? Worst Case: The Apocalypse merely engenders a rebirth, with a re-booting of “X Men”, as all the principal characters are played by members of TNT’s cast of “Dallas” – call it, “X Men of Dallas.”

Central Intelligence (June 17). Best Case: As the CIA operative chasing Dwayne Johnson’s character, and in a nod to Michael Keaton in “The Other Guys”, Amy Ryan speaks almost exclusively in Boyz II Men quotes. Worst Case: It makes you remember at every turn that the trailer employed the lamentable phrase “A Little Hart and A Big Johnson” because it’s just that clever.

----------

We interrupt this summer movie preview to provide a still from the forthcoming “High Rise” (May 13) in which Sienna Miller apparently plays the character I have long dreamed she would play in a movie - that is, a cigarette smoking, martini slurping faded diva haughtily judging everyone from on high.

----------

Independence Day Resurgence (June 24). Best Case: Charlotte Gainsbourg plays the leader of a violent splinter SETI group. Cable Repairman David Levinson has, in the ensuing twenty years, found a way to break up the cable company monopoly. Russell Case, like Geppetto, Figaro and Cleo winding up alive in Monstro’s belly, is alive inside the remnants of the alien spaceship (please don’t ask) and returns to re-save the day. Worst Case: I don’t want to imagine a worst case for this movie. I just want this movie to be Emmerich good.

Ghostbusters (July 15). Best Case: The funniest stuff was deliberately kept out of the trailer, the rare delayed gratification Hollywood marketing ploy, and the movie soars as the quartet of female paranormal investigators don’t simply duplicate but duplicate and expand. Kate McKinnon becomes a damn star. Worst Case: That was the funniest stuff in the trailer. Projectile Vomit for everyone!!!

Star Trek Beyond (July 22). Best Case: Fed up with J.J. Abrams constantly referencing the past in previous “Star Trek” reboots, new director Justin Lin reboots the reboots, re-imagining James T. Kirk as a by-the-book intellectual, Spock as a piratical anarchist, Bones as a fiery stand-up comic, Scotty as an ex-member of the IRA, and Uhura as less Starfleet communications officer and more Naomie Harris in “Miami Vice.” Worst Case: Much like Benedict Cumberbatch turned out to be Khan (spoiler alert!) in “Star Trek Into Darkness”, Idris Elba turns out to be interstellar con man Harry Mudd.

Jason Bourne (July 29). Best Case: Fed up that the government has AGAIN employed some shady black ops to try and take him out, Jason Bourne decides his only recourse is to slyly spring a trap where he lures unwitting, dimwitted America into nuclear war with unwitting, dimwitted North Korea. They blow each other up. Jason Bourne lazes on a beach in the south Pacific with Nicky Parsons. Worst Case: As Jason Bourne lazes on a beach in the south Pacific with Nicky Parsons, a shady dude (Michael Sheen) emerges from the palm trees. The Moby song plays. The Shady Dude says: “Jason. Do you want to know what you really are?” Jason and Nicky sigh.

Suicide Squad (August 5). Best Case: Jared Leto saves his grandest prank for last, rigging it so that every digital projector in the world showing the “Suicide Squad” will automatically incinerate mid-movie. Worst Case: The movie rips the box office a new one. It so successful that producers decide to forgo the sequel and that sequel’s sequel eventually giving way to the reboot and simply making the reboot the sequel to the original.