The Expendables 3 (August 15)
As someone who absolutely loved The Expendables and The Expendables 2, you can bet your ass that I’m excited about The Expendables 3, the super-sized third outing in this testosterone-fueled series. Bringing several exciting new talents into the cast, including but not limited to Harrison Ford, Antonio Banderas and Mel Gibson, The Expendables 3 promises to be bigger and more bombastic than its two predecessors (if that’s even possible). In other words, it promises to be more of the same, but that’s perfectly fine by me.
There’s just something so immensely pleasing about seeing the action stars of yesterday, today and tomorrow gang up to kick some ass. It’s mindless popcorn entertainment at its absolute best, and you’d be hard-pressed to find another film this summer that will offer up as much pure, unadulterated fun.
Look, by this point, I shouldn’t really have to sell you on The Expendables 3. Most people know what this series is all about, and your enjoyment of the third film will rest solely on how much fun you had with the first two. If seeing Sylvester Stallone team up with Arnold Schwarzenegger to blow up foreign countries with little regard for human life sounds like a good time, then you’d better be first in line to see this threequel.
– MJ
The Giver (August 15)
Many fans of Lois Lowry’s landmark YA novel The Giver were first stunned then horrified when news broke that Jeff Bridges was moving forward with an adaptation of the supposedly “unfilmable” work. When Brenton Thwaites signed on to play protagonist Jonas, and the character was aged up from 12 to 16, fans didn’t feel any less hostile towards the film. When it arrives this August, we’ll know whether they were right to be so protective of Lowry’s book.
I’m anticipating The Giver mostly because I’m interested to see how Bridges (who plays the title character) and director Philip Noyce handled the various challenges in adapting the book. For one, it takes place in a colorless dystopian society where only one person (called the Receiver of Memories) is saddled with the emotions, pains and pleasures of the “real” outside world. Showing the lack of feeling in the film’s community will be tricky. It will also be tough for the filmmakers to communicate the largely internal hardships Jonas endures when he is chosen to become the next Receiver of Memories, training under the Giver.
Working from such a potent literary classic, it’s entirely possible that The Giver will be a terrific dystopian sci-fi film. Sure, there are various areas in which it could fall short, but if Bridges and Noyce have taken the time to understand the genius of Lowry’s book, the potential for greatness is high.
– IF
If I Stay (August 22)
Another hotly anticipated YA adaptation, If I Stay stars talented teen actress Chloë Grace Moretz as Mia Hall, a 17-year-old musician who faces the toughest choice of her life when a terrible car accident kills the rest of her family (including her parents and younger brother) and leaves her in a coma. Mia has a choice to make. She can wake up and mourn the loss of her family with the love of her boyfriend Adam (Jamie Blackley), or, she can decide to die, leaving the agony of her broken life behind.
It’s heavy subject matter, to be sure, but Gayle Forman’s book didn’t become a smash success by simply depressing readers. If I Stay connected with many because of the tough questions it asked about family, life, death and love, and because of the even-handed, eloquent ways in which it answered them. If screenwriter R.J. Cutler has managed the same trick for this film adaptation, we could be looking at a runaway box office hit.
With stellar turns in Kick-Ass, Let Me In and Carrie, Moretz has repeatedly proven herself to be one of the best young actresses working today, so it’s about time that she got a YA franchise of her own. Without a doubt this is one of the movies I’m most looking forward to seeing this summer.
– IF
