It's shaping up to be a pretty safe summer of sequels and remakes – but there's always a hobo with a shotgun and Takashi Miike with samurai swords to shake things up, writes DONALD CLARKE
IT'S A nervous time for the film industry. Thanks largely to 3D releases – and the concomitant surcharges – the last few years saw cinema takings surge quite comfortably. The opening few months of 2011, however, have been worryingly short of breakout hits. As ever, the studios will look to the summer for salvation. The economics are complicated. Whereas, during the warm months, cinema attendances do not rise dramatically in this part of the world – we like to be out in the sun – the American bean counters regard the period as boom time. If you're sweltering in Arkansas, an air-conditioned cinema – even one showing
Killer Reptile V– presents an enticing prospect.
So the big guns are out. But, my word, a lot of familiar faces (and masks) are on display. Complaining about the number of sequels and remakes has always been a popular activity among film-goers. With recession still lurking and new technologies yet again threatening traditional cinema exhibition, the studios seem to have become more conservative than ever.
If you crave a popcorn flick that is neither a sequel, a remake nor a comic-book adaptation, then you had best look away now.
Pirates 4, Spy Kids 4, X-Men 4 1/12, Kung Fu Panda 2, Cars 2. Now look, here, JJ Abrams.
Super 8, a rare original idea, had better be good.
MAY 4
WATER FOR ELEPHANTS
Robert Pattinson rejoins the mortal world in this romance set amid a travelling circus during the Depression. Reese Witherspoon and Christoph Waltz are among the carnies.
MAY 6
13 ASSASSINS
Japanese master Takashi Miike brings us a samurai film concerning a baker’s dozen of killers. A remake of Eiichi Kudo’s 1963 film of the same name.
HANNA
Joe Wright, who launched Saoirse Ronan in Atonement, directs a thriller in which the young star plays a teen assassin.
JIG
Highly praised documentary concerning the world Irish dancing championships. The hair is large and the children are feisty.
OUTSIDE THE LAW
Rachid Bouchareb offers a follow-up to the acclaimed Days of Glorywith this story of Algerian resistance fighters in post-war Paris. Controversial stuff.
PRIEST
Continuing his merry trawl through lowbrow material, Paul Bettany stars as a more than usually violent priest pitched against ill-tempered vampires. Based on an acclaimed Korean comic.
ONE HUNDRED MORNINGS
Conor Horgan, successful photographer and short film-maker, delivers his feature debut with an excellent drama set in post-apocalyptic Ireland.
MAY 13
A SCREAMING MAN
Mahamat-Saleh Haroun’s Chadian film, runner-up at Cannes last year, concerns a former swimming champion who now works as a pool supervisor at an upmarket hotel. Allegorical.
ATTACK THE BLOCK
Joe Cornish – of TV's Adam and Joe– makes his feature debut with a comic horror involving alien invasions in south London. Sorted!
RED HILL
Promising Australian thriller – a class of latter-day Down Under western – following a cop during his first day on the job.
TAKE ME HOME TONIGHT
The writers of That ’70s Show stretch themselves with an ensemble comedy set in 1988. The underemployed Topher Grace and the chortlesome Anna Faris savour the power ballads.
THE WAY
Emilio Estevez directs his father, Martin Sheen, in a drama set among pilgrims on the Camino de Santiago in Spain. Twinkly James Nesbitt twinkles as an Irish writer.
MAY 18
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: ON STRANGER TIDES
Does that mean the tides are awash with people you haven’t met or that they are more peculiar than usual? Never mind. You don’t need to be told what this is. Should take squillions.
MAY 20
AGE OF HEROES
Thriller concerning the formation of the commando unit headed by Ian Fleming during the second World War. Not sure the old Etonian would approve of Danny Dyer’s presence in the cast.
BLITZ
We still await a satisfactory adaptation of a book by first-class Irish crime writer Ken Bruen. This one stars Jason Statham as a tough (what else?) policeman on the trail of a serial killer.
JULIA’S EYES
Guillermo del Toro presents (whatever that means) a horror film concerning a woman who, as blindness advances, must investigate a mysterious death. To be fair, Señor del Toro knows a good shocker when he sees one.
WIN WIN
Tom McCarthy, director of The Station Agentand The Visitor, returns with a comic drama concerning a decent New Jersey lawyer facing bankruptcy. Paul Giamatti employs his best hangdog look.
MAY 26
THE HANGOVER PART II
Sequel to one of the most successful comedies ever at the Irish box office. This time round, the dissolute dudes are in Bangkok for Stu’s wedding. Liam Neeson no longer has a cameo.
DIARY OF A WIMPY KID 2: RODRICK RULES
Second film adapted from Jeff Kinney’s books concerning a young nerd and his largely likeable family. Harmless fun for, well, some of the family.
LIFE ABOVE ALL
Moving, sentimental drama following a young South African girl’s efforts to keep her family together in a town ravaged by Aids and prostitution. Khomotso Manyaka is stunning in the lead role.
THE MESSENGER
Good grief. Where has this been? This is the film – concerning a soldier detailed to deliver bad news to families – for which Woody Harrelson received an Oscar nomination last year.
MAY 30
X-MEN FIRST CLASS
Who were the X-Men before they were X-Men? It seems that Professor Xavier was James McAvoy and Magneto was Michael Fassbender. Sounds plausible enough.
JUNE 3
PROM
Disney’s latest teen flick takes us among a group of youngsters preparing for the big dance.
MAMMUTH
Is Gérard Depardieu of an age to play a retiree? So it seems. The big man turns up as a hairy biker seeking to secure the pension he has been wrongfully denied.
SENNA
The word is that even those who don’t know a crankshaft from, erm, something else involving motor cars will enjoy this hugely acclaimed documentary on Ayrton Senna. Should be big in the North.
JUNE 8
THE RUNWAY
Ian Powers inspiring debut feature – winner of the audience prize at the 2010 Galway Film Fleadh – goes among the citizens of a Cork village as they warm to a South American pilot who unexpectedly lands in the locale.
JUNE 10
HONEY 2
Hang on a moment. What the heck was Honey? Oh, yeah, it was that 2003 dance thing starring a rising Jessica Alba. The new one features somebody called Katerina Graham. Wasn't she editor of the Washington Post?
JUMPING THE BROOM
Comedy concerning two African-American families from very different neighbourhoods coming together for a wedding. Angela Bassett is posh. Loretta Devine is not.
KABOOM
Another film that’s been around for ages, the latest from ace provocateur Gregg Araki concerns the sexual awakening of a group of college students. Of course it does.
KUNG FU PANDA 2
Sequel to the very enjoyable animation that introduced us to a punchy endangered Asian bear voiced by Jack Black. Gary Oldman voices the villain.
JUNE 17
THE BEAVER
So they are daring to release it? Jodie Foster’s film stars lovable Mel Gibson as a disturbed man who can only communicate via a sock puppet. Lawyers advise us to make no further cracks.
GREEN LANTERN
Really? The DC superhero doesn’t have that much resonance these days, but that hasn’t stopped Hollywood casting Ryan Reynolds in a big-budget adaptation.
LIFE IN A DAY
This oddity, produced by Ridley Scott and directed by Kevin Macdonald, compiles videos shot by ordinary folk around the world on July 24th, 2010.
POTICHE
The latest from François Ozon is a comedy starring Catherine Deneuve and Gérard Depardieu. You don’t get much more French than that.
STAKE LAND
The buzz is strong around this post- apocalyptic vampire thriller directed by Jim Mickle. Stake Land? Get it? Please yourself.
SWINGING WITH THE FINKELS
This can’t be right. It is, apparently, a film about sexual swingers starring the angelic Mandy Moore. We wouldn’t be more surprised if Margaret Thatcher were among the cast.
JUNE 24
BAD TEACHER
Jake Kasdan, director of the criminally underrated Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story, returns with a sex comedy set among the blackboards and ring binders. Cameron Diaz is the titular naughty pedagogue.
BRIDESMAIDS
Everybody worth watching is in this comedy from Paul Feig, co-creator of TV show Freaks and Geeks. You want Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Rose Byrne and Chris O’Dowd? You’ve got them.
COUNTDOWN TO ZERO
Lucy Walker, co-director of the Oscar-nominated Waste Land, delivers a documentary on the terrifying – and largely ignored – problem of nuclear proliferation.
INCENDIES
Denis Villeneuve’s French-Canadian drama, nominated in the best foreign-language picture race at this year’s Academy Awards, finds two siblings trying to untangle mysteries in their mother’s life.
MR POPPER’S PENGUINS
There’s a title you won’t forget. Mark Waters’s adaption of a kids’ book stars Jim Carrey as a businessman who inherits six troublesome penguins. Sounds bearable.
JULY 1
THE CONSPIRATOR
Robert Redford directs a film examining events surrounding the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. James McAvoy plays a crusading lawyer.
LARRY CROWNE
It’s been 15 years since Tom Hanks directed his first (and only) feature film. His second stars the director as a middle-aged man who, after returning to college, falls for Julia Roberts.
NADER AND SIMIN, A SEPARATION
Asghar Farhadi’s Iranian film, winner of the Golden Bear at this year’s Berlin Film Festival, deals with a middle-class couple’s problems following their separation.
TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON
The robots that are also trucks (or cars or aircraft) return for part three of Michael Bay’s noisy franchise. The first one wasn’t bad. The second one was appalling. So, who knows?
JULY 8
JACK GOES BOATING
The directorial debut of actor Philip Seymour Hoffman features the man himself in a big-screen adaptation of Robert Glaudini's play concerning romance in New York. Amy Ryan will also be working the oars.
ONE FOR THE MONEY
Katherine Heigl makes a long overdue break from Rom-com Alley with this thriller based on a popular Janet Evanovich novel.
PRINCESS OF MONTPENSIER
Bertrand Tavernier's costume drama stars Mélanie Thierry in an adaptation of a story by Madame de La Fayette. There's a great deal of scurrying up and down spiral staircases.
THE GUARD
John Michael McDonagh's Irish comedy, sold worldwide at Sundance Film Festival, finds Brendan Gleeson's rural cop discombobulated by the arrival of a suave FBI agent. It's Don Cheadle.
JULY 15
HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART II
It's taken nearly 10 years but – as the haggard stars contemplate middle-age – the adaptation of JK Rowling's wizard series finally draws to a close. We're all a lot older and wearier. Some of us are also quite bored.
HOBO WITH A SHOTGUN
From the publicity material: "A homeless vigilante blows away crooked cops, paedophile Santas, and other scumbags with his trusty pump-action shotgun." It stars Rutger Hauer. Now, this sounds fantastic.
WEEKENDER
Remember that nifty Irish feature The Honeymooners from 2003? Director Karl Golden is back with a film concerning rave culture during the early 1990s.
JULY 22
BEGINNERS
The indomitable Christopher Plummer stars as a man who, following the death of his wife, is revealed to be gay. Ewan McGregor plays the son facing up to a bombshell.
CARS 2
This year's Pixar flick is, alas, a sequel to one of their least admired films. There are reasons to be hopeful. The studio has, after all, delivered some of the best follow-ups ever with the second and third Toy Story films.
HORRIBLE BOSSES
You may have seen the stills showing a fattened-up Colin Farrell with a hideous comb-over. Seth Gordon's promising comedy also features Jennifer Aniston and Jason Bateman. The title says it all, apparently.
TRUST
David Schwimmer directs Clive Owen and Catherine Keener in the story of a family ravaged by sexual violence. Sounds as if Schwimmer is trying to put Friends well behind him.
JULY 29
CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER
We get two Marvel superheroes this summer. Three months after
Thor, Captain Americasets out to bust up the Third Reich. Rather confusingly, Chris Evans, who essayed the Human Torch in
Fantastic Four, plays Cap.
HORRID HENRY – THE MOVIE
If you were a kid in the mid-1990s, then young Henry will need no introduction. Angelica Huston plays the wonderfully named Miss Battle-Axe in Nick Moore's take on the popular juvenile books.
POETRY
Lee Chang-dong's Korean film, winner of the best screenplay at Cannes 2010, follows an elderly lady who – just as Alzheimer's looms – develops an interest in poetry.
ZOOKEEPER
Now, this could be a licence to print money. Kevin James appears as a zookeeper who discovers that his animals can talk. It's mid-summer. The kids are off school. If it's not a hit I'll eat my own foot.
AUGUST 5
THE CHANGE-UP
The body-swap comedy has been a staple of cinema for some time. The latest finds a married bloke getting to live inside the party-going frame of his single pal. Ryan Reynolds is one. Jason Bateman is the other.
SARAH'S KEY
Kristin Scott-Thomas is back in Gallic mode. Her latest drama follows a contemporary French journalist as she investigates horrors from the Nazi occupation.
SUPER 8
Good heavens. It's a potential summer blockbuster based on an original script. JJ Abrams's tasty-looking adventure pits a bunch of midwest kids against a mysterious alien entity. The trailers have been tantalising.
AUGUST 10
THE SMURFS
Where are you all coming from? From Sony Pictures, where we belong. Yes, the puzzling blue beasts are smurfing back for a late summer occupation of cinemas.
THE DEVIL'S DOUBLE
I was Saddam Hussein's son's double. That's what the film should be called. Dominic Cooper does, indeed, play a man forced to act as a decoy for Uday Hussein.
DON'T BE AFRAID OF THE DARK
Horror guru Guillermo del Toro and Hollywood veteran Matthew Robbins have rewritten the cult 1970s TV movie for a new audience. Young Bailee Madison is the unfortunate kid relocated to a haunted house.
PROJECT NIM
James Marsh, director of the transcendent Man on Wire, tackles the 1970s experiment in which scientists raised a chimp – wittily named Nim Chimpsky – as a human child.
RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES
Nobody seems all that clear whether it's a reboot of the 2001 film, a prequel to the original or some combination of the two. At any rate, 20th Century Fox are hoping to draw yet another generation to the durable franchise.
THE SALT OF LIFE
Gianni Di Gregorio, director of Mid-August Lunch, once again tackles the intricacies of domestic Italian life. Expect whimsy and poignancy.
AUGUST 19
CONAN THE BARBARIAN
Yeah, it's another reboot or remake or disinterment or whatever. To be fair, it's been several decades since the last big-budget take on Robert E Howard's brutal hero.
COWBOYS ALIENS
Hark, it's the last blockbuster of summer. As the leaves prepare to fall, Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig, cowboys both, launch one more assault on the pesky extraterrestrials.
IN A BETTER WORLD
Susanne Bier's film, winner of the Oscar for best foreign-language picture, concerns the experiences of a Danish doctor in a Sudanese refugee camp.
THE INBETWEENERS
Unlikely as it sounds, the cult Channel 4 sitcom has made it to the big screen. Following in the tradition of the
Are You Being Served? movie, the naughty teenagers are going on holiday.
SPY KIDS 4: ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD
The first two were very good fun. The third was awful. Let's hope the erratic Robert Rodriguez can turn it round for the fourth episode in the juvenile espionage franchise.
AUGUST 24
MONTE CARLO
Following a series of unlikely accidents, Selena Gomez and Leighton Meester find themselves spirited to Monaco for romance, misunderstanding and endless costume changes. Aimed at teenage girls, methinks.
AUGUST 26
FINAL DESTINATION 5
Raise a tentative cheer for the return of the hilarious comedy-horror series in which young people meet their preordained deaths in delightfully imaginative fashions.
ONE DAY
Lone Scherfig, director of An Education, tackles David Nicholls's hugely popular novel detailing 20 years of a complicated relationship. Anne Hathaway and Jim Sturgess are the couple.
THE SKIN I LIVE IN
The latest from Pedro Almodóvar deals with a plastic surgeon attempting to create a new skin for his unfortunate wife. Almodóvar veteran Antonio Banderas plays the lead.
