Movies! 8/14/15

Fantastic Four Was a Fantastic Failure--I'm sure a hacky headline like that has probably appeared in many places.

This week to challenge Mission:  Impossible is "The Man from UNCLE" where in the 60s Superman faces off against that guy from the crappy Lone Ranger movie and his bad Russian accent.  (Doesn't Russia have any actors they could hire so we don't have to hear the same lame Chekov from Star Trek/Boris & Natasha accent every time?)  Like Mission:  Impossible it's based on an old TV show that not being 60-something I never watched.  I'm sure most people are the same.  Since Henry Cavill isn't hanging off airplanes I'm not sure this has much of a future.  Plus airing two weeks after Mission:  Impossible, people might not be ready for another spy thriller.

Of course timing is everything in the movie business.  Especially in recent years everyone's jockeying to get the first big blockbuster of the year.  Used to be like when Star Wars came out in 1977 it wasn't until around Memorial Day that the big movies would come out.  Then Marvel pushed it to the first week of May with Iron Man and Avengers.  Now we've seen studios pushing it back even more like when Captain America 2 came out in April 2014 or Fast & Furious 7 came out in April 2015.  Sometimes you even get March like the first Hunger Games movie or Batman v Superman next year.

Anyway, a lot of times you get movies that come out when they really shouldn't.  Like say the Ryan Reynolds/Ben Kingsley thriller "Selfless" that came out July 10.  Do you remember it?  No, because it got lost in the shuffle with far more prominent movies like "Minions" and "Jurassic World."  Movies like that are more September or October fare, in between the big "summer" and "holiday" seasons.  Or January/February when they just dump all their shit out.

You think a movie studio would hire me?  I hear Relativity Media is bankrupt; maybe I could help them turn it around.  I literally can't do worse, right?

The other major release this week is "Straight Outta Compton."  This movie focusing on Dr. Dre and Ice Cube (not Ice-T, right? and sure as hell not Vanilla Ice) in their early career could quite possibly win the weekend.  It has already "broken the Internet" with a bunch of memes.  So even if it doesn't make a bunch of money it has that going for it, which isn't a lot.

BTW, my plan was to do a double feature on Thursday to see "Ant-Man" (finally) and "Fantastic Four."  How did it go?  Find out Monday!