Whew. We made it through May, with its high-profile sequels and big event movies. It was great and all, but surely we’re due a little downtime, no? No, apparently, from the looks of June, which features everything from a new Jurassic Park movie to another Ted movie to, well, an Entourage movie. True, some lower-key efforts like the Sundance favorite Me And Earl And The Dying Girl and David Gordon Green’s Manglehorn make their way into the mix, but otherwise, this is another big month for big movies. Will they be any good? Join us in making our best guesses. And tune in next week as the anticipation continues, for July and August’s movies.
Don’t miss our previous Summer 2015 anticipation guide for May. And follow along with our trailer reel here for previews of our most (and least) anticipated films.
| Entourage | (June 3) | 1.8 |
| Insidious Chapter 3 | (June 5) | 4.3 |
| Spy | (June 5) | 5.9 |
| Jurassic World | (June 12) | 6.7 |
| Me And Earl And The Dying Girl | (June 12) | 6.7 |
| Dope | (June 19) | 7.2 |
| Inside Out | (June 19) | 8.5 |
| Manglehorn | (June 19) | 5.3 |
| Max | (June 26) | 3.3 |
| Ted 2 | (June 26) | 4.4 |
| Big Game | (June 26) | 5.0 |
Entourage
(June 3)
SUMMARY
Picking up an unspecified amount of time after the 2011 ending of the popular HBO series, Entourage will follow the continuing adventures of movie star Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier) and his bros as they navigate a Hollywood system that is forever threatening to not get Vinny’s picture made, then getting it made after Ari (Jeremy Piven) yells at someone. This time out, though, what Vinny really wants to do is direct, so newly minted studio owner Ari bankrolls the surely not doomed project—which promptly goes over budget. Someone’s gonna get yelled at for that. Oh yeah. Oh yeah.
PEDIGREE
Entourage was written and directed by series creator Doug Ellin, making his return to feature filmmaking more than 15 years after giving the world the David Schwimmer vehicle Kissing A Fool. The TV series’ executive producer and patron saint Mark Wahlberg also returns behind the scenes, as well as in what we’re assuming will be a pretty sweet cameo. Entourage’s central bro-foursome are all back as well—yes, even Jerry Ferrara!—meaning the chances of this Entourage being remotely distinguishable from an extra-long episode of the TV series are slim.
Early Word
No one’s seen the film yet, outside of the elite athletes and fallen pop idols who have been privy to Wahlberg and Ellin’s early screenings, so their word is all we have to go on. Golden State Warrior Harrison Barnes says it’s “hilarious,” his teammate Andrew Bogut says it has “great laughs,” and Justin Bieber has proclaimed, “Everyone go see it.” Well, who can argue with that? Oh, and in case anyone’s worried, yes, the film features some porn stars.
X FACTOR
The Entourage TV series devolved into self-parody (and self-congratulation) over its eight seasons, but there’s a reason it became a hit: For a good chunk of its run, Entourage had some legitimately funny and biting things to say about Hollywood and the people who benefit from its eternal circle-jerk. If the Entourage movie can tap back into that original spirit—rather than buying into said circle-jerk, as it did in its later seasons—it could be a worthwhile summer diversion.
ANTICIPATION RATING: 1.8
Picture seven glum-looking critics standing in a group, glowering at an Entourage poster, while off to the side, a eighth critic stands beaming, wearing an Entourage hat, T-shirt, and novelty “Entourage is #1” foam finger, and clutching a box set of all eight seasons, signed by the entire cast. That’s pretty much what the votes looked like. Not counting the write-in vote for “a number lower than zero, such as negative-infinity,” which was discounted.
Insidious Chapter 3
(June 5)
SUMMARY
Director James Wan and stars Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne have departed from this prequel to the Insidious horror series, but Lin Shaye gets an expanded role as psychic Elise Rainier, who uses her unique ability to contact the dead in order to help a father (Dermot Mulroney) dispel the supernatural evil that’s tormenting his teenage daughter (Stefanie Scott). In other words, “Chapter 3” is a big, long flashback.
PEDIGREE
The first two chapters in the Insidious series are both hugely effective old-school scare machines with good characterization and an expansive mythology that got a little too dense by the end of Chapter 2. But with Wan and his two stars gone, it’s up to Leigh Whannell, Wan’s screenwriting partner on his horror films since Saw, to lead the series forward in his directorial debut. Only warning sign: The last time Whannell continued a series without Wan, he wrote Saw II and Saw III, to vastly diminished returns.
Early Word
Whannell seems confident enough to start planning for future sequels, and the trailer has been treated like a summer-movie event on par with blockbusters 10 times the size. As for the teaser itself, the decision to slow the action down and focus on a single haunting—and, for early-2000s nostalgists, the T-Mobile Sidekick—seems like a confident step. Then again, Deliver Us From Evil pulled the same move last summer, and it stunk.
X FACTOR
How much of the Insidious-o-verse do we really need to see? That question lingered with the Paranormal Activity franchise—which was created by Insidious producer Oren Peli—and as this series takes on the weight of more “chapters” being added, it seems natural that the novelty of its haunted-house conceit will evaporate. Then again, Paranormal Activity 3 is the best one, so maybe it’ll peak here.
ANTICIPATION RATING: 4.3
Horror tends to be especially divisive among staff, and horror franchises even moreso, as those who haven’t been on board since the beginning are less likely to anticipate later entries in a series. Scores in this case ranged from 1.3 to 6.8, in a clear indicator of who’s been down with the insidiousness since film one.
Spy
(June 5)
SUMMARY
The Heat established Melissa McCarthy as an unlikely action hero, and Spy once again finds her mixing it up with the bad guys, but this time from a much different vantage point. Where Heat cast her as a foul-mouthed super-cop, Spy has her playing a desk-jockey CIA analyst who’s pressed into action when top spies can’t find a missing nuclear bomb. Judging by the trailer and poster, the gig involves McCarthy dressing like Mrs. Doubtfire.
PEDIGREE
Feig and McCarthy first collaborated on Bridesmaids, which grossed half a billion dollars, in addition to scoring Oscar nominations for McCarthy (for Best Supporting Actress) and Wiig (for Best Original Screenplay). Before that, Feig created a popular choice for greatest television show of all time in Freaks And Geeks. So why does everything about this look so dodgy?
Early Word
Spy has a rare 100 percent approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 12 reviews. At Variety, Justin Chang raved, “Melissa McCarthy gets the funniest, most versatile and sustained comic showcase of her movie career in this deliriously entertaining action-comedy.”
X FACTOR
Is McCarthy suffering from overexposure? Tammy wasn’t exactly a smash, and McCarthy has proven divisive, although that’s to be expected of a large, unapologetic star with a big personality.
ANTICIPATION RATING: 5.9
All signs suggest this rating would be lower if advance reviews weren’t so bullish. But McCarthy has been looking for a comic role worthy of her considerable talents since Bridesmaids, and any hint that she’s actually found it is enough to make our exhausted ears prick back up.
Jurassic World
(June 12)
SUMMARY
Having learned nothing from movies like Splice or Species or Deep Blue Sea or the latest Godzilla or the original Jurassic Park trilogy or really any other story where any character could be described as “playing God,” the owners of a park full of cloned living dinosaurs try to boost attendance by engineering a new dino species, with predictably awful results. For the last time, movie protagonists, giving intelligence to apex predators capable of crushing human skulls with their teeth just does not have any upside.
PEDIGREE
The director of the quirky, low-key, low-budget science-fiction movie Safety Not Guaranteed seems like an odd choice to helm a $180 million CGI-fest, but at least Colin Trevorrow has shown he has skills with actors as well as pixels. The cast includes Bryce Dallas Howard, Vincent D’Onofrio, and headliner Chris Pratt, the charm-riddled CGI-fest superstar of the moment. (Though he looks like he practiced his best Sam Worthington befuddled glower for this film.) Still, the real pedigree belongs to producer Steven Spielberg and the groundbreaking CGI dinosaurs that made this franchise billions of dollars to date.
Early Word
No one’s seen it yet, though there’s been some online griping about how much like Deep Blue Sea this sounds. As if that’s a bad thing.
X FACTOR
There are a couple. First: This is meant as the launch of a new trilogy, so there isn’t just the question of how and whether it works on its own, there’s also how it works as a series re-launcher. Second, Trevorrow chose to shoot on film in order to better match the look of the first Jurassic Park trilogy. That suggests both a respect for the original movies and an aesthetic pickiness and specificity that might serve the film well.
ANTICIPATION RATING: 6.7
We all have positive memories of the first Jurassic Park, which gave America a new level of digital effects it had never seen before. This is going to change everything all over again, right?
Me And Earl And The Dying Girl
(June 12)
SUMMARY
Shy, self-deprecating Pittsburgh high-school student Greg Gaines (Thomas Mann) plans to coast his way to graduation, avoiding typical teenage drama and spending his days making goofy movie parodies with his best friend Earl (Ronald Cyler II). Then he starts spending time with a cancer-stricken classmate, Rachel (Olivia Cooke), and his entire value-system shifts.
PEDIGREE
Screenwriter Jesse Andrews adapts his own award-winning YA novel for director Alfonso Gómez Rejón, whose most prominent directing credits up until now have been on the TV series Glee, American Horror Story, and the very Earl-like Red Band Society.
Early Word
Me And Earl And The Dying Girl was a genuine sensation at Sundance this year, impressing attendees with its expressive visual style, wry humor, and heartfelt emotion, and becoming just the sixth film ever to win both the Audience Award and the Grand Jury prize. (The others are Three Seasons, Quinceañera, Precious, Fruitvale Station, and Whiplash.) Towards the end of the festival, though, pockets of resistance did develop, as some questioned the film’s aggressive cuteness and underdeveloped supporting characters.
X FACTOR
How non-fest audiences respond to Me And Earl And The Dying Girl will likely have a lot to do with what they think of Greg and Earl’s home movies, which riff on their favorite films. Are they a fun nod to cinephiles? Or an example of how Me And Earl tries to co-opt a sense of cool without really earning it?
ANTICIPATION RATING: 6.7
We’re largely willing to watch some young people Swede some movies Be Kind Rewind style, especially with such positive advance reaction to their efforts.
Dope
(June 19)
SUMMARY
A trio of nerdy high-school kids from a crime-ridden Los Angeles neighborhood stumble on a backpack full of drugs and end up in the middle of a violent turf war, with their only option to find a way to unload the product.
PEDIGREE
Rick Famuyiwa’s earlier films The Wood, Brown Sugar, and Our Family Wedding have all dealt with characters whose personal identities don’t line up exactly with other people’s ideas about race and class. With Dope, he carries this theme even further, upending the stereotypical “hood” saga by telling it from the perspective of college-bound teens who love comic books and punk rock.
Early Word
Aside from a high-profile takedown by Grantland’s Wesley Morris, Dope won raves at Sundance, as critics and audiences responded to the film’s clever story, lively style, and up-to-date sense of humor. Famuyiwa has made the rare contemporary film that understands how cell phones and the Internet have transformed young people’s lives, affecting how they process pop culture, how they communicate with each other, and even how they get into trouble.
X FACTOR
The one complaint Dope’s fans and non-fans alike have shared is that it’s overlong and structurally unsound, with a pile-up of subplots that Famuyiwa spends much of the last half-hour tediously sorting out. There have been rumors of some pre-release trimming, which if successful could be the difference between Dope being a likable mess or a new teensploitation classic.
ANTICIPATION RATING: 7.2
The concept sounds shaky, but the execution sounds thoughtful, and we’re always willing to give a smart take on a gimmicky topic a try.
Inside Out
(June 19)
SUMMARY
A young girl navigates a cross-country move with the help of five personifications of emotion who run her mind (Joy, Sadness, Anger, Disgust, and Fear), though when an accident isolates Joy and Sadness deep in her mind, they have to come to terms with each other in order to find their way out.
PEDIGREE
Pixar, Pixar, Pixar. The studio isn’t flawless, and lately it seems on a gentle downward decline in quality, in that it’s now sometimes producing serviceable and interesting films instead of great ones. But there’s always the hope that any new given Pixar movie will be another classic. Director Pete Docter helmed Up and Monsters, Inc. for the studio, so he’s no slouch at action, comedy, drama, or heartstring-tugging. And the voice cast is a pretty choice selection of comedy talent, with Amy Poehler, Mindy Kaling, Bill Hader, Lewis Black, and Phyllis Smith as the interior emotions crew.
Early Word
The film’s première isn’t set until Cannes in May.
X FACTOR
This is weird to say about a Pixar project, but… that latest trailer looks weirdly sexist. (Ha ha, Dad is a clueless mope who doesn’t listen when women talk! He’s busy thinking about sports, and then he has to pretend he’s listening! Wow, Mom is kind of a whiny nag!) And the jokes are corny, and Joy looks like a kid’s scrawly drawing of Tinker Bell, and the whole concept is familiar from Herman’s Head. Let’s be frank: Pixar has earned immense goodwill over the years, and Pete Docter’s name carries plenty of weight. But if this exact same trailer came from any other studio, we’d all be dismissing this film as regressive, cheesy, and potentially desperate.
ANTICIPATION RATING: 8.5
Still, the Pixar is strong with this one. Anticipating the studio’s films is a long and well-rewarded habit at this point.
Manglehorn
(June 19)
SUMMARY
A leathery ex-con wallows in lost chances, subsisting on regret and an IV drip of liquor. The film tracks his attempts to get his life back together, which ally him with a precocious child and bring him back into contact with his estranged son. With the aid of a friendly bank teller, A.J. Manglehorn might be able to leave his lost love behind and salvage what’s left of his soul.
PEDIGREE
The two big names in the game belong to director David Gordon Green and Al Pacino. Though their filmographies both have smatterings of wrong moves and misfires, they’re clearly capable of great work. Pacino showed flashes of his 1970s-era greatness in this year’s The Humbling and Green’s last two films, Joe and Prince Avalanche, were a return to form after his run of god-awful stoner comedies.
Early Word
Our own Mike D’Angelo was none too fond of the film when he caught it at TIFF last September. Short version: “…really not very good.” Long version: “What starts out as an offbeat character study devolves into a facile redemption narrative—a more ruinous variation on Joe’s trajectory, and further proof that Green and cinematographer Tim Orr do their best work when untethered to anything but small-town lethargy and dreaminess.”
X FACTOR
Momma always said that an Al Pacino performance is like a box of chocolates: You never know what you’re gonna get. Will Overacting Pacino rant and rave his way through another turkey, or will Actually Trying Pacino imbue this hardened shell of a man with humanity and compassion? Though the film’s premise seems a little cut-and-dried, D’Angelo noted the attention to detail in Pacino’s performance.
ANTICIPATION RATING: 5.3
We’re clearly putting even odds on the “which Pacino” question, which averages out to average anticipation.
Max
(June 26)
SUMMARY
Max is a German Shepherd mix trained as a working dog to accompany Marines in Afghanistan. Needless to say, he has a ruff time of it, returning to American with PTSD after his handler dies in combat. The soldier’s family takes possession of Max, but it takes the care of a once-apathetic, videogame-playing layabout kid (Josh Wiggins) to bring the temperamental pup back to its old self. Is the family healing the dog, or vice versa? Viewers don’t need Max’s superior olfactory abilities to sniff this plot out.
PEDIGREE
Max’s poster and trailer trumpet its soul-stirring bona fides: “From the director of Remember The Titans” (read: you will be inspired) and “the producer of Marley & Me” (read: the dog almost certainly dies at the end, so bring Kleenex). Lauren Graham and Thomas Haden Church are among the supporting cast, though, so lighter moments are a possibility.
Early Word
Nothing yet. This is classic summer counter-programming on the part of MGM and Warner Bros., burying the movie in late June like the proverbial dog bone, with the expectation that families—especially military families—might do some digging.
X FACTOR
Once upon a time, Boaz Yakin was the thoughtful, up-and-coming director of the inner-city drama Fresh and the early Renée Zellweger showcase A Price Above Rubies. Perhaps Max will have him working again on a more intimate scale, but his résumé since (screenplays for Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights and Prince Of Persia: The Sands Of Time, directing credits for Uptown Girls and the not-Todd Haynes Safe) suggests otherwise.
ANTICIPATION RATING: 3.3
Dogs? Yay. Hero dogs? Double-yay. Heartwarming stories about heroic dogs helping our troops and boosting military spirits? We’re on board. Tearjerking movies that use all this dog-related enthusiasm to manipulate audiences? ’Scuse us, we’re going to go take our dogs to the park.
Ted 2
(June 26)
SUMMARY
Reuniting Boston schlub John Bennett (Mark Wahlberg) with his magical talking, walking, pot-smoking teddy-bear bestie Ted (voiced by writer-director Seth MacFarlane), Ted 2 posits that Ted and his lady-love Tami-Lynn (Jessica Barth) want to have a baby, with assistance from John and his human sperm. There’s a catch, though: Someone in the Ted-iverse apparently thought, “Wait, a human and a stuffed animal having a baby, that’s weird” and challenged Ted’s paternity rights. So John and Ted are forced to team with a pretty lady lawyer named Samantha “Sam” L. Jackson (Amanda Seyfried) to legally establish Ted’s personhood.
PEDIGREE
Ted became the ninth highest-grossing film of 2012, based in large part on the proven-successful chemistry between MacFarlane and his Family Guy writer-producers Alec Sulkin and Wellesley Wild, who developed the movie’s Family Guy-esque script (read: crude, rude, and full of pop-culture references, but often hilarious despite/because of those things) from MacFarlane’s story. Ted 2 brings back the three points of that behind-the-scenes trifecta, as well as Wahlberg reprising one of his most Wahlbergian roles. The only major change from the first film to the second is the replacement of female lead Mila Kunis (whose character married John at the end of the first film, but has apparently since returned to her home planet) with the similarly wide-eyed Seyfried. Giovanni Ribisi, Morgan Freeman, Dennis Haysbert, Liam Neeson, and John Slattery have also joined the cast, and Sam J. Jones will return as himself, which means Ted 2 will likely continue Ted’s ongoing fixation with Flash Gordon.
Early Word
Nothing to go on but a trailer, which suggests that Ted 2 will definitely have a scene where Mark Wahlberg slips in a puddle of sperm, then pulls a shelf full of sperm samples on top of him as he falls.
X FACTOR
After getting off to a crude but charming start, the first Ted lost its way in its final act, devolving into a poorly conceived and executed thriller, culminating in a blatant fake-out death that left a sour taste for a movie that had previously been salty fun. From the previews,Ted 2 looks like it could potentially fall into the same trap with its law-movie conceit, but if it clears that hurdle, it looks to be full of the sort of humor audiences will laugh at, then feel a little bad for laughing at immediately afterward.
ANTICIPATION RATING: 4.4
Those staff members who respond enthusiastically to the phrase “puddle of sperm” have nowhere else to fulfill their fetishes at the cineplex this summer. Everyone else’s ratings came in noticeably lower.
Big Game
(June 26)
SUMMARY
Samuel L. Jackson plays America’s president in this purposefully goofy throwback adventure from Finland, which imagines what would happen if a Finnish teen out hunting in the mountains happened upon the wreckage of Air Force One. Meanwhile, in a bunker in Washington, a crack team using satellite technology tries to find the commander-in-chief before a mob of anti-Obama anti-unnamed-totally-fictional-president operatives tracks him down and assassinates him.
PEDIGREE
Big Game writer-director Jalmari Helander previously made the cult favorite Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, a similar film about a plucky kid working with local reindeer herders to destroy a malevolent Santa Claus and his frightening helpers.
Early Word
At the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival, Big Game was generally well-liked, though not exactly loved. The idea of the movie is so appealing that it’s hard not to hope for it to become more than the merely serviceable wilderness-chase story it is. Still, Helander has a fantastic supporting cast (including Felicity Huffman, Victor Garber, Jim Broadbent, and Ted Levine), and this is exactly the kind of scrappy B-picture that’ll play well on cable on some future Saturday afternoon.
X FACTOR
Is it too late to get Jackson a killer catchphrase? Something along the lines of, “My fellow Americans, the state of my foot in your ass is strong!” or, “Ich bin your worst nightmare!”?
ANTICIPATION RATING: 5.0
Next Monday: We move on to July, featuring Ant-Man, some Minions, an impossible mission of some sort, and a major downer of a much-anticipated documentary.