August has arrived, and plenty of movies soon will too. There are only two that I want to watch this month though — the rest just don’t interest me for one reason or another.
Movies I will definitely watch in cinemas:
The Dark Tower (Aug 3)
I’ve never read the books, but I have heard so much about how it is considered Stephen King’s magnum opus, and that many people have tried and failed over the years to adapt it for screen. Basically, it’s about this Gunslinger called Roland Deschain (Idris Elba) who wages an eternal war against the Man in Black (Matthew McConaughey) who wants to destroy our world. Tons of deserted landscapes are involved.
The cast looks great! I like Idris Elba and Matthew McConaughey. There are idiots out there who don’t like that the filmmakers cast a black man as Roland Deschain, but you can’t do anything about idiots. For its own sake, I pray that the movie is good and shuts its critics up.
The Hitman’s Bodyguard (Aug 17)
Samuel L. Jackson plays hitman Darius Kincaid and Ryan Reynolds plays his bodyguard Michael Bryce. Both hate each other and Kincaid has tried to kill Bryce many times in the past, but now they have to work together to keep Kincaid safe for the next 24 hours until he does an important thing for the government. Or something along those lines.
I love the first trailer, which parodies the 1992 Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston film The Bodyguard, with the iconic theme song for that movie, “I Will Always Love You”, playing in the background. The poster spoof is hilarious too!
The second trailer is a more straightforward buddy cop comedy trailer.
Other movies opening this month that I won’t be watching:
Snatched (Aug 3)
A mother (Goldie Hawn) and daughter (Amy Schumer) go on vacation and get kidnapped. Don’t worry, it’s a comedy, so nothing too bad happens. It doesn’t look very funny to me. But while watching the trailer, I was shocked to see how disproportionate the down-votes are on YouTube, and how many misogynist dude bro trolls there are who down-voted it just because they don’t like Amy Schumer. I mean, I wouldn’t watch it, but it looks no worse than, say, Neighbors.
The Emoji Movie (Aug 8)
The Emoji Movie has been utterly and completely trashed by critics, and has one of the worst scores on IMDb I have ever seen. I honestly don’t think that it can possibly be so awful — I’m sure that I have seen worse movies, and IMDb users are just down-voting the movie because it’s cool to hate on it. That said, I never intended to watch it, and the bad reviews just cement my belief that I shouldn’t.
Annabelle: Creation (Aug 9)
I don’t watch horror movies. Has great reviews though, so if you like horror movies, I encourage you to! It’s a sequel to the spin-off of the creepy doll in The Conjuring.
Born in China (Aug 17)
A documentary that follows three animal families in China — a panda, a golden monkey, and a snow leopard. Looks gorgeous! The landscape doesn’t even look like China at all. :-O But I seldom watch documentaries, and when I do, I don’t watch them in cinemas.
The Battleship Island (Aug 17)
It’s set during WWII on an island where Japanese soldiers have interned Koreans and forced them to mine for coal. They stage a breakout.
I am not fond of war movies, but this looks particularly blockbuster-ish. But the main reason why I’m bringing up this movie is because Song Joong Ki is coming to Singapore next week! (Not his fan — just letting people who are know!)
47 Meters Down (Aug 17)
I don’t watch scary shark movies if I can help it. This one is a thriller about two sisters (Mandy Moore and Claire Holt) who are trapped in a shark-viewing cage at the bottom of the sea while sharks circle them and their oxygen tanks are running out. What will they do?
I’ll google the plot to find out.
Rough Night (Aug 24)
Five girlfriends (Scarlett Johansson, Kate McKinnon, Zoë Kravitz, Jillian Bell and Ilana Glazer) go for a bachelorette party and they accidentally kill a stripper and have to figure out what to do. It’s like the destitute cousin of The Hangover. I’m all for movies starring females, but this movie looks stupid! Then again, so did Bridesmaids, which I eventually watched years later. Maybe that’s what I’ll do for this film.
An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power (Aug 24)
It’s a sequel to Al Gore’s 2006 climate change documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Clearly we need an update, because not enough action has been taken to combat global warming.
Despite the fact that it is timely and much needed, I get enough reality from my newsfeed, so I will be skipping it.
Cars 3 (Aug 31)
It’s a Pixar movie, but the Cars franchise is known for being the black sheep in Pixar’s stellar repertoire — the movie made so that they can sell toys. (Same with Planes. Next, Disney will probably make Trains. Followed by Ships.)
I watched Cars 2 and it was terrible and disappointing, especially because I expected Pixar to do better! It was unfunny and full of cheeseball lessons about friendship, and most egregious of all, turned the good-in-small-doses sidekick into an annoying main lead. Didn’t watch Cars, so can’t say much about that. Anyway, I’m not a little kid, so I don’t want to watch it. (And if I had kids, I will probably avoid it, in case my kids want me to buy Cars toys for them.)
American Made: Based on a True Lie (Aug 31)
It’s a movie where Tom Cruise is a pilot who works undercover for the CIA and somehow becomes a drug runner as well. I have no interest in movies about drug trafficking. Or trafficking, period.
