Wish I Was Here (July 25)
Garden State captured the ennui of young adulthood like few films before it – and this year, it turns 10 years old. So what has Zach Braff been up to since his Jersey-set romance? Well, preparing for a comedy-drama that returns to the same themes, tone and transcendent indie soundtrack of his earlier film, that’s what.
Braff plays a dad dealing with his father (Mandy Patinkin), whose cancer has returned. He also struggles through a difficult time in his career while trying his best to relate to his kids, played by Joey King and Looper’s Pierre Gagnon. Braff grabbed a lot of attention when he went to Kickstarter to finance Wish I Was Here, but if the colourful trailer is any indication, those who helped to fund the project will feel like it was a worthwhile investment.
Few are as good as playing the good-natured underdog as Braff, and with a big ovation at Sundance earlier this year (despite mixed reviews), this should be a big indie hit this summer. You may as well pre-order the soundtrack as soon as it is announced, too.
– JA
Hercules (July 25)
We Got This Covered’s own Matt Donato decried January’s The Legend of Hercules as a “monumental failure,” noting that it would “take a Herculean effort” for Hercules, Brett Ratner’s take on the Greek hero, to be worse. And though the film’s marketing campaign has failed to generate much interest for the summer tentpole at this point, there are multiple reasons to suspect that Hercules may be worth a watch. First and foremost among those is Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, returning to the loincloth and sword for the first time since his breakout role in The Scorpion King. The Fast & Furious star is in the best shape of his life, and previews have so far focused on how great Johnson looks in the part.
Other actors involved, including Ian McShane, Rebecca Ferguson, Rufus Sewell, John Hurt and Joseph Fiennes, give us hope that Hercules will supply strong acting to match its sure-to-be mighty battle sequences. Meanwhile, a condensed plot (Hercules, post-labors, helps the King of Thrace and his beautiful daughter to defeat an evil tyrant) will likely hold the film together better than its messy non-starter of a competitor. Hercules is still a big question mark (are audiences still interested in swords-and-sandals epics?), but you can never count out The Rock.
– IF
Magic in the Moonlight (July 25)
We don’t know all that much about Woody Allen’s latest, a romantic comedy set in the south of France during the 1920s, but the film’s delectable cast already has us excited. Colin Firth stars as an Englishman who is tasked with exposing a phony mystic (Emma Stone) but ends up falling for her. Marcia Gay Harden, Jacki Weaver, Hamish Linklater, and Eileen Atkins co-star.
Magic in the Moonlight finds Allen returning to the same setting and timeframe of his 2011 hit Midnight in Paris, which unquestionably ranks among the director’s finest works. And with this cast, there appears to be a high probability that cinematic lightning will strike twice.
– IF