Hollywood resurrects nostalgic '80s vibe for its summer movie season
Welcome to the summer of 1985.
I'm not talking about the theme of time travel, that staple of warm-weather movies. But there's something in the cinematic zeitgeist this summer that reeks of 30-year-old Drakkar Noir.
From George Miller's "Mad Max: Fury Road" to "Straight Outta Compton," there's a distinct air of nostalgia in the multiplex for Reagan-era America.
Look at "Poltergeist," a remake of the 1982 ghost story. Then there's "Pixels," an action-comedy about gamers defending the planet from weaponized Pac-Man monsters. And how about "Terminator Genisys"? The fifth film in the sci-fi franchise takes place in 1984 - the year the series launched - as well as in 2017 and 2029.
Even "San Andreas" feels like a throwback to a bygone age of disaster flicks, which, let's be honest, peaked in the late 1970s.
It's not just the popcorn flicks, either. The Brian Wilson biopic "Love & Mercy" jumps between the 1960s and the 1980s, with dueling performances by Paul Dano and John Cusack. Check out Elizabeth Banks's big hair, which deserves a separate credit.
Speaking of good hair, '80s pop star Rick Springfield makes an appearance as Meryl Streep's love interest in the dramedy "Ricki and the Flash." Streep covers songs by '80s icons Bruce Springsteen and Tom Petty.
The horror movie "Regression," which is set in 1990, features a detective (Ethan Hawke) investigating a satanic cult. Shades of 1987's "Angel Heart"?
Read on. There's something or someone in our summer preview for every taste, especially movie fans still wearing acid-washed jeans.
<b>MAY 15</b>
"I Am Big Bird: The Caroll Spinney Story" - A loving documentary on Carroll Spinney, the man behind Sesame Street's Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch for 45 years.
"Iris" - An 87-year-old documentarian Albert Maysles pairs up with Iris Apfel, the quick-witted, flamboyantly dressed 93-year-old style maven who has had an outsized presence on the New York fashion scene for decades.
"Lambert & Stamp" - How filmmakers Chris Stamp and Kit Lambert discovered, mentored, and managed the iconic band known as The Who.
"Mad Max: "Fury Road" - George Miller's fourth lap around the "Mad Max" track stars Tom Hardy in the role originated by Mel Gibson. Here, the taciturn loner does battle with bloodthirsty bad guys in a post-apocalyptic world where gasoline is king and Charlize Theron is queen.
"Pitch Perfect 2" - A competitive a cappella group attempts to redeem itself after an embarrassing loss in this sequel to the 2012 hit. The feature directorial debut of actress Elizabeth Banks.
"She's Lost Control" - A sexual surrogate in New York City blurs the line between professional and personal intimacy when she starts working with a volatile new client.
"Soul Boys of the Western World" - A documentary about a band, an era and how one small gathering of London outsiders shaped the world's view of music.
<b>MAY 22</b>
"Animals" - A couple living in a car parked near Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo struggle with drug addiction and create a fantasy life to cope. A big hit at the 2014 Chicago Critics Film Festival.
"Good Kill" - A drone pilot wrestles with his conscience in this drama reuniting Ethan Hawke with his deep-thinking "Gattaca" director Andrew Niccol.
"I'll See You In My Dreams" - A widow (Blythe Danner) tentatively re-enters the dating pool, only to discover that the water is fine. Soon she's making waves with a sexy septuagenarian (Sam Elliott).
"Poltergeist" - Why did producer Sam Raimi decide to remake the classic ghost tale, which has already given birth to two lackluster sequels? Because, as the film's paranormal expert says of the ectoplasmic protagonists: "They already know what scares you."
"Slow West" - A young Scottish man (Kodi Smit-McPhee) searching for a lost love in late-19th-century Colorado is taken under the wing of a laconic bounty hunter (Michael Fassbender) in this atmospheric Western.
"Tomorrowland" - A teenage girl finds a mysterious pin and unlocks a portal to a parallel universe. Her guide to this dangerous new world is a reclusive inventor (George Clooney). Directed by Brad ("The Incredibles") Bird.
<b>MAY 29</b>
"Aloha" - Bradley Cooper and Rachel McAdams star in Cameron Crowe's romantic comedy about a defense worker who teams up with a pilot (Emma Stone) to stop a satellite launch.
"Love at First Fight" - Arnaud meets and falls for the apocalyptic-minded Madeleine, who joins an army boot camp to learn military and survival skills to prepare for the upcoming environmental collapse.
"Saint Laurent" - The fact-based drama on the life and arts of French designer Yves Saint Laurent.
"San Andreas" - After California registers a magnitude 9.0 earthquake, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's search-and-rescue pilot swings into hero mode, giving new meaning to the phrase "when the big one hits."
<b>JUNE 3</b>
"Entourage" - The silver screen version of the award-winning hit HBO series reunites the show's original cast, led by Kevin Connolly, Adrian Grenier, Kevin Dillon, Jerry Ferrara and Wilmette's Jeremy Piven.
<b>JUNE 5</b>
"Aloft" - Claudia Llosa writes and directs a drama about a struggling mother (Jennifer Connelly) who encounters the son (Cillian Murphy) she abandoned 20 years earlier.
"Insidious Chapter 3" - The prequel to two earlier films about malevolent spirits from a supernatural realm known as The Further leads viewers even deeper into the domain of the damned.
"Love and Mercy" - Paul Dano and John Cusack play Beach Boy Brian Wilson at different points in his life, jumping between the surf group's rise in the 1960s and Wilson's 1980s struggle with mental illness.
"Spy" - Melissa McCarthy's deskbound CIA agent finally gets a shot at field operations in this fish-out-of-water yukfest from writer-director Paul Feig ("Bridesmaids").
<b>JUNE 12</b>
"Jurassic World" - Have the developers of dino-centric theme parks learned nothing from three "Jurassic Park" movies? A genetically engineered beast is introduced, wreaking predictable havoc.
"Me and Earl and the Dying Girl" - An awkward high school senior is forced to spend time with Rachel (Olivia Cooke), a student just diagnosed with cancer. The closing night movie at the Chicago Critics Film Festival.
<b>JUNE 19</b>
"Dope" - The college aspirations of a poor but high-achieving black teen from Inglewood, Calif., take a comic detour when drugs enter the picture.
"Inside Out" - Amy Poehler, Mindy Kaling, Bill Hader and Lewis Black voice some of the emotions rattling around inside the head of an 11-year-old girl in this animated comedy from Pixar.
<b>JUNE 26</b>
"Big Game" - When Air Force One is shot down over Finland by terrorists, a 13-year-old boy (Onni Tommila) comes to the rescue of the U.S. president (Samuel L. Jackson).
"Eden" - Director Hansen-Løve's brother Sven, a pioneering DJ of the French rave scene in the early 1990s, is the subject of this doc.
"Max" - A military dog from Afghanistan is adopted by his late handler's grieving family in the U.S., where his close bond with the soldier's brother leads to a life-altering revelation.
"Ted 2" - The trash-talking teddy bear (voiced by director and co-writer Seth MacFarlane) goes to court to prove his humanity in this sequel to the raunchy 2012 comedy.
<b>JUNE-ISH</b>
"Infinitely Polar Bear" - In the semi-autobiographical tale from writer-director Maya Forbes, Mark Ruffalo plays a bipolar father struggling to raise two daughters when his wife (Zoe Saldana) goes off to graduate school.
"Testament of Youth" - A drama about young love, the futility of war and how to make sense of the darkest times, based on the First World War memoir by Vera Brittain.
<b>JULY 1</b>
"Magic Mike XXL" - Channing Tatum's title character reunites with his stripper pals from the 2012 hit, inspired by Tatum's real-life past as an exotic dancer.
"Terminator Genisys" - The fifth big-screen outing in the seemingly indestructible sci-fi franchise about killer robots introduces a wrinkle in the fabric of the time-traveling tale, which jumps from 1984 to 2029 (and in between).
"Ant-Man" - Expect action and laughs from this screenplay (written by Adam McKay and Paul Rudd) based on the Marvel comic books about an insect-size superhero (Rudd).
<b>JULY 10</b>
"The Gallows" - Yet another low-budget fright-fest in the found-footage genre, "The Gallows" centers on teenagers who put on a play 20 years after one production of the show in which its star was killed.
"Minions" - The lovable potato tots from the "Despicable Me" movies get their own prequel in an animated comedy featuring a new supervillain voiced by Sandra Bullock. Michael Keaton and Jon Hamm also provide voices.
"10,000KM" - Two lovers living in Los Angeles and Barcelona struggle to remain connected even as technology threatens to tear them apart.
"Self/Less" - A scientist (Matthew Goode) offers the prospect of immortality to a billionaire with cancer (Ben Kingsley), agreeing to transplant the dying man's consciousness into a healthy body (Ryan Reynolds). But the dying man finds the new body preoccupied.
<b>JULY 17</b>
"The Bronze" - A former Olympics gymnast finds her status as a small town celebrity challenged when a talented up-and-comer threatens to steal her spotlight. Starring Park Ridge native Gary Cole.
"Mr. Holmes" - Ian McKellen plays Arthur Conan Doyle's beloved sleuth, now 93 and suffering from incipient dementia, in this drama based on novelist Mitch Cullin's "A Slight Trick of the Mind," about intergenerational friendship.
"Trainwreck" - Amy Schumer stars as a happy-go-lucky commitment-phobe who discovers that she's falling for Mr. Right (Bill Hader). Judd Apatow directs from Schumer's script.
<b>JULY 24</b>
"Paper Towns" - Nat Wolff and Cara Delevingne, a British supermodel, star in an adaptation of a YA novel by John Green ("The Fault in Our Stars") about a boy whose crush disappears.
"Pixels" - Old-school gamers do battle with aliens who have devised weapons in the form of Pac-Man and other antique video game characters in this sci-fi comedy. Adam Sandler stars.
"Southpaw" - Jake Gyllenhaal's troubled, muscle-bound boxer is the physical opposite of the emaciated sociopath he played in "Nightcrawler" in director Antoine Fuqua's drama about a widower struggling to regain custody of his daughter.
<b>JULY 29</b>
"Vacation" - Rusty Griswold, the son of Chevy Chase's iconic character of the original "National Lampoon's Vacation," has grown up to look like Ed Helms in this reboot co-starring Leslie Mann and Christina Applegate.
<b>JULY 31</b>
"The Gift" - Joel Edgerton makes his directorial debut with a psychological thriller about a married couple whose life is upended by the appearance of an old friend (Edgerton) with secrets from the husband's past.
"Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation" - When his spy organization disbands, superagent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) and his IMF teammates go freelance to defeat a syndicate of international supervillains.
<b>JULY-ISH</b>
"Irrational Man" - Like clockwork, Woody Allen has released at least one new film every year since 1982. His 46th offering explores a relationship between a college professor (Joaquin Phoenix) and one of his students (Emma Stone).
"Jimmy's Hall" - A 1921 dance hall's socialist and free-spirited reputation becomes a target for the church and politicians who want to shut the place down on the rural crossroads in Ireland on the brink of Civil War.
<b>AUG. 7</b>
"Fantastic Four" - After critical flops with the first two "Fantastic Four" films, Hollywood tries yet again to make these action heroes happen, re-imagining their origin story as a drama about the burden of superpowers.
"Masterminds" - Zach Galifianakis and Kristen Wiig play larcenous yokels in a crime caper inspired by an actual 1997 heist. Directed by "Napoleon Dynamite" director Jared Hess.
"Ricki and the Flash" - Jonathan Demme directs a script by Diablo Cody ("Juno") about a middle-aged rock singer (Meryl Streep) reconnecting with her daughter (Streep's real-life daughter Mamie Gummer).
"Shaun the Sheep" - An animated adventure based on the tales of the title character, a sheep who must join the flock to return everyone safely to the green grass of home after a misadventure in the big city.
<b>AUG. 14</b>
"The Man From U.N.C.L.E." - Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer play unlikely allies - an American and a Soviet spy, respectively - in this Cold War-era adventure based on the 1960s TV series. It's directed by Guy Ritchie, whose "Sherlock Holmes" movies prove he's no slave to source material.
"Straight Outta Compton" - N.W.A. members Ice Cube and Dr. Dre produced this biographical drama about the rise of the seminal gangster-rap group, which, in a bit of clever casting, stars Ice Cube's son, O'Shea Jackson Jr., as his father.
"Underdogs" - Oscar-winning Argentine director Juan José Campanella ("The Secret in Their Eyes") turns to animation in this fantasy about foosball-table soccer players coming to life.
<b>AUG. 21</b>
"Hitman: Agent 47" - After the box-office success (but critical failure) of the 2007 film based on the "Hitman" video game, a fresh director (Aleksander Bach) tries his hand at adapting the adventures of a genetically engineered assassin.
"Learning To Drive" - Patricia Clarkson stars as Wendy, a middle-ages book critic who is shattered when her husband Ted (Jake Weber) leaves her. Wendy begins taking driving lessons from Darwan (Ben Kingsley) an American citizen from India who makes a living as a cabbie.
"She's Funny That Way" - Peter Bogdanovich directs a comedy about a married Broadway director (Owen Wilson) trying to help a call girl go straight while a star of his latest production (Rhys Ifans) makes a play for his wife (Kathryn Hahn).
"Sinister 2" - In this sequel, a new family gets terrorized by Bagul, the boogeyman from the first film who feeds on children's souls (and the hard-earned cash of horror fans starved for an original concept).
<b>AUG. 28</b>
"Regression" - It bodes well that Alejandro Amenábar is at the helm of this film, a return to horror after his acclaimed "The Others." Ethan Hawke plays a detective investigating a young woman's (Emily Watson) claims of abuse by a satanic cult.
"We Are Your Friends" - Zac Efron, Wes Bentley, and Emily Ratajkowski star in Max Joseph's romantic drama about the electronic dance music and Hollywood night life scene.
<b>AUGUST-ISH</b>
"The Diary of a Teenage Girl" - The buzz out of Sundance was strong for this coming-of-age drama about a girl's affair with her mother's boyfriend, based on Phoebe Gloeckner's acclaimed 2002 graphic novel.
"The End of the Tour" - Based on Rolling Stone writer David Lipsky's 1996 interviews with David Foster Wallace, this literary road movie premiered to glowing reviews at this year's Sundance Film Festival. With Jason Segel, Jesse Eisenberg and Joan Cusack.
"Grandma" - Paul Weitz reunites with Lily Tomlin, who stole the spotlight in the director's 2013 "Admission," for a comedy about a lovable crank who helps her teenage granddaughter get an abortion.
Dann Gire's predictions
What movies am I looking forward to seeing this summer?
Hmmm. Good question, because I usually wind up loving the movies I never saw coming and being disappointed by those I've built high hopes for.
I can tell you right now that true film aficionados will embrace “Slow West,” an unpredictable tale of a quest through the American west, with a wicked twist of humor. I saw it at the Chicago Critics Film Festival last week and loved it.
A horror film or two, such as “The Gallows,” might force me to keep the lights on all night, but I've been disappointed too many times to hold out hope for that.
I can't get too excited by reboots and remakes and sequels and prequels because they, too, possess a dismal track record of disappointment.
But there is “Batkid Begins,” a wonderful documentary about a 5-year-old cancer patient whose dream to become Batman for a day captures the world's hearts and imaginations. I'd see that again in a heartbeat. Except so far it's not on the summer release schedule in the Chicago market.
So, I'm putting my money on “Me and Earl and the Dying Girl” — about a student's relationship with a classmate just diagnosed with cancer — as a seasonal best bet.
We shall see.
— Dann Gire