Five Summer Movies, Featuring Ants, Robots, Dinosuars, Minions and…Ted.

The temperature is topping out in the 90's and that means it's time to forgive Hollywood for the slop they were feeding us a couple of months ago, because the hoit buttered popcorn, oh, it is calling. It's the Summer Movie season! A time when Jingling Keys: The Motion Picture could be a hit if enough stuff blowed up. So, Leave your thinking hats at home, it's time to watch stuff blow up as people fifty feet high RUN! Here's a quick look at five cinematic hamburgers soon to be sizzling on your widescreen grill! Hmmm, can you smell that?

"Sure it's fun at first...but then there's all the running and the screaming..." -- That guy Jeff Goldblum played.

Seriously, why do they keep re-opening this park? Remember that time the rollercoaster at Six Flags got loose and starting eating nuns? How many movie people must die before they realize this really isn't the best concept for a theme park? Newly minted action hero Chris "I talk to the dinosaurs" Pratt steps into the hero shoes and there's a mess of running and shooting and the best dino effects an obscene amount of movie money can buy, all powering a movie seemingly borrowed from an issue of Amazing Adventure Stories from the thirties. I do like Chris Pratt's goonball presence, so perhaps he can do this franchise justice. Get in the cart, the metal bar's coming down, we're going on a ride.

From rampaging dinos to everybody's favorite killer andriods:

Two kinda ehhh sequels, an angry Christian Bale yelling at the crew, a television show, this is the movie franchise that has seen a rough couple of decades. So of course the logical thing to do is pull a Back To The Future, and rewind the thing back to the beginning, or thereabouts. John Conner, Sara Conner, time traveling robots, loads of references to the first two movies and good old Arnie, back in his robot boots, one final time. And of course lots of running and shooting and an all new liquid metal robot guy. Cue the trailer:

From weirdly accented robots (seriously who programs an android like that) we move to A WALKING TALKING TEDDY BEAR SEQUEL!

Everybody involved Ted 2 needs this, the sequel to the high grossing R-rated comedy of all time, to be a unqualified smash. Seth McFarlane's western comedy from last year was murdered by critics and audiences, Mark Whalberg made some serious movies nobody wanted to see and also tried playing a scientist again (I'm an inventor!) in the last Transformers circus, and Mila Kunis birthed a child with Ashton Kutcher (I'm Steve Jobs, Jackie!). This time, Ted needs to prove to the... Ah, who cares? Naughty fun boy boob and pot jokes coming out of an animated Teddy bear? The return of the guy who played Flash Gorden AND footage of Morgan Freeman cashing his movie check at the ha ha bank?  I AM IN.

Which leads us to:

Yeah, there's a new Pixar movie coming out, but Pixar keeps insisting on loading their movies down with grown up stuff like feelings and stuff and blerrg, sometimes you just wanna see cartoons running around like cartoons, man, doing cartoon things, fast and silly. And the folks behind the Despicable Me movies have wisely jettisoned all that heavy mommy daddy grownup blah blah subtext, and given us the prequel we need, cos it's summer and we're all babies and we want watch gibby gibby talking yellow nubby nubs do funny on movie screen thing.  Heh, movie.

And then...ANT MAN!

Really, what more can you say about that? The train gag alone. I've seen that bit with many audiences over the last few months and it kills every time. You like Paul Rudd, Michael Douglas is easing into his twilight years with incredible grace, and the director did Down With Love, which I think is under-recognized American treasure, and also co-created and directed The Weird Al Saturday morning  t.v. show, which qualifies him for sainthood.

And there you go, that's just five from the onslaught of films about to hit your movie screen. We haven't even mentioned The Fantasic Four, A Man from Uncle reboot, the next Mission Impossible movie or the fact that there is a brand new Bond movie just over the horizon. Save me a seat, the popcorn's hot, buttered and covered in M And M's. It's movie time.

And while you are here, check out my review for the previously mentioned Down With Love. It's a winner, or my name isn't Zip Martin.