Philadelphia Weekly

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It’s time to turn off your brain and soak up the air conditioning as a slew of summer event movies once again jockey for your hard-earned dollar. ’Tis the season when carefully cultivated tsunamis of hype entice entire audiences to report to their local multiplexes—not for fun, but as an obligation.

It wouldn’t be summer without an unnecessary remake. June kicks off with Tony Scott’s pumped-up rendition of Joseph Sargent’s 1974 classic The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3. The original subway hijack thriller is a grimy, slow-boiling masterpiece of grizzled faces, cynical barbs and a crumbling New York. Early peeks at Scott’s makeover suggest something much flashier, with Denzel Washington stepping into Walter Matthau’s shoes and John Travolta chewing scenery in the Robert Shaw role. We’re hoping Scott tempers the car chases and explosions with at least a little bit of the local color and cynicism that made Sargent’s film so indelible, but that trailer sure ain’t promising.

What if they made an Iraq movie people actually wanted to see? Hollywood seems to have taken the hint after a dire run of melodramas like In the Valley of Elah. Director Kathryn Bigelow went the indie route with The Hurt Locker, which has been scoring raves at festivals. Jeremy Renner stars as the head of a bomb-disposal unit in Baghdad, and word is the flick avoids political platitudes in favor of street-level realism. Point Break director Bigelow is a phenomenal technician who never quite found a script to suit her talents. Maybe this is the one.

A few guys throw a bachelor party in Las Vegas, only to wake up from the alcoholic blackout missing some teeth, their dignity and the groom. (Sounds like just another weekend at the Burns household.) The Hangover is being touted as this season’s raunch-comedy sleeper, à la Superbad, with Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis poised for breakout moments. A tiger, a baby and even a chicken fit into the mystery evening, but I’m not sure why every ad ends with Mike Tyson singing a Phil Collins song. Director Todd Phillips found a sophomoric groove for roughly half of his Old School, so let’s hope this time he’ll be able to keep it going through the entire feature.

Can you get away with pulling the same prank twice? It’s a question that’s probably plaguing Sacha Baron Cohen right now, as he puts the finishing touches on his July release, Brüno. Cohen has revived the third, and least engaging, character from Da Ali G Show and sent him on a Borat- styled trek to embarrass the unsuspecting and suss out homophobia. I’m wondering if this gag will work as well without the element of surprise, but leaked clips detailing Cohen’s attempt to adopt an African baby are rudely hilarious.

Michael Mann, our abstract expressionist of cops ’n’ robbers melodrama, heads to the 1930s with Public Enemies, a Fourth of July weekend release starring Johnny Depp as bank robber John Dillinger and Christian Bale as Melvin Purvis, the tightly wound FBI agent obsessed with bringing him down. It’s hard not to salivate at the idea of Depp indulging himself in the Dillinger mythos, and Bale was born to play one of Mann’s trademark driven lawmen. The big question here is how the director’s hypermodern digital-video aesthetic will play in Prohibition-era Chicago.

There was no way we could go three months without a Judd Apatow production. The busiest slob-comic producer in Hollywood steps into the director’s chair with July’s Funny People. The filmmaker’s former roommate Adam Sandler stars as a surly superstar facing a cancer scare, so he hires an up-and-coming standup (Seth Rogen, naturally) to be his gag writer and personal assistant. Can Apatow’s dick and fart joke fetish coincide comfortably with musings on mortality? It sounds like a risky proposition, but anyone who saw Punch-Drunk Love knows Sandler has untapped actorly potential.