Movie Sign!

Spring is here, and we know what that means - $5/gallon gas is right around the corner, just in time for the summer driving season!

Oh, and there's also a bunch of movies coming out too. Makes me glad I'm a short walk away from a theater. There's ten movies I'm looking forward to seeing in May, June, and July. But not August. Have you seen the crap coming out in August? No, August is catch up with the Netflix queue month.

Before I hit my ten must-see (and I know you're sooooo anxious to know what's what), have to give a shout out to my pal Jason Lee Miller, currently blogging and crying at his journal Off Topic. The crying doesn't surprise me even a little bit. Go read him and cheer him up. Please. He has a wife and daughter in his grill 24/7. He needs the boost.

Now on to the cinema!

First weekend of May. If I was a good local I'd be sucking down mint juleps, pretending I knew the length of a furlong (protip - no one actually knows) and watching the Kentucky Derby (or at least the Oaks.) Instead, I'll find a seat for Thor. The plotline: the Norse god of thunder ticks off his dad by being an arrogant snotrag. Odin, with godly powers at his fingertips, decides the best punishment for his kid will be to drop him on Earth to hang out with Natalie Portman.

Yeah, some punishment. Image credit - Filmofilia

(Ok, my plotline synopses may or may not accurately reflect the actual plot of the films. Caveat emptor etc)

After that, it's a fortnight's wait until Cap't Jack Sparrow and his eyeliner return in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides on May 20. The plot? Jack Sparrow and Penelope Cruz need to find the Fountain of Youth before Jack's dad turns 3000 years old and crumbles into dust. In an astute bit of casting, Keith Richards returns in the role of Papa Sparrow, most likely because Keith appears to have been born around the time pirates sailed the high seas in wooden ships.

Notice how she wears less makeup than Jack does. Image - Disney

Memorial Day weekend will be cartoon break time. Kung Fu Panda 2 will answer the one question about Po that everyone has wondered about since the first movie - does Po weigh less than Jack Black? Angelina Jolie returns to the cast, sadly in voice only. Which reminds me, I need to nudge Tomb Raider up a few spots in my Netflix queue...

School ends locally just as Professor X and Magneto get their mutant on in X-Men: First Class. With no Patrick Stewart or Ian McKellen this time around, we get the origin story of these two friends turned adversaries over mutants and their place in the world. Their common purpose? Serving as yet more links to Kevin Bacon's movie career.

June 17 kicks off the superhero movie I have to admit I never thought I'd see made, mostly because I figured Warner Bros would find a way to screw it up. Green Lantern features the nigh-omnipotent ring-wielding space cop played by Ryan Reynolds trying to accomplish a truly superheroic feat - finding a hotter date than his ex-wife.

"Is that my tie? Who said you could borrow my tie? It was Sinestro, wasn't it?"
"Don't make me smack you with a lemon, Hal." Image - Joyhog

Time to veer from cartoon heroes to just cartoons again. Ok maybe what Pixar does is a little more sophisticated than making cartoons. Cars 2 vroom-vrooms on June 24th. The skinny? Larry the Cable Guy tools around the world as an international spy. Seriously, that's the plot, peeps. It's Pixar so you know it'll do $400 million worldwide. Just pay for your ticket, you know you're going,

July 1 rolls in on the wheels of the latest Michael Bay flick, Transformers: Dark of the Moon. In this sequel, Sam Witwicky has lost a girlfriend, and gained a girlfriend. Cars will turn into robots and things will explode and you stopped reading this after that last link didn't you?

On July 15, J.K. Rowling's wizarding saga comes to a close as Part Two of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows opens on 14 trillion movie screens. Despite the interest from millions of fans, Warner Bros couldn't be bothered to give the second movie its own website, choosing instead to shill the Blu-Ray release of Part One. Marketers, oy vey.

The two weeks after Harry Potter and the Looting of the Box Office will see Captain America and Cowboys & Aliens debut on the 22nd and 29th. Cap's movie is really just another taste, along with Thor's, of next summers Avengers movie, which ought to be seven kinds of awesome.

In Cowboys & Aliens, James Bond and Indiana Jones team up in the Old West to slap leather and draw sixguns against creatures from beyond our world. Sadly, those evil menaces getting several times their daily allowance of lead aren't the ones who are holding up progress on the next Bond movie, which looks like it ought to go into production right about the time Daniel Craig's great-grandkids will be ready to audition for the superspy role.

So that's my summer movie going plotted out. The only movies I saw last summer were Salt and, um, Salt. This year, I'll see a few more. Action!