It’s August and that means, as far as Hollywood is concerned, the traditional summer season is over. Now they’ll still market these films as summer movies, but all of their 100 million dollar plus budgeted movies were prioritized to release between May and July and these are the leftovers. August doesn’t get the hype the other summer months do but I actually think this month can churn out some original hits. 

2 Guns

 

Dropping the same weekend that The Smurfs 2 was expected to take the box office title, this Denzel Washington & Mark Wahlberg action movie surprised some people and took the #1 spot at the box office. It was actually the weakest #1 debut of the summer, but claming first place is always good for marketing your movie in the following weeks. 


August 7

Percy Jackson: Sea of Monsters

 

While the first Percy Jackson film wasn’t a total flop, it didn’t quite pull the box office numbers the studio expected. It did do well enough, especially overseas, to warrant this sequel. I couldn’t make it through the first film as it seemed like too much of a Harry Potter rip-off. Even now, watching the trailer evokes more comparisons to the Potter film sequels, but I know the movie has its fans and I hope it’s a better film for their sake. 


August 9

Disney's Planes

 

One of the interesting takeaways from this film is that it's not a Pixar film but a Disney film based on a Pixar franchise. This spinoff from the Cars universe is one of the first clear results of the Disney buyout years ago, though it seems like an odd choice considering Cars is possibly the most disliked Pixar property. Since every Pixar film is insanely profitable though, it’s not a huge risk either.

Elysium

 

It’s been four years since District 9 put Director Neill Blomkamp on the map, even garnering a best picture Oscar nomination. Now he has triple the budget of his debut feature and some movie stars thrown in for good measure. It looks like a good, effects-heavy sci-fi piece, but I hope the difference between this and say Oblivion is in the grittiness and heart Blomkamp brings to the production like he did with District 9. 


August 16

Kick-Ass 2

 

The surprise hit film gets a sequel that adds even more unlikely superheroes and over-the-top violence. The film has stirred some controversy with co-star Jim Carrey coming out against the movie a month before its release. He says he's had a change of heart regarding violent movies, but press like that will probably only help the smaller scale comic book movie find success.

Lee Daniels' The Butler

 

This film, starring a huge list of movie stars, seems to have Oscar written all over it. The only problem is these movies tend to come out in the fall, not mixed in the action film dumping ground that is August. It could still be great thanks to its pedigree, but something tells me the studio didn’t have enough faith to release this in the fall with its Oscar hungry peers.

Paranoia

 

Harrison Ford and Gary Oldman play a game of high stakes chess with the movie’s hero as their unwitting pawn. Okay, so this movie looks like more of the same late summer action releases, but it’s got Han Solo and Sirius Black in it, so that should count for something right? 


August 21

The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones

 

Based on the first of six books in the young adult fantasy novel series, this seems to hit all the checkboxes for films in this vein. The difference is always in execution, as to whether you can get out from under the shadow of Harry Potter. However, just look to the aforementioned Percy Jackson to see how hard that is to pull off. 


August 23

The World's End

 

This film is the latest collaboration between director Edgar Wright and stars Simon Pegg & Nick Frost who brought us the classic comedies Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. Wright took a detour to make the cult hit Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, while Pegg & Frost made the terrible sci-fi comedy Paul. Now they’re all back together and Wright seems to have combined the small village humor from Hot Fuzz with the over-the-top action of Scott Pilgrim, and I can’t wait to see it. 

 
August 30

Getaway

 

Labor Day Weekend always seems to feature either a horror movie or an action film, so I was surprised this year, when horror has done so well at the summer box office, that we get an action movie. At least from a marketing perspective, we have Ethan Hawk, star of the surprise horror hit The Purge co-starring with a Shelby Cobra, taking a hint from the hit Fast and Furious sequel that cars are movie stars too. Selena Gomez is also in the film, but it seems like such a stretch to have her there, that the concept put forth in the trailer loses a bit for me. 

That’s the end of my summer preview! Make sure to rank these movies below by how interested you are to see them and look for a fall preview next month. Based on the previous ranking polls, I am going to make the fall preview one comprehensive list of geek-centric films instead of a monthly report of everything, but the comments section is open season on all movies. Speaking of which, let me know in the comments what you think about this month’s movies or even the whole summer breakdown in general.