There are two excellent choices this time around, the live action option being Tomorrowland from Disney. I have been watching that one spit out new trailers for a while now, and am quite excited about it. We also get the animated When Marnie Was There from Studio Ghibli in a noticeably more limited release. I plan to try to make both of them.
One of the silliest Japanese trailers I have seen in a long time, The Mole Song: Undercover Agent Reiji looks like a lot of fun. At least if you enjoy Yakuza Comedy and Police Silliness, which I do. As near as I can tell, this one is only available as an Import so far, hopefully it will be released in the US soon. Here is Exhibit A:
The one everybody knows about this week is Mad Max: Fury Road, yet another entry into the Mad Max apocalyptic franchise that began back in the late 70s. Like all the other films in this series, this one takes place in a desert, which Australia has a lot of. The filming location this time was the Namib Desert in Namibia, so I guess they decided the Australian deserts they did the first few films in just weren’t post-apocalyptic enough. Fewer people know about Time Lapse, a movie which has been racking up the awards on the Film Festival circuit for the last year, and is finally making it to some regular theaters. As near as I can figure it, this is a modern retelling of the 1960 Twilight Zone episode A Most Unusual Camera, where a camera that takes pictures of the future makes life in the present much more complicated (and possibly much shorter) then it would have otherwise been.
This week Infini will be showing up on a limited number of screens around the country. An elite search and rescue team hit an off-world mining site to rescue the lone survivor of a man made plague.
Studio Ghibli has produced some amazing animations in its history, and it looks like When Marnie Was There is yet another in a long line of triumphs. The box office results in Japan were poor for this one, but the critical reaction was positive to the point of acclaim, and this is another beautiful feature length production in the Miyazaki style. It will be premiering in New York and Los Angeles on May 22nd, and go into wider (but still limited) release after that. If you are lucky enough to be in a town where you can catch it on the big screen, you should try to do so.
This is the week when Avengers: Age of Ultron hits the big screen, and I will definitely be in the theater to see it. The word came from Chris Evens (Captain America) earlier today that they have already set up the shooting schedule for Avengers: Infinity War, filming the two part movies back to back over 9 months beginning in the fall of 2016. Part one will be out in May of 2018, part 2 in May 2019. Also they started filming on Captain America: Civil War today as well. That film will be near-Avengers in scope, including the return of Iron Man, Falcon, Black Widow, Hawkeye, and the Winter Solder, and giving us the new characters Black Panther and Scarlet Witch.
If you are up for a marathon, AMC Theaters, Showcase Theaters, Regal Theaters, and Cinemark (and probably others I didn’t find) are running 27 hours worth of Marvel titles back-to-back for the new Avengers premier. You start at 6PM Wednesday give or take a few minutes, and finish with the 7PM showing of the latest one Thursday evening, like so:
6:00pm IRON MAN
8:25pm THE INCREDIBLE HULK
10:35pm IRON MAN 2
1:00am THOR
3:10am CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE FIRST AVENGER
5:30am THE AVENGERS
8:48am IRON MAN 3
11:15am THOR: THE DARK WORLD
1:45pm CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER
4:20pm GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY
7:00pm AVENGERS: AGE OF ULTRON
Obviously the one that caught my eye was Guardians of the Galaxy, which has not been part of the Avengers filmography. This may be confirmation that there will be a film where the two teams meet, or perhaps it is Marvel/Disney figuring that film was popular enough they can sell out the theaters even though it isn’t new.