Looking Ahead: Fall Movie Preview 2012

As we near the end of the August in a matter of days, the fall movie season is about to be bestowed upon us. After a summer season that was full of flops and disappointments, the upcoming fall lineup is very promising as it is composed of potential Oscar contenders and highly anticipated blockbusters. Nonetheless, this year's summer movie season looks strong with what it has to offer, so I'm going to break down my Top 10 Anticipated films for the forthcoming movie season.

Premium Rush (2012)

January and August. What do both of the those months have in common with each other? Well for starters, you can easily take similar climate out of the equation. However, something that these two months do share is releasing movies that are mostly either mediocre or just plain bad. "Premium Rush" fits that example since it was a film that was originally set to release in the second week of January way earlier this year, but then got pushed to the second-to-last week of August. Now that right there folks, is definitely not the wisest of moves to glimmer any hope that a film would be good. So does "Premium Rush" prove that decision wrong, or does it highlight why the two aforementioned months are known to release relished within mediocrity and sometimes more? Hit the jump button to find out!

Side by Side (2012)

 

One of the most hotly debated topics in Hollywood over the past decade is the debate on which film celluloid is becoming more of an endangered means of shooting movies on, and is now giving way to a digital technological takeover. As a fellow enthusiast of cinema, this is a topic that I have cared about to a passionate degree. Even the topic of my final essay as a college freshman dealt mostly with the controversial debate circling both the future and overall consensus of the two. To sum up this popular debate, actor Keanu Reeves and director Christopher Kenneally set out on a journey to provide an insightful and historical account on the transition of film to digital by interviewing various Hollywood directors, cinematographers, editors, film students, and many more to gain their opinions on the digital evolution and how it has affected both them and the film industry as a whole.

Commando (1985)

In the wake of the recent release for "The Expendables 2," I decided to have all of you vote on several choices of cult classic action movies for me to review. And in the end, the winner was the infamously over-the-top Arnold Schwarzenegger 80s action flick "Commando." After making his American acting debut in "Conan the Barbarian" and "The Terminator," Schwarzenegger established himself as a very promising star in the action department. His acting skills were nothing amazing, but his strong physical build and exquisite line delivery for puns set him apart from most action stars of the 80s decade. However out of all the action movies he starred in during the 1980s, none of them stand alongside the ridiculously over-the-top, yet awesomely bad "Commando." If you're a Schwarzenegger fan that hasn't seen this film yet, you're essentially not a true fan until you sit down and view it for the first time.

The Expendables 2 (2012)

 

When it was first announced, who really thought that a sequel to "The Expendables" was needed in the first place? The insanely hyped 2010 first installment was of the most disappointing action movies ever made, and it was a true shame because it had all the necessary stars, but the film itself was executed so poorly. Suffering from choppily shot and edited action scenes, dodgy CGI, in addition to taking itself too seriously, it was one of those few movies that I was so disappointed with I initially didn't want to admit it. Fortunately though, I got some hope for the sequel when Sylvester Stallone vacated the director's chair to Simon West, in addition to more acclaimed action legends being added to the star-studded cast of manliness and testosterone. In the end, does "The Expendables 2" live up to what the first film should've been, or did Sy and the crew still not learn from the many mistakes made in the first one? Hit the jump button to find out!

ParaNorman (2012)

2009 was the last year that experienced a huge mainstream resurgence in the stop-motion animation field. Now it feels like it has ignited this spawn to occur where three films of the aforementioned craft release every third year after it happened. "The Pirates! Band of Misfits" was the first of the three stop-motion animated films to release this year, which was a pleasant adventure but still a tad disappointing when comparing it to Aardman Animations' past credits. Second in the lineup is "ParaNorman," the LAIKA sophomore follow-up to their 2009 sleeper hit "Coraline." Proclaimed by its co-director Sam Fell as "John Carpenter-meets-John Hughes," does "ParaNorman" live up to that bold summary, or does it tarnish the potential good streak that stop-motion animated films have had this year so far? Hit the jump button to find out!