Log In


Reset Password
Arts and Entertainment

Ready to go to the movies?

John Lloyd Young, Erich Bergen, Vincent Piazza and Michael Lomenda perform as the Four Seasons in a scene from “Jersey Boys,” directed by Clint Eastwood.

The month of June brings some summer sequels into the mix – another “Transformers” movie, a “How to Train Your Dragon” follow-up, the continuing adventures of the “21 Jump Street” crew – but also a Jimi Hendrix biopic, a Clint Eastwood movie musical and a cheerleader-laden horror film.

The week-by-week highlights:

JUNE 6

‘Anna’

Stars: Mark Strong, Taissa Farmiga, Brian Cox

Director: Jorge Dorado

Plot: A detective (Strong) who has the extraordinary ability to read people’s minds and memories to help solve crimes is on the case and invading the noggin of a young actress (Farmiga) accused of a triple homicide.

‘Burning Blue’

Stars: Trent Ford, Morgan Spector, Rob Mayes

Director: D.M.W. Greer

Plot: A close group of Navy pilots fractures after a series of deadly accidents, and soon, a secret affair is uncovered when the government begins investigating them.

‘Burt’s Buzz’

Stars: Burt Shavitz, Priscilla Potter, Bruce Tibbetts

Director: Jody Shapiro

Plot: The documentary chronicles the rise of Shavitz, a bearded introvert who went from an ordinary beekeeper to a man with one of the most recognizable brand identities in the business world.

‘Edge of Tomorrow’

Stars: Tom Cruise, Emily Blunt, Bill Paxton

Director: Doug Liman

Plot: The bad news is William Cage (Cruise) has to keep reliving his dying day in a battle against invading aliens. The good news? Thanks to that time loop, he learns some impressive skills each time he’s killed and resurrected.

‘The Fault in Our Stars’

Stars: Shailene Woodley, Ansel Elgort, Willem Dafoe

Director: Josh Boone

Plot: An adaptation of the best-selling novel stars Woodley as Hazel, a teenage cancer patient who meets the equally witty Gus (Elgort), a former basketball player with a prosthetic leg, at a support group.

‘Le Chef’

Stars: Jean Reno, Michaël Youn, Raphaëlle Agogué

Director: Daniel Cohen

Plot: Set against the backdrop of the French foodie scene, the story brings together a young self-taught chef (Youn) and a renowned culinary master (Reno) whose reputation and restaurant have hit the skids.

‘Obvious Child’

Stars: Jenny Slate, Gaby Hoffman, Jake Lacy

Director: Gillian Robespierre

Plot: Donna (Slate) is an up-and-coming comedian in her 20s who pokes fun at her life onstage, but adulthood slaps her in the face when she gets dumped, loses her job and becomes pregnant.

‘Ping Pong Summer’

Stars: Susan Sarandon, Lea Thompson, Judah Friedlander

Director: Michael Tully

Plot: In 1985, a teenager named Rad Miracle (Marcello Conte), a lover of hip-hop and Ping-Pong, heads to Ocean City, Md., for a summer vacation that includes a first crush, local bullies and an unexpected friend in the weird guy next door.

‘Supermensch: The Legend of Shep Gordon’

Stars: Shep Gordon, Alice Cooper, Michael Douglas

Director: Mike Myers

Plot: Myers makes his directorial debut with a documentary about Gordon, a music manager he met filming Wayne’s World, who led the careers of everyone from Cooper and Blondie to Luther Vandross and Raquel Welch.

‘The Case Against 8’

Stars: Ted Olson, David Boies

Directors: Ben Cotner and Ryan White

Plot: The overturning of California’s same-sex marriage ban is central to the documentary focusing on former political foes Olson and Boies, who team to champion the rights of two gay couples.

JUNE 13

‘All Cheerleaders Die’

Stars: Caitlin Stasey, Sianoa Smit-McPhee, Brooke Butler

Director: Lucky McKee

Plot: An outsider (Stasey) joins her school’s cheerleading squad to exact revenge on the captain of the football team. But a late-night party goes south, the girls die, and they show up to class the next day decidedly different.

‘How to Train Your Dragon 2’

Voices: Jay Baruchel, Cate Blanchett, Gerard Butler

Director: Dean DeBlois

Plot: The latest adventure of Hiccup (Baruchel) and his loyal dragon, Toothless, takes them from their village to the Arctic, where they run into dragon hunters and a possible mentor for Hiccup in the vigilante dragon rider Valka (Blanchett).

‘Ivory Tower’

Stars: David Boone, Clayton Christensen, Andrew Delbanco

Director: Andrew Rossi

Plot: The documentary looks at current college costs and the business of university learning by focusing on several institutes of higher learning, from historically black all-female Spelman College in Atlanta to the nontraditional program at Deep Springs College in Big Pine, Calif.

‘Jimi: All Is By My Side’

Stars: André Benjamin, Imogen Poots, Hayley Atwell

Director: John Ridley

Plot: Benjamin (of Outkast fame) stars as iconic guitarist Jimi Hendrix in a year of the musician’s life, chronicling his early days as an unknown in 1960s New York City to becoming a rock legend in the London music scene and at the Monterey Pop Festival.

‘Lullaby’

Stars: Garrett Hedlund, Amy Adams, Richard Jenkins

Director: Andrew Levitas

Plot: In a matter of 48 hours, a troubled man (Hedlund) has to make peace with his ailing dad (Jenkins) before he’s taken off life support and also reconnect with his mom (Anne Archer), his sister (Jessica Brown-Findlay) and the love of his life (Adams).

‘The Signal’

Stars: Brenton Thwaites, Olivia Cooke, Laurence Fishburne

Director: Will Eubank

Plot: When Nic Eastman (Thwaites) goes into the desert seeking an enigmatic scientist and hacker (Fishburne), he ends up thrown into a mind-bending experience of romantic thoughts and violent weirdness.

‘22 Jump Street’

Stars: Channing Tatum, Jonah Hill, Ice Cube

Directors: Phil Lord and Chris Miller

Plot: Undercover police officers Jenko (Tatum) and Schmidt (Hill) have graduated to taking on a university crime ring and posing as fraternity brothers in the comedy-action sequel.

JUNE 20

‘Jersey Boys’

Stars: John Lloyd Young, Freya Tingley, Christopher Walken

Director: Clint Eastwood

Plot: Based on the stage musical, the movie follows Frankie Valli and his friends in working-class New Jersey as they form the 1960s pop group The Four Seasons and become a soundtrack for the era.

‘Think Like a Man Too’

Stars: Kevin Hart, Michael Ealy, Gabrielle Union

Director: Tim Story

Plot: The main players from the first film return to celebrate the impending nuptials of their friends (Regina Hall and Terrence Jenkins). They hit Las Vegas for a wild weekend of bachelor and bachelorette parties, strip clubs and jail time.

‘Third Person’

Stars: Liam Neeson, Mila Kunis, Adrien Brody

Director: Paul Haggis

Plot: Haggis again uses a multilayered story line, à la “Crash,” to follow three complicated couples (Neeson and Kim Basinger, Kunis and James Franco, Brody and Moran Atias) amid betrayal, infidelity, children and love.

JUNE 27

‘La Bare’

Stars: Joe Manganiello, Lance Winters, Nick Soto

Director: Joe Manganiello

Plot: “Magic Mike” star Manganiello goes behind the camera to direct his first feature, a documentary that takes an inside look at Dallas’ La Bare, one of the most famous male strip clubs in the world.

‘Snowpiercer’

Stars: Chris Evans, Jamie Bell, Tilda Swinton

Director: Bong Joon-ho

Plot: Based on a graphic novel, the sci-fi thriller centers on a group of survivors from an apocalyptic global-warming experiment. They begin to revolt on a train traveling via a perpetual-motion engine.

‘They Came Together’

Stars: Paul Rudd, Amy Poehler, Cobie Smulders

Director: David Wain

Plot: Candy-business rivals Joel (Rudd) and Molly (Poehler) fall in and out of love – with him still keeping a torch burning for his ex (Smulders) and her having a tryst with her accountant (Ed Helms).

‘Transformers: Age of Extinction’

Stars: Mark Wahlberg, Nicola Peltz, Jack Reynor

Director: Michael Bay

Plot: An auto mechanic (Wahlberg) and his daughter (Peltz) are embroiled in a new dust-up between Optimus Prime’s transforming alien Autobots and the evil Decepticons. Dinobots and the U.S. government further complicate matters.

‘Whitey: United States of America v. James J. Bulger’

Stars: Stephen Rakes, James J. Bulger Jr., Tommy Donahue

Director: Joe Berlinger

Plot: The trial of gangster James “Whitey” Bulger and law-enforcement corruption in Boston are at the heart of Berlinger’s latest documentary.

© 2014 USA TODAY. All rights reserved.



Reader Comments