Another warm summer weekend, another opportunity to squander it by sitting in a dark room watching make believe. This week cowboys fight aliens, Steve Carell fights Julianne Moore, and the Smurfs fight any reasonable standards of common decency.

Assassination Games

The Muscles from Brussels stars in this thrilla about two rival assassins who, of course, team up to take on a big bad guy. What's your favorite Jean-Claude van Damme movie? Mine is, oddly, Sudden Death. Powers Boothe is so mean in that! (Limited)


Attack the Block

A bunch of South London hoods go up against some badass aliens in this fun-looking sci-fi/horror movie. Nick Frost shows up to do his Nick Frosty thing, and everyone talks in that funny, clipped way people from around there talk like. Reminds me of Misfits. Are you watching Misfits? You should be. (Limited)


Cowboys & Aliens

Many years before they came for the estates of London, the aliens apparently tried to mix it up with cowboys out in the old American West. Though apparently the aliens survived. So does that mean that Harrison Ford and Daniel Craig don't beat the aliens in the end of this movie and everyone dies? Oh dear. That's bleak. Spoiler alert? (Everywhere, duh)


Crazy Stupid Love

This movie is surprisingly getting pretty strong reviews, so maybe it'll kinda be like the "grownup" movie of the summer, the way that people are always looking for the "grownup" movie of the summer. Grownups are so greedy, always wanting movies for themselves when all they do is pay for all the movies. (Wide)


The Devil's Double

Hopefully this movie, about the nightmare of being the guy chosen to be psychopathic maniac Uday Hussein's body double, will make Dominic Cooper the star he's deserved to be since The History Boys. Though, it's political and about people from not-America so I do not think it will because the people that make movie stars, us dear sweet lard-butted Americans, will not go see it. (Limited)


The Future

Polarizing performance artist/writer Miranda July has made a movie about the terror of mortality and time's passing that's narrated by a cat. Fun way to explore some dark and heady themes, or annoyingly cutesy indie gimmick? You decide! Personally I liked her last movie, and I really liked No One Belongs Here More Than You, so I'm optimistic. (Limited)


Golf in the Kingdom

Based on the bestselling novel, this is a movie about a young man searching for something who learns lessons from a grizzled old man through golf. So it's golf-as-life, just like The Legend of Bagger Vance (aka Everyone Loves a Magical Negro). So we've done golf-as-life, we've definitely done baseball-as-life, we've done basketball-as-life (beautifully, once). What's next? I'm hoping for badminton. "You see, son, the shuttlecock is like... your... cock? I don't know where the hell I'm going with this. Just go have fun." (NY)


Good Neighbors

This Québécois thriller features the odd pairing of Canadian superstars Scott Speedman and Jay Baruchel. Jay Baruchel actually is from Québec, though obviously he's not one of the weirdo French ones. He's one of the more regular English-speaking Canadians. Still a Canadian and thus not trustworthy, but at least he's not yapping away in some mongrel tongue. At least that. Anyway, looks scary! (NY & LA)


The Guard

The great Brendan Gleeson gets a nice, big, juicy starring role in this comedy-thriller about a roguish cop trying to bust up a drug smuggling ring. The also-great Don Cheadle shows up to help out and hilarity and gun shooting ensues. Could be good! (Limited)


The Interrupters

The director of Hoop Dreams (hey!) takes another look at the roughness of life in impoverished South Side Chicago, this time through the eyes of anti-violence activists. So basically yet another crassly commercial enterprise done for no good reason. (But seriously, you will cry very much at this movie if Hoop Dreams is any indication.) (NY)


Point Blank

A bunch of French people run around being French in this French movie about France. I dunno, someone gets kidnapped, Frenchily, and her husband tries to find her in a very Frenchlike manner. Then everyone Frenches and that's what happens. (NY & LA)


Sleep Furiously

Aphex Twin wrote the music for this documentary about life in rural Wales. If you want to look at pretty, slow-moving pictures of towns with names that have no vowels but lots of F's in them, this is the movie for you. (NY)


The Smurfs

Would you think I was weird if I said I once stood on First Avenue for a good five minutes deeply staring into the eyes of a Smurf on a poster for this movie, contemplating how strange and almost lifelike they were? You would? OK, then never mind. What happens in this movie is that basically everyone's skin melts off and their eyeballs fall out and they scream and scream and scream as all the water boils and the birds fall out of the sky and the sun turns black and Neil Patrick Harris realizes what a terrible, terrible thing he's done. (Wide)