2014 Preview: June

Welcome back to Rhode Island Movie Corner’s year-long preview of the films set to come out during 2014. This is Part 5 of 11 (previously 12) and today we’ll be looking at the films that will be hitting theaters during the month of June. Of course, we are now officially in the ‘summer movie season’ but surprisingly, there aren’t a lot of wide releases coming out this month. Except for the last weekend of the month, only two new wide releases are coming out a week. Still, let’s take a look of what June has to offer at the movies.

JUNE 6- This week will feature a Tom Cruise sci-fi/action movie with a romantic drama based off of a best-selling book.

*Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt star in ‘Edge of Tomorrow’, directed by Doug Liman (‘The Bourne Identity’) and based off of the novel ‘All You Need Is Kill’ by Hiroshi Sakurazaka. Cruise stars as an officer who is sent into battle against an alien race despite being inexperienced in combat. However, he soon finds that he is continuously experiencing the same events over and over again as he begins to become a better fighter with the help of another warrior (Blunt).

*Based on the novel of the same name by John Green, ‘The Fault in Our Stars’ stars Shailene Woodley as a girl suffering from a terminal illness who falls in love with a boy with a prosthetic leg (Ansel Elgort) when the two of them meet at a cancer support group.

JUNE 13- Two highly anticipated sequels come out this weekend. One’s an R-rated comedy to one of the big surprise hits of 2012 and the other is an animated sequel to a much beloved film.

*2012’s ‘21 Jump Street’ was a surprise hit and this weekend, its sequel, ‘22 Jump Street’ hits theaters, once again directed by Phil Lord and Chris Miller (fresh off of ‘The Lego Movie’ earlier this year). Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum return as cops Schmidt and Jenko, who in this film go undercover as college students in order to deal with another drug ring. Ice Cube, Dave Franco, and Rob Riggle return for this film as well.

*Another big hit was 2010’s ‘How to Train Your Dragon’, based off of the book series of the same name by author Cressida Cowell. The DreamWorks production’s sequel, ‘How to Train Your Dragon 2’, hits theaters this weekend. Taking place five years after the events of the first film, dragons and Vikings now live in peace. While this is going on, Hiccup (Jay Baruchel), son of the Viking chief Stoick (Gerard Butler), and his friends deal with a new threat, a dragon hunter named Drago (Djimon Hounsou) and Hiccup also comes across his long-lost mother (Cate Blanchett). Baruchel, Butler, Craig Ferguson, and America Ferrera (among others) reprise their roles from the previous film and are joined in this one by Blanchett, Hounsou, and Kit Harington.

JUNE 20- A Clint Eastwood directed musical and another comedy sequel hit theaters this weekend.

*Clint Eastwood’s latest directorial effort, ‘Jersey Boys’, is based off of the Tony Award-winning musical of the same name. The movie (and play for that matter) is a dramatized account of the band known as ‘The Four Seasons’ detailing their formation, success, and ultimately their break-up. John Lloyd Young, Erich Bergen, Vincent Piazza, and Michael Lomenda play the four members of the band and the film also stars Christopher Walken as Gyp DeCarlo, a mob boss tied to the group.

*2012’s ‘Think Like A Man’, based off of the book ‘Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man’ by Steve Harvey, was a surprise hit when it was released in April 2012; it even ended ‘The Hunger Games’ 4-week run at the #1 spot at the US box office. The main members of the cast, including Kevin Hart, Michael Ealy, and Taraji P. Henson, return for the sequel, ‘Think Like a Man Too’, which sees the main group of couples heading to Vegas.

JUNE 27- The month closes out with a sole wide release this weekend; the fourth film in a very successful (if mostly just from a box office perspective) film franchise.

*Following 2007’s ‘Transformers’ and its sequels, 2009’s ‘Revenge of the Fallen’ and 2011’s ‘Dark of the Moon’ is ‘Transformers: Age of Extinction’, the fourth installment in this franchise once again directed by Michael Bay. However this film features almost entirely a new cast of characters, taking place four years after the events of the last film. Mark Wahlberg stars as a mechanic who, along with his daughter (Nicola Peltz), come across a broken-down Optimus Prime (once again voiced by Peter Cullen), but then find themselves at odds with the government, who have been trying to rid the planet of the Transformers. The new members of the human cast include Stanley Tucci, Kelsey Grammer, and Jack Reynor and the voice cast includes John Goodman, Ken Watanabe, and Frank Welker.

And those are the films that are set to come out during June 2014. Check back next month, when we’ll be halfway through 2014, for Part 6 where we’ll be looking at July’s lineup of films.