Films You Should Be Looking Forward To In May

Star Trek Into Darkness (Thursday 9th May)
Director: J.J. Abrams
Starring: Chris Pine, Benedict Cumberbatch, Zachary Quinto, Zoe Saldana, Simon Pegg

As a life long fan of Star Wars is pains me to admit just how much I loved the 2009 Star Trek film. It was absolutely outstanding. The cast was great, the story was great, and overall I felt it was a pretty brilliant effort. So, understandably I'm very excited for the sequel. As the Starship Enterprise enters our atmosphere once again it brings with it a fresh new tale of  Captain Kirk fighting an unstoppable force of terror from within his own organisation. The villain, a one man weapon of mass destruction, is played by Benedict Cumberbatch which I think will prove to be an excellent choice. If you're partial to a bit of sci-fi then you will not want to miss this one.


Great Gatsby (Thursday 16th May)
Director: Baz Luhrmann
Starring: Leonardo Di Caprio, Carey Mulligan, Toby Maguire, Joel Edgerton

It was only ever going to be a matter of time before someone cracked and decided to try and recreate F. Scott Fitzgerald's iconic book The Great Gatsby (1925). That someone was Baz Luhrmann, and to be honest I'm quite glad. Luhrmann's greatest success came in the form of his fantastic 1996 re-telling of Romeo and Juliette which gained great critical acclaim. Now he's back with his leading man, Leonardo Di Caprio, and I'm very confident they will be able to recreate the same on screen magic for us all over again. The Great Gatsby is a really good book, which I'd wholeheartedly recommend to anyone, but it's a very hard story to try and explain. At it's very core it's a love story, but a love story with a whole heap of subtle undertones and social commentaries weaved in throughout it. It's a tall order attempting to recreate the subtext of a book onto the big screen, yet I have the utmost confidence that Luhrmann will stand strong to the task. Will it be as good as the book? Maybe not. But from what I can gather it'll be one brilliant film with one hell of a soundtrack.


Fast and Furious 6 (Friday 17th May)
Director: Justin Lin
Starring: Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, Paul Walker, Jason Statham

Seriously now, who genuinely doesn't enjoy the Fast and Furious films? Yes they maybe slightly generic, yes the acting may not warrant any academy awards, yes the story may be pretty much the same in every film, and yes they may just take any excuse to blow things up. But none of that matters, because every time I watch the latest installment I get the buzzing excitement of a child in a sweet shop. I'm not really that big on cars, if you opened up the hood of a million pound sports car I'd probably only be impressed by how shiny it is. But again none of the matters because Fast and Furious doesn't require you to have a good grasp on automotive engineering, all you need to know is that the cars go fast and the people behind the wheel are badass. Fast and Furious 6 does appear to be breaking the mold slightly, the story has shifted away from pulling off a heist and more into stopping bad guys, but honestly it doesn't really matter that much. This movie is going to be epic and I can almost guarantee I'll leave the cinema with a big beaming grin on my face.



Epic (Wednesday 22nd May)
Director: Chris Wedge
Starring: Colin Farrell, Josh Hutcherson, Amanda Seyfried, Christoph Waltz, Aziz Ansari, Chris O'Dowd, Jason Sudeikis, Steven Tyler, Beyonce Knowles

Just take a look at that cast and tell me you don't already want to see this film? It's rare a film comes along where the term "star studded" doesn't do it justice, yet somehow Epic has managed it. So many famous names can sometimes result in attempting to make up for a poor script, although with animated films this is rarely the case. I'm a fan of animated film, something about them just appeals to my inner child, and I think this looks like it could become a real classic. Of course there's always going to be an element of risk with films of this type. You don't know whether they're going to be slightly too childish too enjoy, or just another money maker the studios have churned out. But personally I like the look of this film and if it's done the way I'm hoping it could be a real success. Also, I'll pretty much watch anything with Aziz Ansari in it. Definitely one to keep an eye on.





Written by Ash Davies