Popcorn Junkie

You want Shakespeare? Go to the park, Einstein. Here are six multiplex picks to gloriously disengage your brain.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith This is actually an art film. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie play international assassins who have sex with each other. Oh—they’re a married couple, too. And each of them is assigned to kill the other, which director Doug (The Bourne Identity) Liman says reinvigorates their love and results in “a movie that’s celebrating marriage.” Mm-hmm. Like anybody else with half a brain in his pants, though, I’m just going to see it because Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie play international assassins who have sex with each other. Duh. June 10.

Wedding Crashers Now here’s high- concept for you: Owen Wilson (who gets one more year of his hairstyle before I become nasty about it) and Vince Vaughn are a couple of Beltway yahoos who crash weddings in order to score a little easy sumthin’-sumthin’ from the single gals in attendance. I think they end up falling for a D.C. bigwig’s daughters—one of whom is Rachel McAdams, who is getting more career mileage out of that sucktastic The Notebook than anyone could have predicted—and the bigwig is played by Christopher Walken. This kind of thing is as close to feeling dumb, straight, and horny as I ever allow myself. July 15.

The 40-Year-Old Virgin God, Hollywood is never smarter or funnier than when it’s dealing with matters of human sexuality. Am I right? Right? Well, anyway, director and co-writer Judd Apatow was responsible for TV’s unimpeachable slice-of-high-school-life Freaks and Geeks, which, in my book, gives him a hall pass to make whatever dumb comedy he wants. The Office‘s Steve Carell falls in love with Catherine Keener—also unimpeachable—and Paul Rudd is around, too. (At least someone was thinking of me.) Aug. 19.

Red-Eye Cillian Murphy (the hottie who survived the zombies of 28 Days Later) plays a bad guy who terrifies Rachel McAdams (the hottie who survived The Notebook) during a late-night flight on which he’s plotting to kill some wealthy guy. I can’t recall the last time director Wes Craven directed a decent movie, but everybody knows that airplane flicks make for good, stinky celluloid cheese, so I’m on board for a bite of this thing. Plus, hell, I can survive anything after Craven’s last dog, Cursed, in which Christina Ricci was some kind of slick L.A. mover-and-shaker going werewolf. Aug. 19.

The Cave An attractive group of young spelunkers is hired to explore a dauntingly murky, mysterious cavern— because, hel-lo, everybody knows that complex expeditions require a real foxy crew. Anyway, the other apparent qualification for such an assignment is total unfamiliarity with Alien, since there’s a real nasty-looking creature swimming around down there and, you know, no one wants anybody to get the jitters too soon and bolt. I assume a lot of these poor kids get eaten, which is why I’ll be attending. I like to see people get eaten—the more the merrier. Hardly anybody got eaten in that shitty Anaconda sequel, which was also released by Screen Gems. They’d better deliver digested spelunkers this time around. Aug. 26.

Into the BlueThe Fast and the Furious‘Paul Walker, a gorgeous blond idiot with two facial expressions and no problem removing his shirt, spends this film in his bathing suit. And so does Ocean’s Eleven‘s big, thickScott Caan. And so does Jessica Alba and some other tart. They’re divers in the Bahamas who find an underwater treasure and a missing shipment of cocaine. And since all of them are too young to have seen The Deep, they get in way over their pretty little heads. Sounds completely enthralling. Late summer (we hope).

swiecking@seattleweekly.com