Top 5 Movies to watch in August

The summer movie blockbusters are still in full bloom with, “Hancock,” “Wanted,” “Iron Man” and the “Hulk” almost a memory, until the DVDs come out, but there are plenty more coming out in August.
Here are my top 5 movies to see this August, in order of release.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
(Opening Aug. 1)
With the opening of “They Mummy” two actors, Jet Li and Brandon Fraser, are making their second appearance in summer actions films. Jet Li stared in “The Forbidden Kingdom,” which unofficially started the summer blockbuster season and Fraser will star in “Journey to the Center of the Earth” opening later this month.
The “The Mummy” will do better than both.
The original mummy, staring Fraser, which premiered in 1999, took a fourth-rate slow-moving, foot-dragging, bandaged horror creature joke and propelled it into a mainstream horror icon.
This time the mummy series moves from Egypt to Asia when Rick O’Connell’s (Fraser) son Alex (played by newcomer Luke Ford) once again gets in trouble and needs mum and dad’s help.
Also joining the action are Michelle Yeoh (Memoirs of a Geisha, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), Maria Bello (World Trade Center, Payback) and the series popular funny man John Hannah (Four Weddings and a Funeral, The Last Legion).

Swing Vote
(Opening Aug. 1)
Let’s face it, two months before the November Elections this movie has “preaching” written all over it. Apparently, in “Swing Vote” the citizens of the United States are completely divided on who to vote for in the presidential election. Earnest “Bud” Johnson’s (Kevin Costner) vote, however, isn’t counted because of a glitch, so now he is being courted by both presidential candidates for his vote. Whoever gets his vote wins the election.
Yep, it’s a bit of a stretch, a tall-tale (insert appropriate unbelievable metaphor here), but it still has feel-good movie written all over it, especially with performances by Kelsey Grammer, Dennis Hopper and Kevin Costner.
Maybe we could do with some additional preaching before the elections.

The Perfect Game
(Opening Aug. 8)
You’re not going to recognize many names headlining this movie, but that will be a plus. On the surface, this movie seems just another movie about baseball. What happens when a former Pro baseball coach is roped into coaching a Mexican little league baseball team? – they become the first foreign team to win the Little League World Series of course. The movie, based on true events, is more than that, though. It’s the story of what happens after the game that will truly make this one of the year’s best feel-good movie to watch this summer.

Tropic Thunder
(Opens Aug. 15)
If I were to rank my top 20 actors Ben Stiller would probably rank somewhere around 45. Every couple of years, however, he makes a good movie. His last passable movie was two years ago with “Night at the Museum.”
It’s that time again.
This time, Stiller teams up with Robert Downey Jr, Jay Baruchel, Jack Black and Nick Nolte to being us Tropic Thunder – sort of a Rambo meets the Five Stooges. In this movie, a group of actors are filming a Vietnam movie when the director decides to drop them off in the middle of a war-torn jungle. It won’t win any Oscars, but with Downey playing a white man playing a black man, it should fill you with plenty of laughs

Bangkok Dangerous
(Opens Aug. 22)
Nicolas Cage may not always get the big-hit material, but that does not keep him from always delivering the big-hit performance. In Bangkok Dangerous, he looks to do both. In this movie, Cage plays a lonely anonymous assassin who finds love, and you know what that means – plenty of action in one of the summer’s last potential blockbusters.