The 2010 Summer Movie Season: Mid-Term Report Card

The 2010 Summer movie season is halfway done.

Thank God for small favors.

Normally during the summer, I will go to the movies quite a bit. Even in Hollywood's off years quality-wise, I still managed to trek down to the theater and sit through a majority of the films trotted out by the major studios. Screenings were free, I didn't have to take home any work from my job and best of all, the theaters were air-conditioned.

But as the old saying goes, that was then and this is now. I now have a job with plenty of take-home work, I finally broke down and bought a A/C for my apartment and while the screenings are still free, a majority of what has come out this summer has not been worth my time and resources. So while my cinema going has been on the downside of late, I've still seen a bunch of flicks since the beginning of May. And without mincing too many words, I feel that this year's summer selections have been, hands down, the worst I have come across in at least a decade. Whether it was the still-lingering effects of the Writer's Strike from a couple of years ago or the fact that Hollywood has simply given up trying to make decent product, this summer season has by and large been one giant middle finger from Tinseltown to you and I.

Now, it is true that Hollywood is lucky to crank out four or five really good or downright great movies per summer. For example, last year we had "The Hurt Locker", "Star Trek", "UP", "Inglourious Basterds", "District 9", "Drag Me To Hell" and "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince". But we also had the likes of such shit as "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra", "Angels and Demons", "Terminator: Salvation", "Land of the Lost", "Year One" and the unwatchable nerdfest "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen".

This year is different. I can't even think of one great film that has been released this summer so far, just a few decent ones. Making the dire quality movie scene even more dire is the overwhelming amount of subpar crap: "Robin Hood", "Sex and the City 2" (a movie so bad that even the diehard fans thought it sucked), "Jonah Hex", "Killers", "The A-Team", "Marmaduke", "The Last Airbender", the list goes on. Fortunately, I am in the position to skip such films (okay, I saw a couple of the aforementioned snoozers). Unfortunately, my friends who are critics did not. They've had to sit through each and every one of the aforementioned snoozers (and about a dozen more stinkers on top of that). The past two months has been so bad for mainstream cinema that it's enough to make one swear off new movies from this point on.

But a modicum of salvation may be on the horizon, at least in respect to a few films heading our way this month. Christopher Nolan's trippy "Inception" has been receiving sterling early word-of-mouth from critics, giving hope to moviegoers that one high-concept blockbuster might actually live up to and possibly exceed its hype. Lisa Cholodenko's comedy "The Kids Are All Right" and the Duplass brother's "Cyrus" have also benefitted from raves while slowly expanding its theater count across the country. But the biggest surprise may very well be the new Robert Rodriguez-produced sci-fi actionier "Predators". Based on a press screening my friend attended in Boston, the Nimrod Antal-directed film is apparently a solid genre flick that delivers. Whether those four films can turn a dreary movie season around or not is anyone's guess, but at the very least, the quartet can provide a little bit of moviegoing solace in a sea of truly bad product.

The following are capsule reviews for the films I have seen so far this summer. More will be added as the days and weeks progress.

May 2010

"Iron Man 2" (Paramount. 124 minutes): The first "Iron Man" was a hell of a lot of fun, thanks to a director who understood and respected the source material and an ensemble cast that worked together like a well-oiled machine. The second installment may suffer from too many characters and a lack of freshness, but it still was a very enjoyable follow up. Once again the cast (led by the great Robert Downey Jr.) and director (Jon Faverau) helped elevate the material into solid summer entertainment. Three out of four stars.

"Robin Hood" (Universal. 148 minutes): What the hell were Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe thinking? This slow, dreary prequel to the Robin Hood legend is a convoluted mess that is nicely shot, but nearly insufferable to sit through. Even the action scenes, which Scott handled so well in "Gladiator" and (to a lesser but still successful extent) "Kingdom of Heaven", felt like uninspired outtakes. In fact, one has to wonder why the movie was called "Robin Hood" to begin with since Crowe's character is never referred to that name during the movie! Apparently, there is an extended version coming to home video this fall with a half hour reinstated to the film. Sounds like pure torture to me. One and a half stars out of four.

"Get Him to the Greek" (Universal. 109 minutes): From the director, co-writer and two of the stars of 2008's hilarious "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" comes this crass, consistently funny, well-acted rock comedy that doesn't quite match the creative heights of "Sarah", but it does consistently make one laugh. Russell Brand once again plays rock star Aldus Snow, whose career has hit the skids. Jonah Hill (playing a different character than the one he played in "Sarah Marshall") is a put-upon record company employee who is tasked with bringing the hard-partying rock star to the Greek ampitheater in Los Angeles from London to put on a concert. Chaos ensues along the way. Brand and Hill work perfectly together, while Sean "P. Diddy" Combs is just as hilarious as a profane record executive (this guy really needs to act in more movies). You know where everything is going and what is going to happen to who, but you could care less about predictability when you're laughing so damn hard. Three stars out of four.

June 2010

"Jonah Hex" (Warner Brothers. 81 minutes of my life I won't get back): A production so troubled that it made "Robin Hood"s look like a cakewalk. The end result of switching writers and directors, several weeks of reshoots and a marketing campaign that redefines the word "sucks"? Easily one of the worst films of the year. The story is stupid not to mention slight (the latter might be the result of some major sections chopped out in post-production), the characters non-existent and the action sequences poorly executed. Only Josh Brolin makes any sort of impact as the title character, which stops this film from taking the pole position as the worst movie I have seen in 2010 thus far. One star out of four.

"Toy Story 3" (Disney/Pixar 103 minutes): After scaling such creative highs with "Ratatouille", "Wall-E" and "UP", Pixar plays it safe with its latest summer offering, the third and reportedly final chapter of the "Toy Story" franchise. Despite being about 15 minutes too long and borrowing a fair amout from the 1999 second film, "Story 3" still manages to entertain and deliver a solid emotional punch during its conclusion. The 3-D effects are decent, but totally unnecessary to enjoy the film. Three stars out of four.

"Knight & Day" (20th Century Fox 111 minutes): If you can stomach the schizophrenic first half hour of James Mangold's action/comedy starring Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, you should find yourself enjoying the other 90 or so minutes. The story is a mess and the tone of the movie veers way too much for its own good. But the performance by Cruise is one of his better ones from the past decade or so (he looks like he's actually having fun) while Diaz offers up some solid support. The duo have some nice chemistry between them, which makes the movie far more enjoyable than it has any right to be. Two and a half stars out of four.

"Despicable Me" (Universal Pictures. 90 minutes): Neither horrible or great, the latest 3-D computer animated comedy has a fair amount of chuckles thanks to the voice talent likes of Steve Carell, Russell Brand and Jason Seagal. The only problem is that it really doesn't have much beyond that. The animation is Pixar-esque and the jokes Dreamworks Animation-esque. But the story is too slight and uninvolving to be worthy of either animation studio's time, which may explain why it ended up with Universal Pictures. Two and a half stars out of four.