Fred gives B+ on Summer Movie Season 2006

Big Improvement Over 2005

The summer started early this year. Many big releases came out in mid-May to get a jump on the World Cup. Now that Hollywood has to rely more on international box office to offset the high cost of their big productions, the whole world has to be watching for them to have a fighting chance of making a buck.
Not so long ago, a movie released in the U.S. would take a few months to make it to Budapest, not now. Many huge films like The DaVinci Code are opened on the same day all around the world, mostly to get a jump on the illegal DVD pirates.
But the World Cup put a crimp in this year's summer movie season. The big World Cup matches can be seen by as many as 3.2 Billion people at a time. People take their vacations (holiday) from work in some countries to be able to catch all the matches. So that diminishes the potential audience for the big action films that generally do well world wide.
So, thankfully, the World Cup forced the studios to hold back on their bigger morsels until almost the 4th of July weekend. I wish the World Cup was on every year, because it gives a movie buff like me a chance to catch up on these films at less of a breakneck pace. Thus allowing me down time to soak in what I just saw before moving on to the next chafing dish.
So in this new world order, where summer starts around May 20 and ends on Sept. 21, we are at the midseason point and I'm ready to give my thoughts on all the films I've seen so far.
One quick note: My friend Harry asked me about one particular film. He wondered if it gave me that rush that you got when we walked out of a Rocky movie as a kid. After a Rocky movie how many kids would be shadow boxing in the street? I said no, I haven't felt like shadow boxing or imitating any action in a long time. I don't know if there is a lack of adrenaline in movies today, or I'm just jaded from having my dopamine levels set at a sky-high level. Excitement and adrenaline for someone my age comes harder. My friends and I used to come out of Chuck Norris movies and karate kick each other down Myrtle Avenue. But in retrospect, Chuck Norris movies were terrible. So no I haven't gotten that rush I got coming out of the original Die Hard, but that doesn't mean the movies I saw this summer didn't cause a rush for someone younger.
Here goes:

1---Superman Returns---My favorite quote of the summer comes from Newsweek. "Next to Superman Returns' Champagne, most recent superhero movies are barely sparkling cider."
Perfect.
My favorite movie of the summer so far. Magical. Takes all of the best elements of the first two movies and improves on them a tiny bit (especially the flying scenes which are both beautiful and then outrageous). And improves on all the weaker elements greatly. Brandon Routh (pronounced like south) is a great Superman. Heroic and charismatic as Supes, gawky and funny as Clark. Kevin Spacey is a terrific Lex Luthor, adding seriousness and cold villainy back to the role. So "under the top" as compared to Gene Hackman's minstrel show. The film's plot is secondary to the spectacular action scenes, a particularly great one involving an out of control airliner.
And this film is really great for the girls. A good looking romantic Superman, and a very strong, courageous Lois Lane. One of the things I liked about this movie was Richard White, Lois' fiancee, he's not just an earthly schlub that Superman has to joust with for Lois' love, but a really good guy who is as deserving of her love as Superman is. A rare romantic triangle that has you pulled in two different ways.

2---Monster House---I think this movie is too scary for kids under say 8. But just great for anybody else. A rare horror movie that is both really funny and pretty scary. The fact that it's a CGI-animated film does not matter. It is painted with honesty. A little girl rides her tricycle and sings to herself (annoyingly) as she goes past the scary house on the block. When the old man comes out to scream at her, she runs away and he carries her tricycle inside, to add to his collection of toys that ended up on his property. Even when the old man doesn't come out, the house seems to get mad.
We've all known houses and old men like that and kids like the main character DJ. He spies on the old man and the house directly across the street. He and his best friend Chowder are about 11 and caught in that age between being little boys trick or treating and pubescent pre-teens who like girls. When Jenny, the pretty girl scout, comes along they are both smitten and unable to run away from their fears of the house.
This movie plays it straight like Poltergeist and doesn't wimp out on bad dreams. The house is really that bad and it's up to these kids to do something about it. The movie was co-produced by Poltergeist's writer Steven Spielberg and his old partner in crime, Robert Zemeckis. Zemeckis has made a ton of hits, from Roger Rabbit and Polar Express to Forrest Gump and Castaway. The floating feather in Gump has been changed into an autumn leaf in this film and a Wilson basketball is a central prop. That Chowder doesn't scream Wilson was a welcome sign of restraint by the filmmakers.
Even the teenagers are creepily realistic. Great movie. I will buy this one.

3---Mission Impossible 3---The best of the 3. As (Frozone) Samuel L. Jackson's wife says to him in The Incredibles, "We have guests coming over, so you don't have no time for no derring do." Tom Cruise does a lot of derring do in this movie, some of it funny, some of it unbelievable, but all of it exciting. One scene on a rooftop of a Shanghai skyscraper is outrageous. Joel Siegel says that Tom Cruise doesn't go through one door throughout the whole movie, constantly shattering windows and it's true, but if you want to see doorway entrances go see Prairie Home Companion.

4---You, Me and Dupree---Last week, I was driving home while flipping channels on my radio. 103.5 WKTU had Goombah Johnny or somebody talking about being on Fresh Pond Road in Ridgewood outside the Rosa's Pizzeria. They were giving away "You, Me and Dupree" Sneak Preview tickets.KTU is a station of dance and hip hop, aimed at young people. I'm not their target audience. So when I showed up in my mailman uniform, I asked "you guys got Dupree tickets?," they were mildly shocked. They had to give them to me, but the one guy goes, "Ay, Papi." My brother and I were laughing for days about this, fortunately the movie is even funnier than this story.
Owen Wilson proves he can carry a movie on his own. He plays Dupree, the slacker best friend of the newly married Matt Dillon. Dillon is married to Kate Hudson, who I'm not a big fan of but is awfully cute here. Dillon is a rising young executive architect in her father's company (played by smarmy Michael Douglas) and he feels squeezed by both his father in law and by his ne'er do well buddy who just lost his job and apartment. When Dupree moves in soon after the honeymoon, Matt Dillon's life takes a turn for the worse. When Owen Wilson is on screen this movie is very funny. When he's not, it's very serious and not very interesting. Fortunately, Wilson's on a lot and his brand of humor is full of surprises.
One scene that he's brilliant at is when he gives a speech on career day at Hudson's elementary school. The only problem is he has no career or any plan of getting one. So his speech is squarely aimed at the kids like him who will go through life "living, laughing and loving." Sounds great, wish we could all live like that. But then we'd need Matt Dillon to pay our bills.
5---Prairie Home Companion---PHC is a filmed version of the famous radio program. Heard on National Public Radio, host Garrison Keillor puts on a pretend radio show in the tradition of the '30s and '40s. A staged event in front of a big live audience with singing and acting and comedy. The show takes place in Minnesota and has corny ads that are read live for biscuit powder and the like. Famed director Robert Altman (MASH, Nashville, The Player) reins it all in and Keillor wrote and stars in his own production.
Knowing only what I read about the show over the years, I have to admit I really enjoyed the movie. I don't know if I could listen to the show on the radio, but watching these stars perform it on stage was a treat. Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin play a pair of Carter sister types, full of old stories and Christian-themed songs. Lindsay Lohan plays Streep's death-obsessed daughter. Kevin Kline is great as a befuddled, clumsy house detective, sort of an American Inspector Clouseau, but the best part of the movie belongs to the singing cowboys, Woody Harrelson and John C. Reilly (Chicago). Their show stopper at the end, singing slightly dirty, slightly corny, but very funny bad jokes was for me the highlight of the film.
6---Pirates of the Caribbean--Too long perhaps. But the first one was a half hour too long and I was the only one complaining then. A very original action movie. When you break an action movie down to its set pieces, they have to show you something you've never seen before. This movie showed me about 10 new things, while using old devices like a man on a spit over an open fire and a ship attacked by a sea monster. One scene was similar to A Mad Mad Mad World and even used the music from that scene. Very clever. Deserves all the money it's making.

7---The Devil Wears Prada---Meryl Streep shows why she's still the best actress in America. She takes a part that is pure royal bitch, as the editor of the top Women's fashion magazine and still manages to find her human core. Not for long, because image is everything, but those instances when she's making sense or revealing herself, help you take your foot off the hate pedal long enough to make you mad at yourself later when she does something loathsome.
This Wall Street for girls makes Meryl Gordon Gekko and Anne Hathaway as Charlie Sheen. The problem with this movie is Hathaway is so shiny and cute, that even when she's supposed to be making the transformation to the dark side you're not quite sure it's happening until they tell you. Whereas when Charlie Sheen (who used to be able to play innocent very believably) made the transformation, you were like, Oh Charlie what happened, what went wrong? The big difference is that Charlie really wanted to be Gordon and Hathaway annoyingly keeps her feet on both sides of the line. The devil has to appeal tothe person from the beginning for the transformation to really take hold. Devil's Advocate was great at that.
8---Over the Hedge---I enjoyed it more than Cars. Was it better, no. Was it funnier, yes.
9---Click--Enjoyed. (See earlier review)
10---My Super Ex-Girlfriend---Fun and funny. Uma Thurman is a perfect New York superhero. Completely neurotic. She finally finds love in Luke Wilson. But he's just looking for a good time and she doesn't get that. Like a lot of guys, he takes his relationship advice from the worst possible source, his insensitive best friend played by The Office's Rainn Wilson (no relation). When he follows this guy's advice to wimp his way out of the relationship, all hell breaks loose. Uma's G-Girl is not above using her superpowers for vengeance. As the saying goes, "Absolute power corrupts absolutely," and Uma's G-Girl is very corruptible. We need to see more women as superheroes. Barb got a real charge out of it. Between this film, Pulp Fiction and Kill Bill, she is now a big-time Uma fan.

11---X-Men 3---Good, solid X-Men movie, but third best out of the three. No-nonsense at 90 minutes. Only one really good new mutant--Juggernaut, a behemoth who can't be stopped once he gets going. The second X-Men hinted at the idea of a teenager being a mutant as being on a par with a teen trying to tell his parents he's gay. But this film is less subtle with the message as the government tries to force a cure on the mutants, much the same way as the Conservative Christian groups try to brainwash gay people to be "normal."
12---Cars--Very well made. Not very funny. Not a lot of fun. Rare Pixar film that is aimed more at kids, specifically little boys. (See earlier review)
13---An Inconvenient Truth---Global warming is going to get us and we're starting to see the proof already (the severity of Katrina, the 10 hottest years in history all in the last 15 years). I don't like that Gore tied his own political past so much into the film. Yes, Bush is bad for the environment, but how Bush got into power at Gore's expense is less of an issue. This movie would better serve if it was a little less political. Because while the politics that get mixed in can be relevant, they scare off the people who really need to see this movie. I came away from it only learning a handful of new things. And while they still were eye-opening, for someone who leans right and doesn't pay attention to environmental issues, this could have been a real mindblower. They are the ones who really need to see this.
Two parts got me--one is that we are able to detect the earth's climate through studying the layers of snow in the polar ice caps. I knew we could do that, but didn't know we could do it by going back 200 Thousand years. (We are currently putting more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than at any time in that period.) Second, that through the ban on aerosol cans and FLUOROCARBONS, we have effectively Healed the Ozone layer. So with just a simple change in our behavior we can reverse the damage we've done.
14---Poseidon---A good remake to the original disaster movie from 1972. In some ways a big improvement. The kid in the original you hated and wanted to see drown, well now he helps more than annoys. Kurt Russell as an ex-NYC fireman/mayor is more suited to help people escape than Gene Hackman's preacher. And Richard Dreyfuss as a gay older man is a perfect update on the Shelley Winters role. Josh Lucas is cool and is a great sideman to a more charismatic actor like Russell. Russell's underwater scene near the end is worthy of an Oscar. Very real.

15---The DaVinci Code---A mess, but an interesting, fun mess. Clearly above Ron Howard's pay grade. Alfred Hitchcock would have eaten up this movie, but I'm not sure there is a director out there today who could make something great out of this. Part of the problem, as with a lot of modern movies based on books, is that the author is not a filmmaker, and what may excite on paper does not translate well to the big screen. I see this all the time with Michael Chrichton novels. You keep saying to yourself, wow this would make a great movie and then you see the movie and it's not great, it's barely good, and yet it was very true to the book.
This is the first time in a very long time that I saw Tom Hanks mail in a performance. My guess is because he really doesn't have a character. The fact that the French police are chasing him is utter nonsense. A young French actress (Audrey Tautou) is hard to understand when she speaks. And while she's supposed to be the new Audrey Hepburn, that doesn't do much for those of us who didn't like the old Audrey Hepburn.
The best part in the movie belongs to (Lord of the Rings' Gandalf) Ian McKellen. As the world's best scholar on DaVinci he knows all the goodies. One unintentionally funny aspect of this movie, is that everywhere Hanks and Tautou need to go to find out something seems to be less than an hour's drive from where they are. Not only didn't I realize that France was so small, but that it was the center of the Catholic world. LOL


The Freditor