Summer Movie Season: The Good, the Bad and the Maybe

09.04.09 / Uncategorized / Author:

No matter how frustrated, disappointed, or outright disgusted Hollywood makes me, all is forgiven during that brief moment just after the trailers finish and just before the film begins. When those lights dim the chip dissolves from my shoulder and all the filmmaker need do to win me forever is tell one helluva story.

Politics shmolitics… Just take me away.

For we hopeless movie lovers, each year hope (if you’ll pardon the expression) springs eternal with a fresh offering of pull-out-the-stops-studio-balance-sheet-in-the-crosshairs slate of tent poles. And for that reason, this is my favorite part of the movie year because all I want for my ten bucks is to get lost for a couple hours, and from May 1st through the end of August filmdom at least attempts to put the political nonsense on hold to do just that.

So how does this summer’s slate look…

Well, we start by awarding major points for no films starring Nicole Kidman, Keira Knightley, Leonardo DiCaprio, or George Clooney. The result of this news is a hissing sound as some of the suck potential leaks out of the season. Obviously, Shia LeWhats-His-Name’s presence mitigates some of those warm fuzzies, but the Mighty Denzel Washington makes up for a lot. It’s also nice to see that most of the sequels are frontloaded in May as if the Schedule Gods took pity on us and decided to get them out of the way.

We’ll look at what’s coming up in a three-part series:

The Good:  Cinematic offerings worthy of anticipation and the emotional investment of hope (if you’ll pardon the expression).

The Bad: Those that if they don’t suck the impact could create a dangerous rip in time forever altering life as we know it.

The Maybe:  Those we can only hope (if you’ll pardon the expression) will be good.

And so today we start on a positive note, with those worth getting excited over:

May 21st: Terminator Salvation – I wrote about this the other day but let me just add that the real attraction is Christian Bale. When you’re dealing with a style-over-substance director like McG, the presence of Bale sends a signal that this won’t be “Charlie’s Angels 3: Look at all the Shiny Machines.” Bale’s exactly the kind of action star you want. He’s not some snob who refuses to do popcorn flicks, he just wants them to be good. In a way he reminds me of Harrison Ford when Harrison Ford was still Harrison Ford.

–

June 12th: The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 – Gawd, I love the original and were it not for Denzel Washington’s presence I’d be pretty down on this. You can’t improve on the perfection of the 1974 version, and John Travolta can’t be Robert Shaw and Denzel can’t be Walter Matthau, but the concept is so fool-proof that if they make it their own and set it to David Shire’s same bad-ass score, very little can go wrong (he said naively with a dash of denial).

–

July 1st: Public Enemies  – A Michael Mann film is always an event, but casting Christian Bale and Johnny Depp as Melvin Purvis and John Dillinger is the real draw. When it comes to modern actors dropped in this era, whether or not they can pull off looking credible in a fedora is the first test, and the publicity shots look promising. There’s also the promise of mucho machine-gun violence Mann-style.

–

July 24th: Piranha 3-D – There are certain words that when spotted in a film title immediately earn my goodwill, one of them being piranha. Others include: death, aliens, snake, Navarone, vampire, women (when the context involves prison), guns, blood, gladiator, wizard, monkey, Tarzan, hot rod, zombie, and for some strange reason, frogmen.

–

Aug. 21st: Inglorious Basterds - As I get older I’m finding my tolerance for violence has diminished considerably. I still love action, but the gory stuff makes me squirm, and not in a good way. Tarantino’s approach to blood is a notable exception. So over the top and cartoonish it’s like watching Daffy Duck get his beak blown off or Wile E. Coyote go over a cliff. Other than the abysmal “Death Proof,” I love Tarantino’s work. His enthusiams, raw talent and energy wins me over and there’s no film coming out this summer I’m more excited about than this wild man director’s enthusiastic take on the WWII, Man-on-a-Mission genre.

NOTE: Because I’ve already seen “Bruno” (7/10) and respect confidentiality agreements and the reasons behind them when it comes to a work-in-progress, I won’t say anything about the film until legitimate reviews (meaning, non-Roger Friedman-ish) start to roll out.

Coming Next… “The Bad: Those We Dread.”