August is over, and as a result so is summer movie season. Kids are back in school, football is back, and so on, so summer movie season is therefore over as well, at least as far as I'm concerned. There are still a few summer titles in theaters, but in my opinion September starts the weak, but brief 6-7 week fall movie season before the "prestige pictures" of Oscar season start to roll out in late October/early November. Ok? Great, on to the movies!
By my count and recollection I saw 20 films in theaters this summer and for the most part they were fairly enjoyable, (only Transformers was a real waste of time) which I think says at least 1 of 3 things: 1) I try pretty hard to find the good in everything, 2) I only watch movies I know I'm going to like, or 3) This was a good summer for movies.
I think they rank out fairly well. So here we go:
The Elite:
1. Stardust - Best movie of the summer. An sweeping adventure movie experience that reminded me of the first time I saw Raiders of the Lost Ark or The Princess Bride (though not quite on the level of those two), the way fantasy used to be made before it was hijacked and serialized by LOTR and Harry Potter. How this movie is not an absolute hit is beyond me.
2. Ratatouille: Best Pixar offering since their first (Toy Story). I had it pegged as the best of the summer, until I saw Stardust last week.
The Very Good:
3. Hot Fuzz
4. Hairspray
5. The Host
6. Waitress
The Good:
7. You Kill Me
8. The Simpsons Movie
9. Knocked Up
10. Superbad
11. Sicko
12. Mr. Bean's Holiday
13. Sunshine
The Respectable:
14. Becoming Jane
15. Oceans 13
16. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
17. I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry
The Forgettable:
18. Resurrecting the Champ
19. Spiderman 3
20. Transformers
3 comments:
I thought You Kill Me was way better than just good... then again, I didn't see that many movies.
(i apologinze before hand for spelling, in to tired to edit) You bumb, this is chester your brother. I can't believe that you would put transformers last and the simpsons movie 7th. 7th!? Lets see you take two movies based on cartoons. One that faded out in late 80s and has gone through several iterations in early 90's and now is not exsistant. Second you have the other cartoon show which is widly popular, has a huge cult following, and is currently being taught in colleges around the country as modern anthropology. Both cartoons come out with movies this summer. The first does as well as can be expected. Its entertaining the actors work, and the explosions are good. The second movie, a waste of my time. It wasn't creative it wasn't imaginative. They relied upon their rep and created a 2 hour tv episode. But for the second movie being the simposons it certainly should have been number 20. The spong bob square pants movie was more inspiring then simpsons.
Ben:
That was the toughest call . I think it could've gone in either group. I made my choice, but the case could be made it could go in the higher group.
Chet:
First of all, The Simpsons is 8th, not "7th!?".
As for the movies themselves, I have to disagree right away with your review of Transformers. You say it's "entertaining". I found it boring. To my mind the 2nd most boring film I've ever seen in a theater (behind You, Me, and Dupree). The actors do in fact work, but the actors "work" is like saying the band is in tune. It's the baseline of acceptable work, hardly a ringing endorsement. The explosions do indeed abound, but they are much sound and fury signifying nothing. I'm glad you make no mention of plot (which was an overblown, convoluted mess). Maybe it's just me but seeing animated robots flying around fighting in 1-2 second shots is uninteresting, especially when they all look similar enough to not be able to tell them apart. And, and, there was the whole Iraq undertone, about American military men being caught in a civil war and completely impotent to do anything about it. And the Secretary of Defense is running the whole operation while the president is nonexistent. The whole thing was so obvious and over-the-top.
As for the Simpsons Movie, I thought it was good. It was closer to 85 minutes than 2 hours as you claim, and they avoided the temptation to try to throw in all the classic characters and in-references (no Mr. Burns, no gags about Bleeding Gums Murphy or a monorail, I don't recall seeing Groundskeeper Willie, etc), and made a movie that could be enjoyed by a viewer who had never even seen the show. I haven't seen the Sponge Bob Movie so I can't comment on your comparison, but even if it was "more inspiring" doesn't necessarily make it better, nor does it make the Simpsons Movie bad just if Sponge Bob was good.
Finally, I forgot to add in A Mighty Heart, and I think the fact that I forgot seeing it tells you pretty well where it falls on the spectrum.
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