Salon.com > Summer movies

“Star Trek Into Darkness”: Who made J.J. Abrams the sci-fi god?

Wed, 15 May 2013 18:31:00 +0000

Apparently I missed the papal conclave. Not the one with Pope Francis and the Argentine torture scandals; I heard about that. I’m talking about the high-level secret meeting in the super-secret sub-orbital space fortress where J.J. Abrams was elected sole curator, conservator and monarch of three generations’ worth of nerdy pop culture history. Seriously, people, how does one guy end up in charge of both the “Star Trek” and “Star Wars” reboots? Give me a break! Isn’t that kind of nuts and megalomaniacal and wrong and just too much of the same flavor of peppermint hazelnut chip ice cream from that one summer in Connecticut, when “Alligator Woman” was on the radio every single day? (We can discuss this another time, but if I could create a world in which Joss Whedon had taken on “Star Trek,” and given Abrams the freakin’ “Avengers,” I’d do it in a heartbeat.)

“Iron Man 3″: A playboy grows up

Thu, 02 May 2013 17:45:00 +0000

As far as bored and cynical, playing-out-the-string comic-book action sequels go – hey, “Iron Man 3” is a pretty good one! The third and purportedly last of Robert Downey Jr.’s adventures as the armor-clad but increasingly vulnerable Tony Stark features one of Downey’s most nuanced performances, arguably a lot better than the movie around him, and keeps him separated from the physical and emotional protection of the Iron Man suit for extended periods. There are several good supporting performances, not even including Gwyneth Paltrow’s abdominal muscles, which is really all I can remember about Pepper Potts: Guy Pearce, as a nerd genius spurned by Tony Stark years earlier who comes back for revenge; Ben Kingsley, most delicious of all, as a shadowy techno-Osama known as the Mandarin.

“The Dark Knight Rises”: Does Christopher Nolan’s “Batman” hold up?

Sat, 14 Jul 2012 19:00:00 +0000

This coming week brings us the last big Hollywood spectacle of the summer and, even allowing for the immense success of Joss Whedon's "The Avengers," the one that arrives burdened with the most anticipation and the most philosophical heft. Christopher Nolan's "The Dark Knight Rises" will apply the capstone to a trilogy that's not quite like anything else in the history of cinema, a massively ambitious attempt to blend an existing superhero mythology, the cutting edge of technological spectacle and an auteurist personal vision. Nolan himself has co-authored the screenplays for all three films (with his brother, Jonathan Nolan, as co-writer on the second and third), and on repeat viewings it becomes increasingly clear how closely the Batman films are linked to themes he's pursued throughout his career.

“Snow White and the Huntsman”: A would-be fantasy classic

Wed, 30 May 2012 23:00:00 +0000

There's plenty of ambition and imagination on display from the first seconds of "Snow White and the Huntsman," along with an enthusiasm for the material that can't be faked and which makes up for at least some of the film's missteps. I resisted this derivative mishmash of classic fairytale and modern epic fantasy for as long as I could, but ultimately it swept me up into its geeky but manly embrace and carried me away on a white charger. English commercial director Rupert Sanders makes his feature debut with a splash, launching a fantasy-adventure franchise that probably isn't as good as any of the things it references -- the classic Walt Disney film, of course, but also "The Lord of the Rings," the Narnia series, "Game of Thrones," "Star Wars," Shakespeare and countless other works besides -- but comes close enough, I'd guess, to carve out its own niche and create its own fan base.

Blockbuster fatigue? A summer alt-movie guide

Tue, 29 May 2012 20:50:00 +0000

It may feel to you as if the summer moviegoing season has only just begun and many months of popcorn-munching delight lie ahead. That's both true and not true. There's a degree of pseudo-Calvinist predestination about the whole thing this year that's unusual even by the standards of Hollywood, where conventional wisdom and guesswork-in-advance count for actual knowledge.

I mean, nobody knows for sure how much money the 1980s big-hair musical "Rock of Ages" will gross or whether "The Dark Knight Rises" will beat out "The Avengers" as the top box-office hit of the year. (My answers: Not enough to be a huge hit, and no.) But pretty much any idiot with a computer -- me, for instance -- can look at the calendar and figure out what the biggest hits of the summer will be. As I just mentioned, the summer's No. 1 movie, in all probability, has already been released. (I'll save the trollery about how it wasn't really all that great for some other time.) After we get through "Prometheus" and "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" in June, followed by "The Amazing Spider-Man" and "The Dark Knight Rises" in July, well, that's pretty much it. I exaggerate, but only a little -- these days, blockbuster season commences in early May and is over by the end of July, with August reserved as usual for offbeat genre movies, the fourth chapters of trilogies, and the continuing careers of Sylvester Stallone and Jackie Chan. (In other words, the good stuff.)

“Battleship”: Dumbest military spectacle ever?

Thu, 17 May 2012 00:00:00 +0000

One of the great marketing constants of contemporary Hollywood is the idea of appealing to the 11-year-old boy within every moviegoer (whatever gender that person may manifest on the surface). Almost every American movie released during the summer season has that squirmy pre-adolescent id in view, and about two-thirds of the movies made the rest of the year. But what about a movie as baffling and incoherent and flat-out stupid as "Battleship" -- an alien-invasion adventure by way of a Hasbro game, or maybe the other way round -- a movie that would make your inner 11-year-old stomp out of the theater in disgust?

It's undoubtedly gilding the lily to claim that "Battleship" is the dumbest movie I've ever seen -- for all that I front as someone who only likes Turkish films where people stare at the landscape without talking, I've seen a lot of dumb movies -- but it's definitely up there. Over and above its extraordinary, mind-melting level of stupidity, "Battleship" (which is directed by actor-turned-filmmaker Peter Berg, of "Hancock" and "Friday Night Lights," and written by action-flick brothers Erich and Jon Hoeber) is also extremely weird. Its shameless and nonsensical combination of ingredients finally won me over, after a fashion, when I realized that its gung-ho Navy-recruitment propaganda and retrograde gender politics shouldn't be taken any more seriously than the ZZ Top, AC/DC and Billy Squier songs on the soundtrack. The only point of the whole exercise is to make small boys whoop and holler.

‘Smore, ‘smore, ‘smore: Cinema’s greatest summer camps

Fri, 01 Jul 2011 14:01:00 +0000

What's the most wonderful thing about summer? Is it the long, lazy days, the hot sticky nights? Is it the peach pies, the corn on the cob, the way attractive people wear less clothing? It's all those things. And it is also surely every triumphant chorus of "School's out!" -- the unbridled joy of no more teachers, no more books. But let it never be said that the balmier months are not rife with educational opportunities. Far from the halls of academia, there are lessons to be learned, life experiences to be had, bunks to be short-sheeted. And aside from giving generations of young people bittersweet memories and sexually transmitted diseases that will last a lifetime, summer camp has given us some of cinema's sagest moments. And so, in honor of the laziest, haziest time of year, we present a few handy rules for living, courtesy of the greatest summer-camp movies of all time.

Splitting up your identical twins will come back to bite you on the butt. Oh sure, it seems like a great way to never see your incredibly hot ex-spouse again, but come on. You really want throw away an extra kid in the deal? It's a small world, and at some preadolescent sleep-away adventure, they will find each other, and you'll have to marry Dennis Quaid all over again. Take a tip from both versions of "The Parent Trap" -- this kind of thing leads to awkward musical numbers at best and Lindsay Lohan's entire career at worst.