Summer review round-up: the good, the bad and the ugly
Summer review round-up: the good, the bad and the ugly
Mar 01
Way back in the beginning of December, in our first week of existence, I posted a list of the five most anticipated films of the summer. Now that it is officially autumn (even if the weather obstinately refuses to accept this incontravertible truth), it’s the perfect time to look back over the past three months and put the summer releases in perspective. There were a few surprises, some hits and some misses, and more than the usual number of disappointments.
First of all I’ll deal with the aforelinked list. Here movies I was looking forward to the most:
Sherlock Holmes: 83/100
Holmes turned out to be better than expected. Downey, Jr’s ludic performance combined with Guy Ritchie’s gritty direction made for a fun, fresh and interesting reboot of the old super-sleuth franchise.
The Lovely Bones: 18/100
Peter Jackson’s saggy, bloated, boring fantasy was mired in CGI quicksand, lacked any engaging characters, and failed to entertain for its lengthy 150-minute running time. Here’s hoping that Tintin doesn’t also suck.
Shutter Island: 27/100
Martin Scorsese manages to achieve the impossible and make a terrible film out of an interesting premise. The cast is great, the locations are fun, and the direction is snappy and engaging– but the plot is none of these, hamstringing the film beyond any reasonable semblance of entertainment.
Avatar: 48/100
Eye-popping visual effects can’t help a mind-bogglingly asinine story, nor can competent action scenes undo hours of misanthropic preachery. The movie is too long by half, a bit too silly for its own good, and far too blue. Oh, and it failed to sell the premise of 3D, too.
It’s Complicated: 52/100
It’s Complicated was indeed on my list of summer movies, but it was filed under “Top 5 summer movies that will almost certainly suck.” Irony kicked down the door, waltzed into the room and force-fed us all humble pie when the Meryl Streep / Steve Martin / Alec Baldwin rom-com got a better score than nearly all of the movies that were supposed to be good. Oh dear. Sure, 52/100 is nothing to be proud of, but I’d rather watch a mediocre movie than a downright awful one.
The Hurt Locker: 80/100
If The Hurt Locker had had a solid release date at the time of writing, it surely would have made an appearance in the above article. As it stands, Hurt Locker is in my mind the best of the season, by a long way. I only caught it last night, but even on the last day of summer it’s still summer, so it counts. Contrary to Captain Howdy’s review of the flick, I didn’t find the script overly American in its discussion of warfare and the nature of humanity in the (typical of us) throes of violence and destruction; to me it was just a movie that pursues that most noble of enterprises in attempting to grapple that slippery thing somewhere in our skulls that apparently accounts for our bizarre cultural identity and unpredictable and oftentimes silly behaviour. The Hurt Locker was a wrenching, personal discussion of who we are framed with some of the most brutal, white-knuckle rollercoaster action scenes I’ve ever endured in a cinema, and for that it gets top nod from me: I’d give it 93/100, putting it right at the top of the two-dozen-odd movies of the past three months. If The Hurt Locker doesn’t win every single award at the Oscars, I will cry for days.
As you can see, I was wrong on nearly every count. This goes to show just how treacherous and misleading film advertising and critical hype can be, not to mention how terrible my skills at predetermination must be, but bear in mind that The Lovely Bones, Shutter Island, and Avatar should have been good — great directors were in charge of all three, and early trailers were promising – but they faltered on the home stretch and flopped lifeless and dull into cinemas.
Now that we’ve got the article recap out of the way, here’s a rundown of the films of the season, from worst to best (or at least the ones we managed to review):
New Moon: 01/100
Paranormal Activity: 12/100
The Lovely Bones: 18/100
Shutter Island: 27/100
Up In The Air: 28/100
The Wolf Man: 37/100
From Paris With Love: 39/100
Where The Wild Things Are: 46/100
Avatar: 48/100
Julie & Julia: (average)
It’s Complicated: 52/100
Bran Nue Dae: 55/100
2012: 62/100
The Road: 63/100
The Princess And The Frog: 70/100
Zombieland: 78/100
The Hurt Locker: 80/100
Sherlock Holmes: 83/100
Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs: 84/100
Of course this list doesn’t include all of the other many, varied reviews we’ve been ransacking our DVD collections to write, or the hefty number of news article’s we’ve produced over the weeks.
So, three months in, how is our driving? We are vaguely aware of a regular audience of sorts that pops up to check out our posts, and we would very much like to hear from you. Do you enjoy current reviews, do you like chuckling at the hilarious witticisms we scribe while revealing new trailers or posters, or do you prefer the random old movies we dredge out to give a reel good inspection? Any and all feedback is appreciated, even if it boils down to “you are an idiot” or “my crippled blind dog with alzheimer’s can write better reviews than you.” As much as we love the sound of our own voices, we love the sound of our own voices yelling back at people in heated argument even better, so let fly your opinions and comments! What were your favourite movies of the past three months, summer or winter, depending on where you live? Were you disappointed by something you were sure would be awesome, or pleasantly surprised by something you thought would be awful? Let us know!
