I’ve been tasked with preparing a summer movie guide for Popdose. I haven’t done one of these since I was at the Daily Northwestern, cramming dozens of titles into a few column inches. Entertainment Weekly, your local paper, and — for all I know — Orbitz, Stuff on Your Cat, and anyone with a blog will be running one of those all-bases- covered-but-somehow-lacking guides in the coming weeks. But that won’t do here. The trick is to winnow, to cut the chaff to get at the wheat. And as it’s summer, or summer-ish — the season pretty much starts with the May 2 release of Iron Man, though a case could be made for beginning a weekend earlier with the Harold & Kumar sequel, the one Iraq picture audiences may actually see — there’s a lot of fluff to separate out.
Most of these pictures are machine-stamped to be disposable, to make as much money as quick as can be, then be regurgitated as DVDs by Christmas. I find of lot of them to be dispiriting. Summer is mostly about indulging your inner child, and the kid in me just dies at some of the stuff put before us. Worse, there isn’t a single picture on the slate with a giant animal wreaking havoc. (The Incredible Hulk doesn’t count.) I love that kind of movie, but I’ll have to wait to see if Santa brings one.
But scanning the calendar I can find ten to hype about. It’s all about the sizzle, and I’m putting these on the griddle. I’ll say up front that I have no special knowledge of any of these movies, no crystal ball beyond cast lists, a few preliminary trailers, and the odd gleaning or two. They may all stink, and a rose may pop up somewhere else totally unexpected. In the spirit of trying to simplify your viewing, here are two fistfuls of films you must try to squeeze in between May Day and Labor Day. Anything constructive to add, please comment; any complaints, call management. Hey, I’m one person over here, from my garret in Brooklyn, and I tried.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (May 22). “Hoo-boy,” I can hear you snarking, “this guy’s really going out on a limb. Making the tough calls.” But I need this film to work. You need this to work. There are problems: That Jim Morrison-sounding title isn’t rocking my world. And its star, missing in action (or at least a good action film) since the Clinton years, is so old he needs to be backed up by the felonious whippersnapper whose name I can neither pronounce nor spell. Still, the notion that Steven Spielberg is rolling up his sleeves and getting back to basics, scaling back the CGI and employing the same lighting and editing style he used on the first three adventures, excites me. Those, to me, are true-blue summer movies — you remember, the ones with stories, and smarts, and heart to go along with the thrill ride. (And, in this case, Soviet bad guys and a bad gal, played by the all-purpose Cate Blanchett. Yes, Soviet, not Russian — we’re back in the USSR!) What will kids reared on rock-’em, sock-’em robot crapfests make of this? Taking this sort of picture back to its roots is a truly radical notion.
