Summer 2009 So Far

by Josh Roth @ 6:26 pm June 7th, 2009

Boy do I love the summer. Not only is it a time to kick back and relax by the pool, but it’s also when we get some of the biggest, most anticipated movies of the whole year. We’re about a month into the summer movie season and I wanted to give you guys a wrap up of my thoughts of how the summer’s been shaping up, cinematically.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

I held out hope for months and months that this movie wouldn’t turn into a steaming pile of guano, that perhaps the actors (mainly Hugh Jackman, Liev Schreiber, and Ryan Reynolds) would pull it through past the bad writing, and past the atrocious effects. Sufficed to say, they didn’t. Almost everything about this movie fails at its first attempt. In terms of story and character, this movie ranks somewhere between Daredevil and Catwoman. Everyone, especially Logan, is a 2D cardboard cut out parody of their comicbook (or in Logan’s case, previous movies) version. And the effects! Oh the effects. How is it possible that we can make a movie with worse effects than the original X-Men? Which came out in 1999?! Ten years ago and effects have gone backwards. I’m ashamed. A terrible, awful, jumbled story, ridiculous characters, just plain bad filmmaking, and some even worse effects make this movie less watchable than the yule log. Skip it.

Star Trek

This movie is the polar opposite of Wolverine. It has compelling characters, a story that makes sense, state of the art effects, and loads of kick ass actions scenes. And best of all? It’s all a wonderful homage to the Original Series. I’m simply amazed at what J.J. Abrams has been able to do here, without any prior knowledge of the source material. At its heart this is just one big budget episode of original Trek. Kurtzman and Orci, the writing team behind Fringe, and Transformers are mainly responsible for this, as they bring us a fascinating story about all our favorite characters, one that fits into the original story line via a brilliant plot device I won’t spoil here. Even if you’re not a fan of any Star Trek, you’ll still find loads of stuff here to enjoy. And if you are a fan, well you’ll have the time of your life. See it.

Angels & Demons

I wasn’t a fan of the first DaVinci Code movie, although I did like the book. Tom Hanks’ haircut, mixed with an incomprehensible story and weird storytelling made it a miss for me. I had hopes that Angels & Demons would succeed where DaVinci Code failed, in making a faithful yet enjoyable adaption of Dan Browns rather mediocre novels. Well, it was certainly better than the first one, but not by enough. Part of the problem lies in the fact that the Vatican wouldn’t allow Ron Howard and Co. to film in the actual physical locations the film demanded. So, they decided to shoot it all on greenscreen and recreate the sets. Bad idea. The end result feels like a bad mix of a video game and Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. At least Tom Hanks’ mullet was gone. Rent it.

Terminator Salvation

The Terminator franchise has always been close to my heart. The absolutely stunning effects and all of that badassery made them ideal movies for a 12 year old filmmaker. I even enjoyed Terminator 3. So when I read they were making another Terminator movie, with Christian Bale, this new guy Sam Worthington and today’s effects, I was ecstatic….Then I heard it was being made by McG (of Charlie’s Angels) and my hope dissolved instantly. McG promised us this would be the end all be all of Terminator flicks, that it would be gritty (it wasn’t), realistic (it wasn’t), R-rated (it absolutely wasn’t) and badass (kinda was). One thing about Terminator, all of them have been R rated, so why was this one PG13? Well that may be because you can show things in a PG13 movie today you never could ten years ago, but still it feels wrong. Salvation suffers from a cripplingly terrible story and characters you can see through. Not to mention the effects ranged from impressive to Wolverine bad. There were some shots that were pretty effective (all the stuff with Marcus Wright’s face and limbs revealing his metal skeleton were awesome), and others that made me nostalgic for the days when directors took care in crafting their visual effects (i.e. James Cameron’s Terminator 2). Bad effects and filmmaking aside, there are a few action scenes (like the ones with the motorcycles) that are actually pretty awesome. Rent it.

Well that’s all for now, the first couple movies of summer 2009. Be sure to stay tuned for more reviews throughout the rest of the summer!