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2007 Summer movie report card: part 1
Written by John Michael Decker
Aug 14, 2007 at 12:42 PM
It's been a while since I've written article for Entertainment in Review. The past few months have been extremely busy. I've been performing and directing at the Sterling Renaissance Festival in northwestern New York, and in addition, the first few weeks of July I was involved in co-producing a science fiction comedy which was recorded and performed in a 1950s radio show style. Needless to say, I did not have the spare time to sit down and write reviews, as much as I missed that activity. Well, now I finally have a few days off, and I thought that instead of writing a review of one movie I would create a report card for the summer movie season so far. I will list all of the films I have seen in the summer season up until now, write a brief synopsis for each, and give them a simple letter grade. I realize that this will not be as detailed or comprehensive as my usual reviews, but you will receive a good overview of what the season has been like thus far.
Spider-Man 3: The weakest of the Spider-Man films so far, but still an enjoyable adventure with a quick pace and great special effects. The multiple plots made the final product feel cluttered. Like many of the summer films this season, it could have used a better editor. As a Spider-Man fanatic, however, I enjoyed seeing some of my favorite comic book scenes played out on the big screen. Grade: B+
28 Weeks Later: A good sequel to the wonderful 28 Days Later. Not as shocking or as scary as the original, but still with enough thrills and chills to make a horror fan happy. Once again, the audience is left to ponder which is worse; the mindless hordes of flesh eating cannibals or the military/industrial complex in charge of rebuilding humanity. Grade: B
The Hills Have Eyes 2: A fun soldiers vs. mutants horror flick that is strong on action but light on surprises. It's got a 1950s nuclear paranoia element that I really dig. I love how in many films, radiation is like a magic wand that can grant people extraordinary and often horrible powers. Grade: B-
Pirates of the Caribbean: At Worlds End: Great performances and top-of-the-line special effects don't quite save a meandering and convoluted plot. There are some enjoyable "yo ho ho" moments, and Johnny Depp deserves an Oscar for his performance, but I still spent much of the movie scratching my head and trying to figure out what was going on. This needed some serious editing -- even more than Spider-Man 3 did. Grade: C+
Bug: An incredibly effective psychological thriller that burrows under the skin and leaves the viewer feeling disquieted and paranoid. This film features some amazingly powerful performances, but is so intense that I would not recommend it to general audiences. Grade: A-
Mr. Brooks: A bizarre thriller that features Kevin Costner as a nebbishy everyman who also happens to be a serial killer, and William Hurt as his psychotic imaginary friend. Though the plot didn't always make sense, I found the premise original and the film largely engaging though often unintentionally funny. Grade: B-
Ocean's 13: This was the lackluster conclusion to George Clooney's "Danny Ocean" trilogy. The story was all style and no substance and I left the theatre barely remembering what I had just seen. Grade: C-
Knocked Up: A genuinely funny and sometimes warm-hearted comedy about a night that goes terribly wrong and forces two people who are polar opposites to try and make it as a couple. Grade: B+
Fantastic Four: The Rise of the Silver Surfer: Like the first Fantastic Four film, this movie fails to capture the energy and wonder of the Stan Lee and Jack Kirby comic books that inspired them. The special effects are hit or miss and the main characters are largely miscast. The portrayal of Dr. Doom, who is one of the best characters ever to be featured in a Marvel comic, is especially terrible. There are a few fun moments, but they are few and far between. Grade: D+
Live Free or Die Hard: A very enjoyable, if somewhat by-the-numbers, action film that shows that Bruce Willis still has what it takes to play a convincing action hero. While not as good as the classic original Die Hard, it was cool to see Detective John McClane in action again after so many years. Grade: B
Transformers: I enjoyed the Transformers cartoon from the 1980s, so I thought the live action version might be a hoot. Boy was I wrong. The acting was wooden, the dialogue was embarrassingly corny and Michael Bay's directing style is nausea-inducing. Though the special effects were good and it is always fun to see giant robots pounding on each other, I can't in good conscience recommend that anyone other than a Transformers fanatic pay good money for this experience. Grade: D
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix: If you accept that the Harry Potter books are better than the movies, and just judge the films on their own merit, than you can enjoy them for what they are. This was a very good addition to the Harry Potter film franchise. This movie is almost more of a thriller than a fantasy. As the mood gets darker and the stakes get higher, the films just keep getting better and better. Grade B+
Sicko: This is my favorite Michael Moore documentary so far. Now I haven't always bought the baseball-hat-wearing, everyman persona that Moore affects, and I freely admit that he often uses cheap stunts to prove his points, but this time he was more restrained and balanced in his expose of American HMOs. I liked that this film had some genuine moments of humanity. Grade: A
The Simpsons Movie: This is the most enjoyable film I've seen this summer. In fact, I doubt I'll see another movie that is this good for the rest of the summer season. While the Simpsons television series has become somewhat lackluster over the past few years, the movie had all the edginess and hilarity of the old school Simpsons cartoons in spades. There were more laughs per minute in this flick than in anything I've seen in years, and I'm talking about big, gut-busting laughs here, not just polite titters. I attended the film with a bunch of my friends from the Renaissance Festival, people who usually have vastly different ideas about what makes a good movie, and we all thought it was amazing. Grade: A+
So those are the films I've seen since the summer blockbuster season opened. As usual this is just my opinion, and you can feel free to agree or disagree with me. I'll write another article later wrapping up the 2007 batch of summer films.
John Michael Decker is an actor and sometime freelance writer. Anyone in the Syracuse area this summer can drop by the Sterling Renaissance Festival and see John portray Damian Spector, the evil sheriff of Warwickshire until August the August the 19th.
Discuss this article or get some movie or music recommendations on our forum.
Copyright 2007 John Michael Decker No reprints without written permission.
2007 Summer movie report card: part 2
Written by John Michael Decker
Sep 30, 2007 at 02:44 PM
With the arrival of autumn, I thought that it was high time for me to get off my butt and finish my Summer Movie Report Card. Between this article and my 2007 Summer Movie Report Card: Part 1, this will cover every film I've seen between May the 5th through September the 22nd. I would again remind the readers out there that these reviews are simple synopsis of the films I've seen along with a letter grade. This will not be the usual in-depth kind of review one would usually find for a single film on Entertainment In Review. It will be a good overview of the summer as a whole.
Ratatouille: Brad Bird, the man responsible for The Iron Giant and The Incredibles brings us this lovely little gem of a film about following your bliss. Even if you're a sewer rat and your bliss is gourmet cooking. You can rarely go wrong with a Pixar film. Grade: B+The Bourne Ultimatum: A balls-out action flick with a realistic edge and a fine performance by Matt Damon. This is the third film in the Bourne trilogy and, wonder of wonders, all three segments are great -- a truly a rare occurrence in a movie trilogy. Grade: B+
Stardust: This is a fine adaptation of the comic graphic novel by Neil Gaiman and Charles Vess. It is a fairy tale with a wacky sense of humor in the tradition of The Princess Bride. I particularly enjoyed the performances of Michelle Pfeiffer as a wicked witch and Robert DeNiro as a gay pirate. Grade: A-
The Invasion: Yet another adaptation of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, but not nearly as good as the Don Siegel-directed 1956 movie or the Phil Kaufman version from 1978. Though the performances of Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig are outstanding, the film itself is lackluster and fails to capture the feeling of fear and paranoia generated by the past classics. Grade: C
Superbad: A blisteringly funny high school comedy about those painful last days of school. And sure, this material has been covered by many other filmmakers, but I just found this one particularly hilarious. I really have a soft spot for movies that can combine raunchy humor with real pathos. Grade: B+
War: This was a by-the-numbers action set piece with Jason Statham and Jet Li playing a cop and an assassin respectively, and locked in a game of cat and mouse. I was bored through most of this picture and probably would have given it a much lower grade if not for the surprisingly clever plot twist that was thrown in at the end of the movie. Grade: C+
Halloween: Rob Zombie's bloody remake of the John Carpenter slasher classic is an awful lot of fun for those who enjoy that genre. While I must confess, to my shame, that I have never seen the 1978 version of this film, I liked this one for what it was. This flick had all the hallmarks of a "B" movie: Beasts, Blood, and Breasts. Grade: B-
Rush Hour 3: Did we really need a Rush Hour 3? Didn't Rush Hour and Rush Hour 2 say all there was to say about the bizarre team up of Jackie Chan's by-the-book Inspector Lee and Chris Tucker's loud-mouthed LA cop, James Carter? How many times can two such incompetent boobs save the day? This one is for fans of Chan and Tucker only. Grade: C-
3:10 to Yuma: Director James Mangold's remake of the classic 1957 western of the same name. In this version, Russell Crowe and Christian Bale play the characters originally portrayed by Glenn Ford and Van Heflin. The real power of this tale doesn't come from gunfights as much as from the battle of wills between the two main characters wonderfully acted by Crowe and Bale. Grade: B+
Dragon Wars: D-War: This film from director Hyung-rae Shim is based on Korean myths. Perhaps if I had a better handle on the source material, I would have enjoyed this film more, but the story didn't make a lick of sense to me. I did, however, enjoy the scenes of dragons battling helicopters. Grade: D+
Shoot 'Em Up: In this psychotically over-the-top action picture, Clive Owen plays Mr. Smith, a gun enthusiast with some serious anger management issues. With a baby and his prostitute girlfriend, Smith is on the run from nefarious forces led by a scenery chomping Paul Giamatti. If you can let go of logic and just go with this, it is one hell of a fun ride. Grade: B+
Resident Evil: Extinction: If you are looking for a movie that's going to sweep the Oscars and change modern cinema as we know it, that you should probably avoid Resident Evil: Extinction. If, on the other hand, you want to see a gorgeous supermodel kicking the crap out of zombies in a film directed by the guy who gave us Highlander, than you could do a lot worse than this film. Grade: B-
Summary
So there you have it--my very biased opinion of the summer blockbuster season of this year of our Lord, 2007 anno Domini. Hopefully this will give everyone a good idea of what they can rent over the next few months. I saw a lot of films, but I didn't see everything, so feel free to drop me a line through Entertainment In Review and let me know if there was a great film that came out this summer that I shouldn't have missed. Save me some popcorn...
John Michael Decker is a struggling actor and wanna-be action film star. He has a lot on his plate these days and won't be contributing as much to Entertainment In Review as he has in the past, but hopes to be writing a lot more here in the near future.
Discuss this article or get some movie or music recommendations on our forum.
Copyright 2007 John Michael Decker. No reprints without written permission.
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