By Cory Greene, Film Geek and Devourer of Worlds

May 10, 2010

The Greene Light: Cory’s 2010 Summer Movie Review

This summer is going to suck so let’s just go ahead and get that out of the way.

As I sat down and looked at the list of movies coming out this summer, I realized that there was hardly anything that I was really looking forward to. Granted there are no racist robots or dumb hippie thundercat movies coming out this summer, but the lineup is still pretty sub par.

I think part of the problem has to do with something I often read on movie websites. They often say “there are no original ideas in Hollywood anymore” and, for the most part, I would argue that point. Looking at independent, foreign and some of the films released by the major studios that get limited releases, there is pretty much nothing BUT original and interesting ideas.

Then I look at the slate of crap that the major studios have coming up this summer and I concede. It’s nothing but adaptations, sequels, remakes, reboots and re-imaginings.

Basically what I’m saying is I’m here to give you a rundown of what’s coming out this summer and at the same time I’m urging you not to give many of these films your money. Give your cash to the independent filmmakers who are actually trying to say something in their films. Not to Michael Bay or whomever they get to direct the new Twilight movie. It’s pretty much the same thing as seeing the guys from Limp Bizkit on the street and giving them $100 to go toward recording a new album. Nobody wants that, do we?

Iron Man 2
Release: May 7
Director: Jon Favreau (Iron Man, Elf)
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Mickey Rourke, Samuel L. Jackson
I enjoyed the first Iron Man movie quite a bit. Robert Downey is awesome as Tony Stark and it was an all around fun flick. I’m really looking forward to Iron Man 2 because I tend to like comic book movie sequels better than the first. Once you get that origin story out of the way it clears the way for comic mayhem in the sequel. The casting is great for this one (Garry Shandling?? Genius) and the trailers look like Favreau is continuing with the same vibe from the first film. There’s no way this one can be bad. (I like how I go into a tirade about big Hollywood movies in my opening and then gush all over the first big summer movie that pops up. I’m such a poseur.)

Trash Humpers
Release: May 7
Director: Harmony Korine (Gummo, Julian Donkey Boy)
Harmony Korine excels at making uncomfortable films that you hate to watch but end up viewing again and again. Gummo fans can attest to that. Trash Humpers is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. Shot entirely on a VHS video camera, it’s about a gang of sociopathic old men running through suburbia, humping trash and smashing things. I don’t think Iron Man 2 has anything to worry about opening on the same date as Trash Humpers but if I had my druthers, I’d see this one first.

Robin Hood
Release: May 14
Director: Ridley Scott (Blade Runner, Alien, Gladiator)
Starring: Russell Crowe, Cate Blanchett, Mark Strong
This pretty much looks like Gladiator in England to me. Nothing I’ve seen has really knocked me out yet. But it’s Ridley Scott and he rarely disappoints (we’ll forget about American Gangster).

Shrek Forever After
Release: May 21
Director: Mike Mitchell (Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo, Sky High)
Starring: Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz, Eddie Murphy
Does this franchise really still hold any appeal? Of course it’ll still make money even if it’s horrible because children have terrible taste in film.

Sex And The City 2
Release: May 27
Director: Does it really matter?
Starring: A bunch of old chicks
I still have flashbacks from being a bartender when the first Sex And The City movie came out. Me standing there about to cry as my bar filled with cougars dressed like tramps ordering cosmopolitans (without knowing what was actually in a cosmo) and then complaining that they were too strong. I don’t want to re-live this nightmare again. Please, ladies, wait for the DVD.

Editor’s Note: Oh, gimme a break, Cranky Cory. We’ve already had this discussion. You love cougars. And if SJP ever sauntered into Flamingo Row, you’d be so totally intimidated, you wouldn’t know what goes into a cosmo anymore, either! Sheesh.

George A. Romero’s Survival of the Dead
Release: May 28
Director: George A. Romero (Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead)
Starring: Alan Van Sprang, Kenneth Welsh
Any time Romero releases a new zombie flick it should be considered a national holiday. If you don’t feel the same way, you should probably crawl inside of a hollow log and stay there for a few days.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
Release: May 28
Director: Mike Newell (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Donnie Brasco)
Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Ben Kingsley, Alfred Molina
My favorite commercial from the Super Bowl this year was hands down the trailer for Prince of Persia. Watching Jake Gyllenhaal, playing a Persian (what??) with a British accent screaming, “GIVE ME THE DAGGA!” had me on the floor laughing. This looks as bad as bad can be. Can anyone name me a good video game adaptation? Seriously?

Get Him To The Greek
Release: June 4
Director: Nicholas Stoller (Forgetting Sarah Marshall)
Starring: Jonah Hill, Russell Brand
All these Judd Apatow comedies are starting to wear a little thin. They all star the same seven or eight actors and follow mostly the same plot line: Lovable stoner and straight laced best friend embark on wacky adventure and somehow cross paths with P.Diddy. Beloved ‘80s comedy actor appears in small roll. Raucous sex jokes and memorable bodily function scenes all around. Life lesson learned at end. Everybody happy and laughing. Except me. I’ll be at home weeping in my bathtub, thanks.

Splice
Release: June 4
Director: Vincenzo Natali (Cube)
Starring: Adrian Brody, Sarah Polley
If you’re not interested in seeing two genetic engineers create a humanoid lifeform in a tank full of fluid and then watching said lifeform freak out and wreck everyone’s life then you should be ashamed to call yourself an American. I really liked Cube and Natali’s style in general. It’ll be interesting to see what he does with some real studio money backing him. Plus Guillermo Del Toro is the executive producer and when has he ever let anyone down?

The A-Team
Release: June 11
Director: Joe Carnahan (Smokin’ Aces)
Starring: Liam Neesom, Bradley Cooper, Sharlto Copely
I’m not going to go into this expecting anything but dumb fun. Example: The trailer features The A-Team being parachuted out of a plane inside of a tank and they start shooting down planes from the falling tank. Yes, that is the most ridiculous thing you’re likely to see all year and probably the most awesome. The casting is pretty great but the only thing that bothers me is that they didn’t just cast Mr.T as B.A. Baracus. The dude still looks exactly the same.

The Karate Kid
Release: June 11
Director: Harald Zwart (The Pink Panther 2, Agent Cody Banks)
Starring: Will Smith’s kid, Jackie Chan
Remember what I was saying about remakes? I point to this as a prime example of why they’re just dumb. And what’s with that director’s name? It sounds like an alien growth on your ass that needs to be drained of fluid.

Jonah Hex
Release: June 18
Director: Jimmy Hayward (Horton Hears A Who!)
Starring: Josh Brolin, John Malkovich, Megan Fox
I used to dig the Jonah Hex comics as a kid. Something about a bad ass bounty hunter in the old west with a screwed up face just pulls at my heart strings. You just can’t screw up a character like Hex with a cast like that, right? Apparently you can. There have been massive re-shoots of the film (never a good sign) and early reviews have been comparing it to Wild Wild West. I guess the only positive thing I’ve read about the film is that it wasn’t directed by Harald Zwart.

Toy Story 3
Release: June 18
Director: Lee Unkrich (Toy Story 2, Finding Nemo)
Starring: Tom Hanks, Tim Allen, Michael Keaton
If you claim to not like Pixar movies you are either a liar or have severe emotional issues. In fact I’m not even going to say any more about Toy Story 3. Everyone already knows it’s going to be awesome.

The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
Release: June 30
Director: David Slade (30 Days of Night, Hard Candy)
Starring: Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner
Look, vampires don’t sparkle. Now that that’s out of the way we can reasonably discuss why the Twilight films are a blight on humanity. The facts are irrefutable. They’re poorly made films adapted from horrible books that have made stars out of “actors” with questionable at best talent.

The fact that the studio can pump out one of these cinematic miscarriages once a year just goes to show that they’re not too worried about putting any real effort into making a good movie. I could literally go on for hours but talking about Twilight films is like trying to teach an infant to fly a helicopter. You’re just going to get more and more frustrated the longer it goes on.

The Last Airbender
Release: July 2
Director: M. Night Shyamalan (The Sixth Sense, Unbreakable)
Starring: Noah Ringer, Jackson Rathbone
I used to eagerly await M. Night Shyamalan movies. Then came The Village. Hey, everyone makes at least one bad movie right? Then there was Lady In The Water. OK, he started losing me a little there. By the time I saw Marky Mark running away from the wind in The Happening, it was all over between M. and me. The guy had obviously lost his freaking mind.

Still, part of me is a little nostalgic for the glory days of M. Night. Maybe the fact that he’s not working with original material here will save the film. I doubt it though. The wind is featured as a weapon in The Last Airbender. Why does this guy have so much animosity toward wind?

Predators
Release: July 9
Director: Nimrod Antal (Kontroll, Armored)
Starring: Adrian Brody, Topher Grace, Lawrence Fishburne, Danny Trejo
I’m an admitted movie snob but sometimes it takes very little to get me into a theater. Not one but LOTS of Predators hunting Earth’s biggest bad asses on the Predators’ home planet? Done. The only thing that could possibly get me more excited is if the Predators were hunting the cast of Twilight.

Inception
Release: July 16
Director: Christopher Nolan (The Dark Knight, Memento)
Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Ken Watanabe, Michael Caine, Tom Hardy, Ellen Page, Cillian Murphy, Tom Berenger
I had to list more of the cast for this one because casts like that are rarely seen in a film. Details are pretty sparse about the plot but it has something to do with “dream invasion” and other generally weird stuff. Add the fact that Nolan can pretty much do no wrong and this is probably my most eagerly awaited film of the summer.

The Expendables
Release: August 13
Director: Sylvester Stallone
Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Jet Li, Jason Statham, Dolph Lundgren, Eric Roberts, Randy Couture, Steve Austin, Mickey Rourke
When I heard about this movie and the cast that Stallone had assembled for it I got a little nervous. Could that much badassery cause a black hole to appear in our solar system and destroy our planet? Then I saw that Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis have small parts in the film. Right before my head exploded I realized that the entire universe was likely to collapse on itself. It doesn’t even matter what this is really about. It’s all those guys, and the poster has a bunch of guns on it.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World
Release: Aug. 13
Director: Edgar Wright (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz)
Starring: Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Chris Evans
I’m honestly getting a little tired of looking at Michael Cera’s face, but when you throw him in a flick based on a comic book series about a guy who has to defeat his new girlfriend’s seven evil ex-boyfriends and then have it directed by Edgar Wright, I’ll try to persevere. The trailer for this may be one of the greatest things I’ve ever seen.

Notable mentions: Holy Rollers, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Undead, The Killer Inside Me, Cyrus, [REC]2, Get Low, The Other Guys, Centurion and Pirahna 3D.