Though it's become something of a cliche to say so, the 2010 summer movie season was, for the most part, a complete wash. I say it's a bit of a cliche not because people have been saying this about the last few months' worth of films (though they have). It's a cliche because someone feels the need to say this about ANY summer movie season, at least within the past decade or so. I post this on a day when five--count 'em, five--new movies were released at the box office, and if one of them makes more than $15 million, it'll be lucky. The summer season is officially over, and it went out whimpering.
Of course, there were highlights. Most summer movie seasons aren't perfect--2005 and 2006, if I remember correctly, were particularly boring--and 2010 had three truly great films, films I'm going to be thinking about years from now: Toy Story 3, Inception, and Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World. Each offered something different; two of them are among the most successful films of the year, while the latter is going to be a box-office dud. None will be forgotten--though it could be successfully argued that Scott Pilgrim won't be forgotten because its most ardent fans (by which I mean geeks) won't let you forget.
Unfortunately, based on where I live and where all the independent films get shown, I can only cop to having seen one of the big indie films of the last few months in theaters, and I did so just last night--The Kids Are All Right. I went in knowing that this was a movie I am supposed to see. Why? A) I'm a movie lover. B) I'm liberal and, what's more, a supporter of gay marriage and gay families. C) Relating to the first reason, this is a movie that's probably going to get nominated for Best Picture at the next Oscars ceremony. So why was I dreading it? Over the years, with few exceptions, I've come to loathe two of its leads, Annette Bening and Julianne Moore.
I'll get into a more detailed opinion of the film in a following post (short answer: Bening and Moore were much better than I've seen them in a while, but the movie is just...well, all right), but movies like Cyrus, Winter's Bone, and Get Low (all of which I want to see) will probably have to wait for Netflix. Maybe the worst realization I came to this summer, one that was a gradual notice, is that I am officially an old man. I saw, really, a handful of movies at the multiplexes: Iron Man 2, Get Him To The Greek, Toy Story 3, Inception, The Other Guys, and Scott Pilgrim are the ones I can remember off-hand as being, at the very least, OK. Movies like Eclipse or Robin Hood or even Salt have just not stoked my interest.
The problem is simple: there was nothing to get excited for this summer save for the three movies I loved and the latest installment in Marvel's attempt to make movies out of every comic-book hero they've ever invented. Iron Man 2 was good, but it wasn't close to the first film, something I came to accept in the days after seeing it. In the next few summers, there will be major tentpole films that I can't wait for: the next Star Trek film, the final Harry Potter film, the third Batman movie, pretty much anything Pixar makes, and so on. But a large majority of the movies that hit or were supposed to hit big this year were so drab, so dull, that they left me cold.
The advantage there, of course, is that those movies not only pale in comparison to my three favorites of the summer, but they also elevate those films in my mind. We always say that, with each subsequent entry from Pixar Animation Studios, the bar is set too high for them to reach. How can a movie hope to equal the emotion of the opening sequence of Up? The answer is provided in the final 15 minutes of Toy Story 3, a movie that had me doing something I don't ever do at movies: cry. It's a testament to the film's director and writer, Lee Unkrich and Michael Arndt, respectively, that the landfill sequence--and yeah, spoilers--is as emotionally taxing as the following scene where the toys are played with for one last time by Andy.
It's a Disney movie. It's beloved characters like Woody and Buzz Lightyear. There is, of course, absolutely no way that they're going to get incinerated in a fiery pit at the end of the third installment of one of the most popular franchises of the past 20 years. But damned if I wasn't freaking out in my seat, wondering how the hell they'd get out of it. Of course, the solution is not only fitting to the series, but one of the great movie moments of the year, as rousing and satisfying a moment as Joseph Gordon-Levitt's zero-gravity fight in Inception. What Toy Story 3 did was something no other third movie in a trilogy can say it's done: stuck the landing without any problems.
Inception is completely different, an electrifying, dazzling film that's able to entertain without being idiotic. People have complained about the dreams not being dreamlike enough (the answer to which is clearly spelled out in the film--if the dreams ARE too dreamlike, the mark's subconscious will realize it and attack the dream thieves), about there either not being an emotional core or it not being emotional enough (a problem I did not have, and one that I find interesting--how often do we complain about our summer movies not having enough heart?), and about the characters not being fully drawn (a fair point, but there's a reason for it, I think). What the naysayers are ignoring is the sheer audacity Christopher Nolan has to create a full-blown spectacle with the mind of a low-budget psychological thriller. Folding cities in half, snowbound gun battles (and yeah, that scene works very well for me), zero gravity, spinning tops, and another soulful Leonardo DiCaprio performance; where else do you get a movie with a huge budget that's about solving the problem of spousal guilt?
I've explained in a recent review at Box Office Prophets about how much I love Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, but a quick recap: you don't have to love comic books, you don't have to love video games, you don't even have to love Michael Cera. Do you love movies? Watch this one. It's made by a man who is clearly in love with the art of filmmaking, and it's also a film that can tip its hat to popular culture in many ways without being just a pastiche of movies, music, video games, television shows, and graphic novels. Edgar Wright is as impressive here as Nolan is in Inception or, reaching further back, Paul Thomas Anderson is in There Will Be Blood in being a confident, assured, and wildly talented director who's finally made the movie he's been working towards for a long time.
The summer movie season, yes, is a wash. That the three films I've just highlighted got greenlit by studios, and were made without any studio interference, is lucky for all of us. You may not love the three films I've gone over here, but they made my summer movie season worth sticking around for. Fingers crossed that the fall movie season picks up the slack.
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