domingo, 4 de septiembre de 2011

Sin #97: Summertime 2011 Part II

The summer season of 2011 is finally over; let’s take a look at the remaining movies.

“Kung Fu Panda 2” is a sequel done right. Here’s a beautifully animated and exciting adventure that pleases both kids and their parents. It’s curious how Dreamworks showed a lot more heart in this story than Pixar did with “Cars 2”, which was a departure for a studio that usually deals with emotions much more sophisticated than we are accustomed to in animated features. “Cars 2” is a shallow and forgettable action romp, boasting some impressive visuals but lacking a lot in the narrative department. Still, it’s an entertaining movie but it’s also a disappointing one from a studio that’s made some of the best family films of all time.


Some might remember this summer for its sequels or superhero movies but I will remember it for “Transformers: Dark of the Moon”, easily the worst movie of the year and one of the most wretched so-called pieces of entertainments I’ve ever had to endure. To watch a movie this dumb, vulgar, senseless and mean and to watch it gross an enormous amount of cash at the box office is to witness a complete disregard for the value of cinema as an art form. And I know that we shouldn’t expect high art in a Hollywood blockbuster but at least we should expect an engaging storyline and characters we care for. “Transformers 3” is a 157 minute waste of time; utter garbage that cements Michael Bay as a showman for imbeciles and a freak impresario, eager to cash in from the puerile fantasies of the male adolescent.


The one bright spot about watching this movie is that it sets a standard so low that practically any movie looks good by comparison. That’s why I’m glad I saw Duncan Jones’s “Source Code” after Transformers. Here’s a smart sci-fi parable about a man reliving the same instant before a bomb explodes on a train. It is terrific entertainment and a nice tonic to the toxic waste of Bay’s spectacle.


One of the most eagerly awaited releases for the year was the final installment in the Harry Potter franchise (the most commercially lucrative series in movie history). After a chronically tedious start to the Deathly Hallows story, it basically redeems the weaker aspects and becomes one of the summer’s most exciting blockbusters. The film boasts terrific acting and special effects and a thrilling pace bringing the action back to Hogwarts and tying all the loose ends. For fans it’s an emotionally satisfying ending.


A couple of fantastic movies followed with “Captain America: The First Avenger” and “Super 8”. “Captain America” is a gloriously retro adventure in the style of those Saturday morning serials from the 30s and 40s promoting so-called American values (the movie makes fun of its cheeky propaganda aspects). Chris Evans proved to be a great casting choice for the titular hero making the film one of the best of the summer and Marvel’s best offering (on par with “X-Men: First Class”).


J.J. Abrams “Super 8” is also a retro piece of entertainment that takes us back to those 80s Amblin movies where a bunch of kids find themselves on an extraordinary adventure. There’s a lot of debt to Spielberg in “Super 8” but Abrams crafts his movie with style and a special gift for casting since all of the kids are terrific. I confess that the monster is the less appealing aspect of the film since the story with the kids is much more engrossing. The one superhero I missed in theaters was “Green Lantern” but since its reviews ranged from mediocre to terrible I don’t think I missed on much.


One of the biggest disappointments of the summer was “Aliens and Cowboys”, an ungainly mishmash of genres that’s so clumsily executed that it works neither as a western nor an alien invasion picture. The cast is completely wasted with the usual array of stereotypes and the aliens are so generic they lack any menace.


The best was saved for last, however, with “Rise of the Planet of the Apes”, an impressive and surprisingly provocative work that goes beyond any of the Apes sequels and stands on its own as a fantastic summer entertainment. The CG in the movie is amazing and so convincing that it turns Ceasar, an animated ape, into a full living character that’s much more human than his real human counterparts.


Overall, the summer of 2011 provided a good time at the movies. There were some big surprises and some big disappointments but it was mostly a successful introduction to superheroes, reboots and sequels.


No hay comentarios:

Publicar un comentario