The Man with the Golden Eyeball

As my summer comes to an end, I admit, I am sad to leave behind the lazy days of watching movies, writing, basking in the sunlight, and going to movies with friends, I can't say I am completely depressed, because, as school starts again, I will see my friends basically everyday, and have a lot more things to occupy my time.

However, as I now look back on the summer of 2010, I am still surprised by the sheer number of great films released over the last 2 1/2 months. In June, we were graced with the presence of, in my opinion the second best music comedy ever made, Get Him to the Greek. Russell Brand's hilariously quintessential, self-important Aldous Snow is the perfect match for Jonah Hill. A great soundtrack, surprisingly excellent performance by Sean Combs, and great mixture of both physical and dialogue-driven comedy make it one of the best so far this year.

Then, two weeks later, the film that I, and millions more children of the nineties, had been waiting for since we were wee lads was released. Toy Story 3 opened, kicked the ass of any component brave enough to challenge it, and delivered in a way few sequels of sequels can, it surpasses the original in emotional impact, characters, and humor, in my opinion, of course.

The next film I bothered to see after that was the completely badass, worthy sequel, Predators. I will admit, immediately after viewing the movie, I sort of though, "That was it?", but soon afterward re-evaluated it, and have come to the conclusion that, of what I've seen, it's the second best thing Robert Rodriguez has ever put his name on. It excelled at being just what it wanted to be, one of the most entertaining action film in years.

The next weekend, America's mind was blown by Christopher Nolan's Inception. Prior to seeing the film, I was very excited, since I loved The Dark Knight, and thought the trailers looked quite thrilling, but after I saw it, I honestly thought it didn't live up to the hype. Okay, I know what you're going to say to me, "You just didn't understand it.", but, the thing is, I really did, and personally think that the whole dream-within-a-dream's-dream's-dream's-dream plot device did nothing more than alienate a good majority of its audience, turn some away completely, and muck up a story that would have been good enough to stand on its own. This could have also been avoided by cutting out at least a good 20-25 minutes from the film. The entire snow-capped mountain scene serves no purpose and fells very out of context here. In essence, Inception was a film that could have been so much more, with less.

After that, for me, was The Other Guys. Say what you will about Will Ferrell, but his schtick never seems to get old with me. Of course, I don't watch one of his films every day or anything, but really, who does?

Immediately after that came my favorite film of this past summer, and one that surpassed the hype, in my humble opinion, Scott Pilgrim Vs. the World. Where can I even start? This is easily Edgar Wright's best film to date, and one that breaks free of its cutesy premise because of its fantastic characters, made even better by great performances all-round, quite original style, and excellent soundtrack. It really does make me lose all hope in US. audiences when Lottery Ticket, Vampires Suck, and The Expendables all manage to out-gross a film with more of a soul than any of them, I'm sure, could ever even think of possessing. Here's to hoping Edgar Wright isn't shelved because of indecisive theatre-goers.

Then, to round out my summer, last night I saw Piranha 3-D. If you want my thoughts on the film, you can read the review below. In short, a great film, with decent 3-D, and a surprisingly good cast.

So, we had some good films, and some great ones, readily available at our local chain theatres throughout the summer. The past few months did reaffirm my hopes that mainstream cinema is not completely worthless, if you know what to see. We can only hope that Autuman will bring the volume of quality films to a Cinemark near you.