Summer Movies

With Roger Ebert recouperating, I thought I'd give my version of thumbs up/down for a few summer movies.

An Iconvenient Truth

It's been described as one of the most important movies of our time. Personally, I believe it is one of the most enlightening, frightening, and paradigm shifting movies you'll ever see. I give it a definite green thumbs up!

Who Killed the Electric Car?

Holy conspiracies batman! The oil and auto manufacturers are actually in bed together? These titans of industry huddle together on golf courses and club houses to figure out ways to make more money? No, come on that's just pure paranoia. Right? They don't really care about profits just making sure you and I have safe affordable clean transportation and save our limited natural resources. Well if you are wondering why technology in computers and every other industry has advanced, yet we have done little to change the combustion engine. Why have cars gone from 40mpg down to 16 mpg over the past 20 years? If you watch the film be prepared for the backlash of advertising and media rebuttals from GM. Thumbs up!

Disney's Cars

Eh. My thumb is some where between up and down. I really like Pixar films so it is difficult for me to bag on this movie. However at times it felt hypocritical that Disney, the king & kingdom of commercialization, was giving a lecture on the evils of commodifying. That said there were definitely cute moments and you couldn't help cheer for the heart string pulling moments. It was worth an afternoon matinee ticket price and the bucket of popcorn I shared with my boys. They loved it.

Pirates of the Boxoffice... I mean Caribbean II

The movie title is actually Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest. But not only did I feel that I was rooked out of $25 dollars to see this dredge, after watching 150 minutes it felt like I trapped in a Deadman's Chest. This movie at best was a nearly 3 hour long teaser for Pirates of the Caribbean 3. At worst it was as if the cast was set before the script was then hastily written over too many mimosas. Trust me there were no rum drinks that inspired this movie. It was pure hollywoood, self-importance isn't this so cool with this special effect and this name, crappola. They opened so many plot lines and introduced and reintroduced so many characters that you were left wondering, how are they going to tie this all together? The answer, they didn't. They just shut off the camera and called it a movie. I didn't even find Johnny Depp's performance redeming. I felt like I had been held up at sword point and then told to walk the plank, actually that would have been at least heart thumping. There wasn't one bit of heart in the entire movie... not even in the Deadman's Chest. Thumbs down.

DVD Rental recommendations:

If you want to see a feel good movie with great acting but not a bunch of sappy formula writing, definitely pick up The World's Fastest Indian. Sir Anthony Hopkins was absolutely brilliant in this movie and I hope that at 80 I'm as spry as the character he portrays.

My second recommendation may make you feel like you just flashed back to a wild college party where someone passed around a funny cigarette or may make you want a funny cigarette. Either way it's one of those movies that will leave you thinking for days, What the Bleep Do We Know Anyway?

Okay, that's it for me and my movie reviews. I'll hand this back over to Ebert because, sheeesh I've got other things to do besides just watch movies all summer!