The Cure For The Summer Doldrums

[oscar jubis]

The summer can be a trying season for lovers of cinema. Plenty of cheap thrills but little of substance at the theatre. Home entertainment is the answer for me. The five I have not seen, from the list below, have been hailed by other filmwurld members.

Now.....Sergio Leone's "closet" masterpiece: Once Upon a Time in America(Finally uncut and letterboxed) , Adaptation, Almodovar's Talk to Her, The Pianist and Bloody Sunday.

June 17.Tully, Solondz's Happiness(Signature Series).

June 24.Fritz Lang's You Only Live Once, Robert Altman's Popeye, The Hours, Intacto(Spain).

July 1..Charles Chaplin Collection Gift Set, Scorsese's My Voyage to Italy and Gangs of New York, The Experiment(Ger), Polanski's The Tenant, Wenders' Wings of Desire, Taviani's Night of the Shoting Stars.

July 8..Cronenberg's Spider, Tykwer's Heaven

July 22.Egoyan's Ararat, Read My Lips(Fra), Imamura's The Pornographers and De Sica's Umberto D.

July 29.The Quiet American, Solaris

August. Lord of the Rings:The Two Towers, Bowling for Columbine, Chicago, Costa Gavras' Amen.

[Johann]

True enough, the summer is usually the worst time of the year for movies.

Nevertheless so far I've enjoyed Finding Nemo, Bruce Almighty (which has more "sermonizing" in it than probably all 3 Matrix movies...), X-Men 2, and Reloaded. What looks OK: Charlie's Angels 2, The Pirates of the Carribean, Tomb Raider 2 & Terminator 3.

Ang Lee's The Hulk is the summer film I am most anticipating. I even bought a Hulk collector's ticket..

What is evidently "crapola":

Dumb & Dumberer-feh No Farrelly's, No Daniels, No Carrey-NO MOVIE..
2 Fast 2 Dumb- feh
Wrong Turn-feh
The Extrordinary Gentlemen Gay Club-feh
Daddy Day Care-triple feh (An Alan Smithee Movie)

[pmw]

What about Bruce Almighty did you like?
I found it hard to swallow. All of the preaching rubbed
me the wrong way... And why was love enough of a
reason for him to settle back into a job he hates? It
frustrated me a bit. BUT, I wanted to like it, and as such
I want to know why you did. Pray tell.

P

PS Summertime blues to be averted by festival attendance!

[Johann]

I just found it hilarious. The Sammy Davis outtake KILLED me.

I think it's Carrey's "It's a wonderful Life-up yours" to the folks who said he should stick to comedy.

But if you want me to nitpick, I can do that:

1. The sappy love story. Not for one minute did I believe that Bruce would have a wife as hot as Aniston. The scene where he's peeping tom to her "prayer" was soemthing I didn't need to see.

2. there should have been more scenes of Jim using his omnipotence- the few that were shown to us were classic.

3. And Jim, you should stick to comedy.

[Ilker81x]

Why is anybody trying to see "Bruce Almighty" as anything more than a stupid comedy? That's all it is. All romantic comedies have some silly message or moral to them, like fairy tales. That's what they're meant to do...they show us ridiculous situations, sometimes realistic, but usually not...the people come out of those situations with some great appreciation for what makes love so wonderful...and along the way, there's a few dozen laughs, hopefully. Is "Bruce Almighty" sermonizing because it deals with God as a primary character? I don't think so. I think it's just another excuse for a cute comedy. I didn't find the preaching hard to swallow so much as it was another device of the romantic comedy...make the comedy slightly more intelligent by having a message. I think it was a good message, but one that was neither profound nor really worth analyzing. It's certainly not a message that hadn't been said by a bunch of other movies only more effectively. I mean, let's face it. Did those thugs beating up on the homeless guy really learn a lesson on how to treat people better because Bruce had a monkey come out of the guy's ass? No...you'll notice one of them was screaming, "El Diablo!" The devil...hell, even the scene with chaos in the streets and Bruce's poster is on fire...is it telling us that Bruce is Satan's disciple? No. Is it telling us that people have learned anything? No. It's just stupid fun. It's funny...that's all it is. No sermons, no preaching, just fun...and maybe a moral to go with it.

[HorseradishTree]

I wouldn't suggest shunning League of Extraordinary Gentleman just like that. The graphic novel is astoundingly good, and Captain Nemo is the ultimate coolest. I'm pretty sure things will work out well in the movie.