The Most Laughs: The Kids Are All Right

The Kids Are All Right is easily the funniest movie of the year. The film covers some heated topics and touchy themes through the lightest and most heart-warming approaches via careful cinema and clever story. With its incredibly humorous undertones that hide behind genius dialogue, writing and delivery, the film toys around with the most hilarious tongue and cheek. No puns intended.

Read REVIEW HERE

The Biggest Cash-In: Knight and Day

The recent queen of cash-ins Cameron Diaz has had another explosivly exploitative summer, drawing massive amounts of money from massively dull movies like Shrek Forever After and Knight and Day, which showed us the same lame for our money. Diaz doing her usual self-portrayals in crappy action movies wasn’t the only offender, Tom Cruise hoping for a career saving hit and director James Mangold have both had better days.

Read REVIEW HERE

The Best Sequel: Toy Story 3

In a summer once again dominated by sequels it seems this award would be hard to crown a winner, but really Toy Story 3 wins this one with complete ease, and might still take the award if it was only a miniature, play version of itself. But make no mistake, the film works a lot harder to earn the title with its ever-entertaining and enchanting story filled with classic Pixar marvel.

Read REVIEW HERE

The Biggest Disappointment: Robin Hood

The anticipation couldn’t have been any heavier for this film with Russell Crowe re-teaming with Ridley Scott for another swords and sandals epic to match Gladiator.  This time add in Cate Blanchet, a Super Bowl ad spot and HD. And while the prequel retelling’s intent was pulled back as far and tight as possibly, it couldn’t have missed its target any further with such a mediocre, muddled movie.

Read REVIEW HERE

The Biggest Surprise: Splice

What appeared to be another half-rate horror cash-in ended up being one of the biggest shocks of the season. The story provided similar shocks and some rare-cinematic magic and intelligence that are often scared away from the genre. A little bit of a creature feature, a lot of a benchmark science fiction film, Splice ended up splitting conventions in a really good way.

Read REVIEW HERE

The Most Forgettable: Iron Man 2

Forgetting Iron Man 2 has nothing to do with it being the first tent pole of the summer. Despite the buzz, the grand box office receipts and the charm of Robert Downey Jr., the second installment of the franchise committed a huge crime by not establishing itself as any different or more interesting from the first film or any other films in the genre, making it a complete waste that should have been recycled for a story less metallic.

Read REVIEW HERE

The Best Escapism: Inception

Escapism is too often associated with science fiction which itself is too often associated with aliens, blue people, Hobbits, vampires, transforming Chevys and now 3D. But this year the movie that took us far away did so without having to leave this world or time period. Instead, Inception remains grounded in realism and goes deep into the mind exploring an entire subset of realities envisioned by Christopher Nolan. It would be hard to find a film that engrosses audiences more with its extravagant sets, eye-popping visuals and stimulating scenery.

Read REVIEW HERE

The King of the Garbage Heap: The A-Team

Earning our first and only F-rating today, The A-Team deserves no praise, no respect or no sympathy for being the big huge pile of stinky shit that it turned out to be. Without any real consideration in story-telling, cinema, entertainment or even basic elements of Hollywood movies beyond “How can we hodgepodge something together to sell for $10?” The A-Team is an insulting, disgraceful film that lacks anything redeemable that even the more average summer movie should contain.

Read REVIEW HERE

CLICK HERE to see the summer movies ranked and reviewed.