How time flies. It's May already, which for any self-respecting filmfan means the time has once again come to check your brain at the box office and enjoy the virtues of slow-motion explosions, larger-than-life set pieces, high speed car chases and epic battles with or without giant robots. Yes, blockbuster season is here again and this summer, more than ever, expectations are soaring for most of the big-budget releases.I know mine are.
Blockbuster season 2008 had a tremendous kickstart a few weeks back with Jon Favreau's IRON MAN, which I certainly didn't expect to like as much as I did. It's terrific summer fare, and if you haven't seen it yet, I highly recommend that you do - on the biggest screen you can find. Robert Downey Jr. is undoubtedly the shining star of the show, playing the chauvinistic, arrogant business-tycoon Tony Stark like only he can (just a great performance, I ask, or maybe just a little too close to home?). When the action kicks in, this film is tons of fun. And with all due respect for Favreau, I really didn't think the guy could pull these kinds of action sequences off as well as he did.
So, hats off to Favreau, Downey Jr. and the guys at Marvel Studios, who I hope will continue to produce comic adaptations as great as this one. I leave my hat firmly on my cranium though for the Wachowski brothers' excruciatingly awful turkey SPEED RACER. How on earth a studio could greenlight a 120 million dollar project based on a hammy cartoon that nobody outside of the United States and Japan knows anything about, is beyond me. Now I've never taken LSD while playing WIPEOUT, but I guess this film comes pretty close to that experience. And it's just all kinds of awful.
Rejoice though, for this week sees the release of the grandaddy of high-expectation blockbusters: INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL. A fanboy's wet dream, twenty years in the making. Will it rule? Will it suck? Will a 65 year old Harrison Ford look embarrassing as everyone's favorite adventuring archeologist? To save myself from disappointment, I do my best trying not to get consumed by the Spielberg/Lucas hype machine. But it's just impossible to resist, you know? Come on, it's Indy! Ever since that first trailer came online I've been whisteling Raider's March continuously up to the point where it started to annoy the people around me.
I guess we'll see if Indy's well and truly back come thursday. A good friend of mine, who's actually a bastard because he's enjoying the Cannes Film Festival at the moment and I'm not, saw IJATKCS (sheesh, even the acronym is too long) yesterday and thought it to be an enjoyable, if not somewhat silly, flick. Well, I'm a big fan of LAST CRUSADE, so I'll settle for silly. I actually think that antihero kind of silliness makes up a big part of the Indiana Jones-character.
Luckily, there's sill lots more to come after INDY 4. There's the R-rated apocalyptic thriller THE HAPPENING, which may or may not prove to be M. Night Shyamalan's return to form after the abysmal LADY IN THE WATER. There's Louis Leterrier's (DANNY THE DOG) INCREDIBLE HULK, Guillermo del Toro's HELLBOY 2: THE GOLDEN ARMY, Peter Berg's super-antihero film HANCOCK and of course (something I'm REALLY looking forward to) Christopher Nolan's follow-up to the brilliant BATMAN BEGINS, THE DARK KNIGHT.
Oh, did I forget to mention the return of Mulder of Scully in the X-Files sequel or Pixar's latest masterpiece (could it be anything but?) WALL-E? Let's just say I'm ready for 'em all and expect a lot of blocks to be busted.
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