The Rundown: Can't Miss Movies

Every year there are loads of movies that get hyped up beyond belief that I have no interest in seeing. A few of them from this summer season have already came and went without getting a penny from me.

Terminator Salvation and Land of the Lost come to mind off the top of my head, and while everyone tells me Star Trek is awesome, I'm not paying to see it. That's just me.

That being said, we're midway through June and there are a number of Summer movies still set to roll into theatres that could make me part with a few of my hard earned - well, earned - dollars. I'll run them down for you after the jump...


Top 5 Must-See Summer Movies

5. Transformers: Rise of the Fallen
What can I say? I want to see what bad-ass creations Michael Bay & Co. have come up with for the second time around. The story is bound to be a little lame and Megan Fox will surely be little more than eye candy for fanboys everywhere, but the new Autobots and Decepticons are worth a couple bucks in my books.

4. Public Enemies
The story of John Dillinger with Johnny Depp playing the man himself. Need I say more?

3. Funny People
I've been looking forward to this one for a while and see it as a chance for Adam Sandler to redeem himself in my books. Playing an actual human after stupidity like The Zohan, Sandler leads a great comedic cast in this Judd Apatow flick centered around a stand-up comedian (Sandler) who finds out he has a year to live. It'll be nice to see Apatow do more grown up funny for the first time.

2. G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra
This is where I get my fanboy on! As a kid, I had 4,386 G.I. Joe figures and played with them religiously, in the backyard, in the living room, in the bathtub, everywhere. Seeing my favorite Real American Hero come to life on screen - and starring my boys Channing Tatum and Joseph Gordon Levitt no less - is definitely worth spending some tip money.

1. The Hurt Locker
I just saw the trailer for this a couple nights back and I'm enthralled. Normally, I'm not a big Iraq war movie guy - they all seem too heavy-handed for me - but this one looks too good to miss. I'm a huge fan of Jeremy Renner, the lead actor who played the bad guy in SWAT and kills it on The Unusuals and while reviews can often be horribly wrong, too many bright people have called this film remarkable for me to miss it.

What flicks are you looking forward to? Drop your Must-See Movies in the comments section...

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The Rundown: O-VER-RATED

Spent last night finally watching There Will Be Blood.

I don't see what all the fuss was about.

Daniel Day-Lewis was really good, same as always and the cinematography and score were both really well done, but for me, this wasn't a movie that deserved all the hype that it received during the past Oscar season.

Of course, there are a lot of movies like that.

Today, we'll take a look at five of them from my list.

5 Painfully Overrated Movies

(Movies that got a lot of publicity and accolades that didn't do it for me at all...)

5. Punch Drunk Love

Paul Thomas Anderson just doesn't do it for me, save for Boogie Nights and this one tops Magnolia and last night's choice in terms of his flicks that got a lot of love, that just didn't do it for me. Maybe I just didn't get it - or any of his flicks for that matter - but it was just sort of a long winded excuse for Adam Sandler to be strange. Feel free to clarify this one for me... I just didn't get it.

4. Mystic River

This one pains me because I love the source material (it was a book first) and Gone Baby Gone proved last year (two years ago?) that Dennis Lehane's work can translate well to the screen. This wasn't one of those times. Sean Penn, while still as good as always, scored this Oscar out of being skipped for Dead Man Walking and it just missed for me. Making it worse is that Clint Eastwood was behind the camera and I normally love everything he does. Not this time.

3. Eyes Wide Shut

Not in a million years did this movie have a chance at success. Tom and Nicole together in Kubrick's last pic, one that delved into the taboo and was shrouded in secrecy. Ultimately, this was one big ball of awful, aside from the nice little debut of Leelee Sobieski who has since fallen off the face of the Earth.

2. Lost in Translation

I was most definitely lost with this one. My gut tells me that part of the praise came from the director's last name (Copolla) than the film itself. Murray and Mrs. Ryan Reynolds aren't a pair I can believe as sidekicks ever, even if they're connected in boredom and loneliness in Tokyo. In real life, Murray's character would have been hitting the sake and spending a lot of time at the massage parlours while ScarJo wouldn't have tagged along in the first place. I mean really, would you follow Giovanni Ribisi halfway around the world?

1. The Crying Game

Remember this one? Boy George appropriately sang the theme song for this big ball of hype that amounted to this: the chick isn't a chick at all... it's a dude... OMG! I know it came out before we were a more open minded society and it's British and they're traditionally more tight assed than us, but still, this movie got far more publicity than a mediocre movie deserves.

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