Summer blockbusters offer a “buffet of men” to viewers

Cory Johnson

Staff Writer

There is the Oscar movie season and then there is the summer movie season, which juxtapose each other in every way. One is typically filled with movies that award shows tell you to pay attention to and the other is overflowing with lazy afternoons of dragging your kid cousin away from his parents’ house so they don’t have to deal with his inexhaustible summer energy.

Yes, some blockbusters are left out of the following list. And yes, some of them were amazing, like “The Dark Knight Rises”, “Ted”, and “Moonrise Kingdom.” When these movies come to the Byrd, show up in your Netflix cue or are available at the nearest Redbox, check them out.

Beasts of the Southern Wild

Raw power emits from every pore of the main character’s face as she stares down across the waters of The Bathtub, a fictitious bayou island located on the sinking side of a levee. Based on the short play “Sweet and Delicious,” the movie follows Hushpuppy, a 6-year-old girl, while she finds how she fits into the universe.

The film is immediately captivating. You are introduced to this lively sinking ship of a community from the eyes of Hushpuppy, who cites her father as her source of wisdom. Shots are slightly out of focus; the contrast in colors is heavy and lights seem brighter as you see the world through the young girl’s eyes.

This form of visual storytelling is used through most of the movie. Only when the scene is fully plump with energy and life does narration come, in Hushpuppy’s voice, reminding the audience of the adolescence behind the strong face.

As she learns about her world, listening to its heartbeat, glaring at it straight-on with the intensity of bull, the scene becomes clearer and hues subdue.

Through her learning to survive, director-writer-composer Benh Zeitlin teaches the audience both how to live and how to let others live.

Crying in this movie is not optional; it wears its heart on its sleeve.

Magic Mike

This is a good movie. Period. Whether you watch it for the stripping, which there is just enough to get the housewives going, or you watch it for the direction, handled by Academy Award-winning Steven Soderbergh of “Traffic” and “Erin Brockovich”, it doesn’t matter. Like I said, it’s a good movie.

From the beginning, Magic Mike lets you know the stripping is just a show. Dallas, played by Matthew McConaughey, teases, letting the audience know what they can and can’t touch, setting the tone for the movie and pandering just enough to keep the ladies (and fellas) waiting for the next skin show.

Smash cut to real life. Channing Tatum, in the lead role of Mike, wakes up naked before heading to a construction job. If the moves he lays down as Magic Mike aren’t a clue, Tatum was a stripper before he became an actor. But even outside his night job, Tatum proves that he can maintain a presence as a leading man, being the highlight of most scenes he’s in.

There are no empty scenes in this film. No random pans of Florida. No perspective shots without important dialogue. The most lucid scene, a skillfully executed drug binge, is put together well, signaling the turn of the movie with electric blue and pink piglets.

Yes there are dancing boys, a “buffet of men,” if you will, but the movie has heart and an ending that is both endearing and saddening all at once.

Prometheus

It wouldn’t be summer without aliens, and while the super-extraterrestrials of “The Avengers” are a lively bunch, if you haven’t seen that movie by now, you won’t after reading a review of it.

“Prometheus” is a prequel to Ridley Scott’s “Alien” and begins with a promise of creation. A giant, ivory skinned humanoid watches a ship leave the planet before drinking a dark liquid and dissolving, breaking down cell by cell, before the cells begin to divide and grow again. And while the movie is visually inspired, the writing of this film is angering.

Drinking games could be constructed in honor of the poor script. Every time the aliens are mentioned, take a drink. Every time the characters know something they shouldn’t, take a drink, every time you want to yell at the screen, take a drink, every time logic doesn’t exist, take a drink.

The true beauty of this film lies in the visuals.

Ridley Scott has been around the block enough times to know how to compose a shot and tell a story visually. The planet wheezes a thick fog, leaks black goo and beckons to the cast like an eerie library, full of knowledge but haunting.  A massive spaceship, in post-modern space-age style, inhabited by scientist in skintight bio-suits is set opposite an organic mausoleum with the ability to touch the stars, humanoid olmecs towering stories with the tale of an ancient race, acres and acres of dust and rock and poisonous air.

The acting, considered visual, because the things that come out of the actors’ mouths are ridiculous, does the best it can with a weak script. Michael Fassbender is blonde-haired, blue-eyed mechanical perfection as the organ-envious robot, David and Charlize Theron owns her role as the movie’s villain.

But despite the potent potable appeal and stunning landscapes, the reason to watch “Prometheus” is because it’s the only movie, that I can think of, where an entire species becomes and evolves seamlessly and it could go completely unregistered. CT