1. Star Trek In rebooting the venerable sci-fi franchise, J.J. Abrams delivered one of the best summer flicks in years. This one has it all: Solid story, breakout performances, spectacular effects and enough moments of levity to make you remember that its supposed to be fun. Like a golfer who posts a great score early on a tournaments final day, this May opener has set a high mark for the summer hopefuls that follow. Itll take a special movie to knock it from its perch.
- 1. Star Trek In rebooting the venerable sci-fi franchise, J.J. Abrams delivered one of the best summer flicks in years. This one has it all: Solid story, breakout performances, spectacular effects and enough moments of levity to make you remember that its supposed to be fun. Like a golfer who posts a great score early on a tournaments final day, this May opener has set a high mark for the summer hopefuls that follow. Itll take a special movie to knock it from its perch.
- 2. Angels and Demons To say that theres a bit of a gap between Star Trek and its summer movie competition thus far is to say that the Grand Canyon is a bit of a hole in the ground. Well, at least Ron Howards second go at a Dan Brown novel was a considerable step up from The Da Vinci Code (and Im not just talking about Tom Hanks greatly improved haircut). Preposterous as it is, it hums along expertly enough to let you overlook its outlandish story, even the part where Father Ewan McGregor appears to fly a helicopter into outer space. OK, maybe not that part.
- 3. Night at the Museum 2: Battle of the Smithsonian Like it or not, the follow-up to the surprise 2006 smash is exactly what the fans of the first one probably wanted: An exasperated Ben Stiller playing second fiddle to museum exhibits come to life. The movie, of course, has no interest in history. Its more focused on special effects and slap-happy monkey jokes. And on those charges, it delivers to the tune of a $70 million opening
- 4. X-Men Origins: Wolverine This early in the summer, we get to the dregs pretty quickly in our little rundown. Lets put this right out there: Wolverine is a shoddy, slipshod, paycheck-grab-for-all-involved debacle of a summer movie. Nobody seems to like it, and theyll get no argument here. The only thing that surprises me is that, given the diminishing returns of the X-Men franchise, anyone expected it to be any good in the first place.
- 5. Terminator Salvation Sweet mother of mercy, where do we even start with this one? Lets see its bad? As in really, truly, hideously horrible? Director McG takes over for this latest jump into the muck of the Terminator mythology, but theyd have been better off putting Mayor McCheese behind the camera. Christian Bale must help things a little, right? Wrong. His YouTube tirade was more entertaining than anything that happens in this mess.
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