Here’s where I would make a Kroll Show reference if any of you watched it. Image via Salon

I hate to say it, but summer movies make me feel more and more cynical by the day. It is a bad sign when “good enough” seems like the nicest thing you can say about any given movie.

Sometimes, it feels like Hollywood has lost so much faith in itself that it needs to have a million different voices contributing to just one project. Just look at The Amazing Spider-Man 2: it feels like every person on the Sony lot, from a top studio executive to a random janitor, got to contribute their ideas to the final product. Plus, with all of the sequels and remakes coming out, it feels like there isn’t a single authentic voice left in Hollywood anymore. I have no interest in seeing another superhero movie again, and I will repeat that to myself begrudgingly while buying a ticket for X-Men: Days of Future Past. Hey, it is good enough.

While not all original ideas are good (see: In Your Eyes), I nevertheless appreciate and celebrate every time film embraces something new, as opposed to something that can be turned into a toy six months before the movie actually comes out. There are some films to be excited about this summer, and I would like to take some time to acknowledge them. Here is a list I have compiled of five upcoming films that celebrate good ideas and likable people. Here are five upcoming summer films that might make all of the cynicism go away:

5. Magic in the Moonlight (July 25)

Personal issues aside, a new Woody Allen film is always an exciting event for me. There are certain “best of” lists I make that I have to build around one of his films. Even when Allen is not at his best (*cough* To Rome with Love *cough*), he always makes something at least worth a few extra thoughts once the final credits roll. Plus, I am not going to argue with a cast that includes Colin Firth and Emma Stone.

4. Life Itself (July 4)

Just as any aspiring critic will tell you, Roger Ebert is a hero of mine. He taught everybody that criticism could be as thoughtful and creative as the creative works that you are critiquing. Life Itself, a documentary based on Ebert’s autobiography of the same name, recounts his larger-than-life experiences. It seems like everyday film criticism loses relevance, as more and more people who write reviews for a living get laid off by people who just don’t get it. Ebert’s death last year was the sad end of an era. Roger Ebert was the first celebrity critic ever. Yet, he never resorted to soundbites or pulled quotes. Here is somebody who only wrote exactly what he felt. Maybe he wasn’t always right, but he always made a good point.

3. Boyhood (July 11)

Richard Linklater’s latest film received rave reviews when it debuted at Sundance earlier this year. In order to accurately capture the aging of the lead child actor, Linklater filmed Boyhood in bits and pieces over a 12 year period. This idea is so interesting and ambitious and proves that Linklater is secretly one of America’s most innovative filmmakers. Remember, this is the same dude that also directed Dazed & Confused, School of Rock, and Bernie. Linklater defies formula, and therefore no two of his films are the same. Each one is its own, unique little snowflake. Now, excuse me while I slap myself in the face for writing that sentence.

2. Obvious Child (June 6)

I have watched the trailer for Obvious Child multiple times because it makes me indescribably happy. It may be crazy that this is the only way I felt over an indie dramedy about abortion that looks like it may take an even darker turn than Juno did. Part of my excitement might come from the fact that it stars Richard Kind as a father figure. Or more importantly, Obvious Child will allow America’s newest sweetheart Jenny Slate to show off acting chops. But more importantly, there’s gonna be pee-farting. Any film that takes on a serious topic while taking a moment to joke about pee-farting deserves all of the love and praise in the world.

1. They Came Together (June 27)

It may be fitting that my number one choice for this list is a takedown of what has become one of the most cynical genres out there: the romantic comedy. They Came Together will hopefully prove once again why the geniuses behind The State/Wet Hot American Summer/Stella are still a force to be reckoned with. They Came Together also happens to star America’s two other sweethearts, Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler, who make anything more likable just by showing up. The trailer itself is hilarious, and it makes me fear that they are giving away all of the best scenes before I even get a chance to watch the full film. However, if Role Models (also directed by David Wain) taught me anything, it’s that this comedy crew’s best material is so absurd that it simply would not work in a trailer. If They Came Together makes getting a football thrown in your face ironic on multiple levels, then I have a feeling this will be the best comedy of the summer.

This was so boring that it actually made me fall asleep. Image via Screen Rant

Godzilla finally opens in theaters this weekend after months of hype and a few incredible trailers. The truth is, I have no idea if this is a Godzilla movie, or the idea of what a modern blockbuster should look like.

Godzilla is a character who does not need too much introduction, as he (her?) is now a part of international folk lore. While there is never a bad time for a giant Japanese monster to cause some chaos, Godzilla is a product of nuclear fallout, an issue that is maybe a little less scary and timely than it might have been during post-World War II or post-Chernobyl.

It takes a lot to make a mutant lizard boring, but somehow Godzilla manages to accomplish this feat. It all starts with one power plant meltdown in Japan that kills a lot of people, and drives one man, Joe Brody (Bryan Cranston), mad. He is the only one who seems to sense an imminent danger. Of course, nobody listens to him, because this is a movie, and in movies crazy people are always right, but nobody ever listens to them. Like all of the other great parts of Godzilla, Cranston is criminally underused here. He gets to do a lot of yelling, but not enough to justify his immense talent.

Godzilla was heavily marketed on having a large “human aspect.” While there are a lot of people in Godzilla, none of them are particularly interesting or well thought out. For once, I would like to see a giant monster movies with a character who isn’t a scientist or a member of the military. Godzilla wants to have a heart, but it wouldn’t know what to do with that heart even if it had it. For instance, if Ford Brody (Aaron Taylor-Johnson), Joe’s estranged son, just wants to see his family again, then why does he keep running away from them every time they are finally reunited?

While you can focus on the human aspect all you want, Godzilla should be a character, too. After all, this monster, and not the soldiers and scientists, is the legend here, though it feels like the giant lizard from the sea is barely even a factor here. Godzilla is a Godzilla movie without Godzilla. In a movie like this, buildup is usually key. According to the horror movie law that was established by Jaws, Monsters are typically scarier when we can hear them before we see them. While we can hear Godzilla before we see him, not much happens during that buildup period. Director Gareth Edwards does not create any tension during this time. No stakes are defined whatsoever. Perhaps CGI is making it too easy to complete a film without these essential elements. The long, dull lulls made me appreciate the likes of Super 8 and Pacific Rim, movies which I once thought I did not like.

Sometimes, it feels like this version of Godzilla has no confidence in itself. It makes the viewers wait forever to get to one giant monster fight scene. Then, once it gets there, it immediately cuts away for more unnecessary exposition. When one particularly exciting scene is about to begin, the movie immediately cuts away to a war room. If Godzilla wants to live up to its promise of humanity, then maybe it should spend less time with the strategizing generals and more time showing the actual damage on the ground.

There are moments when Godzilla actually delivers, and when it gets to the stuff that you paid money to see, it is great. That greatness is fleeting, though. To watch Godzilla is to watch a monster movie without heart, soul, or Godzilla.

Brain Farts From The Edge (SPOILERS)

• As my friend Ryan Little said, “this movie is just two hours of monsters commuting.”
• Movies like this make me feel cynical about the future of movies.
• I really wish this was about Godzilla, and not those giant grasshopper things.
• While Godzilla was a good guy and a protector of humanity in earlier versions as well, it seems self-defeating to make a movie that’s an allegory on the dangers of nuclear radiation yet make the victim of said radiation a force for good.
• I did not like Pacific Rim when I first saw it. After seeing Godzilla, I decided to watch it again, and I realized that it had all the heart, humor, and monster fights that Godzilla wished it had. More directors should be as excited about what they make as Guillermo del Toro is.
• Ken Watanabe basically has the same facial expression for everything that happens here.
• Except for the skydiving scene, the 3D here was basically pointless.
• I watched the 1998 version of Godzilla in preparation for the 2014 version of Godzilla. It is awful for its own set of reasons. In the 1998 version, Godzilla has babies and lays those eggs in Madison Square Garden. The Chrysler Building is blown up for no reason whatsoever. Jean Reno yells about French coffee. Ferris Bueller drives a car into Godzilla’s mouth. It is so dumb, yet so much fun to watch. Sometimes, that’s all you can ask for in a movie about a giant mutant sea lizard.

Your grandparents are here right now eating lunch. They have great pastrami on rye. Also, this place was on the Guy Fieri Program once.

Summer is fast approaching and you are just a few weeks away from being able to burn all of your textbooks for firewood.

You will probably have a lot of free time this summer, and a lot of that time might be spent seeing relatives that you haven’t seen in a while. Perhaps those people are your grandparents, who might be heading up north to escape Florida. The humidity is no good for them.

Everybody knows that nothing brings families together like a day at the movies. Everybody also knows that nobody gets a movie title wrong like your grandparents do. They happen to come up with some creative titles that usually make absolutely no sense at all. Yet, they are often more creative than anything that most writers could come up with. One time, my grandpa referred to The Lincoln Lawyer as The Cadillac Man. In my eyes, that is pure gold.

In honor of all of the grandparents out there who just want to spend the day at the picture house, I have decided to breach the gap between two generations by providing what I hope is an accurate translation guide to accompany the one I came up with for holiday movies. Here is a helpful guide to the big movies of the summer, according to your grandparents:

A Million Ways to Die in the West: The Wild West

Captain America: The Winter Soldier: America’s Cold Warrior

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes: These Remakes Are Garbage

Godzilla: Let Me Tell You Something About Pearl Harbor

Guardians of the Galaxy: Galaxy Quest

Million Dollar Arm: This Looks Wonderful

Neighbors: The Neighbors

The Amazing Spider-Man 2: Did You Hear What James Franco Did on the Instant-Photo App?

The Fault in Our Stars: Starry Night

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: What’s That One That My Grandson Wants to See?

Transformers: Age of Extinction: The Robot Dinosaur Picture

X-Men: Days of Future Past: Back to the Future

Possibly a metaphor for the latter part of Adam Sandler’s career. Image via Uproxx

They can’t all be good.

It is easy to forget that every year, with all of the anticipation that the summer blockbuster season brings, a lot of movies are released that nobody asked for. Usually, the end of August and the entirety of September are reserved for the worst bombs of summer that Hollywood wanted to hide from you. However, some of those sneak into June and July. After all, it just wouldn’t be summer without a subpar sequel and an Adam Sandler movie.

Here are the four movies coming out this summer that I want to see the least. I chose four because numbers are irrelevant. Also, instead of the individual trailers, I have decided to accompany each movie with an SNL skit that at least one of the actors from said movie was in. It is partly because you can find the trailers on your own, and partly because I want to remind you that I still love Adam Sandler:

4. Million Dollar Arm

While there are movies coming out that look much worse than Million Dollar Arm, the terrible thing about it is how safe and inoffensive it looks. An underdog sports story about an unconventional approach to assembling a team? Draft Day just came out and it bombed. White people and foreigners teaching each other touching life lessons because we’re all secretly racist? Get in line behind all of the rest. If you are going to give Jon Hamm a star-making vehicle, then at least give him something that plays off of his ability to smoke cigarettes and drink a lot of scotch.

3. The Amazing Spider-Man 2

I might be one of the few people on this Earth who actually enjoyed The Amazing Spider-Man, even though I will admit that the crane scene was one of the worst deus ex machinas in film history. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 looks like it suffers from the same problem that has plagued many comic book adaptations: it overcrowds itself with too many villains. This is especially bad given that I can’t help but associate Jamie Foxx with that blue dude that Tracy Jordan keeps seeing in that episode of 30 Rock where he stops taking his meds. In addition, Paul Giamatti has shamefully been placed into a rhino costume. Somebody please tell Sam Raimi to come back.

2. Blended

If you look up “phoning it in” on Wikipedia, you’ll find a picture of Adam Sandler taking a nap on top of the Grown Ups 3 script. Blended looks like a sad waste of the squandered talent of Sandler and Drew Barrymore, who once upon a time displayed such amazing chemistry together in The Wedding Singer and 50 First Dates (where Drew Barrymore ruined the ending of The Sixth Sense for me). Instead, we will get a lot of African stereotypes, and a lot more of me wishing I was watching Terry Crews in Brooklyn Nine-Nine instead of Terry Crews in Blended. Blended looks less like a movie and more like an ad for Hooters. This is what we get when we take Billy Madison and Big Daddy for granted.

1. Hercules

After seeing The Rock scream “I. AM. HERCULES!” in the trailer, I refuse to call this anything else but I, Hercules. This entire movie is a studio executive screaming, “Look! You know who Hercules is! He’s a familiar character! Give us money!” at an audience that secretly wants somebody in Hollywood to just invent a new action hero already.  I, Hercules is yet another example of Hollywood taking a story we have heard too many times before and trying to put it into a new, “gritty” package. The problem is that for me, stories like Hercules work much better when they are in musical cartoon form. In the future, I, Hercules will be looked at more as a reminder of a horrible trend than a horrible movie that came out in the summer of 2014.

https://screen.yahoo.com/hawaiian-hotel-000000278.html

Round up the usual suspects! Image via Paste Magazine

Just like March, summer goes in like a lion (whatever giant franchise offering Disney has to offer in June) and out like a very wimpy lamb (whatever Paranormal Activity spin-off is lated for release in the last week of August).

It would be unfair to immediately dismiss this summer’s entire lineup just because it doesn’t contain many original ideas. For now, originality is dead in Hollywood. That is a well researched fact, just like the how dogs are better than cats and Jaden Smith is terrible at grammar. Instead of rejecting it, it is better for a cinephile’s psyche to find the silver linings.

While there will still be plenty of sequels, prequels, remakes, and adaptations this summer, some of the worst qualities of modern Hollywood are starting to go the way of the dinosaurs and M. Night Shyamalan. For instance, this summer will give us a few major blockbusters that don’t hit the three hour mark, as well as a worldview that is more fun than gritty. Gritty is for Oscar season. Summer is for fun. Smart fun, if that is in anyway possible.

Here are the five movies coming out in the summer of 2014 that I look forward to the most:

5. 22 Jump Street (June 13)

22 Jump Street seems like an unnecessary sequel. Then again, 21 Jump Street seemed like an unnecessary movie. This is Chris Miller and Phil Lord’s second outing in 2014 following the huge success of The Lego Movie. As both 21 Jump Street and The Lego Movie proved, they are masters at taking bad ideas and spinning them into gold. 22 Jump Street could also be another great bad idea, even if it neglected to find another role for Brie Larson, who is, in fact, America’s sweetheart. Anyway, 22 Jump Street should be great, so long as it turns sequels that rehash their predecessors into a meta joke. Also, less scenes of college parties and more scenes of Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill on drugs, please.

4. Neighbors (May 9)

This is the only movie on the list that is not adapted from previous source material. I have high hopes for Neighbors, as Seth Rogen can do no wrong in my eyes (although he didn’t write or direct this). Neighbors has a simple concept of class versus classless reminiscent of comedies from another era such as Animal House and Caddyshack, and it even promises Dave Franco doing an impression of Robert De Niro in Meet the Parents. The only issue is that the trailers may be giving away too much. I have a theory that bad comedies have good trailers, because all of their best material can fit into a two minute video. The best comedies save all of their gold for the theaters, which is partly why I liked last summer’s The Heat so much. Neighbors will be a great summer comedy, as long as the people who made it stop giving away all of its best f***ing jokes for free.

3. Godzilla (May 16)

I might be the only person on the planet who didn’t like last summer’s Pacific Rim, so I am in need of a movie where a giant dinosaur-type monster destroys an entire city. I think that Godzilla is that movie. The footage that has been shown to the world so far is nothing short of mesmerizing, and the entire film clocks in at just around the two hour mark. Finally, Hollywood is starting to trim down on its bloated spectacles.

2. Sin City: A Dame to Kill For (August 22)

It has been almost a decade since the last Sin City came out, yet time has not weakened my excitement for another installment. A Dame to Kill For looks like it will provide all of the red blood against a black and white backdrop that I need for the year. The last film left most of the characters in a state that you wouldn’t necessarily call alive, so A Dame to Kill For will have plenty of room for new characters (though Mickey Rourke and Bruce Willis are coming back), situations, and decapitated clergymen.

1. Guardians of the Galaxy (August 1)

I don’t know a thing about Guardians of the Galaxy. I have no idea why Vin Diesel is playing a tree or why Bradley Cooper is playing a raccoon with a gun and I don’t care because I am into it. Guardians of the Galaxy looks like a refreshing break from most of today’s self-serious comic book blockbusters. It embraces a funny and silly spirit that will hopefully make this summer less cynical. The Guardians of the Galaxy trailer itself is a master class in how to make a good trailer: it tells you exactly what you need to know about the plot (a rag-tag team must save the galaxy) without revealing anything major (who are they fighting against?). Plus, between this and The Lego Movie, it looks like Chris Pratt is about to become a household name. Burt Macklin would be proud.