So here we are, smack bang in the middle of the Hollywood summer film selection, and already the taste is slightly bitter.
While we anticipated the latest Indiana Jones flick for nearly 17 years – our hysterical nostalgia wasn’t enough to carry the film to the shores of credibility, no matter how hard we tried. It was an enjoyable roller-coaster, but the lack of that quality we have grown to know and love in Indy flicks has left an odd taste to finish off a delicious series.
Sex and the City should be fun – but at the end of the day, it’s an extra long episode of a TV show that has been running for nearly 10 years. It’s less an exciting new movie premise and rather a dry, safe recommendation from the accounts department.
The occasional spatterings of your Forgetting Sarah Marshall provide the brilliance that give a minute balancing point for the genericide of romcoms like What Happens In Vegas and overblown, forgettable, CGI-heavy “Chronicles Of Something Or Other”.
And then there are the re-makes. And what happens once all the TV shows, comic book characters and good old movies have already been remade?
They get remade again!
In 2003, Ang Lee gave us the utterly forgettable Hulk, starring Eric Bana (who pocketed a hefty sum, but with a blemished career.)
Then, in 2008, only five years later, the Incredible Hulk will hit our screens. It’s uncertain exactly what it proposes to deliver that will differentiate itself from the first version, but we are promised that it is incredible. Perhaps the most incredible thing about the film will be working out exactly why Edward Norton signed up for it.
Following the Incredible Hulk is the highly anticipated swan song from Aussie actor Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight, which promises to deliver the goods. However, it’s hard to see past the fact that the original Batman series was stretched from 1989 to 1997 over four movies and - in post-millennia - we are simply telling the same tale again.
But the jewel in the sour crown is without a doubt the travesty of the flashing, garish Speed Racer. It’s a good film for the kids, only just, but for a brilliant team of directors that gave us the ground breaking Matrix and later the compelling V For Vendetta, it’s utterly head scratching.
Hopefully, with such a patchy selection of mainstream fare on offer, our attention will become diverted from the over-the-top superhero flicks and remakes of TV shows long forgotten, and go to the diverse selection of films available at the Sydney Film Festival, which kicked off this week.
It’s not always a safe bet – let’s be honest - but there’s potential to find some absolute gems.
Over 117 feature films, 55 documentaries and 45 short films are on offer and while many will not have high budgets or brilliant special effects, there is always a feast of intimate and interesting stories – many which give insights into cultures we don’t normally encounter.
So if your local multiplex is leaving a sour taste in your mouth, it might be time to get down to the Sydney Festival smorgasbord and get a taste of something different.
