Peter Travers’ Summer Movie Report Card
Which summer movies scored at the box office and which ones disappeared after one weekend? Did action heroes or chick-flicks rule the summer? Look back at the best and worst of the season, from Inception and The Twilight Saga: Eclipse to Eat Pray Love and Iron Man 2.
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The Best: Movie of the Summer
Attention must be paid to Christopher Nolan's Inception, a film that dreams bigger than anything this summer.
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The Best: Animation
For animation, it's the Pixar magic of Toy Story 3.
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The Best: Family Drama
For family drama, it's a tie between Lisa Cholodenko's The Kids Are All Right (pictured), about growing up with lesbian parents, and Debra Granik's Winter's Bone, about growing up poor in the Ozarks.
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The Best: Comedy
For comedy, Cyrus — from Jay and Mark Duplass — shows how it's done by sucking every false sitcom note out of the triangle of mother-son-lover.
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The Best: Documentary
For documentary, Amir Bar-Lev's The Tillman Story (pictured) blasts a toxic relationship between heroism and politics. Add a gold star for Joan Rivers for Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work.
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Oscar Contenders
Could Joan Rivers (pictured) grab Oscar attention? I'm in her corner. But newcomer Jennifer Lawrence (Winter's Bone) and veteran Annette Bening (The Kids Are All Right) are stiff competition. Among the guys, there's no forgetting Robert Duvall as the hermit planning his own funeral in Get Low or Michael Douglas losing the battle against his worst instincts in A Solitary Man.
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Box-Office Winners Summer 2010: The Good
Box-office glory goes, with no argument from me, to Toy Story 3, with more than $400 million in the till since it opened in June. No objections either to the profits raked in by Inception, Iron Man 2, The Other Guys and Despicable Me.
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Box Office Winners Summer 2010: The Bad
Crap cashing in depresses me big-time. I mean you, The Twilight Saga: Eclipse ($300 million), The Karate Kid ($175 million), Grown Ups ($160 million) and The Last Airbender ($130 million).
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Disappointments of the Summer
Disappointment hurts. I had major expectations unfulfilled by Robin Hood, Prince of Persia, Get Him to the Greek, The A-Team and The Expendables.
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Box Office Losers
Flop sweat is all over The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Jonah Hex, Charlie St. Cloud and Step Up 3D. And Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz (Knight and Day) are in a tight race with Ashton Kutcher and Katherine Heigl (Killers) for no-chemistry couple of the summer.
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Attack of the Chick-Flicks
Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz (Knight and Day) are in a tight race with Ashton Kutcher and Katherine Heigl (Killers) for no-chemistry couple. But the stench of failure is strongest from what I call the attack of the chick-flick trilogy. I'm talking Sex and the City 2, a sequel that obliterates all the goodwill Carrie and the girls built up over 94 episodes on HBO. And despair is the only logical response to women who still proudly pay allegiance to Team Edward or Team Jacob after enduring The Twilight Saga: Eclipse. But for sheer, whining, flatlining ineptitude, Eat Pray Love earns the summer walk of shame. Julia Roberts has feelings, and they're not being met. We suffer for two hours. Eat pray puke.
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