Props to Summit, Sunswept, and Temple Hill entertainment companies for giving the Twilight audience exactly what they want. I mean, the way they hit their target audience is genius. I’m not going to argue that it’s not a good move for everyone involved either, including Stephanie Meyer who is making a fortune off her books. It’s just that guys who liked films this summer like G.I. Joe, Star Trek, Transformers 2, and folks who dig films like Public Enemies, and sure-to-be-nominated Oscar films like Nine, The Hurt Locker, Up In The Air, Precious, or Invictus, will be bored out of their skulls. But the girls will love it. New Moon and the Twilight Saga puts a whole new spin on the film-for-women genre term know as “chick flicks.”

The Fourth Kind is an alien abduction film that gets its ideas more from Communion (1989) and The Blair Witch Project (1999) than the actual archived recordings it pretends to deliver, and feels and looks like a student film full of a good ten minute idea stretched with poor execution to an embarrassing ninety minutes. With more senseless filler than a “fixed” Atlanta pot hole, the only thing getting abducted in The Fourth Kind is your money.

Bet you didn’t know 99x is currently featured in one of the best films of the year. It’s Zombieland, and if you look in the bottom left hand corner of the screen about fifteen minutes in you’ll see a highway littered with cars, one of which features a huge square 99x sticker on the right lower corner of a red SUV window. It happens just as our heroes Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) and Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) stop to look for Twinkies in post-madcow-turned-zombie-virus America. You can’t miss it. And Zombieland, whether you like horror films or not is a film not to be missed. Filmed right here in Georgia using Georgia crew and equipment. You might even see a friend or two zombieing it up on West Paces or down there in Valdosta or Rutledge. It is one of my favorite films of the year and I place it in my top ten of 2009. Scary as that seems. Speaking of scary, other than The Rocky Horror Picture Show playing since 1975 (midnight Fridays at The Plaza) here’s a list of horror films still in theaters. Catch them while you can. Before they catch you.

Hilarious send-up of 70’s Blaxploitation films written, produced by and starring Michael Jai White (Spawn (1997), The Dark Knight (2008)) as the heroic, almost comic book superman protector and occasional stand-in pimp of his Nixon-era community. It might appear to be just another spoof but upon close inspection you’ll find it’s a work of art as the recreated clichés of 70’s micro-budget filmmaking give White an excuse to neo-stylize from within the context of the genre. Like the Italians did with realism after World War II, White in trying to find comedy in the techniques of the past invigorates film structure and style better than the best of current Hollywood. And it’s all disguised with humor.

Finally one of those lost in the season by-the-numbers studio films worth seeing. Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler teach and learn their own lessons the hard way in Law Abiding Citizen. Both play workaholic characters living in the city of brotherly love who fight to earn each other’s respect, and mine by story’s end, with a smart exit by these characters like we haven’t seen since Sylvester Stallone’s Nighthawks (1981) or Charles Bronson’s Once Upon A Time in The West (1968). Maybe not as great as West (which wasn’t really a studio film) but Jamie Foxx continues to prove he’s a real star. And everyone knows you can’t be a star without star support. I’d say the script does its part but it is actor turned producer Butler who shines that light.

The following are nine genre films indicative of fall’s most notorious characteristic, early darkness. Who says you can’t have fun in the dark.

1. Zombieland
Release Date: October 2nd
Director: Ruben Fleischer (dir. of Jimmy Kimmel live; prod. for MTV’s Rob and Big)
Starring: Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg (The Squid and the Whale, Adventureland)
Story: Fun comedy Zombie film about Man and Young Man bonding over burnt Zombie; feels like Shaun of the Dead at Disney World with a modern family twist.

If you like your sci-fi in your horror and your horror in your sci-fi, Pandorum is your film. Psychological thriller? Alien film? I can’t tell you. All I can say is there has been relatively little advertising of this film through regular channels. So if you’re looking for a film that’s one of the best of the summer run-off, or I guess part of an early, early fall kick-off, and sneaking up on us under the radar, this ship-stuck-in space film with lots of darkness and evil lurking around every corner is just for you. Before you spend $10 on the highly publicized and glossy Hollywood big-pic Surrogates, think about this film first. You won’t be disappointed.

I think the exclamation mark mirrors the soundtrack more so than the film, though this punctuation is probably part of director Steven Soderbergh’s humorous tongue in cheek remark on 90’s forced corporate enthusiasm, pre-Enron-like shenanigans and one man’s dynamic attempt to become a whistleblowing hero even if heroism is only in his comic book mind. The Informant! is one of the best films of the year in terms of film as art, or in terms of pushing the proverbial envelope on the imaginative use of film elements. In this case screenplay, acting, and directing.

What? You mean this isn’t a remake of the Kurt Russell, John Carpenter remake of The Thing from 1982 like the trailers sell it to be? And Kate Beckinsale isn’t playing the Kurt Russell part? What a rip off. I feel so totally deceived. And even more so after seeing Beckinsale’s extremely poor performance. How embarrassing. It’s a murder mystery at a science research outpost in Antarctica, and as the film lets us know Antarctica “is the coldest, most isolated place on Earth. ” Really? I didn’t know that about Antarctica.

It was a late prescreening, around 9:30PM which is unusual for this kind of thing. But perfect for the kind of crowd that rolled in: talking to the screen, laughing louder than usual, screaming in the dark. It’s what a movie like this needs to succeed at the theater because other than scantily clad college girls being off’d one at a time by a Scream-like hooded killer, there’s nothing much else to be anxious about here. No thrill ride, I guess depending on who you are; just the entertainment of Jerry Springer show-like reactions from the crowd.

Nine Bullets in a Clip:

1. For the casting and directing alone of German actor Christoph Waltz and what the actor does with Quentin Tarantino’s character of Hans Lander, it is a single performance like none other that makes Inglorious Basterds, in my opinion, one of the greatest films of all time.

District 9 is a Sci-Fi film on par with anything Hollywood has done. Solely a South African production, with Peter Jackson’s backing and probably his computer graphics people from New Zealand involved, it is an alien film similar to Alien Nation (1988), with remnants of James Cameron’s Terminator (1984) and John Carpenter’s The Thing (1982), and at times Carpenter’s They Live (1988). It has that sort of B film on the cusp of something great feel to it. Or should I say, like some of those successful Science Fiction B films on the edge there is always a great film there that stays true to its context so much so they usually shy away from sound tracks by popular artists, or those tie-ins with fast food chains (partly because of budget, mostly to retain the persona of reality). District 9 is one of those films that won’t have mass appeal like Independence Day or Armageddon, or Transformers; no real stars or sports illustrated swimsuit girls to exploit. Just solid craftsmanship to hide the fact that none of what you see is real. Or is it? Science fiction, good or bad, is usually coded with social and philosophical commentary. And director Neill Blomkamp does a fantastic job with all of that.

One of the best of the summer line-up thus far. I’d say better than Star Trek. And you don’t have to know who these guys are in the G.I. Joe scheme of things. It’s all laid out for you here, in very simple terms with deceptively savvy direction and writing to kind of string you along. But of course if you’re a fan of the 12” figures from the 60s, or the animated series from the 80s I think you’ll be surprisingly satisfied. Of course nothing is as good as your twelve-year-old imagination might have made the Joe adventures out to be.

I’m biased when it comes to Judd Apatow films. I think the guy and his band of genitalia-joking, go-for-the-broad-stroke-joke-every-time characters can do no wrong. Provided Apatow writes in the charming disposition of the lovable average guy who’s just trying to make a living and stay afloat but keeps getting caught in the awkward moment, like in Knocked Up, or in 40-Year-Old Virgin, or like the high-school boys of Freaks and Geeks; always the little guy overcoming figurative sand in his face to succeed in getting the girl. Funny People loses a little of that charm, though it keeps up with the Apatow brand of humor just fine. For the first forty-five minutes that is. The last hour and forty-five minutes though had me squirming because it was so darn long, with no resolution in sight and an ending that just left me worried for the future of Apatow films.

It takes huge kugeln to make a movie like Bruno, as an actor and creator after following the success of Borat. Bruno is really Borat part zwei – more of the same social and cultural commentary, hidden in the seemingly naïve exploration of America and, this time out, a few hot spots around the globe. The film is at its best when it’s remarking on relationships as volatile as the one between Israelis and Palestinians, and when Bruno explores the deep rooted beliefs of America’s South. But it fails in its attempt to create a story because it doesn’t really need one. And therefore at times the gimmicks and shock attack on little America, while funny and periodically randomly fresh, feels heavy-handed and set-up more so than Borat.

The last hour of Public Enemies starring Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, Marion Cotillard and Billy Crudup is spectacular. It’s the kind of rich portrayal of characters and action you find in an Eastwood film around Oscar time, and artful enough in its photographic approach to be treated as such. With the kind of individual inner conflict that has even the strongest male personality in the film lighting his cigarette from the wrong end.

This film is prototypical big budget Summer blockbuster movie. If you like Michael Bay films such as Armageddon, The Rock, Bad Boys, or Con Air then you definitely need to see this Transformers film, and certainly the one before it. In fact, it’s the perfect movie for the Fourth of July weekend. It’s very patriotic incorporating the U.S. Military and a cavalcade of GM concept cars. Just like the first one.

And the $201 million box office take since its release on Wednesday the 24th is nothing to laugh at. It made $60.6 million in one day. But for deeper storylines and rich character development, you’ll be wise to go elsewhere.

Holding on strong at the box office with a huge take of $183.2 million, The Hangover released June 5th is proving to be the sleeper hit of the summer. And in my opinion it’s the funniest film of the year thus far.

The Hangover successfully incorporates the one major plot device of the bachelor party genre of films which is the “get the bachelor back in time for the wedding” strategy. Doing that in The Hangover is a tad bit more difficult though for Stu, Phil and Alex who wake up in Vegas post party with no memory of the night before, and worse, no bachelor.

And it gets increasingly more tricky as the boys piece together the previous evening using the only clues and items they have—a baby, a tiger, Mike Tyson, a stolen cop car, angry Asian gang members, and an impromptu wedding at The Best Little Chapel in Vegas.

The old Land of the Lost TV show that ran on TV from 1974 to 1976 liked to think it was eons ahead of its time, and it probably was in the mid 70’s. Not as far advanced for TV as Star Trek was in 1965. But the chroma key fake video background set they used on Land of the Lost worked well for the show. It was the claymation dinosaurs that really sucked.

But if you were ten-years-old in the 70’s you didn’t care. Alien lizard men called Sleestak, shhhleeshing their way around caves beneath the Lost City were enough to make you wonder what lurks in the dark. Because it was the spark of these things that set the imagination off. I wonder today if there’s any spark at all, if in trying to create that perfect reproduction of life in HD and digital video if we aren’t losing some cerebral spark.

An adventure film for the whole family. If crying is your adventure.

Like all Pixar events, the short pre-show Pixar-ette film Partly Cloudy puts you in the mood for the big film that follows. Only it’s not all “lose-yourself-in-the-humor-of-life-represented-in-animated-form” kind of escapism like Toy Story or The Incredibles. You could be the world’s most emotionless person and ten minutes into Up you’ll be drenched in tears. Which makes you wonder about the title.

But Up is how you’ll feel once the film is over. Because you will feel uplifted. If not for the shear fact you’ll be over your tears and up out of your seat for the staff to clean the theater. Which is just the way it is.