And it finally begins.  A quick rundown of the next several weeks, including the “name” movies that I have no particular interest in (cough, cough, “Sex and the City 2”, cough).  As always, a major release every Friday through late July (and in a couple of cases, two major releases in the same week).

May 14 – Robin Hood

May 21 – Shrek Forever After

May 28 – Prince of Persia: Sands of Time

June 4 – Get Him to the Greek & Marmaduke

June 11 – The A-Team

June 18 – Toy Story 3

June 25 – Grown Ups

July 2– The Twilight Saga: Eclipse

July 9 – Predators

July 16 – Inception & The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

July 23 – Salt

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One more week before the Summer Blockbuster season kicks off with a sonic boom in the form of Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man.

In the meantime, there is absolutely nothing coming out this week that would even be worth a bargain matinee.

Mini Review – Brothers

This rates as another movie that I regret not getting to the theater to see when it was first released.  It is a hard movie to watch, with very raw and emotionally draining scenes, but it is still an amazing little film.

Tobey Maguire stars as Marine Captain Sam Cahill.  As the movie starts, he is about to be deployed from his base in Minnesota for another tour in Afghanistan, something that unsettles his wife Grace (Natalie Portman) and the eldest of his two young daughters.

Adding tension to the situation is the release from prison of Sam’s younger brother Tommy (Jake Gyllenhaal).  Tommy had always been the wild child growing up, rebelling against his strict Marine sergeant father (Sam Shepard) and his “perfect” big brother.  Now free after spending three years for robbing a bank, Tommy is ruining Sam’s last few days at home by his actions, and the re-actions of their father.

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A day late and a dollar short, is the old expression.  Well, this column is a day late as my normal routine was thrown off due to a business trip that saw me getting back home just in time to watch Game 5 of the Cavaliers-Bulls series.  And if you think I was missing that to watch this tripe…you’ve got a worse drinking problem then I do.

But this series isn’t a “dollar short”.  It just doesn’t have any cents/sense.

Thank you.  I’ll be here all week.  Try the veal.

So this begins the six episodes that were filmed after taking a break for Kiefer Sutherland’s surgery.  Hopefully during the break, the writers all underwent surgeries, and their moronoscopies were all successful, and we can perhaps have a decent ending.

And perhaps that Powerball I purchased while getting enough beer to get me through this episode will win me $200 million.

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I must say that so far, 2010 has been a major disappointment at the theater.  So far, there has been only one movie released this year that I consider “good”, and that’s “Shutter Island”.  The rest have been OK at best (“Book of Eli”, “Green Zone”), and horrible at worst (“Clash of the Titans”).

I’d like to say that I think it will get better, but that would be lie.  I’m looking at the upcoming Summer Blockbusters, and it’s as lackluster of a season as I’ve seen since I started writing here.  When looking at the big movies coming out over the next four months, there are only three that truly interest me; “Iron Man 2”, which looks to be popcorn fun at its finest, “Robin Hood”, with Ridley Scott and Russell Crowe hopefully recapturing their magic from “Gladiator”, and “Inception”, another Christopher Nolan mind bender with Leonardo DiCaprio.  The rest?  Lame remakes, lame video game adaptations, and moronic comedies.

Mini Review – Pirate Radio

This will probably be the shortest mini-review in the brief history of this segment.

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