Rating:
Director: Jon Favreau
Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges

Despite high hopes for the Batman sequel, the Indiana Jones comeback and the new Hellboy, it would not be a bad summer at all if the early arriving Iron Man turns out to be the best action-adventure of the summer. Jon Favreau, who does not have this kind of action movie under his directorial belt, just knocks it out of the park here, taking a very good script and an excellent cast and making it all explode off the goddamn screen.

The film starts with the dry humor Robert Downey Jr. does so well, and then veers into intense, chaotic violence that should put to rest any fears over Favreau’s lack of experience directing an action film. He delivers one of the best superhero adaptations done in recent years, and in fact is arguably the single best. It lacks the two-halves-jammed-together-ness (one hour origin, one hour Willem Dafoe raving) of the otherwise delightful first Spider-Man and stands on its own better than the excellent Spider-Man 2. It’s way more fun, but equally well-acted, written and directed, than Batman Begins. It’s far less self-conscious than the X-Men movies, and doesn’t flat-out suck like every other superhero film of the last ten years (except maybe for the middling Fantastic Fours).

Rating:
Director: John Hurwitz, Hayden Schlossberg
Starring: John Cho, Kal Penn, Neil Patrick Harris, Rob Corddry

Did you see “Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle”? Did you like it? Then you’ll want to see this film. Written—and this time directed—by the pair that wrote the original, the sequel delivers everything the first film offered—stoner jokes, gross-out laughs, plays to racial stereotypes—that the first offered. Here, everything is, as the kids say, dialed up a notch, so fans with fond memories of the 2004 original will love the sequel. I saw the movie with someone who’d never seen the original, and he enjoyed it, too. You just have to have a taste for jokes about drugs, genitalia and bodily secretions.

Rating:
Director: Michael McCullers
Starring: Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Greg Kinear, Steve Martin, Sigourney Weaver

Tina Fey headlines an uneven but mostly enjoyable comedy with Baby Mama. Fey is likable everywoman, the normal, if awkward, center of a chaotic universe. That’s pretty much her gig on “30 Rock,” it was her personality on the “Saturday Night Live” news segments (where Baby Mama costar Amy Poehler was often her zanier co-anchor), and here she’s a sympathetic corporate executive trying to have a baby by surrogacy because she’s infertile. The issues of choosing single motherhood are not really dealt with, but it seems understandable to go it alone, since Fey is surrounded by people doing schtick.

Rating:
Director: Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Starring: Jason Segal, Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell

This is a much better film than it should be. It stars and is written by some minor actor on a minor sitcom, co-stars the most annoying girl on That Pretty Annoying 70s Sitcom, and is about young people dating. Honestly, why even try to make a good movie out of that? But hey, 20 years ago, it would’ve been written by Nora Ephron and have starred Meg Ryan, so let’s count our blessings.

(People rightfully say the Bush Era is a low point in American history, what with the stolen elections, the nine-eleven, the lying us into wars we can’t get out of, the secret prisons, suspension of habeas corpus, general erosion of civil rights, the Katrina disgrace … sure, points taken. But in these two presidential terms, Nora Ephron has only written one movie, Bewitched and no one even saw that. So don’t tell me it’s been all bad news. But I digress.)

Jason Segal has written a really appealing film.

Rating:
Director: Rob Minkoff
Starring: Jackie Chan, Jet Li, Michael Angarano

Last time you watched The Wizard of Oz, did you find yourself thinking, “What this movie needs is less singing and more people kicking each other in the head?” If so, Forbidden Kingdom is the answer to your rather disturbing prayers.