Special: Summer Movie Awards

Well it's officially October so I think we can officially close off the summer movie season which begins May 1 and wraps up August 31. Looking at the box office numbers you can clearly see there were a lot of winners (Guardians Of The Galaxy, Transformers: Age Of Extinction) and a lot of losers (Sin City: A Dame To Kill For, A Million Ways To Die In The West) but I've put together my own awards ceremony to celebrate the summer movie season.

Most Successful Summer Movie: Guardians Of The Galaxy

Well another summer and another #1 hit for Marvel... Only no one expected this one. Guardians Of The Galaxy was considered a risk to every person that did not work for Marvel, working in house Marvel knew that it had a hit with James Gunn taking on this colourful collection of characters. It's earned nearly $650,000 worldwide and outgrossed Transformers 4 here in North America... Take that Michael Bay.

Honourable Mention: Transformers: Age Of Extinction - Transformers is over 1 Billion worldwide, but everyone saw that coming. The numbers are way lower here in North America and the rest of the world will soon realize these films have been declining in quality and the numbers will show.

Best Summer Sequel: How To Train Your Dragon 2

The original was a near perfect movie, the sequel improved on it. This was seen as a sure fire hit and a favourite among box office buffs to be the highest grossing movie of the summer, and although it seems unlikely it'll hit 200 million domestically, that by no means makes this movie a failure, the worldwide gross has been up and just like the original it will play well to the home video crowds.

Honourable Mention: X-Men: Days Of Future Past - In what seemed like a brilliant scheme to get movie-goers out to see the X-Men, Fox combined the casts of the original trilogy and first class to show us a post apocalyptic future that the only chance of survival would be to go back in time, shortly after First Class took place and put a stop to a series of events, It was a Top 5 movie at the box office and with most critics as well. You can write this off as a success.

Best Summer (Re)Launch: Guardians Of The Galaxy

Be prepared to have Guardians merchandise thrown at you in every possible direction. The movie has already spawned a sequel, which was announced after opening weekend numbers were in, a cartoon series and a crazy amount of toys and comics.

Honourable Mention: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Regardless of how you might feel about the film, it introduced the heroes in a half shell to a young wide-spread audience. It already has a successful TV series on Nick and as an old school fan, this movie wasn't as bad as everyone said it was.

Biggest Summer Disappointment: Lucy

This movie looked so great from the trailer but then you watched it and you thought to yourself "okay not as good as I would have thought... But not bad!" Then the ending came about and you retracted that statement. Lucy was always going to be a tough sell, but critics mostly liked it and it was a surprise hit taking in over 100 million domestically. But for me and everyone I spoke with that saw it, it lacked a lot, so all that potential was wasted.

Honourable Mention: Sin City: A Dame To Kill For - The opposite of Lucy here, I quite liked this movie, however critics were mixed and box office receipts might as well of been non-existent. Sin City deserved better.

Biggest Summer Surprise: Edge Of Tomorrow

I'd be lying if I said Edge Of Tomorrow was on my must see list upon it's release, it was a fringe movie for me then the reviews were spectacular so I decided I'd watch it, when I finally got around to it I was obviously surprised. It was action packed, it was a fresh outlook, which surprised me since well the trailer made it seem like The Source Code. Tom Cruise can still be an action star, and in a sci-fi movie no less, a genre that has really struggled to turn out hits.

Honourable Mention: Lucy - You just can't ignore those box office numbers...

Best Summer Thrill: The Purge: Anarchy

I could not peel my eyes away from the screen during The Purge: Anarchy, after watching I realized the movie had some flaws but I could not ignore the fact that I was enthralled with watching these 4 stories cross over with each other to become one story of how people deal with a 24 hour time period where all crime is legal including murder.

Honourable Mention: Edge Of Tomorrow - Damn you Tom Cruise, why can't you just kill those aliens on your first try.

Best Summer Laugh: 22 Jump Street

This was truly the summer of sequels, for me anyways... 6 out of 16 movies I have seen as of this writing were sequels. And most have been honoured already so let's go ahead and honour the funniest movie, also a sequel, 22 Jump Street. The sequel to 21 Jump Street starring Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum take them to college to stop a drug ring... Yup that's almost 21 Jump Street and this is almost as funny, but it still beat out the other comedies.

Honourable Mention: Neighbours - Remember that time you heard Seth Rogen was going to be a dad and living next to a frat house whose leader is Zac Efrom? Hilarious right? It was...

Best Summer Family Affair: How To Train Your Dragon 2

In case you haven't figured it out yet I really liked this movie.

Honourable mention: Maleficent - This was the role Angelina Jolie was born to play... And she played it Maleficently... I mean magnificently. This was a fun fantasy film for the whole family that took an old tale and gave it a whole new spin. It gives me lots of faith in Disney live-action reboots after I was scratching my head at Cinderella and Jungle Book movies forthcoming before seeing this.

Worst Summer Movie: Sex Tape

I literally just finished watching this movie... I planned to review it for this Sunday special, until I watched it and realized I wouldn't be able to say that much good stuff about it, which makes for a short review, so you get this award type post instead... Thanks a lot Sex Tape.

Honourable Mention: Lucy - For a bad movie, this sure has been mentioned a lot!

Best Summer Movie: How To Train Your Dragon 2

You guys are so smart for guessing this right!

Honourable Mention: X-Men: Days Of Future Past - This movie had a lot going for it, however it did not have an adorable animated dragon. Fox step up your game, that could've been the difference maker.

Monthly Movie Madness: June 2014

After a great May to kick off the Summer Movie Season we slow down a bit here in June but there is still some quality films hitting up your local multiplex.

5. Transformers: Age Of Extinction: Okay, I know I'm the number one supporter of franchise fatigue... Especially with the Transformers series. The first film was good, the second was a little worse and the third was downright annoying. Though even director Michael Bay must have realized this rebooting the franchise with a new star in Mark Wahlberg and the inclusion of the dinobots.

Synopsis: The Transformers film series continues with this fourth entry from director Michael Bay and executive producer Steven Spielberg. Mark Wahlberg and Jack Reynor star. Four years after the conclusion of Transformers: Dark of the Moon, a mechanic (Wahlberg) and his daughter discover a deactivated Optimus Prime. Meanwhile, a powerful, ingenious businessman and a group of scientists attempt to learn from past Transformer incursions and push the boundaries of technology beyond what they can control.

4. Snowpiercer: Chris Evans stars in the first English film from South Korean director Bong Joon-ho (The Host). The ratings are good as are the box office receipts as it's already earned more than 50 million in South Korea.

Synopsis: Based on the French graphic novel Le Transperceneige by Jacques Lob, Benjamin Legrand and Jean-Marc Rochette. When an experiment to counteract global warming causes an ice age that kills nearly all life on Earth, the only survivors are people travelling on a massive train called Snowpiercer. Powered by a perpetual-motion engine, it travels on a track that spans the globe. The inhabitants of the train soon find a class system installed, with the wealthy taking over the front of the train and the starving poor forced to live behind locked doors at the tail, where food is sometimes delivered to them in protein blocks by armed guards. The guards also periodically take some of their children. One of the leaders of the tail inhabitants, Curtis (Chris Evans), stages a revolt to unlock the doors dividing each car so they can get to where the elite live in luxury and take over.

3. Edge Of Tomorrow: Here's a movie that wasn't even on my radar. I like Cruise and Blunt but this looked like Oblivion meets The Source Code. Two movies I thought missed the mark. But the early reviews (88% on RT) are amazing so it climbed up to number 3 on my list.

Synopsis: The epic action of "Edge of Tomorrow" unfolds in a near future in which an alien race has hit the Earth in an unrelenting assault, unbeatable by any military unit in the world. Major William Cage (Tom Cruise) is an officer who has never seen a day of combat when he is unceremoniously dropped into what amounts to a suicide mission. Killed within minutes, Cage now finds himself inexplicably thrown into a time loop-forcing him to live out the same brutal combat over and over, fighting and dying again...and again. But with each battle, Cage becomes able to engage the adversaries with increasing skill, alongside Special Forces warrior Rita Vrataski (Emily Blunt). And, as Cage and Rita take the fight to the aliens, each repeated encounter gets them one step closer to defeating the enemy.

2. 22 Jump Street: Deuces are wild here as 22 lands at 2 for my most anticipated movies coming in June. In a month lacking comedy and movies aimed at females (Fault In Our Stars excluded) 22 Jump Street is going to have big numbers as both Hill (Coming off Wolf Of Wall Street) and Tatum (Coming off The Lego Movie) are having big years thus far and it's about to get 22 times better.

Synopsis: After making their way through high school (twice), big changes are in store for officers Schmidt (Jonah Hill) and Jenko (Channing Tatum) when they go deep undercover at a local college. But when Jenko meets a kindred spirit on the football team, and Schmidt infiltrates the bohemian art major scene, they begin to question their partnership. Now they don't have to just crack the case - they have to figure out if they can have a mature relationship. If these two overgrown adolescents can grow from freshmen into real men, college might be the best thing that ever happened to them.

1. How To Train Your Dragon 2: Like I wasn't going to put this at number 1? The two headed monster of How To Train Your Dragon 2 and 22 Jump Street open the same weekend and don't be surprised if it's the biggest weekend of the year. But if I could only pick one I know which I'm going to see.

Synopsis: DreamWorks Animation returns to the world of dragons and Vikings in this sequel to their successful 2010 outing How to Train Your Dragon. The original film followed the exploits of a Viking chief's son, who must capture a dragon in order to mark his passage into manhood and prove his worthiness to the tribe. It's been five years since Hiccup and Toothless have made peace with the dragons and the Vikings of Berk. During one of the adventures of Hiccup and Toothless, they come across an ice cave that serves as a haven for the dragons and Hiccup's long-lost mother Valka. Hiccup and Toothless are then dragged into a battle when the dragon hunter Drago Bludvist plans to build a dragon army to take over the world.