On the screen this summer, everyone is a superhero. Just take a look at the nobodies who end up all-powerful and in costumes in Green Lantern (June 17) and Captain America (July 22). The women join in, too, like Harry's stalwart sidekick, Hermione, in Harry Potter and the Deadly Hallows, Part 2 (July 15). And if you want to include ruthless opportunism as a superheroic trait, then Cameron Diaz in the title role of Bad Teacher (June 24) would have to qualify, too.
But as the latter example suggests, such heroism can come at a price. Even when the goal is justice, the single-minded pursuit and wielding of power can push one over to the dark side. Not just in the movies, but in real life: just look at Charlie Sheen, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, and, of course, the original Conan the Barbarian, Arnold Schwarzenegger. This summer, could the superhero's mask conceal something unsavory — like the face of the beast unleashed in Rise of the Planet of the Apes?
Related:
Reivew: Resident Evil: Afterlife, This is the season for unexpected greatness, Review: Tyler Perry's Madea's Big Happy Family, More 
- Reivew: Resident Evil: Afterlife
Within the first 15 minutes of Resident Evil: Afterlife , an army of Milla Jovovich clones have ripped 500 bad guys to shreds and Tokyo has been reduced to a smoking crater. The action gets only more gonzo from there.
- This is the season for unexpected greatness
Say what you will about cruelest months, but spring is a time of hope. It's a time when the dead revive, appearances deceive, expectations are reversed, and secret identities are revealed.
- Review: Tyler Perry's Madea's Big Happy Family
It's that time of year again, when the daffodils spring up and Tyler Perry puts on a dress and becomes Madea.
- Review: Rubber
When a tire lifts itself from the desert sand of the West and rolls down the road to the sound of recorder music, it feels like one of those old Film Board of Canada shorts about the triumph of the spirit.
- Review: The Double Hour
Giuseppe Capotondi's unrelenting Italian thriller opens with a suicide witnessed only by meager hotel maid Sonia (Ksenia Rappoport).
- Review: Carancho
Pablo Trapero's soggy, misguided, derivative melodrama was, somehow, Argentina's Official Selection as Best Foreign Language Film for the Academy Awards.
- The Independent Film Festival Boston trends to greatness
If you had to find a common theme among the films in this year’s Independent Film Festival of Boston (recently honored in the Phoenix Best of Boston Poll as the Best Film Festival), you might say that there are a number of deranged old coots who turn out to be possessed by genius, as in Last Days Here and Heaven + Earth + Joe Davis
- Review: 13 Assassins
A prolific director of extreme films, Takeshi Miike (Ichi the Killer) sets his latest in the waning days of feudal Japan's samurai era.
- Review: The Beaver
In January, Summit Entertainment released the trailer for the Jodie Foster film The Beaver, in which Mel Gibson finds a raggedy beaver puppet in a dumpster, begins speaking through it, and reconnects with his wife, Jodie Foster.
- Review: Fast Five
In the 10 years since the F&F franchise first fired up, it has regularly spun out retreads of its tired premise, pitting the righteous against the heavy with a backdrop of car boosting, drag racing, and bum cheeks hanging out of hot pants.
- Review: Queen to Play
A hotel maid, Hélène (Sandrine Bonnaire), in a French resort sees a glamorous foreigner (Jennifer Beals) playing chess one day, and she's determined to learn to play herself.
- Less
Topics:
Reviews
, Movies, Conan the Barbarian, reviews, More
, Movies, Conan the Barbarian, reviews, Green Lantern, Bad Teacher, summer11, Captain America the First Avenger, Cowboys and Aliens, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Less
