While the naysayers of Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D will point to its 1959 classic predecessor, the new film succeeds in nearly everything it attempts. The only real down side is the fact that never really aspires to be more than a fun 3D escapist romp. To be sure, Journey has at least two major hurdles to overcome: the first film which starred Pat Boone, and the novel by Jules Verne.

Like a lot of films that languished for years in development hell, Journey met with its own bumps and twists, but those two major obstacles would have to be dealt with. In what is a classic modern avoidance tactics, script writers Michael Weiss, Jennifer Flackett, and Mark Levin chose to simply bypass both by referring to a world of “Verneians,” where certain people believe that Verne wrote his book based on fact, not fiction. Although I’m tempted to find out if such a group of people really exists, it’s just not that interesting an idea to pursue, so I’ll just move on.

Such illustrates both the success and the flaws of the film. By not giving into the challenge of adapting a 19th century story to the 21st century, director Eric Brevig is able to work free of any imposing need to meet expectations. This is a good thing, since clearly expectations are not really that high to begin with. Journey is Brevig’s first film as director, and took the helm with more than two decades of experience as a visual effects supervisor of a wide range of films including effects-heavy films like Scrooged (1988), Total Recall (1990), Hook (1991), Peter Pan (2003), and The Day After Tomorrow (2004).

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Before I spend any significant time in pontificating on just how bad The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (hereafter Mummy 3) really is, I should confess that I have a certain amount of fanboy affection for Brendan Fraser. It’s hard for me to not like one of his films. Alas, in the case of Mummy 3, the film really borders on a level of asinine that makes for downright painful viewing. Even my fondness for Fraser’s presence on the big screen doesn’t save this atrocity from the depths of total celluloid depravity.

Director Rob Cohen takes over the reins from Stephen Sommers, who helmed the first two films. Cohen’s style of storytelling clearly wanted to capture some of the apparent nostalgia of the first two Mummy films. Only there’s one big problem – it’s only been seven years since the last one, and the first two films really weren’t all that great to begin with.

SPOILER WARNING: I’ve long had a personal policy of spoiler-free reviews, but I’ll have to make an exception in this case because it’s just THAT bad.

Try to imagine, if you can, a scene where massive, overly-animated Yeti pounce on the villains only to kick one of the poor heavies over a roof in an impromptu football field goal, with the obligatory referee’s hand sign. If you think such a scene is an exercise of brilliant humor, then there’s not really much hope for you—you’ll probably love this movie. The rest of us will roll our eyes nearly out of their sockets.

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When the closing credits rolled for The Dark Knight, I was left in stunned silence. In what is easily the best film of the year so far (and possibly one of the best in the last thirty years), director Christopher Nolan has delivered his shining star; a masterpiece that has set a new standard in crime dramas.

Oh, it’s a comic book adaptation? How I seem to forget that simple little thing. To be honest, it’s easy to forget that this complex, juicy, layered dissertation of the human condition is based on a nearly seventy-year-old hand-drawn character that first began in the half-toned pages of Detective Comics way back in November of 1939.

The Dark Knight, unlike Superman or Spider-Man 2 (which themselves were the best of their own genre), has completely emerged from not only from its paneled source material, but has soared into skyline of cinematic brilliance.

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The world that Hellboy II: The Golden Army (hereafter Hellboy 2) presents is one that is filled with images of the fantastic, the bizarre, and the mysterious. In this world, it’s the humans that are the outsiders, while the trolls, demons, and even the Angel of Death collaborate deliver a tale that’s part parable, part adventure, and part love story.

Hellboy and Hellboy 2 joins the long line of great films that were inspired by comic books, and is one of the few comic books that I never read during my collecting days. Perhaps this is a good thing, as the film is uncluttered by previous expectations of certain villains and characterizations that must be met. In my mind, Guillermo Del Toro, who wrote and directed this film, is free to tell whatever kind of story he can imagine.

While it’s not the masterpiece of Pan’s Labyrinth, Hellboy 2 is a deliberate fairy tale mixed in with a brilliant observation of the nature of man – as told though the eyes of monsters. No matter how strange the images on the image might be, the film is a probe of pinpoint accuracy of just what makes the hearts of men tick.

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In a summer where superheroes clearly have staked their territory, Hancock makes the biggest mess of all of them. The weird thing about this mess is that it’s what the film intended. Part superhero movie, part whacked-out theology, and part jerk-gets-redeemed story, Hancock has so many irons in the fire that the audience just doesn’t know what the hell is going on.

Director Peter Berg turns in a celluloid train wreck that’s filled with the overuse of the gutter version of “anus” to such an extent that it becomes a one-joke film. Okay, we get it. John Hancock (Will Smith) is a jerk. He’s the king of potholes, dodging airplanes, and sloshing around with a big bottle of booze. He’s homeless, and hates the world around him. Now, I don’t know if he’s a jerk because of these things, or that being a jerk led him to being homeless, but frankly, I wasn’t really compelled to care.

I don’t know what it is about today’s filmmakers that feel the necessity to drive in the obvious (that Hancock is a jerk) to the point where even a headache would be a relief. The fact that the first time we hear the word is from a small child is supposed to be funny, but again, it’s stating the obvious.

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