The reviews for the first big summertime movie blockbuster, Van Helsing, are in and it’s not looking good for Universal Pictures.
The range of reviewer criticism available at Rotten Tomatoes — where the film receives a 4.2 rating on a scale of one to ten, with 96 out of 123 critics conferring the film with ‘rotten’ status — include derisive commentary from Owen Gleiberman at Entertainment Weekly, “a long, kinetic, yet dreary mess” to James Berardinelli’s “the worst would-be summer blockbuster since Battlefield Earth.”
VanRamblings found the $145 million Van Helsing to be little more than a Grade-B Saturday afternoon monster flick, a silly-verging-on-stupid waste of time, money and resources, and utterly forgettable movie fare. Here’s hoping that Troy has more to offer.

Yes, it’s that time of year again, when Hollywood brings out the heavy artillery, and sets about to release their sure-to-be-blockbuster slate of summer movie eye-candy.
Perhaps, the most anticipated film of the summer movie season is Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man 2, due June 30, just in time for the long holiday weekend. Sony’s Columbia-Tri Star has just released a new, longer trailer for the film. If you’ve got Quicktime Pro, you can save the trailer to your hard drive, by clicking on the down arrow at the bottom right on the screen (once the trailer has finished), and clicking on ‘Save as Quicktime Movie’. Possibly, reason enough to purchase Quicktime 6.5?
In respect of trailers (which is to say, previews) for the remaining upcoming summer-movie releases, of course you can always go to apple.com/trailers, and click on any one of the upcoming previews for films about to be released. We’ll save you a bit of time and trouble, though, by linking to the films that VanRamblings is most looking forward to summer 2004.
Coming up May 7th, the summer’s first blockbuster, Universal’s Van Helsing, which will be followed by Wolfgang Peterson’s Warner Bros. film release Troy (May 14). Pretty much everyone, one would think, is looking forward to the release of Dreamworks’ Shrek 2 (May 21). On a lighter and slighter note, there’s Touchstone’s Raising Helen (May 26), followed by one of the most anticipated films of the summer movie season, Roland Emmerich’s 20th-Century Fox release of The Day After Tomorrow (May 28).
June sees the release of the latest instalment of the J.K. Rowling series, Warner Bros’ Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (June 4); the filmed-in-Vancouver Universal film The Chronicles of Riddick, and Paramount’s The Stepford Wives (both June 11); Steven Spielberg’s The Terminal (June 18); and MGM’s Cole Porter biopic, De-Lovely (June 25).
In the second half of the summer, VanRamblings will set aside monies to gain entrance to Fox Searchlight’s The Clearing (July 2); Touchstone Pictures’ King Arthur (July 7); the Will Ferrell comedy, Anchorman (July 9); Will Smith’s filmed-in-Vancouver I, Robot (July 16); Matt Damon, back in The Bourne Supremacy; M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village (July 30); Michael Mann’s Collateral, (August 6); and 20th Century Fox’s Alien vs. Predator (August 13), among a host of others.
As more movie previews are made available, links to the trailers will be posted on VanRamblings.

The Chicago Sun-Times’ Roger Ebert may feel that The Girl Next Door “is a dishonest, quease-inducing ‘comedy’ that had me feeling uneasy and then unclean,” but VanRamblings tends to fall more into the camp of New York Daily News’ Jami Bernard, when she writes: “Once in a very long while, a truly memorable romantic teen comedy comes along. The Girl Next Door is one. This funny, surprising gem joins the ranks of Risky Business and Say Anything, comedies with heart and charisma.”
See for yourself, by taking a peek at this R-rated, uncut version of the movie trailer — get it while you can, cuz it’ll probably be taken down quite soon (you may want to raise the size of the screen by ‘pulling out’ the bottom right-hand corner of your Windows Media Player).
Meanwhile, if The Girl Next Door isn’t quite your cup of tea, take a peek at the A-list movie previews for the summer movie season (just above).

From today’s London Daily Telegraph, a story by Elizabeth Day: Films containing explicit sex or nudity do much worse at the box office, earning nearly 40 per cent less on average than more wholesome movies.
An analysis of 1120 cinematic releases over the past four years has shown that films without sex scenes, such as Disney’s Finding Nemo or Toy Story 2, earned an average of $41.1 million (all figures in U.S. currency), while films with sex have grossed 38 per cent less with an average of $16.7 million.

Continue reading No sex – we’re movie goers →