Summer Lovin' at the Movies

The looming red figures swinging from movie multiplexes and crouched on the sides of buildings, the consumer product tie-ins and the clever slogans paid off: This year's first summer blockbuster opened to the tune of $114 million in box office sales. As to the movie, most of the best parts of Spider-Man are the parts with Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst cooing. The special effects, despite their dazzling perfection, come off a little too shiny. The irony hangs around us like a sagging web: a $139 million budget, miles of latex and endless man-hours of computer animation -- and the best moments still come from good ol' human chemistry.

The bar continues to rise on the stratospheric expectations for summer movies. Blockbusters have become economic powerhouses with budgets the size of small countries (Spidey's was almost three times U.S. aid to El Salvador since 1999, just for perspective). The Los Angeles Times reports that the studios are "engaged in a checkbook war to manufacture successors to such aging action heroes as Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sylvester Stallone and Bruce Willis." New action stars don't even have to slog their way up from "Conan the Barbarian," anymore. Now, they're plucked straight from the WWF (cf. The Rock) or wherever and hyped directly into $10 million-a-movie stardom. Every year, it seems like the hype has reached its apex, and every year, it escalates.

Faced with all of this, we movie-goers have a dilemma: Can we indulge our summer movie craving -- our jones for action, fluff, schmaltz and star-power, a desire as deep as that for fake butter -- without feeling that some part of our soul has been pre-packaged, franchised and sold?

The answer is no. But if you're anything like the rest of us, chances are you'll go see at least one or two of this summer's releases anyway. With summer movies, it's sometimes useful to think of them not in terms of what will be good, but what kind of emotional reaction they are likely to provoke. Are you in the mood to laugh, cry, or have your fight-or-flight instinct triggered?

(Disclaimer: only hopelessly compromised Hollywood insiders get invited to preview screenings. It's not as if the author has actually seen these movies.)

A MOVIE THAT MAY INCREASE YOUR CHANCES OF GETTING NOOKIE

Secretary (James Spader, Maggie Gyllenhal, opens August 9) seems like summer's most promising date-movie. Remember James Spader? Think feathered hair and unctuous demeanor. He broke the evil yuppie mold in the John Hughes teen flick, "Pretty in Pink." A card-carrying member of the Brat Pack, Spader got a bit stuck in the slimy rich kid rut until "Sex, Lies and Videotape." With that 1989 homage to the psychosexual, writer-director Steven Soderbergh and Spader managed to make strange sexual neuroses seem ... pretty hot. Now Spader stars in what is supposed to be a romantic comedy with an S&M twist. Bondage, dominance and a hot, evil yuppie. How can you resist?

A MOVIE THAT WILL MAKE YOU THINK ABOUT NOOKIE IN NEW WAYS

Speaking of Soderbergh, the director's latest, Full Frontal (Julia Roberts, Blair Underwood, opens August 2) is being billed as a "sequel-in-spirit" to none other than Sex, Lies and Videotape. An actor falls in love with a magazine writer, digital cameras get involved, mind games ensue. Despite the bloated "Ocean's Eleven," Soderbergh is a real storyteller, and it's exciting to have him working his magic in a quick, low-budget labor of kinky love. If he can pull off some of the alchemy that once managed to make Andie MacDowell seem less than annoying (in Sex, Lies), then Full Frontal should be truly sexy.

MOVIES THAT WILL GIVE YOU A KICKASS ADRENALINE RUSH

Action movies are not films. They are nighttime alternatives to amusement parks. As with roller coasters, we overdose on sugar and salt, the rush leaves us slightly nauseous and head-achey, and we don't pretend to have had an enriching cultural experience. The ability to appreciate Jean-Pierre Jeunet or Akira Kurosawa is not mutually exclusive with a love of action movies.