Welcome to the first edition of the Kick Ass Movie Podcast’s weekly top 5 lists, because the internet loves lists. This week we present the top 5 MVPs of the summer, the actors and directors who made this an awesome summer for movies.
5. Rachel Weisz
For being smart enough to stay away from the just insane stupidity that was The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. I’m sure she heard “Friendly Yetis” and said “no, thanks”.
4. Louis Letterier
Not only for directing the Transporter movies (which we’ll get to some time this season) but also for helping us all erase the horror of Ang Lee’s Hulk from our minds. Instead of a long, boring look into the uninteresting mind of Eric Bana and all his daddy issues (granted his daddy was Nick Nolte), we got a fast paced, action packed movie with an awesome cast including Ed Norton, Tim Roth and William Hurt. Also a bunch of great fan service and the second piece of the “Marvel movies are now connected” puzzle with a Tony Stark cameo.
3. Tom Cruise
Who knew that Tropic Thunder would make us go, “Man, Tom Cruise is fucking awesome!”? Tom plays Les Grossman, the evil producer of the ficitional Tropic Thunder who tempts people with cash and private jets and loves hip hop. You’d be hard pressed to steal the movie from a black faced Robert Downey Jr. but Cruise argueably does. This has to erase at least one of the batshit crazy things he’s done these last couple of years ,right?
2. Heath Ledger
I know, you were expecting him to be first, right? I’m not saying his performance as the Joker wasn’t amazing, it was and definitely warrants some oscar attention, it’s just number one had two awesome performances. Anyway, Ledger’s Joker makes Jack Nicholson look like some dude at a costume party while his gets the national guard called in and you think, “yeah, that’s a pretty appropriate response.” Ledger also adds so many creepy touches from the ambigous origins to the constant lip licking. Of course there’s also the pencil trick, the truck assault, the bank robbery and all the other plans and craziness that the Joker does and you have a villain that will go down in cinema history.
1. Robert Downey Jr.
Who else this summer went from “that guy” to “THE guy”? Downey Jr. had two fantastic roles this summer, as playboy industrialist turned superhero Tony Stark and Hollywood oscar whore/bad boy Kirk Lazarus in Tropic Thunder. In Iron Man he is the perfect embodiement of the comic character with his mix of humor and intellect and provided the perfect light ying to The Dark Knight’s well, dark, yang. With Iron Man 2, and the Avengers coming down the pipe we can expect a ton more Stark in the future. In Tropic Thunder he plays the ultimate method actor, one who is so method he can’t even fathom why he never breaks character. He steals the movie with great scenes like the “never go full retard” speech, the “Satan’s Alley” trailer and the end shoot-out where he pulls out two M-16s and looks like a black Raiden. If you add in the cameo in Hulk then it truly was the summer of Downey Jr.