AUSTIN, Texas — We're at that point, the halfway one, at which reflection seems fitting. The summer's 50 percent done, meaning half of the summer movie season is over. Which also means that there are plenty of movies left to round out the summer slate.
So here it is, our midsummer report on the movies that are still worth catching and upcoming titles that sound promising and are arriving with buzz.
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Looking backward: Summer's best so far
'The Hurt Locker.' My favorite movie of the season is the one I keep telling people to see. It's a war movie shorn of message-mongering and an action movie stripped of hedonistic kablammy highs. It's about a crack bomb mechanic in Iraq — Jeremy Renner in a bristling star turn — who's so good at defusing bombs that he becomes a new kind of kick-butt hero for jaded times. While it's dead serious, this pressure-cooker of sometimes unbearable tension by director Kathryn Bigelow provides the stern visceral and aesthetic thrills of great art.
'Moon.' Sam Rockwell is stuck on the moon, and he's not delighted about it. Uh-oh. Wait. There are two Sam Rockwells. Wha? It's been a while since a meditative, truly adult sci-fi movie in the tradition of "2001: A Space Odyssey" and Andrei Tarkovsky's "Solaris" has come along. But this quietly unsettling and weirdly enthralling picture is redolent of both masterworks, on a smaller, more entertaining scale. To say much more is to spoil this remarkable little film's curious newness.
'Public Enemies.' Not as brilliant as I'd hoped, yet worth a look. Johnny Depp is celebrity '30s gangster John Dillinger, and he's got the look and cocky panache, if not the heat. In fact, the whole movie misses the crackle that director Michael Mann is so good at. Still, shot in ravishing high-definition that makes every image pop, and told with expert command, the movie, like, "Moon," is a quality genre picture for grown-ups.
'Food, Inc.' This acclaimed documentary, a chilling bit of muckraking, enlightens as it appalls. If you don't know many of the secrets lurking within America's corporate food industry, whose goal, it appears, is to create cheap, unhealthful food at any cost, then this smart treatise could make you lose your appetite.
'The Hangover.' One of the summer's genuine smashes. A pleasingly raunchy comedy that's often very funny, yet whose laughs don't merit the movie's jaw-dropping box office success. The Todd Phillips romp about four guys' crazy misadventures in Las Vegas was made for $34 million and has grossed $240 million in America, passing "Beverly Hills Cop" as the highest grossing R-rated comedy of all time, according to Variety. Mostly memorable for providing deadpan comedian Zach Galifianakis his breakout role.
Looking forward: Movies that could wrap the season with a bang
'Thirst.' This creepy vampire thriller from Chan-wook Park, the South Korean auteur of the brilliantly original crime dramas "Oldboy" and "Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance," won the Jury Prize at this year's Cannes Film Festival. I'm excited, and vampire movies usually repel me like so much garlic. (Aug. 14)
'Inglourious Basterds.' I have my doubts about this buzzed flick, another Quentin Tarantino project genuflecting to not-very-good B movies from the '70s. Yet the anti-Nazi war thriller might prove the summer's last essay at action bliss following the smothering horribleness of "Terminator Salvation" and "Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen." Of course, a Tarantino movie is never just about action. It's about rat-a-tat dialogue, outre characters, willfully outlandish violence and broad stabs at cleverness. It gets a special Austin premiere on Aug. 15 at the Alamo Ritz, before opening wide Aug. 21.
'The Cove.' Probably the feel-bad movie of the summer, this award-winning documentary plays like a high-stakes thriller, as a group of animal activists take stealthy, high-tech measures to uncover unspeakable dolphin abuse and murder in a far-flung Japanese village. (August)
'Shorts.' Robert Rodriguez, forever teeter-tottering between violent action flicks and candy-coated family movies, lands on the latter with this fantasy. All heck's unleashed when a magic, wish-granting rock lands in a spotless suburb. Children wreak harmless mayhem with their wishes, but it's the adults, naturally, who muck things up with their nefarious wishes. The comedy, starring James Spader and Leslie Mann, has a special premiere Aug. 16 at Austin's Paramount Theatre and opens Aug. 21.
'Soul Power.' Live, legendary performances by James Brown, Celia Cruz, Bill Withers, B.B. King, Miriam Makeba, the Spinners and others are the stars of this documentary about a three-day music festival in Zaire in 1974. It happened when Muhammad Ali and George Foreman met for the famous "Rumble in the Jungle," and the performances, wrote Charles Ealy of the Austin American-Statesman when the movie played South by Southwest this year, "are nothing less than amazing." (August)
'Humpday.' Lynn Shelton's small-scale comedy comes trailing a swath of exceptional reviews from the festival circuit, including Sundance and SXSW. It stars Joshua Leonard and Mark Duplass as best bros who partake in a most risque dare — to make a porno starring themselves. The film tries, and apparently, succeeds at flipping the bromance genre on its tired little head. (Late summer)
Chris Garcia writes for the Austin American-Statesman. E-mail: cgarcia(at)statesman.com.
