With summer nearly out of the picture, it’s about time to bid farewell to another season – a season within a season, if you will, and a calculated attempt to say “season” six times in one paragraph. Summer is a season for movies. Like a multi-billion dollar poker game, there are plenty of flops, and viewers aren’t quite sure what the next hand will hold. This summer yielded a number of mediocre pairs, a couple of highly-anticipated box office aces, a good few flushes, and something about “Chimps in Space.” They’re now en route to DVD, ripe for the renting. Your Mountain Times staff would like to make a few suggestions. Season.

Frank Ruggiero: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

The original title was “Indiana Jones Tries to Get a Head.”

I like visiting old friends. We reminisce about the good ol’ days – like the time we thought our college apartment was haunted, or the midnight hike to the tomb of Moses Cone. Come to think of it, college was a lot like an episode of Scooby-Doo. But then there was that time we were stuck in an ancient Egyptian snake pit with only a few dying torches to protect us, narrowly escaped a Thuggee horde in a harrowing mine-cart chase, and battled Nazis atop a Turkish tank careening toward a daunting cliff, only to later drink from the Holy Grail.

Indiana Jones represents cinematic adventure in its prime, and having first seen these films when they were still fresh and not yet classics made them grow all the more endearing. Growing up in a decade of good cinema made for plenty of memories, making favorites seem almost like old friends, though our conversations were reasonably one-sided. Indiana Jones was no exception. Ever since Indy rode into the sunset in Last Crusade in 1989, whether or not he would return remained as questionable as producer George Lucas’s screenwriting abilities. But 19 years later, Harrison Ford donned the fedora, Steven Spielberg unfolded his director’s chair, and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was released.

Crystal Skull finds famed archaeologist and adventurer Indiana Jones butting heads with Soviet agents to find a fabled crystal skull, which is said to grant immeasurable powers to its keeper. Easily the weakest entry in the series, Crystal Skull features too much computer-generated imaging for comfort, a bizarre Tarzan sequence and confusingly tame screenwriting. However, it still manages to share a quality inherent in the original trilogy – fun. It’s obvious all involved had a heck of a good time making the movie, and that enjoyment is contagious. Seeing Crystal Skull was like revisiting old friends – they’ve changed a bit, and not necessarily for the better, but they’re still the same at heart. As far as enjoying the series goes, the first three are the main course. This is more like icing on the cake – an enjoyable but messy treat.

Cara Kelly: Wall-E

Domo arigato, Mr. Roboto.

For the sake of avoiding repetition (I would first and foremost recommend Sex and the City: The Movie), I will discuss my second favorite blockbuster of the summer, Wall-E. Forming an atypical tradition of nerdiness, my dad and I have ventured to the movie theater together to see the last dozen Pixar productions, laughing at the adult humor mixed in with childish prose and admiring the impressive feats of animation. Although I have greatly appreciated recent ventures, including Horton Hears a Who, Cars, and of course the Shrek trilogy, Wall-E proved to be the most creative and intellectually stimulating of the successful company thus far.

Set 702 years in the future, the film follows a small and outdated robot named Wall-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter – Earth-Class) and his pet cockroach M-O, both of whom the genius animators managed to make absolutely adorable, especially when M-O climbs in his Twinkie bed, a clever joke depicting the post-nuclear Holocaust condition of the environment in the movie. Now the only ones left on Earth, Wall-E is one of the robots who were charged with cleaning up the waste and filth left by a society of over-indulgent consumers. Humans left the planet for what was supposed to be a brief cruise through space, to return when life could again thrive on the Earth. Wall-E continues to compact the trash and stack it in neat buildings, picking through the garbage for interesting odds and ends that catch his eye. The first 40 minutes of the movie pass with no dialogue, symbolic of Charlie Chaplin’s silent films, the only exception being two songs from “Hello, Dolly!” which Wall-E found on VHS and plays repeatedly, pining for someone to hold hands with.

The movie pushes beyond the typical moral lessons that Disney movies try to instill in child viewers, conveying a message of warning for a society that is often too obsessed with consumption and shameless in its disregard for the environment. The extensive symbolism in the movie is incredible and far more frequent than any 10 year old, or even 22 year old, would ever guess to could be included in an animated classic.

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Jeff Eason: The Dark Knight Gets Smart in the Tropics

This summer was the Summer of Downey Jr.

It would be easy to say that The Dark Knight was my favorite movie of the summer. After all, it is the only one that I saw more than once. Fearsome, exciting and full of director Christopher Nolan’s trademark wicked wit, The Dark Knight is a worthy successor to Batman Begins, one of my favorite films of all time.

The summer movie that surprised me the most was probably Get Smart. I was no big fan of the original television series and was not sure if the new movie would add anything to its legacy. Anne Hathaway, Steve Carell and the rest of the cast did a marvelous job keeping the hilarity high while the plot moved along at a feverish pace. I’m hoping that Hathaway will continue to look for comedic scripts as she seems to have a real knack for humor.

The other action/comedy filmed that worked its magic on me this summer was Tropic Thunder. The idea of putting three egotistical actors (perfectly played by Jack Black, Ben Stiller and Robert Downey Jr.) in the middle of a war zone that they think is a movie set is pure genius, and the films within the films are as funny as the film itself.

Downey scored twice this summer with his major roles in the hits Tropic Thunder and Iron Man. As his character, Nick Lazarus, would say, “I’m the dude playing the dude disguised as another dude!”

Scott Nicholson: Borgnine’s Finest Hour

The Big Lebowski works for any situation.

Well, I am not sure I even watched a movie this summer. Let me think. Everything either seemed too big, too loud, too crowded, or featured Adam Sandler. No, wait, I watched about 49 seconds of Tropic Thunder before I left in horror and went down the hall to Pineapple Express, which I should have left in horror, but I was running out of hallway and I’d spent seven bucks. When a stoner movie jumps the roach in the second act, it’s not a pretty picture.

Fortunately, I watched a few good old movies. They call them “classics” for a reason (and the inane hype of marketing something as “an instant classic” is not a reason). I watched The Wild Bunch, a Sam Peckinpah Western that features Ernest Borgnine in his finest hour (he only had one). I also enjoyed Bridge to Terabithia, which isn’t really a classic but it was made by Disney, so that counts for something. I also watched House of Wax to understand the modern horror audience, but the only thing I learned was that Paris Hilton looks awesome with a steel pole through her head. I then watched a tiny bit of the “Making of House of Wax” DVD extras and learned it was a very loose remake (no Paris jokes here) of a 1953 movie that starred Vincent Price as a horribly disfigured sculptor in love – I would have 100 times rather have watched that one instead.

Wow. I guess I can’t recommend anything. I don’t even own a TV. Nothing to see here, folks. Roll credits and fade out.

Or watch “The Big Lebowski.” It works for any situation.