This is the summer of the "thirds" or in the case of Diehard I don't even know what number this one is.

Spiderman 3: I liked the film, my daughter who is generally my movie companion liked it much less. She is right that there is one too many villains, but overall I thought Toby McGuire played the daring webster with a deeper moral sense than previously. Harry was back and revealed as a much more sympathetic character than in the previous films. Kirsten Dunst got to scream a lot, which is about as deep as her acting talent goes anyway, at least IMO. In general, the film was the expected good vs. evil format, but with less simplistic divisions between the two. Each of us is a blend of the two, the film suggests, and which one will guide our lives is the issue.

Shrek 3: As usual, not too complicated and a nice show for the kids. Fiona plays a much more central role in this one, and the cat is back. Another one that got lackluster reviews and then surprised me by being better than its critics said it is. Of all the films I mention here, this one really is a kids' film, whereas Spiderman and Pirates are for the older set, especially the latter which is one that teenage girls will drool over.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End: This movie is a mess: the plot is torturous, the storyline is so tangled it feels like a labyrinth, and even some of the visuals defy belief in their improbability. And where did Calypso come from? Boy, were those folks having fun with that whirlpool and the tangled ships's masts. Oddly enough, I loved it in all its silliness. I mean how can you really hate a film with two of the most gorgeous men in the world, Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom, swashbuckling before your eyes? Keira Knightly was terrific in this film, and I was glad to see Geoffrey Rush back as Barbossa--he plays a pirate with a broad sense of farce that matches Depp's similar sense and together they just made me laugh all the way through. In fact, that was my final feeling about this film. It is simply hilarious despite all the messiness at its heart.

Waitree: Hmmm....this film was better than I expected it to be. A plot that centers on a woman in an abusince marriage who finds herself pregnant but has no money and no place to go is hardly original. And the other man in the waitress's life, her obstetrician, is very handsome but something of a slimebucket himself. But that seems to be the point of this film: no one fits into some tidy niche and happiness does not mean endless glee but being "happy enough." Her waitress pals (one of whom is played by the film's director who was later murdered in her Manhattan apartment) have their own flaws, but nothing terminally problematic, and Andy Griffith, whose friendship with the waitress (played by Keri Russell) is at the center of the film, is a cantankerous crank who owns the pie restaurant where she works. Ah, the pies--I had a little sense of Like Water for Chocolate or Chocolat in the conceit that women working with food can literally change the world. Russell's every emotion, whether of love, hate, desire, finds its way into a pie and when she plops one of these down in front of her miserable husband, the irony that is lost on him reverberates through an exchange in which he is oblivious to the joke. I thought the film was a bit trite in the depiction of a woman who takes one look at her infant daughter and suddenly can speak with honesty for the first time in her life, and the Disney collage at the end--well, the less said about that the better. See this for Andy Griffith if for nothing else. Nice summer fare.