Labor Day weekend is upon us, and as the recession grinds into its 16th year, who can afford a trip to the Hamptons, a hibachi or even a six-pack of cold ones? Movies remain the cheapest entertainment outside your door, and to accommodate cinemaniacs there are plenty of new releases and long-running flicks in the multiplexes and art houses. But which film to choose? Never fear, The Post’s Labor Day Movie Guide has anticipated your every possible query.
I can’t stand sissy movies. For breakfast, I ate a deer. That I killed myself. With my bare hands. Are there any decent action films for a gal like me?
You’re in luck! A couple of rip-roarers have come along at the end of the season. “The Expendables 2” features Sly Stallone, Jason Statham, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis shooting Albania to smithereens while trying to stop a ragged crew of serious villains from delivering a load of nuclear-grade plutonium. Sure, Stallone’s Madame Tussauds statue is a better actor, but Schwarzenegger and Willis seem to be having a good time, and Jean-Claude Van Damme makes an appropriately nasty bad guy.
On a slightly higher IQ plane (and by “slightly” I mean “vastly”) is “The Bourne Legacy,” in which potato-nosed tough guy Jeremy Renner tries to unlock a series of mysteries involving clandestine intelligence programs, lab-engineered super-killers and exactly what Matt Damon had on his schedule that was so much more interesting than this franchise. The action is pounding, the pace is frantic and there are no icky love scenes. By the time the movie ends, you’ll be dying to see it again, mainly to figure out what you just saw.
For a younger crowd, Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays a bike messenger on the run from a dirty cop in the fast-moving two-wheeled chase movie “Premium Rush.” He literally threw himself into the role, buying 31 stitches in the arm after crashing into a taxi during filming. The plot’s ridiculous, but at least it’s got some zippy chases. You can also catch Gordon-Levitt’s big secret in the thrilling epic “The Dark Knight Rises,” still playing in a lot of theaters. If you’ve seen all of Gordon-Levitt’s repertoire, there’s always the less-talented version of him: Shia LaBeouf, who stars as a moonshinin’, bootleggin’ hillbilly takin’ on vicious corrupt lawmen from 1931 Virginia in “Lawless,” which boasts as many bullets as dropped G’s.
I make it a rule never to do any thinking before September. Give me some cheap scares!
Without a doubt, August’s most frightening offering has been Zach Galifianakis’ mustache in “The Campaign,” but if it’s intentional horror you’re after, take your pic: There’s “The Awakening,” “The Apparition” and “The Possession.” The best-received of the three is “The Awakening,” a slightly arty period piece in which Rebecca Hall and Dominic West deal with ghostly sightings at a boarding school where a pupil has recently died. In “The Apparition,” “Twilight” star Ashley Greene plays half of a young couple who discover their house is harboring a mysterious spirit, and respond by hiring an experienced investigator of paranormal activity. Oh. My. God! That sounds so . . . much like 50 other horror movies released in the past 10 years. In “The Possession,” by contrast, a little girl (with parents played by Kyra Sedgwick and Jeffrey Dean Morgan) discovers spooky doings connected with a mystical Jewish antique box. Does it contain a terrifying spirit called a dybbuk who will take vengeance on any human in sight? Maybe. Or maybe it’ll just pop out and do corny impressions like the genie in “Aladdin.” I’m not telling.
Were there any comedies that were actually funny?
Slim pickings, my friend. “The Campaign” wasn’t, but there are at least some laughs in the action comedy “Hit & Run,” in which Dax Shepard plays a guy who emerges from the Witness Protection Program to flee a lawman (Tom Arnold) and a gangster (Bradley Cooper) he double-crossed.
Speak to me of the noble offerings at the art house.
The surprise hit of the summer is Wes Anderson’s gentle childhood fable “Moonrise Kingdom,” which opened before Memorial Day and is still charming audiences with its saga of a misunderstood boy and girl who run away together on summer vacation. Another crowd pleaser is “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” a stirring, surreal look at the lives of a penniless girl and her father in “the bathtub” the most destitute part of Louisiana. A much lighter offering is “Celeste and Jesse Forever,” in which Rashida Jones of “The Office” and Andy Samberg of “Saturday Night Live” try to subvert rom-com formulas. The documentary “Queen of Versailles” is a funny and alarming accidental primer on the financial crisis as lived by a couple attempting to build the largest home in the US during economic Armageddon. Not to be missed are “Robot and Frank,” a comedy about an old codger and his home health-care robot who decide to pull off the perfect caper, and the twisty “Compliance,” about a prank phone call gone wrong at a fast-food chicken joint — one of the more acclaimed movies of the summer.
What about kid movies?
No problem. The Tim Burton-ish horror-comedy “ParaNorman” proved to be one of the summer’s breeziest entertainments, and it charms adults, too. Disney’s warm-hearted small-town tearjerker “The Odd Life of Timothy Green” may appeal to sensitive older kids. “Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days,” the third in the popular series, is a hit with anarchic preteen boys. And in the category of weirdly psychedelic characters designed to warp the brains of kindergartners, the Teletubbies finally get some competition with “The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure,” featuring rounded blobs of fun named Goobie, Zoozie and Toofie who lose their magic balloons on the way to a birthday party in “Lovelylovelyville.” Somewhere Sid and Marty Krofft (“Banana Splits,” “H.R. Pufnstuf”) are complaining, “And they thought our stuff was trippy?”
Summer went by so fast! Is “Rock of Ages” still playing?
“Rock of Ages” opened on June 15 at 12:01 a.m. and closed around lunchtime the same day. In a one-line press release, New Line Cinema said, “Oops!”
kyle.smith@nypost.com