'Beasts' beats out 'Batman', 'Brave' in 'Current' summer film top 10

2 To Rome with Love (July 6)
Writ. and dir. Woody Allen; feat. Woody Allen, Judy Davis, Alec Baldwin, Roberto Benigni, Penélope Cruz, Jesse Eisenberg, Ellen Page, Greta Gerwig
He did London (Match Point), he did Barcelona (Vicky Cristina Barcelona), he did Paris (Midnight in Paris), and now Allen does Rome. A heavenly ensemble cast with a Cruz much more sane than in Barcelona, but even sexier.

1 Beasts of the Southern Wild (July 27)
Dir. Benh Zeitlin; feat. Quvenzhané Wallis, Dwight Henry, Levy Easterly
The big winner of the 2012 Sundance Film Festival (Grand Jury Prize and Best Cinematography), this is the first feature by Zeitlin, who cites John Cassavetes, Emir Kusturica, and Terrence Malick among his influences. Go figure. Set in Louisiana, Beasts is a visually stunning magic realist story shot in super 16mm and held together by a then-6-year-old force of nature named Quvenzhané Wallis. This is the movie of the summer.

Also opening:
The Watch (the new comedy by neighborhood watchers Ben Stiller and Vince Vaughn, July 27), Hope Springs (Tommy Lee Jones and Meryl Streep trying to restart the pilot light of their marriage, August 10), Ice Age: Continental Drift (things are moving fast, literally, for animals on an iceberg, July 3), and the biggest guilty pleasure of all: The Expendables 2, with every single bad motherfucker that ever appeared on screen in our generation (Schwarzenegger, Willis, Li, Norris, Stallone, Van Damme, Statham, and others, August 17). •

*In the original version, the actor portraying Hannibal Lecter was mistakenly identified as Anthony Perkins.

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