(My Contributions to) The Dissolve's 50 Greatest Summer Blockbusters

Ricardo Montalban's Khan was Star Trek's greatest villain.

Nuclear Family: Eddie Furlong, Linda Hamilton, and Arnold Schwarzenegger fight the future in Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

Minority Report, Steven Spielberg's most Hitchcockian film, was all about not being able to trust what you were seeing.

It's only July 1, but thanks to the ever-accelerating start date of the summer movie season -- it kicked off the first weekend of April this year, when Captain America: The Winter Soldier came out -- summer movies are done. I still want to see Snowpiercer, which will roll out to Washington, DC this week, but the less-than-enthusiastic early notices from critics I respect has tempered my enthusiasm for that. There's no Dark Knight coming in two weeks. There's no Terminator 2: Judgment Day opening at midnight tomorrow night. Does that sadden me? It does, a little! Shut up.

Anyway, I was honored to be one of a dozen critics who determined -- through three rounds of voting -- the 50 Greatest Summer Blockbusters for The Dissolve. Numbers 50-31 were posted yesterday; 30-11 went up today. Tomorrow you'll all find out what we deemed the Top Ten.

I had the honor of writing the entires for three of my favorites: Steven Spielberg's Minority Report, from 2002, which placed 46th; Nic Meyer's Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, from 1982, which placed 37th; and at lucky no. 13, James Cameron's Terminator 2: Judgment Day, which is probably my personal all-time favorite summer movie. (I still love you, Jaws, but so does everyone else, and you arrived before I did. Whereas I had the experience of discovering T2's greatness at the same as the rest of the world.)

The process of choosing our 50 from the initial list of 655, I think it was, was fairly agonizing. Like any exercise is winnowing, it forces you to examine your priorities in art. I'll probably try to write about that this week. UPDATE: I did write about it.