Summer In The City! Summer Wars Starts Today!

Summer Wars -- a film by Japanese director Mamoru Hosoda -- has been getting rave reviews from audiences around the world. It's played in film festivals throughout the USA. It's been shown in NYC a dozen times, too. And it keeps coming back. Why? It's awesome. It's neon. It's heartwarming. It's got a karate-chopping jackrabbit. FUNimation picked up the film and will be releasing it on DVD later this year, but, if you haven't seen it yet, don't wait. And if you have seen it before, see it again. IFC Center is presenting Summer Wars today through January 4.

Officially, this is what the film's about...

Teenage math prodigy Kenji stumbles upon the virtual world of Oz -- a hallucinatory pixel parade of cool avatars, kung fu jackrabbits, toothy bears and a bursting rainbow of colors -- that secretly regulates everything from online shopping and traffic control to national defense and nuclear launch codes. But when a devious AI program starts hijacking Oz accounts, sowing chaos and threatening real-life destruction in its wake, Kenji and his friends must prepare for a sci-fi showdown.

Really, though, you need to see the thing in action to get it.  It's good.  It's very good.  And it's not so much about Oz or any of that.  Rather, it's about the dysfunctional family outside the game that has to come together.  It does, though, share a few similar beats with the Digimon movie (Digimon 02: Bokura No War Game to be precise).  Director Mamoru Hosoda was behind both Summer Wars and the Digimon flick, and methinks he lifted a few of his favorite plot points from his old Digimon yarn for this.  It's not a knock against the film, instead another point which gives it more geek cred.

Spend two hours of New Year's weekend dreaming of summer, and keep your eyes on a few other nerdy flicks playing in NYC in January.  Evangelion 2.0, Pi, The Thing, Indiana Jones, Scott Pilgrim, Ghostbusters, Postman Blues, Dangan Runner, and Rear Window are just a few of the flicks coming to New York City very soon.  Oh, Darren Aronofsky will be in town, too.  For details, hit up nerdyorkcity.com.