With the summer movie season coming to a close (and our hours returning to something akin to normal, thank goodness) I figured a nice bullet-point wrap up of the winners and losers of the summer movie season might be in order:

  • Clear winner: Batman.

There’s no doubting it now. It’s much more than Heath Ledger hysteria. It’s just a damn good movie, and it’s worth seeing more than once. It’s smart, edgy, challenging and exciting in a way that most typical comic book movies have missed. There’s no denying it: The Nolan brothers hit a grand slam.

  • Clear loser: Mike Myers, Eddie Murphy, Adam Sandler and other pre-Apatow comedies

If you hadn’t yet noticed, it’s a brand new world in the comedy genre. Judd Apatow and his cadre of talented “Freaks & Geeks” alums have changed comedy forever, and for the better. Sure “40 Year Old Virgin” started it, but hits like “Knocked Up,” “Juno,” and “Superbad” picked up the torch.

Now it’s all different, and it isn’t enough to get by on dick jokes and fart humor anymore. Now audiences want smart, clever comedies with interesting characters that they can relate to. Mike Myers miserable failure “The Love Guru” deservedly failed because it delivered none of the above. Likewise for Sandler’s entirely forgettable “Zohan” and Eddie Murphy’s “Meet Dave.” See, you didn’t remember those either did you?

They should have gone straight to DVD. Hopefully from now on, they will.

  • Winners: Robert Downey Jr. & Brendan Fraser

Here’s to a two-hit summer for both these guys. Downey had “Iron Man”, which was a wonderful comic book movie filled with humor, action and great characters… and he now has a hit with “Tropic Thunder”, the hilarious and well-paced satire about the movie business itself.

Fraser had less moving, but still entertaining films in “Journey to the center of the earth” which you should have seen in 3-D if you didn’t. In 3-D digital projection this is really something to see. In the coming years this will become commonplace and the gimmicy gags will get old fast. But this was a groundbreaking film, and it was great to watch. While the third installment of the Mummy franchise was forgettable, it’s still been a hit and delivers on what it intends to: a couple hours of chase scenes and stuff blowing up.

  • Loser: The Wachowski brothers, and Speed Racer

This thing was just bad. It was unwatchable. Eventually some clever director is going to put this kind of digital technology in filmmaking to fantastic use. But they’re going to need a script to do it, and this movie kind of forgot that.

  • Winner: Pixar

Nine in a row. Count em. Nine.

Wall-E was the best in years from Pixar, and proof that the Disney takeover isn’t about to ruin their creative energy. This thoughtful elegy to romantic old movies and Chaplin pictures had so little dialog no one thought it could hold the attention of adults, let alone children. It did both to great effect. In 20 years Wall-E will be in film schools.

  • Loser: Boring old romantic comedies, Winner: R rated comedies

Again, if you might have missed it the world changed. Formulaic old romantic comedies are done for. Audiences have gotten too sophisticated and we know the two leads are going to wind up together. We quit caring how. Films like “Made of Honor” and “What happens in Vegas” are no longer enough to get us into theatres.

Now we want something more clever. “Sex and the City” was a huge hit and proved once and for all that women deserve their own movies geared toward their tastes. Now if only we can work on improving their quality. While we’re at it, can we please get some more films directed at minority audiences. Tyler Perry has already made enough money to fill up three banks. What is it going to take to get Hollywood to realize people other than white men and teenagers like going to the cinema?

Now, movies like the entertaining buddy comedy “Pineapple Express” and the raunchy “Step Brothers” are proving that an R rating is no longer the death knell for a film. Few things could be better for movie goers.

So there we have it. I know I left a lot of things out. George Lucas wins with Indiana Jones, but loses badly with “Star Wars: The Clone Wars.” The second “Chronicles of Narnia” movie could have done better at the box office. “Kung Fu Panda” was a clear winner, but now we all dread a dozen Dreamworks sequels in the “Shrek” template. “Mirrors,” “The Happening,” “Hancock” and “Fly me to the moon” were clear losers. “Hellboy,” “Kit Kittridge” and “Hellboy” come out as winners.

The real question is, is Hollywood going to learn from these lessons and make movie goers the real winners moving forward? We can only hope.