A summer of discontent / Hollywood’s big ho-hum

The summer box office slump can hardly be surprising to a movie reviewer, especially one who has been on the beat more than 40 years. At long last we’ve reached critical mass, with too many remakes, too much that’s formulaic, to persuade enough moviegoers to deal with congested parking conditions, frequent long lines and costly admissions and snacks.

More and more people are setting up virtual home theaters with outsize TV screens -- and the time between a film’s release and its availability on DVD is growing increasingly shorter. That there are some good movies out there doesn’t seem to be enough to stem the tide.

Like virtually every other enterprise, the movie business is cyclical, and it may well be that a “War of the Worlds” and a couple of other titles will lure people back to the multiplexes. Then Hollywood will doubtless go back to business as usual, sticking to the tried and true, with a “Million Dollar Baby” or a “Crash” miraculously turning up from time to time to become the exception that proves the rule. In this light, the arrival of “Hustle & Flow” from a reorganized Paramount Classics is especially encouraging. It’s a modestly budgeted picture with tremendous vitality and wide appeal that points to a fresh direction for the majors.

But what if the slump lingers? That could turn out to be the best thing that’s happened to Hollywood in years. Maybe the powers that be would be forced to take chances once again. Studio heads might begin to think smaller and therefore be more willing to risk giving fresh voices with new ideas a chance to express themselves. It’s a path that may be fraught with peril, but that’s always been how the greatest and most enduring Hollywood movies have come into being.

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to have a Hollywood like the one in the ‘70s that made room for movies like Peter Bogdanovich’s “The Last Picture Show” and Martin Scorsese’s “Mean Streets” -- films that dealt with people and their lives in an involving, illuminating fashion instead of pictures that rely primarily on fancy hardware and special effects, boosted by great dollops of gratuitous violence?

Even the most dedicated art film enthusiast craves the respite of a good, smart Hollywood thriller like Michael Mann’s taut and witty “Collateral,” with Tom Cruise and Jamie Foxx. Still, there’s a great, aching need for Hollywood to become more inclusive and to reflect the increasing multicultural diversity of contemporary America. “Crash” deftly pinpoints the tensions and misunderstandings generated by this diversity, but how about lots more stories about the experiences of many kinds of Americans?

Thanks to the continuing flow of quality foreign films, moviegoers actually get a better opportunity to discover what life can be like for Koreans, Taiwanese and Iranians on their home ground than for the thousands of immigrants who live in Los Angeles County alone.

A saga about a Japanese American family’s trials and triumphs throughout the 20th century could make a great film. So could the odyssey of Madame C.J. Walker, a laundress born into poverty to former slaves. She not only promoted her famous hair “relaxing” process -- “straightening” was a word she abhorred -- but also established a nationwide chain of beauty salons that provided many African American women unprecedented economic opportunities and independence. (Sure, such stories lend themselves to long-form TV, but wouldn’t it be great to see them on a big theater screen?)

The truth is that it’s hard to care much about what happens to Hollywood anymore, beyond being concerned about the economic impact on dedicated craftspeople and the plight of exhibitors with too many empty seats. Although it may be wishful thinking, the box office slump, especially if it stretches on, might just become a long-overdue wake-up call for the American motion picture industry. And people who really care about movies could finally get excited by more of what Hollywood has to offer.

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Contact the film critics at Calendar.letters@latimes.com.