“Up”
Rated PG
96 Minutes

It’s been a long time since there’s been much to get excited about at the box office. But summer is finally here and blockbuster season has officially arrived with “X-Men,” “Star Trek” and “Terminator Salvation.”

For audiences who prefer movies a bit calmer, the summer gems have begun to roll out. Last week there were two. They are very different movies, yet strikingly similar.

“Goodbye Solo” is a small film with local appeal. Set in Winston-Salem, the film focuses on an old man’s desire to get to Blowing Rock and the young man who helps him.

Solo (Souleymane Sy Savane) is a Senegalese cab driver who is hired by the old man, William (Red West), to drive to Blowing Rock and leave him there.

William offers Solo a thousand dollars to make the trip two weeks later.

Solo immediately believes that William means to kill himself.

This is not something Solo can silently agree to. In fact, there seems to be nothing Solo can be silent about, and while William finds the younger man’s chatter annoying, he can’t seem to muster up the energy to get away.

Solo is so obsessed with William’s fate that the two men end up spending the entire two weeks together. First William sleeps on Solo’s couch but Solo’s wife has had just about enough of her husband and ends up kicking them both out.

So William gets a hotel room and Solo makes himself at home. Solo’s stepdaughter, Alex (Diana Franco Galindo), is the only person William warms to at all, and so the three of them make the trip to Blowing Rock.

Director Ramin Bahrani (“Man Push Cart,” “Chop Shop”) is known for looking at intimate relationships set in diverse cultures and “Goodbye Solo” continues the trend brilliantly.

“Up” is a huge 3-D film from Pixar. The film focuses on an old man’s desire to get to Paradise Falls in Venezuela and the young man who helps him.

As a boy, Carl Fredrickson (voiced by Edward Asner) had a dream of a great adventure in South America. As a young man, he had a wife who shared that dream. Heartbroken by their inability to have children, they focus on that dream but keep getting sidetracked until one day, when they are old, Carl’s wife dies.

Yes, this is an animated Disney movie that will make adults cry.

When developers threaten all Carl has left — his cozy little house — he fights back, with disastrous results.

Luckily, Carl was a balloon salesman with a large supply of balloons and tanks full of helium. The day the authorities come to take him to the old-folks home, he uses the balloons to fly away — house and all.

He soon finds that he has a stowaway. An Adventure Scout name Russell (Jordan Nadai) has been after Mr. Fredrickson to allow him to do something worthy of earning his Assisting The Elderly merit badge.

Russell is so obsessed that he was hiding under the porch, waiting to give assistance, when the house takes off. As they float out of town, Russell tells Mr. Fredrickson all the ways he can now assist him.

Once in South America they do have a great adventure involving a long-lost explorer, a pack of talking dogs and a giant bird, but none if it matches the heart of the story that is established in the first half.

“Wall-E” suffered the same fate. I’m still holding out hope that Pixar will make a film where the end is as good as the beginning. “The Incredibles” came close.

But this was the first 3-D movie I’ve seen where the effects were never annoying. Instead, the 3-D gives every scene added depth, which is a nice touch when your characters are flying around buildings and mountains in a balloon-driven house.

So have we entered the era of films about An Old Man On A Quest? If these two movies are any indication, I hope so.