Following is the type of low-budget film you watch, think is okay, and then forget about a few minutes after you watch it. Its staying power is very low, and the reason that it fails is largely because the story it wants to tell isn’t particularly interesting, but is told in a manner that makes it seem that way. Here is another non-linear film that seems more clever than it actually is.

We open with a man (Jeremy Theobald, whose character is credited as “The Young Man”) telling a story to an older man (John Nolan). He begins by telling us that he’s a wannabe writer, but he’s not a very good one, nor is he very dedicated to his craft. He decides that stalking people is much more fun than actually writing is, so that’s what he did. He came up with some rules, like “don’t follow the same person twice,” but as well all know, rules are made to be broken.

One day, he follows a man who comes to be known as Cobb (Alex Haw). Cobb catches him in the act, but instead of being angry with his stalker, he is intrigued. “Why are you stalking me? Do you have nothing better to do with your life?” Evidently not, and after having a cup of coffee together, Cobb reveals what he does for fun: He breaks into apartment suites and steals things from the people who own them. Being the curious man that our protagonist is, he accompanies Cobb on his next few thieving missions.

We come to find out that Cobb thinks he’s doing the owners of these items a favor. He takes something away from them, and it makes them ponder why they had that item in the first place, what it meant to them, and if they really wanted to replace it. He considers this to be beneficial, although I had to wonder if he’s ever been robbed. He also claims that people want their personal items, like photographs, to be seen, so he spreads them out around the floor so that the owner knows he’s taken a glance at them.

We flash forward and backward so many times that it’s easy to get disoriented. From what I can tell, there are three distinct mini-stories that are being told in Following. You can tell by the way The Young Man presents himself. In one, he has a beard and scruffy hair. In the second, he’s clean shaven and has had a haircut. In the third, he has a black eye. These stories all eventually connect to one another. It’s up to you to piece them together and get them to fit chronologically.

So, yes, it’s one of those films. When you’re trying to figure everything out, the film continues on, leaving you little room to breathe and think. When other films might pause, allowing you to pause and put all of the events into place, Following throws something else your way. It’s a relentlessly paced film, containing no filler and only playing for around 70 minutes. Thanks to its rapidity, I think it appears better than it is.

From what I’ve given you about the plot, you might not think that there will be a lot of surprises. There are. Following ends up being a surprise-a-minute film, with a lot of reveals coming from the use of flashbacks or flash-forwards. Who’s duping whom? This means you’ll likely miss some things on the first watch, and also that a second watch will be more enthralling. But after you figure everything out, you just might realize that the story is actually quite simple and that figuring everything out for yourself is actually more entertaining than what the film presents you with.

If we were presented with a straightforward narrative, Following probably wouldn’t be a success. It’s only because of the non-linear fashion that the plot is presented to us with that it works. Even then, it only works until the audience catches on and figures everything out. After that period of time, if begins to fall apart because the mystery is the only thing that keeps you watching. Or at least, that’s how it felt for me. But still, getting potentially two or three really engaging watches is better than a lot of films manage, so I suppose I should give credit where credit is due here.

Maybe if there were more captivating actors, Following wouldn’t rely almost solely on its somewhat unconventional plot structure (which, let’s be honest, isn’t that unconventional anymore). Everyone in this film is so bland. I understand that this was more or less a student film and that most of the people involved aren’t professional actors, but that isn’t going to matter when you watch it. You want to see people with more emotional range than a block of wood, especially when the role banks on the characters having emotions and acting like real people. This film doesn’t have that. You don’t even get the naturalist acting that you sometimes get with unprofessionals. It’s just one bland performance after another here.

Following is a film where the sole gimmick, the non-linear storytelling, makes it work. It stops working once you figure out how mundane the plot really is, but up until that point, you are thoroughly engaged. Granted, this movie became almost worthless after I figured the story out, as none of the other elements really work, but for a production with a budget of $6,000, you can’t expect much. And it will provide most audiences with at least two entertaining watches, and that’s pretty good in my books.

The Claim gets off to a terrible start. It begins with a group of people coming into the small town of Kingdom Come, but before we have even been introduced to them, they’re already communicating like they know one another. Obviously some of them do, but we seem to be missing all of the in-jokes and relations. Some have just known each other, but they’re talking like they’ve know, one another for years. It doesn’t help that the dialogue is hard to hear and there are so many people to follow around that we’re instantly disoriented.

Regardless, this is how The Claim opens up. Over the course of the film, we’ll get to know some of the characters, although none of them well enough. We find out that the town is more or less run by a man named Mr. Dillon (Peter Mullan). He owns the stores, he decides who can come and go, and he even sets the rules (in the first scene, the characters are told that no firearms are allowed in-town because Mr. Dillon says so). This is one powerful man, so it only makes sense that he’ll play a pivotal role later on.

Coming into the town are a few people, some of whom matter, while others don’t. Firmly on the “matter” side is Donald Daglish (Wes Bentley), a surveyor for the Central Pacific Railroad who desires to place tracks down either going through Kingdom Come, or close to it. Mr. Dillon wants it in town, obviously for business reasons. Also on the “matter” side are the terminally ill Elena (Nastassja Kinski) and her daughter Hope (Sarah Polley). Their reason for being in-town is something I’ll leave for you to discover.

What transpires over the rest of the film are a progression of these characters as we discover things that they already know. Like with the opening scene, they all seem to be aware of small (or sometimes rather large) details that are only slowly revealed to us. Presenting us with the information this way is a risky move on the part of director Michael Winterbottom. Whether or not it pays off will depend on who you are, and if you can deal with a much slower pace as a result.

For me, this resulted in a film that was, at times, too slow. Character often just sat around, doing very little, and it made for a boring watch. Once things got going, we started learning about them, and “shocking” reveals were made, I started to have a good time. But in between these moments are long, drawn-out periods of almost nothingness. Well-photographed nothingness (seriously, cinematographer Alwin H. Kuchler deserves a ton of credit here), but nothingness nonetheless.

Of course, doing nothing is just what the characters would have to do during both the time period and the season. The Claim is set during the gold rush, as well as during the Winter. When it’s snowing and it’s too cold outside to work, what are you going to do? Stay at the saloon or the brothel, sleep a great deal, sit around and drink while chatting with friends or strangers — but that’s about it. This comes across clearly in the film, but filming this doesn’t necessarily make for an enjoyable watch.

The style of the film, where you’re mostly just dropping into the lives of these people — eavesdropping on their conversations, if you will — instead of watching a traditional film, works both in its favor and against it. It helps because it makes the film unique. It helps with immersion because you feel like you’re really in this town. We don’t think we’re on a movie set, and we don’t instantly think these people are actors. It looks authentic, and that means something in a period piece.

Also helping to set the scene are the actors. You can dress terrible actors in accurate costumes, place them in front of realistic sets, and they’ll ruin the immersion and believability because they’re, well, bad actors. Luckily, this film has good actors who — even though some of them can’t keep a consistent accent — help make us feel like we’re back in the mid-1800s. They don’t need a lot of range here, though, as there are few highly emotional scenes, but for what they were given, they all did fine.

However, choosing to leave in mundane and largely unimportant scenes, while making it seem more genuine, hurts the pacing and can potentially bore an audience. Sure, you’re immersed, but how much does that really mean if you feel like you want to leave the town you’re in? I wanted that train to be built so I could get the first ticket out of this place and go somewhere more interesting. This filming/editing style is a balancing act that doesn’t quite pay off.

It does mean that the film is unpredictable. You’re not going to figure out who will do what after watching the first 30 or so minutes, which is almost a rarity. Some things you might be able to figure out, but many of the reveals felt fresh in my mind. That does come with the territory when we’re sometimes unsure of which character we’re currently watching and why they’re important, but when the revelations occur and they surprise you, you are given a good feeling.

The Claim is a film that I feel really unsure about after watching it. One one hand, it tried something unique by not playing out like your generic film. Instead, we get to eavesdrop on some characters, learning about them really slowly, and not really giving them a plot. On the other hand, this style means that there’s a lot of downtime and I was frequently bored. I suppose I have to use the “Is It Fun?” test to determine whether I had a good time. The answer to that is: “Intermittently, but on the whole, no.” There you go.

The Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption is quite possibly the best movie that you can watch. I can not remember a moviegoing experience as pleasurable as the time I sat through this movie, and that’s saying something. No, I don’t think it’s a perfect movie — there are a few moments early on that leave you a tad confused — but the experience as a whole overcomes any minor flaws one wants to bring up. And to think, this movie only cost $6 million to make. Imagine what director Roel Reiné could do if he was given a larger budget.

Anyway, we finally got a real sequel to The Scorpion King with this film. The second one, despite what the title indicated, was a prequel. This one takes place after the first movie, and shows us an older, more scruffy Mathayus (here played by Victor Webster). He has lost his kingdom — it’s not explained how or why — his princess has been killed, and he’s back working as a mercenary. He doesn’t even tell people that he’s the Scorpion King, as he’s ashamed — humbled, even. He is called into battle by King Horus (Ron Perlman), who tells him that he’ll get paid a bunch of money if he stalls an enemy for a while.

Mathayus accepts, although he’s joined on his journey by a brute named Olaf (Bostin Christopher), I assume because the king doesn’t trust Mathayus all that much. After a bonding fist fight, the two men become close friends, although they bicker back and forth throughout. It’s hilarious whenever Olaf opens his mouth, and you can tell that he’s not taking anything too seriously. He’s kind of like Gimli in that regard: He’s comic relief, but he’s also strong in battle.

Some big, epic battles happen soon after, although our two men don’t even get involved. They just kind of sneak around until the battles are almost over, and then they jump in at the last second and take credit. Eventually, they get a new quest — completely ignoring the last one, which was too confusing — to save a princess. And it’s here where Scorpion King 3 really picks up. See, the battles get larger and another group, called “Cobra,” which is made up of a bunch of ninjas, gets involved. And then … things and stuff happen, okay?

Look, I really don’t know what happened for most of the film. It’s all so overwhelming and to try to even set the stage is too difficult. There was even a scene with tigers, which seemed like it was building to something great, but then the two main guys just run away. Elephants are involved in a bunch of the battles, there’s a scene when ninjas run up a waterfall — for no discernible reason — and eventually the Book of the Dead from The Mummy gets used to resurrect a trio of ghosts (Selina Lo, Kimbo Slice and Dave Batista) to join the fray.

This movie is jam-packed with everything that you want to see in a cheesy action movie. Nothing is taken seriously, and everyone has a good time because of it. Just watch Billy Zane ham it up as the main villain. And I actually kind of enjoyed Victor Webster in The Rock’s role as the Scorpion King, even though he never really looked older than his wrestling counterpart. And many of the action scenes aren’t even quick-cut, allowing you to actually see what’s going on.

You might not like the color palette, which seemed as if the desaturation tool was on constantly. The whole film is really washed out, although it is somewhat stylish in its creation. There aren’t that many special effects throughout, which is good considering the film’s budget, and the few times in which they’re required, they look serviceable. The Scorpion King 3 does have a unique look, and at least doesn’t look as cheap as its predecessor did.

I was very confused at the beginning, which is about the biggest problem that one can have with this film. The direction that it was taken seemed to be one of non-direction. It felt as if it would just meander around for the entire running time, while also introducing a bunch of loosely connected elements that seem to be part of a larger picture. But it eventually gets focused and ties everything together quite nicely. Mathayus really is just a mercenary in this, even if he does eventually pick a side.

Actually, I forgot about the biggest problem that Battle For Redemption has: Its ending. It ends on a cliffhanger, which is just so disappointing considering there very well might not be another Scorpion King. I was so into this one that I wanted a definite finale, but what I got was a promise that might never come to pass. It’s possible that a better ending was thought of but the filmmakers ran out of time or money, and if that’s the case, I feel worse for them than for myself. One final battle might have pushed this film into Best Ever territory.

The Scorpion King 3: Battle for Redemption is about as much fun as you can have watching a motion picture. It suffers from a multitude of confusing plotting points, but apart from that, everything works perfectly. It’s lighthearted enough to not take seriously, but competently put together and stylishly crafted as well, leading you to believe that there’s some skill behind the camera. And it’s super fun. Now if only we can get this crew a slightly larger budget and filming schedule, we’ll have a true masterpiece with Scorpion King 4.

What was the main thing that you remember from The Scorpion King? If your answer is “The Rock was in it,” then congratulations, as you’re with the majority. Considering he was front and center of practically every shot, becoming bigger and more important than his character or the plot of the film, I have no idea why they went ahead with this film after he declined to reprise his role. The Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior is a prequel, not a sequel like the title indicates, and gives the lead role of Mathayus to Michael “Blue Power Ranger” Copon.

He begins the film as a rebellious young child, betraying his father’s wishes to not become a great warrior. He ends up being selected anyway, and after six years of montage training, he returns to his city to find out that things have changed. Sargon (MMA fighter Randy Couture) has become the new king. He’s the villain of the story, primarily because Mathayus blames Sargon for his father’s death, in which scorpions appeared in a black cloud and started eating the now-deceased warrior. He vows revenge, even though he has no proof at all.

We’re just supposed to go with it, and because Sargon sometimes has pitch-black eyes, we can kind of understand that he’s evil. Upon returning, Sargon appoints Mathayus his new bodyguard, but that lasts about one night, as Mathayus soon escapes after a quick action scene. He eventually teams up with his childhood friend, Layla (Karen David), and a scribe — and our narrator, for some reason — Ari (Simon Quaterman), to travel across the land and eventually bring Sargon down.

Basically, we’re going through a bunch of action scenes again. Although they’re actually less frequent than in The Scorpion King, they’re still the focus, which is for the best. Whenever we have to listen to these characters talk to each other, I cringed. Every. Single. Time. I can’t remember the last movie I saw with dialogue and actors this terrible. Not a single line was convincing. Nobody had an ounce of charisma. I didn’t believe that any of these people could function in society, let alone actually be friends with others.

You notice that Michael Copon is no The Rock right away, but it takes at least a few scenes to find out just how far removed he is from the star of the first Scorpion King. The Rock is hardly the deepest actor around, but he’s charismatic and is believable in action roles. Copon is neither. He can’t deliver any of his lines with any gravitas, and can hardly even keep a straight face. Maybe he knew his lines were terrible. Maybe he wanted to just get a paycheck and then get out of dodge.

Considering how cheap Rise of a Warrior looked, somehow I have to doubt he received a substantial amount of money for the role. The sets look like sets, the costumes look cheap, the special effects are atrocious — like, worse than The Scorpion King’s CGI — although thankfully they’re sparse. I don’t know why Sargon was given magical powers, especially considering the filmmakers didn’t have the budget to render these powers properly, but that’s exactly what he gets.

That doesn’t make him interesting, but it does raise the stakes a tad from Mathayus’ last adventure. Or is that “future adventure”? Anyway, in The Scorpion King, the villain was just a very well trained swordsman. He could catch arrows in between two swords, which might be impossible, but at least didn’t seem too much like fantasy. Here, Sargon can stop a spear that’s thrown at him, but without even moving a muscle. Oh, and he can conjure black clouds containing scorpions and send it after someone, or so Mathayus believes.

It doesn’t help that Randy Couture is playing the villain here, all but ensuring that we won’t be able to take him seriously. While Copon lacks charisma and gravitas, it’s nothing compared to how lacking Couture is as an actor. The only thing that Couture needed to do was be scary, or at least an imposing figure. He is neither, and falls even harder when trying to deliver lines of dialogue. It’s like watching someone who isn’t an actor try to be menacing — it comes across as pathetic. Perhaps that’s why we shouldn’t hire MMA fighters to act in our films.

Not even the action scenes are terribly entertaining. They’re not inventive, they’re not shot well, and they’re edited together poorly, often leading me to wonder just exactly who just hit whom. I get that prequels are frequently about the journey, and not the destination — we know that Mathayus lives through it and becomes The Rock later on in life — but when the journey is so uninteresting, I can’t help but hating that there’s absolutely no tension. Mathayus can’t die, and since no mention of Sargon is made in The Scorpion King, isn’t the ending predetermined?

The Scorpion King 2: Rise of a Warrior is an awful, awful movie. Nothing about it works, nor does anything even come close. It’s letdown most by its actors, although the action scenes leave a lot to be desired as well. It’s also a very cheap looking film, and if I had to guess, I would say its budget was probably less than The Rock’s salary for the original Scorpion King.

The Scorpion King is a very silly movie. You probably know that from the outset, considering it is based on the character who appeared only very briefly in The Mummy Returns, and that it stars Dwane “The Rock” Johnson. He plays a man named Mathayus, an assassin for hire who is tasked in killing a sorceress (Kelly Hu), who is protecting the tyrant, Memnon (Steven Brand), from being killed. Some betrayal and twists later, he and the sorceress, along with the bumbling fool, Arpid (Grant Heslov), he changes his plans and decides to go after Memnon instead.

That’s as much sense as I can make of the plot. It doesn’t really matter, anyway, as the film isn’t about characters or a plot. It wants to entertain you with action scenes, and when it focuses on that, it’s kind of successful. It’s ridiculous, contains pretty bad special effects — although not as bad as those used in the finale to The Mummy Returns — and doesn’t take itself at all seriously, but it never stops being fun. I can appreciate a cheesy film like this if it’s done right, and The Scorpion King is done well enough to be enjoyable.

Look, sometimes, I just want to watch a movie where The Rock and Michael Clarke Duncan go at one another in a weapons and fist fight. The Scorpion King delivers on that, and on so much more. While the CGI is all terrible, there isn’t a lot of it. Most of the film contains big men fighting other big men in close quarters combat. Knives, swords, spears, and fists are all used rather frequently, while a single bow and a couple of arrows factor in prominently in places.

This is The Rock’s first leading role in a film, and I actually thought he carried himself well enough. He’s not a deep actor — like, not at all — but he knows how action scenes should work, and he’s convincing as an action hero. He seemed to be performing most of the stunts, and when he hits someone, or gets hit, it feels as real as these things can get. He’s also a charismatic person — wrestling fans know this already — and you are not often bored while watching him command the screen.

There’s less to be said of the other actors, primarily because none of them get the same kind of screen time as the wrestling star. Kelly Hu gets the second most time, but factors in very little. The villain is non-threatening, even though he’s supposed to be the best swordsman in all the land. I did like seeing Michael Clarke Duncan in the few scenes he gets, but again, he’s pushed aside so that The Rock can be front and center. That’s not necessarily a problem, but if you’re hoping for other actors to share the spotlight, you’ll be disappointed.

This movie was, in part, produced by WWE Studios, after all. That studio wouldn’t want their property having to share the focus with anyone else, especially when there are no real big-name actors in the production. The Rock is supposed to be larger than life, as the television tells me, so it makes sense that The Scorpion King is focused solely on him. Besides, we definitely needed to learn the origins of the villain from The Mummy Returns, right? The ten minutes of screen time in that movie warranted a feature-length spin-off, didn’t it?

What I’m trying to get at is that this is a completely unnecessary movie. Yeah, it’s fun, but the story is throwaway, the action isn’t terribly inventive, and the only real draw is The Rock. The film wants to detail the character’s rise to fame, leading to that deal with Anubis we learned about at the beginning of The Mummy Returns, but it’s your standard action-adventure affair that just happens to be set in the “time before the pyramids.” The character was hardly even in Returns, and wasn’t interesting enough to warrant an entire film dedicated to him.

After seeing The Scorpion King, I maintain that the character isn’t worthy of being explored. Okay, he has to learn that being selfish isn’t the best — the love interest/sorceress takes care of that — but there’s nothing else that’s interesting about him. The film is just action scene after action scene, and the screenplay could have been written with nobody in particular in mind, and then adapted to fit the character by tangentially relating it to The Mummy.

But the film doesn’t take itself too seriously, and the action scenes, while uninventive, are kind of enjoyable. It’s your standard summer action movie in terms of content, and if that’s what you’re looking for, you might just have fun. Going in with high expectations is something you won’t want to do, although if you’ve seen the Mummy films, chances are you’re not going to have that high of expectations anyway.

The Scorpion King is a summer action movie starring The Rock. He’s always the center of attention here, and gets all of the important scenes and set pieces. It’s kind of fun watching him, and the movie as a whole is enjoyable. Silly, yes, but enjoyable. It’s never boring, and the winking it does at the audience is quite funny. Sure, it’s not terribly inventive, nor is it really good, but if you’re in the right mindset, it can be kind of fun. And that’s about where my expectations were set, so I didn’t have a bad time with it.

I’ll admit that after watching The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, I missed Imhotep. Perhaps I always wanted to see Arnold Vosloo get the screen time and presence that he deserved with the character, but I really did miss him. The villain in this film is less interesting despite being more threatening. He, a resurrected emperor of ancient China, can transform into mythical creatures, breathe fire, and is also a martial arts master.

He was also betrayed. In the opening flashback which is now a staple of the series, Emperor Han (Jet Li) met the love of his life, a witch named Zi Yuan (Michelle Yeoh) who promised him eternal life. Instead of granting him that, she put a curse on his entire army, causing them all to turn to stone. She also had an affair with the emperor’s second in command, because turning you and your entire army to stone wasn’t enough punishment, I suppose. Of course, he’s going to be our villain, and is somehow going to have to be brought back to life.

In Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, the culprit won’t be Rick O’Connell (Brendan Fraser), nor will it be his wife, Evelyn (now played by Maria Bello, taking over for Rachel Weisz). Instead, it will be their son, Alex (Luke Ford), who has miraculously lost his English accent and has decided to go raid tombs, pillage lost cities, search for gold that’s buried beneath the Earth’s crust. He’s in China, finds a tomb, awakens the mummy, and you probably can figure out the rest from there. The world’s in danger, his parents have to come out of retirement in order to save it, and it’s a race against time in order to stop the reanimated corpse.

Once again, a select group of people have been chosen to join the O’Connells on their quest to save the world. The most relevant for those of you who watched the earlier films is Jonathan (John Hannah), Evelyn’s brother, who once again serves as comedic relief for most of his time on-screen. A young woman named Lin (Isabella Leong) tags along, developing some sort of relationship with Alex, even though earlier in the film, she tried to kill him. Zi Yuan turns up midway through to help them out, as does Liam Cunningham as a pilot who helps the group get to the Himalayas.

Remember how in The Mummy Returns, The Rock wasn’t in much of the film? He appeared in the opening flashback, but didn’t appear again until the end. And then, it was just a CGI likeness of him. Yeah, the same type of thing happens in this film with Jet Li. For the majority of the film, the corpse that’s supposed to be resembling Li still looks like it’s encased in a rock (probably because it is). So, until the final big action scene, we don’t actually get to see our second-billed star. That’s disappointing, and is a bit of a bait-and-switch.

When Li does appear, the film is interesting. Really, this is the same type of plot that we’ve seen twice already, so there needs to be something to make it worthwhile. Li knows his action scenes, so when he’s actually there, in the flesh, there’s always something entertaining. The only other thing that Tomb of the Dragon Emperor does differently is introduce Yetis into the mix. Yes, Yetis. I’ll leave you to see exactly why they’re in this film and their exact purpose, but they basically get an entire action sequence dedicated to their existence.

You know, after the disappointment with the Scorpion King’s rendering, I was expecting similar feelings regarding the CGI here. Thankfully, seven years were taken in between Returns and this film, and the extra time has been used well. The special effects are polished, and they look great. It’s kind of hard to hide three Yetis in darkness in order to cover poor CGI, especially when they’re the crux of your action scene, so instead of doing that, the money was spent and the time was taken in order to make them look good. There are more special effects scattered throughout, but this scene really stood out to me.

The best thing I can say about Tomb of the Dragon Emperor is that I can’t recall a point when I was bored. It’s mostly familiar, but it’s non-threatening and it’s action-packed enough that it held my attention. It’s another brainless action film, and it’s similar enough to the earlier Mummy films that you’re probably not missing out if you decide not to watch it, but it’ll pass the time if you decide to give it a spin.

It’s also the first in the series to clock in at under two hours, which I would have thought to be a benefit, but after watching it, I’m not so sure. Sure, it’s a more relentlessly paced film, but that’s done with sacrifice. The film seems so determined not to waste a moment that it often moves from place to place too quickly to make complete sense. Character moments are forbidden because that would take away time from the action scenes. I also wasn’t a fan of Maria Bello in Rachel Weisz’s role, largely because Bello and Fraser didn’t have the same kind of chemistry as Weisz and Fraser did.

Like the other Mummy films, Tomb of the Dragon Emperor won’t bore you, but it also won’t make you think. It’s another movie that you can watch to pass the time, but if you want stimulation, you’ll have to look elsewhere. This is the first in the franchise that at least looks as impressive as its budget, so if you want to see really good looking Yetis and other visual spectacles, it’ll be worth your time. Just don’t go in hoping for something of substance, or for a lot of Jet Li, as you’ll be disappointed.

At least you can’t say that The Mummy Returns didn’t try to improve upon its predecessor, or, at the very least, maintain the same standard. Here is a film with pretty much the same cast, a larger budget, more refined CGI, and a cameo turned in by The Rock. It is a film that is using the “bigger is better” school to sequel making, something that generally works pretty well for these no-brain action flicks.

Our film opens with a flashback, informing us of a man named the Scorpion King (Dwane “The Rock” Johnson) who was the greatest warrior the world had ever seen — back in 3000 BC, that is. He was eventually defeated, cursed by Anubis, and made a deal with the god, turning over his soul to be given the power to defeat everyone in his path. After an action scene, the soul is claimed, the Scorpion King and his army are removed from the face of the planet, and we’re going to move forward to present day.

Well, we’ll go to 1933. That’s close enough to present day. We meet our heroes from the first film, Rick and Evelyn O’Connell (Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz respectively), a duo who previously managed to defeat a resurrected mummy bent on destroying the world. They also fell in love, and have an eight-year-old son named Alex (Freddie Boath). The family manages to find the Scorpion King’s bracelet, it sticks to Alex’s arm, and before you know it, we’re on a quest to find a pyramid which contains the Scorpion King.

That’s not all, however, as that would be too easy. A separate group of people, led by one Meela Nais (Patricia Velásquez), has brought back the mummy from the first film, Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo), who captures the son and uses him in order to find the Scorpion King. Most of The Mummy Returns is actually an extended chase sequence in which Rick, Evelyn, Evelyn’s brother, Jonathan (John Hannah), and Ardeth Bay (Oded Fehr) all chase after Imhotep in order to stop not only him, but the Scorpion King as well. See, bigger is better.

Or, it might be if the payoff was actually worth it. Unfortunately, it appears as if either the film’s money or time allotted ran out, as the ending is a huge letdown. Oh, you get a couple of action scenes — I think there were three fights going on at once — but it’s all so poorly done that it’s not worth your time. The Scorpion King especially looks awful. Basically what you get is a poorly rendered CGI Rock caricature set on top of a scorpion’s body, then blown up to make him about three times larger than a normal human being.

This wouldn’t be a problem if this creature actually looked like it belonged in this universe. When CGI models are being used, they go through a series of revisions before the final result that you see on-screen. This one looks as if they only got through about half of the revisions that the production team would have liked, and as a result looks atrocious. It stands out and doesn’t ever look like it’s interacting with the people it’s fighting.

I wouldn’t have minded this so much if it wasn’t so much of a pivotal point in the film. We’re building up to his appearance right after we head to 1933, and after we finally see him, it’s a let-down. I’m surprised that they didn’t place him in more darkness, but the terrible CGI is on full-display for the world to see. The other major fight during this time pits Patricia Velásquez and Rachel Weisz against one another, leading me to wonder why neither actor is a huge action star. Their sai (and other weapons) battle is the highlight of the film, so good that the filmmakers end up including it twice.

The Mummy Returns doesn’t have much of a plot, instead favoring lots of action and special effect sequences. Apart from the terrible Scorpion King rendering, the visual effects are actually quite good. Even the mummy version of Imhotep is a major step up from the 1999 iteration. Unfortunately, with not much of a plot, there’s little to satisfy those of you looking for anything other than a brainless action film containing characters you’ve already grown to like or hate thanks to the previous film.

Actually, when an action scene isn’t going on, most of The Mummy Returns does is reference its predecessor. It seems to proud of everything that happened before that it wants to draw your attention to it at every instance. These characters don’t develop or even get interesting because they’re so deeply rooted in the past that it’s impossible for them to grow. Any chance they get, they’ll make reference to The Mummy in some way or another. You might expect some in-jokes regarding earlier Mummy films like the 1932 one, or perhaps the series from the 60s, but that’s not what happens. It’s too self-indulgent for that to happen.

The Mummy Returns is pretty much exactly what you’d expect from a sequel to 1999’s The Mummy. It’s loud, it’s filled with special effects, and there isn’t much to sustain an audience apart from constant action scenes and references to the last installment. If all you want from this film is a bunch of action, or maybe some solid chemistry between Fraser and Weisz, you’ll probably enjoy yourself. If you’re looking for a smart action film, or one that’s satisfying in any other way, you’ll want to look elsewhere, as The Mummy Returns never comes close to being that good.

I don’t understand the villain in this iteration of The Mummy. We’re shown in a flashback that he, a priest named Imhotep (Arnold Vosloo), decided to have an affair with a woman named Ahnk-sun-Amun (Patricia Velásquez), all the way back in 1290 BC. She was considered untouchable, as she was a mistress of the Pharaoh. She kills herself, he’s sentenced to death, and has a curse placed upon him. If he’s ever brought back from the dead, he vows to try resurrecting his lover.

At least, that’s how I understand it. Before he gets captured, he tries to resurrect her via magical methods. After being buried alive, we learn that the curse gives him powers and he could enslave all of humanity if he isn’t stopped. But why would he want to do that? He didn’t seem like a terrible person before he is killed, so why would he have such a change of heart? And it’s not like he’s a mindless creature once he inevitably gets reborn; he’s sentient and can reason.

The reason for this is because our film needs a villain. After seeing this flashback, we begin our main story, which takes place in the 1920s, and follows a man named Rick O’Connell (Brendan Fraser) who knows a thing or two about digging for treasure. After being enlisted by a librarian, Evelyn (Rachel Weisz), the duo embarks on a quest to find Hamunaptra, where treasure is probably buried. Oh, and Imohtep is there as well, but you probably already figured that out. They are joined by Evelyn’s brother, Jonathan (John Hannah), while they have opposition coming in the form of American treasure hunters who play their rivals for most of the film.

As you’d expect, Imhotep eventually gets resurrected, and the film is forever changed. Instead of watching characters wander around in ancient Egyptian tombs, The Mummy turns out to be an action film dealing with stopping a seemingly immortal enemy. Is it stupid? Sure. There isn’t much thought in the screenplay, there’s little hidden beneath the surface, and I don’t think the film wants to do anything apart from entertaining you. Is it entertaining, though? Yeah, it’s fairly enjoyable.

If all you’re looking for in a film is seeing a monster fight against some humans, and the monster also happens to look like a human for most of its screen time, then The Mummy might satisfy. There’s enough action to keep an audience’s attention, and most of it is crafted with skill. Where it falls short is in its characters, plot, special effects, and pretty much all of the areas that you turn to during the dull moments.

When you look at the characters, you don’t get much. O’Connell is a weaker Indiana Jones — a wisecracking adventurer — Evelyn is the typical love interest whose purpose is to move the plot along and fall into danger, Jonathan serves absolutely no purpose, the villain is just that, and all of them aren’t written all that well. This is especially noticeable when it comes to O’Connell, who tries too hard to be brash, bold, and funny that it comes across as forced and annoying.

That’s not to say that the actors are poor, because they’re all adequate. I liked Fraser and Weisz, and I thought they had good chemistry together. If I had a better understanding of the villain, I would have been able to appreciate the screen presence brought to the picture by Arnold Vosloo. I kept wondering why he was evil throughout, which undermines the effort brought to the role, even during the action scenes.

There is a lot of obvious CGI in The Mummy, most of which has to do with the creatures that have been rendered. Before Vosloo portrays the titular creature, it starts off being rendered fully with special effects, and noticeably stands out. There are lesser mummies as well, and most of them are at least partly CGI. The actors sometimes didn’t seem sure what to be doing when interacting with something that wasn’t there, and it led to some clunky battle sequences.

I was also disappointed after watching this film, as most of the deaths occur off-screen. The Mummy was given an $80 million budget and a PG-13 rating, but we don’t actually get to see most of the final blows. When Vosloo’s character first emerges, he has been tasked with sucking the life out of the characters who opened a chest (don’t ask why). I don’t remember seeing that ever happen. We’d see the creature walk up to them, cut to something else, and then see the drained corpse. There’s no catharsis in that!

The only real deaths we get to see come from creatures who disintegrate when hit. Gee, that’s a lot of fun. We get these large set-pieces filled with creative stunts, and then they just end without a real resolution for the audience. It’s not like this material had to be censored for us; it is a PG-13 film, after all. I was almost angry after the third time it happened, and I would have sworn that writer/director Stephen Sommers was playing a joke on the audience. It’s more comical watching the camera move away from the deaths than it is to listen to Rick O’Connell talk.

I won’t deny that The Mummy is fun. It is. I guess I just wanted more, or at least a release after these long set-pieces. If you watch this movie hoping for a brainless action movie, you won’t be disappointed. If you want something more, or even a tight remake of the 1932 film, you’ll be disappointed. You might feel that way anyway just because of the way that the endings of the action scenes are handled, but you’ll probably enjoy the ride for the most part.

I’d be completely lying to you if I said I finished this film.  It takes a LOT for me to walk out of a film, in fact I can count on my hand the number of films I walked out of theaters on.  (The Truth About Charlie, The Glass House and probably would have walked out of Your Highness if I hadn’t fallen asleep) Dark Shadows made the short list.  This pointless piece of drivel was 113 minutes of film that I couldn’t stand.  I dropped out after the first half hour of film.  Maybe I will chalk it up to the fact that it was a freebie showing, perhaps it was that it was 12:30 am and I was running on a few hours of sleep, or perhaps it was that I just ran out of tasty, crunch Dibbs ice cream bites to stuff my face with.  The point was, few films have me heading to the door and this one had me almost running.

Burton and Depp used to produce interesting movie magic together years ago, but now they have both become caricatures of themselves with each new project they make.  They lack the originality they once did and Burton finds once more excuse to put a pale faced Johnny Depp on screen with a new accent.  It amazes me how people will bash the career of Will Farrell, siting things as Semi Pro as “Will Farrell Plays Basketball”, Ricky Bobby as “Will Farrell drives NASCAR”, The Other Guys as “Will Farrell Plays Cop” but no one dares to throw stones at Depp’s body of work in the last few years.  Depp is a talented actor, yet when teamed with Burton it reeks of 90’s staleness that just can not be re-created.

I wish I could tell you that the film progressed better after I left, and perhaps it did.  However my partner is screening crime boldly finished the film in hopes that the film got better with time.  His final report to me was it was a film the continued to try harder than it ever should have to be good and that viewers were dropping like flies.  It sounds like I made the right choice.  I’m in a business where theatrical success of films means more money in the bank for me and I am telling you to steer clear of this film.  If you must, Redbox it or Netflix it in a few months, but don’t give your hard earned cash to Burton and company for sub par crud just because Depp’s name headlines the film.  Stop rewarding bad Hollywood behavior and start rewarding the popcorn flicks you enjoy and the original ideas that come from talent you may have never heard of before.

The way that God Bless America is structured allows you to understand perfectly just what it wants you to take from it. The first twenty minutes shows us the life in a day of a man named Frank (Joel Murray), who is divorced, has a kid who doesn’t want to spend any time with him, lives next to very noisy and inconsiderate neighbors, and learns on the day that we first meet him that he has a brain tumor so large that removing it would be just as dangerous as leaving it in. Oh, and he also got fired from his job because of “sexual harassment,” even though no such thing took place.

He’s a man who is going to lose it. He argues with people about how society is crumbling right around him, and nobody seems to care. He dreams about bursting into his neighbor’s house and shooting them all, making their baby explode into feathers and fake blood. Yes, we get to see this dream, and yes, it is glorious. If you’re already thinking that this is the film for you based on that, you should just go watch it right now, as nothing I say it going to dissuade you from still wanting to see it.

After these first twenty minutes of social commentary — including watching a number of commercials and television shows that will all make your face smack into your palm — we get to the real meat of the film. He heads to the school of one of the people who was on television, and shoots her. Yes, he just killed a 16-year-old girl. This grants him an adoring fan by the name of Roxy (Tara Lynne Barr, in what should be a star-making turn), who ends up joining him for the majority of the film. He’s going to tour across America, killing the people who deserve to die. She’s going to kill, too, and seems far more pleased when she does. They become “platonic spree killers.”

The next hour or so involves one of two things: Jack and Roxy will either talk about killing people they don’t like, or they’ll actually go do it. There is less murder in the film than you’d likely expect — there is still plenty, don’t worry — as there’s a lot more dialogue exchanged between the main characters than in a film like, say, Rampage, which was also about one man killing a ton of people. Or even Hobo with a Shotgun, for that matter, which was about one man trying to clean up the streets of a small town. The characters and their motivations actually matter, and are paramount in keeping our attention.

I don’t want to spoil the ending, but it reverts back to the first 20 minutes in terms of tone. It involves a monologue — an unbroken shot of Joel Murray looking directly into the camera to basically summarize what the film has been preaching for the last hour and a half. You can’t say that God Bless America doesn’t have a lot on its mind; it knows exactly what it wants to say and exactly how it’s going to say it. Sure, it’s kind of preachy, but I was fine with that in large part because the message is worth hearing, and also because the film around the message is so much fun.

The murders themselves aren’t terribly inventive, and if the film does lack one thing, it’s the budget to have really enjoyable action scenes. These two individuals have no trouble killing any of the people they target, and the only worry we have for them is whether or not the police will get them. They even make the mistake of getting their faces on the news — something Roxy is overjoyed about, reminding us of a younger Mallory — but they never seem in any real danger. This is more of a fantasy than anything else, and it plays out very much like it’s all happening in someone’s head. It isn’t, but it easily could be, if you catch my drift.

What surprised me most about God Bless America was how much time it did devote to the two leads sitting around and talking. They really do bond, and their relationship with one another becomes one of the film’s focal points. We actually begin to like these people, crazy as they likely are, and the film’s heart comes through at about the midway point. It isn’t just about killing the “mean” people in America’s society, and it’s that which makes it a better film than Rampage. I’d even call it better than Falling Down, although it has been a long time since I’ve seen that one.

I don’t know if you can call God Bless America terribly unique, as there have been a few films to take this basic idea. I’ve already named three of them, and if you want to count a reference to Natural Born Killers, you have a fourth. Roxy is very reminiscent of Hit-girl from Kick-Ass, at least in terms of demeanor and general attitude. It’s like a mash-up of a bunch of films within this type of genre, picking a slightly different target to satirize, and doing as much as can be done with a seemingly miniscule budget.

It works so well for the most part that it’s really easy to look over its flaws. In fact, looking back on the film, I can’t even really think of anything that I didn’t like. Maybe a couple of the jokes didn’t work. That sometimes happens in a satire/black comedy. And the fake blood was a bit more excessive than it probably needed to be. But that’s a stylistic choice by writer/director Bobcat Goldthwait, and if he thinks the buckets of blood coming out of every dead body is necessary, then I’m not going to argue.

I had an absolute blast with God Bless America. It doesn’t feel really original — there are a bunch of “taking things into your own hands” kind of films — but it does everything that it sets out to do and only missteps a couple of times. The film is very satisfying, contains more character depth than you’d expect going in, and is really funny. It has a couple of lead actors who should get huge career boosts after they’re seen in their roles, and I can’t recommend it enough. This is a must-watch film.

Elegy: “a mournful, melancholy, or plaintive poem, especially a funeral song or a lament for the dead.” That’s what Dictionary.com’s first definition of the word “Elegy” is. I like this definition, and it’s no wonder that this was the choice of the title for this film. I wonder if you think knowing the definition of this rarely used word ruins the film. I’ll tell you right now that it does not.

The film opens with Ben Kingsley narrating. That can’t ever be a bad choice, can it? He is now in his mid-sixties, and his character, David, doesn’t like it. Getting old is hard, he tells us. He was once married, but left after realizing his mistake. He will never get married again. We see him having sex with a woman named Carolyn (Patricia Clarkson). That is the extent of the relationship. They hardly speak, and they only meet every three weeks, or maybe that’s just what it feels like. They’re in a friends-with-benefits type of relationship, and they like it that way.

One might define David as a sexual predator. He’s a university professor, and after giving out his marks, he hosts a party where he seeks out a young woman. His target this year is a Cuban-American named Consuela (Penélope Cruz). After luring her in with some intellectual ideas and thoughts about paintings, the two begin a relationship. She’s thirty or so years beneath him in age, but she seems more comfortable with their arrangement than he does.

He thinks she’ll cheat on him, even though he’s already sleeping around. He confides in us, the audience, and in his best friend, George (Dennis Hopper). The voice-over narration gets us into his head, as do the scenes where he sits at a coffee shop and tries to talk the situation through with George. Both of these elderly characters are intellectuals, but both also fail at relationships. That’s an interesting idea, although the film doesn’t do as much with it as I would have liked. Instead, it spends a great deal of time waiting for something dramatic to happen.

When the drama begins, either one of two things can happen: Either we’ll care and become more involved, or it will fall flat and the film will have to regain our interest. There are only two truly dramatic moments in Elegy (at least, in terms of David and Consuela’s relationship). The first works, while the second, unfortunately, works to undo whatever was done by the first one. As a result, the ending falls flat when it should have been a fitting conclusion. But then, when you make your character disappear for thirty minutes only to bring them back with terrible news, do you really expect us to care?

I’m sorry if I spoiled part of the film, but this is an important reason for why Elegy ultimately fails. The first true moment of drama and tension makes one of the two characters leave for a good portion of the film. When that character comes back, it’s because he or she (I’ll try to leave some surprise for you) has some bad news for the other. That bad news ends up bringing us down into melodrama territory, but since that character has been gone, we have no reason to care about him or her. As a result, this announcement made me lose almost all interest in the film, and since we were so close to the end, Elegy never won me back.

The only fully developed character here is David, whom we focus on for most of the time the film runs. Because of the conversations with George, because of the narration, and because he’s portrayed by Ben Kingsley, we recognize him as a human being. He has flaws — many, in fact — but is just trying to find happiness in life. He also has a son, Kenneth (Peter Sarsgaard), who he has a rocky relationship with due to the fact that David left his wife and son when Kenneth was still very young. Kenneth actually might be heading down the same path his father did, although whether he does or not is to be determined by you if you decide to watch Elegy.

Other characters get less depth, even though it’s imperative that we care about them. George is basically there to console his friend, even though it’s mentioned a couple of times that he has marital problems as well. Consuela is the key character of the film, and yet she doesn’t have any depth or real personality. That’s not to take anything away from Cruz, who does her best, but the character just isn’t written in a way that gives the actor anything to work with or give us any reason to care about her.

There is also a lot of time spent doing nothing. Some further trimming to bring Elegy’s runtime down ten or so minutes might have helped. There are some scenes which bring no insight, contain no action, and serve simply (I assume) to illustrate how boring and terrible getting old is. Or maybe that’s giving the film too much credit, especially considering it comes out and tells us this with its narration.

Elegy is a flawed film that could have been very much worth your time. But it makes a crucial misstep with its ending, and it never manages to recover from this. It might have if more than one of its characters were developed, or if it hadn’t essentially killed one of them off for the thirty minutes preceding a “shocking” revelation, but since that didn’t happen, I stopped caring. Growing old might suck, but spending precious hours watching Elegy isn’t worth it.

The Corruptor begins with an explosion and an execution (because the explosion failed to kill the target). I figure this is a good enough way to begin an action film. You get the audience’s attention right away both because it was an explosion and explosions are cool, while also leaving us wondering exactly why the explosion and murder occurred in the first place. Who was the deceased, and why was he wanted for murder?

The answer ultimately doesn’t matter, as this wasn’t an important man. But it does help set-up the context that the film will take place in. We’re in Chinatown, and here, there are gangs, drug dealers, illegal immigrants, prostitutes, and all sorts of terrible things. Everyone knows, but nobody says a word. Why? We’re told that the culture of this area of the city. When a gun goes off, nobody bats an eye. Exaggerated for effect, I suppose, but it works in setting a tone to drop some characters into. It also works to differentiate itself from many similar action films involving cops.

Of the cops, the first one we meet is a man named Nick Chen (Chow Yun-fat). We see him first receiving a ceremony for putting his life on the line for the force. He works in an all-Asian division of the police force, dedicated to dealing with Chinatown. Imagine his surprise when a white man, Danny (Mark Wahlberg) enters the room and declares that he’s now a part of the squad. We’re told that there’s a reason it was an all-Asian squad: The people in Chinatown won’t cooperate with a non-Asian, especially if they’re a police officer. I guess that was a mistake, Danny.

Anyway, this turns out to be a roundabout way to get us involved in a buddy cop picture that’s not at all a comedy. There are few moments of fun for the characters in the film, really, although given that we deal with corpses, human trafficking and corruption among the city’s finest, we don’t need a lot of jokes. The two cops begin at each other’s throats, but they eventually warm to the idea of working with the other because, well, that’s how these flicks have to work.

I may make The Corruptor sound formulaic with that last paragraph, but to be fair, there are enough twists and reveals to keep things fresh. You start out thinking it’s just your average buddy cop film, but soon enough characters will be making decisions you wouldn’t expect, we’ll learn something suspect about one or the other, and eventually you’ll be wondering if all of the cards have been shown. Chances are, they haven’t been.

What this gives the audience is an involving action film. You’re always unsure of what’s going to happen next, and you wonder how much you actually know about the characters. Suddenly, prior actions make more sense, and you’re forced to reevaluate past events and sequences, putting them into a new context and approaching them with a new perspective. Everyone is hiding a secret, maybe more than one, and the film only reveals one at a time, giving you time to get comfortable with the last one before springing a new surprise on you.

Of course, this is still an action film, so we need action scenes. This is actually where The Corruptor starts to get weak, if only because there’s a lack of creativity to them. Almost every single action scene is a shootout — most of the time in dark locales that do not serve as a good place to watch people shoot guns at one another. Oh, there’s also the obligatory car chase, but even it involves a shootout. It seemed like director James Foley realized this near the end, when pipes burst and people manage to be burned and hung just by being shot at, but it came as too little, too late.

In an attempt to flush out characters, presumably, Danny is given a father (Brian Cox) who begins the film owing $12,000 to some people in gambling debt. Danny doesn’t have his money, but father shows up throughout the film to give us character moments that don’t fit at all. Excluding his character completely probably would have improved the pacing and not made the film feel overlong, which it does. Nick doesn’t get any development, save for the “reveals” which I don’t count, and Danny, despite the attempts, doesn’t get any either.

Really, the only thing to separate The Corruptor from many other action/buddy cop films is its setting. The way that the Chinese culture is laid out, true or not, and the way that it impacts the way that everyone acts, makes this film worthwhile. It makes it interesting, even if this angle is sometimes exaggerated to cartoon extremes. But it kept things fresh and helped me forget about the less-than-exciting action scenes and the lackluster characters. The culture clash worked here.

When you get right down to it, The Corruptor isn’t anything special. It doesn’t have great or interesting action scenes (they’re well-made but lacking in variety), the characters aren’t developed at all, and any attempt at depth falls flat. But I still enjoyed it because it was set in a somewhat unique location and because it had a few surprises that kept it feeling fresh. Sometimes, you just want to sit back and watch a brainless action movie. The Corruptor satisfied that desire for me. It’s not a great film, but it does what it attempts to do well enough to say it’s not a waste of time.

I didn’t really watch Cliffhanger. It played, and I spent two hours looking at the screen it was playing on, but I felt so disconnected from what was happening that I never felt as if I was involved, either emotionally or intellectually — I felt nothing. It’s a shame, as there were a couple of good moments, but on the whole, this is a film that felt devoid of life and personality. I was never given reason to care about it.

I suppose the most apt description one can give for Cliffhanger is “Die Hard on a mountain range,” but that doesn’t seem fair to me. Sure, there’s a seemingly ordinary man and he’s pushed to his limits because of some bad guys, but Die Hard had a certain charm that’s missing from this film. Maybe it’s because we grow to like John McClane, while the main character here is just some muscle-dude who’s really good at rock climbing. McClane had emotions, while this guy shows less emotions than the mountains he climbs on. At least they can cause rock slides when they get mad.

Our opening scene is our best, which perhaps sets expectations too high. We see a group of people climbing rocks, engaging in small talk, and they seem to be likable enough. They’re about to be rescued from the top of the rocks that they just climbed (I guess you don’t have to climb back down when one of your group members is the boyfriend of a rescue ranger). While the woman of the group is climbing across the rope to the helicopter, something goes wrong, and she’s left holding on for her life. Gabe (Sylvester Stallone) tries to save her, but he’s too late. She falls to her death, leaving her boyfriend, Hal (Michael Rooker) helpless.

Months pass after this. Hal and Gabe no longer talk to one another (Hal blames Gabe because he tries to save the woman, for some reason), and Gabe is no longer involved with the rescue ranger, Jessie (Janine Turner). This is going to have to change. See, through events that I’m too tired to explain, millions of dollars have managed to find their way onto the mountain range, and through even more events, the bad guy, Qualen (John Lithgow), is going to force Gabe and Hal to find the money for him, given the fact that they both know how to rock climb.

Soon enough, Gabe is shot at, escapes, and he allows Hal to do most of the work. He reunites with Jessie, and the pair spends a great deal of time tracking Qualen, Hal, and the rest of the baddies. There’s a distinct lack of action scenes at this point, which surprised me. Characters have a lot of downtime once the plot has been set-up, although once the action picks back up, it stays at that level until the end.

I suppose the Die Hard comparisons come because our protagonist is supposed to be like your Average Joe, and also because he rarely gets the chance to meet the villains. That role falls to the secondary cast. But he still manages to make an impact, be a nuisance, and generally cause havoc. Oh, and the bad guys also want a large sum of money, and have come up with an ingenious plan to escape with their prize. (And let’s not forget that director Renny Harlin was also behind Die Hard 2 three years earlier.)

The overarching plot is so basic. We know it’s there just to give characters a reason to be involved in action scenes. We forget these in the good action films because these scenes themselves are exciting enough to make us forget out weak the plot is. That downtime I mentioned earlier took me out of the film, and it never gained my attention and enthusiasm back. There’s nothing particularly special here, and without a real plot or characters, I just couldn’t bring myself to care.

The major problem is with the characters. The opening scene showed me they can be endearing. The rest of the film showed me that this was a fluke on the part of the filmmakers, and that they are actually empty vessels without any real personality. They’re all bland, and any tension has to be artificially created. For instance, the strained relationship between Gabe and the other two major characters gets brought up once or twice but never makes an impact on anyone, and doesn’t even really get resolved. They’re mad at each other early on, but in the next scene, they’ll attempt to save the other’s life. It just doesn’t make sense. I mean, I can appreciate the attempt made here, but it simply didn’t work.

The acting was also pretty bland, but I don’t suppose anyone went into this film expecting deep performances. But since the action was bland, I found myself looking to other areas to impress me. I couldn’t find any. Some action films have good actors to carry them during downtimes. This one doesn’t. The only thing that can be said about the actors is that Stallone is able to do a fine job in the action scenes, and Lithgow made me laugh some of the time he was on-screen.

Cliffhanger is your generic action film that has nothing special to offer us. The action scenes are standard affair, the plot is there just as a backdrop for the action scenes, and the actors aren’t any good, but how could they considering their characters are less interesting than a rock. I couldn’t get involved in the film, even though it got off to a decent start. Cliffhanger might work better as a film to play in the background while doing something more interesting.

In 2004, director Oliver Stone released the theatrical version of Alexander. Totalling 175 minutes total runtime, the film was a box office failure, domestically at least. Shot on a budget of $155 million, it made back just over $34 million. Critics panned it, and audiences didn’t go to see it. It was a failure.

For the DVD release, Stone decided to re-cut the film, making the total runtime 167 minutes. That’s not much shorter, but it helped with pacing issues that the theatrical version had. The director’s cut, along with the theatrical cut, sold 3.5 million copies in the United States. Apparently, Oliver Stone took this as a hint that audiences wanted another, longer cut of Alexander.

In 2007, we got this cut, titled “Alexander: Revisited – The Final Cut“. Totaling 3 hours and 34 minutes runtime, Stone really went all out with this version of his film. He has called this cut the “clearest interpretation [he] can offer”. So, with this knowledge in mind, this is the version of Alexander that I decided to watch. I regret this choice wholeheartedly.

I’ll give you some advice before I even begin saying why Alexander: Revisited isn’t worth your time. If you decide to watch Alexander, the version you want is the director’s cut. You might end up missing out on a lot of content–40 minutes worth, as a matter of fact–but I think that you won’t find that mattering all that much. You do not want to waste three and a half hours on this film, trust me.

I don’t typically like historical films to begin with, because they always seem like they want to teach me something about the period or the characters within it. Alexander is no different. It’s somewhat of a biographical film, detailing the life of Alexander the Great (Colin Farrell). Already I’m curious about it. Why cast Farrell, an Irishman, in the role of Greek? Will he be able to disguise his accent enough to make him believable as Alexander?

Well, no, he can’t. He still sounds quite Irish to me. Although I guess that doesn’t matter, as I don’t actually know what the Greeks sounded like back around 330 BC. Regardless, Farrell didn’t sell me on his role as a great man, especially one like Alexander. He didn’t come across as that incredible, to be honest, even if he is pretty handy with a sword.

Although we don’t even get to see him in battle very often, as there isn’t all that much fighting in the film. Actually though, for a film based around war, it’s more of a character drama than anything else. And this would be okay, except that you won’t grow to like or care about any of the characters within the film.

I think this happens for two reasons. For one, the acting isn’t any good. None of the actors showed much emotion, and nobody seemed to really be into their roles. The second reason is because of how poorly the characters are written. They aren’t given any reason to appeal to the audience, unless of course you are already familiar with the story of Alexander the Great, in which case, you have no reason to see the movie anyway.

See, if you already know the story, then sitting through 3+ hours just to hear another re-telling of it doesn’t make much sense. I mean, sure, you could enjoy watching attractive actors playing parts that you already know quite well, but since the film isn’t entertaining, then I think you’d just be wasting your time.

The fact that it is boring, and incredibly overlong, is the biggest quibble I have with Alexander. Had it been, I don’t know, half its final runtime, then it might have actually been quite good. See, all of the time when the film is focusing on characters we don’t’ care about, it could have instead had these moments cut, allowing us to get to the parts of the movie we want to see–the battles.

I don’t have much to say about the battles except that they don’t occur often enough. They’re entertaining enough, seemingly realistic, and they are the best parts of Alexander. Unfortunately, they are too few and far between to really make a big impact on the film’s total quality. For example, in the first two hours of the film, there is one fight scene, and it appears very close to the beginning. We then have to listen to characters talk and not accomplish much of anything for the rest of this time.

With a runtime of three and a half hours, I can’t recommend Alexander at all. Maybe the director’s cut is better, I really cannot say. I do know that Revisited wasn’t enjoyable, and felt like a big waste. I didn’t care about the characters or the story, the acting wasn’t any good, and I just wanted to sleep for the majority of the time it was on my TV.

Iron Man, Thor, The Hulk, Black Widow, Hawkeye and Nick Furry all team up together to bring you the Marvel super hero movie to end all superhero movies with The Avengers.  The Avengers turns out in many ways to be the film that the Fantastic Four franchise could only dream of becoming.  From start to finish this film is a non-stop action adventure as you get to see your favorite super heroes, smash, crash, and make snide remarks at the villainous Loki, who plans to enslave Earth after being ousted from his home land of the gods, Asgard.  In regards to action, it’s exactly what you expect it to be.  The film jumps from character to character to show how their ability to beat their foe is what makes them all the amazing super team they are.  Sadly enough, the action almost feels as though it goes on too long at times and I lost interest in the end sequence.

Where the film works well is the squabbling between a group of super heroes and super egos that have never been put in check before.  Robert Downey Jr.’s Tony Stark character of course leads the way with an ego that can only rival that of one of the ancient “gods”, Thor.  The two of them constantly battling each other in a game of wits and strength makes the film flow quickly and adds to the comic relief of it all.  Chris Evans finds a way of being the “buzz kill” of the group, as the Captain America character becomes the “jacktard” of the Avengers.  For more info on the definition of the word “Jacktard” please see the comic strip on the side, credited to the people over at Joe Loves Crappy Movies . Captain America’s best moment for me was probably the one part that family friendly Disney required be written in, a scene in which Captain America addresses the fact that there is only 1 God, and it’s not Thor or Loki.  Aside from that he tended to be a brooding, whining person constantly complaining about being stuck in modern times.  Black Widow and Hawkeye serve little point to the story and don’t really advance too much of the plot through out other than a few moments of comic relief.

My biggest disappointment came in the form of Mark Ruffalo as the Hulk.  Ruffalo was the 3rd person took a swing as the big green angry monster, and doesn’t quite deliver.  Don’t get me wrong there were many things I liked about Ruffalo’s take on the Hulk.  The problem is, he played Bruce Banner like he was a timid wuss, and didn’t really follow the character arc that Edward Norton set up.  I was wishing Norton would have returned to the film, but I guess his ego is bigger than the combined super hero egos that were shown on the big screen.  I left The Avengers with a bitter sweet sort of thought on the Hulk character.

Joss Whedon does a nice job behind the camera of this action epic, and keeps things on track.  He found a very nice way of not focusing too much on any one character and giving everyone equal screen time.  It does seem however  as though he focuses heavily on Tony Stark, but Downey knows how to steal the show and really is the stand out character both when suited up, and back at Avengers home base.  Downey also is probably the most talented actor in the room, and it should come as no surprise that he is stealing the scenes he is in.

In the end, Avengers is exactly what you expect it to be.  It’s a fun fluffy popcorn flick that has comic book geeks in full geek mode and has kids bouncing up and down in their seats.  It’s selling a ton of tickets, a ton of merchandise and is all around fun.  It is released in both 3-D and 2-D forms, and while I saw it in 3-D, I honestly think I could care less about the 3-D displayed on screen.  To me, it wouldn’t have been worth the extra cash.  However, as a whole Avengers is a nice way to kick off the summer season.  Welcome back summer movies— we’ve missed you.

Candy is another film that’s rallying against drug abuse. It has three main characters, all of whom have their lives altered in some, negative, aspect, before leading to pretty much the only conclusion that these film ever lead to. We’ve seen it before, and there’s absolutely nothing fresh here, but it’s watchable largely because of the performances from the three main actors. Well, “watchable” might not be the right word, as it’s a difficult film to finish just because of the content.

If there’s anything fresh about Candy, it’s the fact that its characters never enter that annoying denial phase that characters often try to plea. “Oh, we’re not addicts,” they say before snorting another line. No, in this film, at the very least, the two younger characters are ready to admit that quite early on. They just don’t care, or believe that being addicted to a drug is going to significantly alter anything about them. That’s very naïve of them, but at least you can admire their spirit.

The other thing that Candy does differently is separating the different stages that the characters go through for the audience. Now, this happens in most of these kinds of films, but actually drawing attention to it is interesting. We begin the film in “Heaven,” and slowly transition to “Earth” and eventually to “Hell.” I’m not sure if this actually made the film any better, but it is worth noting if only because it shows us that Candy isn’t trying to hide anything from the audience; it knows exactly what it wants to draw your attention to, even if it has to pause the film and give us a single word to do so.

You would almost expect each of the phases to tell a distinct story. You know, “Heaven” would be pure bliss, “Earth” would be the beginning of the come down, and “Hell” would be the worst part, either because the characters are so addicted at this point that there’s no saving them, or because they’re trying to get help but can’t due to any number of reasons. But categorizing them puts an expectation that there will be a noticeable shift in tone, which simply wasn’t the case here. This is a story that could be told without the phases, and we would be unable to pick a spot to place the title cards.

We begin in “Heaven,” although the film’s opening scene is anything but. Dan (Heath Ledger) and Candy (Abbie Cornish) are in love, but they’re also heroin users. Dan injects, but Candy still only snorts it. She wants to inject, for whatever reason (a better high?), but Dan convinces her not to. She decides to get high in the bathtub, but ends up passing out, only to be woken up by the cautious Dan. Boy, isn’t this fun? A character has already almost died. Sure is like “Heaven.”

To be fair, most of the “Heaven” section works out fine for our leads. They get high a lot, borrow money from friends and family, and they don’t have a care in the world. It’s only as we begin to get to the “Earth” phase that things begin crashing down. For instance, they have run out of money, so they begin stealing, prostituting, fighting with one another over the simplest things, and life doesn’t seem all that fun.

“Earth” is the phase that contains most of the action of the film. It’s also the longest, as you’d expect from a three-act narrative. This is where the real descent occurs. There’s a background character played by Geoffrey Rush who provides money and drugs for these people (he’s likened to a “cool” father), although he is underutilized. This film is more concerned about the lives of these two young characters than it is about an old man. Not necessarily a bad thing, but I always like seeing Geoffrey Rush and would have liked more from him.

The “Hell” section of the film is likely going to play out similarly to how you’d expect. This is an anti-drug film, let me remind you. It’s not quite as grim an experience as something like Requiem for a Dream, but it’s right up there. It’s because of the tone and nature of Candy that it’s hard to actually “like” or enjoy it. It’s just not the type of film that you are supposed to enjoy, which instantly makes it difficult to recommend.

Being very cliché (for this type of film) also makes it difficult to recommend. You’ll have seen the majority of the things in this film before assuming you’ve seen one or two similar movies in the past. It doesn’t bring much to the table in terms of originality. So, if you’re tired of films about people abusing drugs and suffering for it, you’ll probably want to skip Candy.

That is, unless you’re a fan of either Heath Ledger or Abbie Cornish, in which case you’ll want to watch it just to see their performances in this film. They are fantastic, and even though their characters aren’t exactly likable or endearing, just watching the actors dissolve in them makes you want to see more — even if it’s not pleasant. Rush is also good, although in a more background role, he doesn’t get the material to really shine.

Candy is a good film that is severely lacking in originality. Even so, if you haven’t already exhausted your quota of anti-drug films, or if you’re a fan of either Heath Ledger or Abbie Cornish, I think it’s worth a watch. It’s not a fun time, though, so if you’re looking for a film to cheer you up after a tough day, you’ll definitely want to pick something else.

The Wrestler tells a story about an aging professional wrestler, Randy “The Ram” Robinson (Mickey Rourke), who knows absolutely nothing else. That’s all he’s ever done in life, and it’s all that he believes he can do. Well, that’s not quite true, he also has a job at a local supermarket moving crates around, and has presumably had the job, or jobs like it, for quite some time. But the only success he’s ever had is in the wrestling business. His life outside the ring isn’t very good, and this is one of the reasons he continues wrestling for so long.

The other main reason to continue wrestling is necessity. His job at the supermarket doesn’t pay well, and it’s implied that he is often late with his rent. About 30 minutes into the film, he decides to have a “No Holds Barred” match against another wrestler. This match almost kills him.

We worried about “The Ram’s” body earlier in the film after we watch him limp around after what seems to be a safe match. This “No Holds Barred” match is shown through “The Ram’s” recollection, as he is having his injuries fixed up. When a doctor is pulling staples out of his body, we witness how they got there. When his face is getting patched up, we become aware of how the injuries occurred, whether they be from barbed wire, broken glass or a fork. We witness these things not like how they are portrayed on TV, but how they presumably occur.

This is what director Darren Aronofsky does incredibly well. His depiction of what it’s like to be a professional wrestler is heartbreaking, but likely not untrue. I’m sure some things are over-dramatized, but judging from the reaction from real professional wrestlers, it appears to be a realistic account of what it’s like. Randy has a lot of suffering to go through, both physically and emotionally, neither seemingly taking a bigger hit than the other.

His life outside the ring is suffering; his friends consist of a stripper named Cassidy (Marisa Tomei) and a few of the neighborhood children. He’s got a daughter, one that doesn’t want to speak with him. He wants to begin rekindling this relationship, or maybe sparking it for the first time, I’m not sure. He doesn’t know much about her, having not seen her in years, but hopes that he’ll be able to, at the very least, get on speaking terms with her.

I used the word “heartbreaking” earlier to describe the life of a professional wrestler, but you could use it to describe the entire film. Watching Randy’s life improve marginally, only to see it get worse is devastating. Things get better, and then things get worse, and the latter is always far more intense than the former.

What drives The Wrestler forward is Mickey Rourke. His performance is two-fold, one part emotion, the other physique. Here, he has to portray the emotion that comes from being an old, rundown, professional wrestler, but he also has to look and play the part. He is large in this film, and seems to take a lot of bumps in the process. Ask Rourke if wrestling is fake after filming this film, and I’d be willing to bet his answer would be a very firm “no”.

Thanks to his performance, and the way his character is written in general, we begin to really care about “The Ram”. Thanks to this attachment, the film becomes more heartbreaking. Even at the 30 minute mark, during this “No Holds Barred” match, we already have an attachment to Rourke’s character. When he ends up in hospital, we don’t want to see him succumb to his broken body. This is true for every single moment of the film. If something can go wrong, as it often does, we don’t wish it to.

Darren Aronofsky is good at making heartbreaking (there’s that word again) dramas, and The Wrestler is no exception. The majority of the film dwells in the negative territory, with only few moments of relief. One that stands out the most is one in which Randy has to work the deli counter at the supermarket. This scene is the only real humorous moment in the film, which is what makes it stand out even more.

The Wrestler is a really, really good movie. It has drama, tension, while telling an interesting and believable story. Randy Robinson is a character that grows on you quickly, even while completely destructive things happen to his body, mind and life. Mickey Rourke is incredible in the lead role, and the film, most importantly, makes you care. If I could reiterate this word one more time: It’s a heartbreaking film. Or it was for me, and likely will be for you as well.

The best way to describe Hannibal Rising is to call it a rape/revenge horror movie and then quickly explain that there’s no actual rape. An event that’s just as psychologically damaging occurs, however, and the rest of the film deals with the title character’s transition into adulthood and subsequent decision to kill the men responsible for ruining his life. Oh, and it’s also not scary whatsoever, so “horror” doesn’t really apply.

We begin near the end of World War II. Eight-year-old Hannibal Lecter (Aaran Thomas) and his younger sister, Mischa (Helena-Lia Tachovska) have just had their parents murdered, and they’re trying their best to survive. A few men break into their house, chain them up, and then eat all of their food. The men stay in the house for days, eventually coming to the conclusion that they’re either going to starve, or have to eat one of the children. Mischa is chosen (she has pneumonia and is therefore expendable), and is soon killed and eaten. After some time, Lecter manages to escape.

He eventually grows up, is now played by Gaspard Ulliel, and moves in with his aunt, Lady Murasaki (Gong Li). He discovers some samurai teachings, learns how to wield a samurai sword, and figures out what his goal in life should be. He’s going to hunt down the men who ate his sister, and cannibalize them as punishment (because they’ll care despite being dead, right?) He’s also a very intelligent person, becoming the youngest person ever accepted to a prestigious medical school, and gets to learn all sorts of things about the human body while working as someone who prepares bodies for dissection.

So, yes, this is an origin story about how Hannibal Lecter became “Hannibal the cannibal.” I don’t know about other audience members, but I really didn’t care how the character got to be the way that Anthony Hopkins portrayed him as. Geniuous and insanity are separated only by a fine line, after all. Some things are better left unexplained. That’s not the way that Hollywood works, so here we have Hannibal Rising, an unnecessary film that tarnishes the character’s name more than Red Dragon could even dream of doing.

For a movie primarily focused on a beloved character going around killing a bunch of other people, this is one dull film. Maybe it’s because we already know the eventual fate of Lecter, meaning there’s no tension whenever his life is threatened, but I think it goes deeper than that: Nothing in the film is put together in a way that makes it compelling. From the disjointed story to the overbearing musical score, this is a film that’s a burden to watch.

Any affection we had for the Hannibal Lecter character was gained through previous films. This one does nothing to make us feel for him, even though that’s one of the main goals. It wants us to see why his cannibalism isn’t a terrible deed, as his life was put through such torment that it’s only natural for him to want revenge. But then we also get somewhat sympathetic “villains,” all of which just did what they had to in order to survive, and it leaves me questioning why we’re supposed to like this cold-blooded killer.

Let me put this a different way: Rhys Ifans plays a villain in this movie. How are we supposed to root against him? Well, Hannibal Rising hopes that Lecter has built up enough good faith over the previous films that we’ll automatically be drawn to him even if he is no longer performed by Anthony Hopkins. Well, I learned one thing from this film, although it was something that I was already leaning toward: Hopkins made the character, and without him in the role, Lecter loses interest.

The character also doesn’t bear all that much resemblance to the adult Lecter whom we get to know in the chronologically later film. Not just in looks, although anyone who thinks Ulliel and Hopkins have a shred of resemblance is fooling themselves, but in the way that the characters act. Now, obviously someone who is 40 years younger is going to act differently, but this is supposed to explain to us how Lecter became the way he is in the other films. That just doesn’t happen here, and it feels like there was much more to tell. If they’re leaving themselves open for a sequel, I sincerely hope that a completely new crew is brought in, as this one didn’t do a good job.

The worst part about Hannibal Rising is that it’s just terribly boring. Here we have a character who could previously carry a mediocre film (Hannibal) or make a good film great (The Silence of the Lambs), but watching him here is just no fun at all. He’s not clever, he’s not smart, he’s not interesting, and he’s not unique. There’s no madness to his method; he’s just on a generic Hollywood revenge path, and the character is being ruined with every second he’s on-screen.

This is a terrible movie. The performances are poor, the writing is laughable, the plot doesn’t flow and the score is overbearing and distracting. It was adopted from a novel written almost solely so that the Lecter novels’ author could make sure that his story was the one Hollywood used, and in his haste, he didn’t come up with a good or even watchable plot. The novel wasn’t well-received, and I can see no reason for you to watch this movie. There is no suspense, no joy, and nothing to gleam from this ill-conceived disaster.

Red Dragon can best be summed up as a copycat film of The Silence of the Lambs, despite the book it’s based on having been written and published first. Essentially, this is the same film as Silence, with a few key differences: (1) it’s a prequel, (2) the main character is a male, and (3) the antagonist gets more time on-screen and is more sympathetic than Buffalo Bill was in Silence.

That’s probably oversimplifying things, so let’s step back a bit. Our film opens with the capture of Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins). He and an FBI agent named Will Graham (Edward Norton) are working on a case together. Unbeknownst to Lecter, Will has actually pieced enough together to know that Lecter was the one who killed people and ate their corpses. After a brief fight scene, Lecter is captured, and Will has been stabbed in the stomach.

We then fast-forward to several years later. Will has retired from the FBI due to the shock of dealing with Lecter, and now has a wife (Marie-Louise Parker), a son (Tyler Patrick Jones), and has a happy life repairing boats and living in a warm climate. Lecter, as anyone who has seen The Silence of the Labs knows, has been locked up (with an impressive seven life sentences). It wouldn’t be a terribly exciting movie if Will stayed in paradise for the entire film, so Special Agent Jack Crawford (Harvey Keitel), tells him that there’s still work to do for the FBI.

See, there’s a serial killer on the loose who is nicknamed by the local paper “The Tooth Fairy” (Ralph Fiennes). He has killed two entire families so far (including the family pets), and time is running out before he’ll strike again. Will is brought in because he’s the best profiler in the business. Of course, the film would be dull if Lecter didn’t get involved at some point, so Will decides that he’ll head to the doctor seeking advice to help catch the Tooth Fairy.

Does that plot sound familiar? Young FBI agent enlists the help of possibly insane serial killer to track down another serial killer? Well, it should, because it’s the same one used in The Silence of the Lambs. Almost exactly the same, in fact, and it makes it difficult to recommend Red Dragon based on that alone. You’ve seen it before, and this is a vastly inferior film to The Silence of the Lambs. You might have seen this exact story already, as in 1986, Thomas Harris’ novel was adapted into a film titled “Manhunter.”

There are a couple of reasons I don’t think Red Dragon worked all that well. The first was the (utterly unbelievable) decision to not feature much of Anthony Hopkins. At this point in the franchise, are you watching for anything other than Hannibal Lecter? If you are, you’re in luck with this film, because Lecter isn’t all that prominently featured, even if Hopkins receives top billing. He’s less involved this time around than in Silence, and he was only on-screen for somewhere around 16 minutes in that film.

We miss the interaction between Lecter and whichever FBI Agent is tough enough to take him on in a psychological duel. But even in the scenes when we get the two characters together, there’s little war going on between them. The talks are pleasant, Lecter seems more than willing to help, and Will rarely has to even pressure him. Lecter is more of a source of (convoluted) exposition than of true intrigue in this film, which is a departure from what was the best part of The Silence of the Lambs.

The other reason comes directly from the film’s director, Brett Ratner. Best known for the Rush Hour flicks, Ratner never seemed to me like a good fit for this material. He doesn’t grasp any sense of suspense or dread, and for the most part, this is a film lacking in atmosphere. Even the previously menacing Dr. Lecter never appears to be much of a threat. Remeber the scene in Silence when we first walk down to see the good doctor? A similar moment happens in this one, but we feel nothing but apathy as it’s happening.

Perhaps it’s the fact that we’ve already seen this character twice before that he no longer is as interesting or threatening. He induced a real sense of despair in Silence, and he got to show off in Hannibal, but after his debut, he never really seemed to be someone to fear. We were fascinated, not frightened, by him. This time around, locked safely behind bars and willingly surrendering information, he can no longer hold an audience by himself. Hopkins isn’t given much to do with here, which is a shame because he does such a good job with the role.

Red Dragon is a movie that does an adequate job of copying the plot from The Silence of the Lambs, but doesn’t bring anything fresh or original to the table. It has far more negatives than positives — particularly in the rendering of Hannibal Lecter, which is actually kind of sad and disheartening — and it’s just retreading old territory. I know that the novel came before, but there was no reason to make this movie, especially if it’s just going to be the same as Silence, a vastly superior film. Not even Anthony Hopkins can salvage this film.

After escaping from custody mid-way through The Silence of the Lambs, serial killer Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) has managed to evade capture for around ten years now. He was originally captured because he was caught after killing people and then eating them, and in Silence, he aided an FBI trainee in the capture of another serial killer.

In Hannibal, he’s the one that’s being hunted. Clarice Starling (previously played by Jodie Foster, but portrayed here by Julianne Moore), is now a tough Special Agent, as the case in the earlier film boosted her career tremendously. She opens the film with a drug bust gone wrong, and is publicly shamed because a colleague died and she shot a woman holding a baby (along with four other people). It’s at this point when she gets a letter from Dr. Lecter, informing her that he’s still watching her. She takes up the case again as a form of redemption, and possibly of addiction.

While it wasn’t exactly clear what it was, there was a very definite something between Lecter and Clarice in The Silence of the Lambs. This film, despite mostly focusing on one hunting the other, will explore this deeper. It never manages to bring us the same psychological warfare as its predecessor did, but the relationship between the two characters gets explored deeper, which is almost as good, and just about as satisfying. The problem is that while this is interesting, it’s never truly suspenseful.

Anyway, there are also a couple of parallel storylines that run alongside Clarice and her seemingly never ending quest to catch the cannibal. The first involves a police officer in Florence (where Lecter is currently residing — knowledge that Clarice doesn’t have) named Pazzi (Giancarlo Giannini), while the second involves an unrecognizable man named Verger (Gary Oldman), who is the only victim of Lecter who managed to survive. He has had his face cut off (of his own doing), and can’t even manage to eat a cookie. Obviously, he wants to see the good doctor tortured and maybe killed, and because he’s so rich, he’ll pay any amount of money to see this happen.

Essentially what we have is an intelligent man attempting to simultaneously outsmart three people who also happen to posses above-average intelligence. It’s a cat-and-mouse film, although all four characters interact with each other so sparsely that it doesn’t even seem to matter who everyone else in the picture is. The story isn’t very tight, and a lot of it seemed like it wouldn’t matter if it was to be removed. That is, until the ending, when we finally get the interaction that made Silence so good. Unfortunately, that’s too late to save face.

There isn’t the creepiness that presided over Silence. We’re never really worried about Dr. Lecter here, which comes as a surprise considering he’s out in the wild now. Before, he was locked in a cage for most of the film, and yet had this allure to him. The scene when we’re introduced to him left us fearing him for the entire film. Here, he isn’t particularly frightening. That’s not because of the character or the performance, both of which are still captivating, but because of the circumstance.

See, ten years have passed since the man-eater escaped from his prison. That’s a long time, and I would think that if Lecter wanted to do something bad to certain characters, he would have already. He begins this film trying to get a job as the curator of the local library. We never fear for Clarice because we know he won’t harm her, or he would have already. And what of this Verger guy? If Dr. Lecter really wanted him gone, he would have finished him off by now.

Instead of fear, we get amusement from this character. We want to see him work, lure in his victims, and otherwise show off his intelligence. We never worry for him — he’s too smart for everyone else — but we never worry for other named characters either; they either would be dead already, or are “rude” and deserve their death. There are a few moments involving Pazzi that work well in terms of generating suspense, but he’s the only likable and realistically killable character in this film.

Because the plot isn’t exactly all that interesting, we’re forced to look next to the actors. Thankfully, they’re all great, even if a couple might not be exactly what you expect. Hopkins is still the star, this time getting more time to show off, and his intelligent cannibal steals every scene he’s in once again. Moore’s interpretation of Clarice ten years later is interesting, and will probably come as a shock to some viewers considering how different she plays the role. Gary Oldman, under copious amounts of makeup and prosthetics, is unrecognizable, but ultimately isn’t all that important a character.

Hannibal is not a waste of your time if you enjoyed Anthony Hopkins’ performance in The Silence of the Lambs and want to see more from him. It is, however, not worth watching if you want a solid plot, because it’s all over the map here. The relationship between Lecter and Clarice gets more development, but the psychological battle between the pair is all but gone, and the only suspense comes either at the end or with Giannini’s character. It’s a definite mixed bag, and only truly worth your time for Hopkins.

There is a serial killer on the loose. No, not the fabled Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), but a man who goes by the name “Buffalo Bill” (Ted Levine). His tactics involve luring in a plump young woman, capturing her and throwing her into a pit, having her starve to death, cut off some of her skin, and then dump her in a nearby river. Obviously, the FBI wants to stop him, so they send their best and brightest trainee to track him down.

Her name — yes, their best and brightest is a female, which gets some looks from the local cops — is Clarice Starling (Jodie Foster). She is told by a man named Jack Crawford (Scott Glenn) that she should interview Dr. Lecter, a former psychiatrist who just happened to like eating his patients, and attempt to coerce him to help with the investigation. She’s a straight shooter, and after their first meeting (which is a chilling scene), it seems that her no-BS approach left an impression on the cannibal.

He doesn’t exactly help, however. He’s a man who speaks in riddles, never giving you exactly what you want but always giving you something that might help if you’re smart enough to figure it out — and if you’re able to get it out of him in the first place. He has to think you’re worthy of not being toyed with, and you also have to play his games. There’s an intense psychological battle between the two characters that takes place in this film, and it’s incredibly enjoyable just to hear them converse.

I’m not sure if we’re supposed to hate Hannibal Lecter. I certainly didn’t for most of the film, as he seemed to have most of his mind together even if he is a cannibal and gets some of the film’s bloodiest scenes. There’s something to appreciate, no matter how creepy he is, about a character as smart as this one. The way he’s written, the way he’s acted — everything about him makes you want to see more. I was drawn to him despite all of his little problems. Hopkins is the star of this film, embodying this character and stealing every scene that he’s in.

At the heart of The Silence of the Lambs is Clarice, whose gritty determination is the whole reason we get a film in the first place. She’s the character we relate to, one big break away from the career she’s wanted for years. We learn her back story through dialogue exchanges shared with Lecter, and we feel compassion for her. She’s not meant to show much emotion (that would be weakness, after all), but Foster manages to convey her emotions in a very subdued manner.

Despite this being a film where a crime must be solved, I felt that the investigation toward Buffalo Bill was far less interesting than either of the lead characters, and when Clarice and Lecter aren’t interacting with one another, our film loses energy. Once Bill gets involved in the events, it gets even creepier (Levine plays him far more out of control than Hopkins’ character is), but the few moments when Clarice isn’t interviewing Lecter get slow. Lecter’s scenes are always interesting thanks solely to Hopkins’ performance.

Even though there are a few slow parts, the slick style of director Jonathan Demme always shines through, and if it weren’t for this, there very well could have been a lot more of these dull portions. The constant close-ups, the way he creates tension from the most mundane of actions, and the way that we’re introduced to Hannibal Lecter all work toward creating a genuinely suspenseful film. The final of those, our first glimpse of the cannibalistic doctor, manages to make every scene, whether it involves the character or not, keep us on the edge of our seat just because we fear that he could appear at any moment despite being locked behind multiple security barriers.

Tension mounts and by the film’s end, we just need a release. You might be surprise to hear that the tone The Silence of the Lambs ends on is very light, but that’s just the case. After we get our conclusion, the final scene make you laugh because of how absurd the events that led to it are, and because of one piece of dialogue. It’s such a perfect line — although the writing of the film on the whole is solid — that it might just make you applaud.

But despite everything else in the film, this is an acting battle between Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster, as well as a psychological war between their two characters. Sure, Ted Levine is creepy and Scott Glenn is strong, but the tour de force performances from the two leads is what keeps us captivated. Without them, this is a good, if unremarkable crime drama. With them, it becomes nearly a must-see film. Sure, Hopkins is the winner, but Foster is strong as well, and definitely shouldn’t be overlooked.

The Silence of the Lambs is a good film elevated to great because of its actors. Hopkins and Foster carry this film, even though the rest of it is nothing to scoff at. This is wonderfully directed, has beautiful — if a bit claustrophobic thanks to all of those close-ups — cinematography, and has enough tension to keep you interested. Hannibal Lecter is the character that drew me in and held my attention, though, and it’s Hopkins’ performance which makes the character special.

Here is an arty film only for those of you who are willing to give it your full attention. It you decide to look away, multitask while watching, sleep (honestly, if you’re that tired don’t even try to watch this film), or anything else that will distract you from what’s happening on-screen, wait to watch it. If you disregard this warning, you’ll probably have a frustrating viewing experience. Actually, that might be the case anyway.

Mr. Nobody is a film that explores the idea that whenever you are faced with a choice, all of the potential outcomes from whichever decision you make creates a separate world. Do I want a lemon candy, or a lime one? Either way, the choice I don’t make still creates a different world where a separate me lives in that world eating that particularly flavor of candy. When faced with another choice, the worlds spilt apart again. People make thousands of choices every day. You can see how this would get confusing to film, so luckily, we don’t get thousands of different storylines — it just often feels that way.

At the crux of the story is a 118-year-old man named Nemo Nobody (portrayed as an adult and as an old man by Jared Leto). He is the last mortal on the face of the planet, as everyone else has managed to become immortal thanks to stem cells and, surprisingly, pigs. A journalist (Daniel Mays) interviews him, and a psychiatrist (Allan Corduner) examines him. They’re trying to figure out exactly what he can remember, which, given his age, proves to be more difficult than anyone could expect, especially considering everything he tells them is contradictory (which the journalist rightly points out to him near the end of the film).

For the most part, we’re getting the life stories of Nemo. There are certain things we know for sure. He has two parents (Rhys Ifans and Natasha Little), and he believes that he can see the future. Of course, his parents don’t believe that, but he tells us that before birth, children know everything. The indent under one’s nose is from being silenced by angels which removes all of your knowledge. Little Nemo was missed, and that’s how he gains this ability.

His parents end up splitting up. He has to decide which parent to stay with. He doesn’t make the decision up until the moment when his mother is already on a train, and his father is at the platform. The train begins to depart, and he runs after it. But his father calls for him as well, causing him to look back. What choice does he make? We see outcomes from both sides. We also see, in an opening montage, that he dies in a lot of these potential worlds.

There are also three women, whom we see during Nemo’s childhood all sitting on a bench together. Whether that really happened or if it was just convenient for the viewer to be introduced to the three possibilities, I’m unsure. It’s convenient that they all wear different dress colors, and that whatever color they wear here is very prominent in the future where he marries that girl.

I’ll list the women and their adult actors, but that’s about as much as I can give you. There are multiple futures with each of them, and to describe each one would be both boring and pointless. First is Anna (Diane Kruger), second is Jean (Linh Dan Pham), and third is Elise (Sarah Polley). They each have teenage and child actors as well (all with varying accents for some reason), but you can look at a cast list if you really want to see find out who plays each character.

So, what does this mean for the viewer? It means that you’re going to be bombarded with information and if you’re not willing to accept that, you have no reason to watch Mr. Nobody. I suppose you could just sit back and admire the gorgeous cinematography and listen to the (mostly licensed) soundtrack. That might be satisfactory enough, but the multiple storylines will be lost. I know I couldn’t keep track of how many different ones were going on, and I was paying close attention. I can only imagine what it would be like for someone who wasn’t willing to give the film his or her undivided attention.

Mr. Nobody is so weird to sit through. You experience it, but always seem disconnected from it. It’s like watching an absolutely stunning thing being spawned in front of you, but you have no power over it and no emotional connection to it. But somehow, some way, it manages to worm its way into your brain and make you reflect upon, well, everything. This is a film that wants you think not only about your past, but about your future. Again, participatory audiences will be the only ones to reap the full benefits from such a film.

The actors are fine here, although maybe the real praise should go to whoever managed to make Jared Leto look 118 years old. Whether it was done with CGI, makeup, prosthetics, a little bit of all three, or by magic, it was very convincing. Leto hams is up while playing his elder character (to some hilarious results), but it’s effective once certain revelations occur. Oh, this is also a film that will feel very different on a second viewing. You’ll both go in with an alternative perspective, while also knowing enough about the story to follow along more easily.

To guard against continuing to type yet say nothing of value, as I feel I have mostly done in this review, I’ll conclude here. Mr. Nobody is a film that you must be willing to give not only your time (it lasts well over two hours, especially if you watch the extended cut), but also your attention. You need to be willing to make the effort, and even then, it might be possible that the film will be confusing. It’s certainly not for everyone, but if it sounds like your type of film, you’ll have to track down a copy, as it’ll be well worth the time and effort. At least, it was for me.

(2012, Dir. by James McTeigue.)

The final known days of Edgar Allan Poe are…reinvented, perhaps is the word?…in The Raven; a modernized twist on the classic author that seems kind of like a cash in on the success of the recent Sherlock Holmes updates.  One part horror tale, another part prime-time murder mystery, The Raven offers John Cusack as the legendary author and more references to Poe’s work than you can shake a stick at.

The film opens with a title card explaining how Poe was found ill on a Baltimore park bench in 1849, and states that much of what occurred in his final days is “a mystery.”  That’s about the only tie to reality, so anyone expecting a Poe biopic should steer elsewhere.  This isn’t the first film Poe had been fictionalized and tied in with his work – for example, Jeffrey Combs got to play the tortured artist in a Masters of Horror episode for Stuart Gordon – but The Raven certainly works to cover as much of Poe’s work as possible while telling the tale of a copycat killer who fashions his crimes after Poe tales.  Many of Poe’s most famous stories are involved, though the story mostly just refers to them and doesn’t re-enact many parts of Poe’s macabre visions.

The plot is catchy enough, though there’s little depth to the script and I would have liked a little more focus on the crimes and a little less of Cusack and the police inspector played by Luke Evans playing Poirot. It’s a repetitive game – body, clue, chase, repeat – that is most interesting when the Poe tales that inspired the murder are relayed by the distraught author.  The chase scenes are effective enough – there’s a lot of pounding music and some fine camerawork whenever the action picks up – and the film doesn’t skimp on the violence (even if it does often settle for computer-generated blood).

The cast do what they can to salvage the simple tale, and are probably the film’s biggest asset.  Cusack is fine in the lead, though there are some moments where the snarky angst we’ve come to expect from his comedic roles shines through and takes the film to a modern place.  Evans is a nice addition, an actor who seems somewhere between Orlando Bloom and Joseph Gordon-Levitt on the “I’m young and have slick hair and maybe I can act” scale, growling plenty of lines that add to the tension when the chase picks up and playing off Cusack well.  The gorgeous Alice Eve (She’s Out of My League is still one of the rare romcoms I can dig, so I salute her) shines as the woman Poe desires, as does Brendan Gleeson as her disapproving father.  None of the performances are great, or even very good, but they all fit into the roles that the film requires and no one is out of place.  A misstep in casting could have sunk the film entirely, but these four leads all meet expectations.

Director James McTeigue, who once wowed me with V for Vendetta, takes charge of the production, though the pacing feels a little bit off to me.  I have to wonder if there was some control taken out of his hands before the final cut was approved, because there are times when The Raven just doesn’t flow quite like I’d expect it to.  The film all builds up to a final reveal that is frankly a disappointment, though the film’s biggest problem might be that there was nothing in the script that could lead to a satisfying ending.  If you have a murder mystery that focuses primarily on four or five characters – and if you are shown that none of them are the killer by the final act – you’re setting the viewer up to scoff at what you do reveal.

The Raven is watchable and entertaining enough, but there’s really little that stands out about it.  Those with a knowledge of Poe – I hate that I have to type that, because I’m implying that there are poor souls who don’t know the writer’s dark masterworks – will find some enjoyment in the nods to his life and works, yet that and a serviceable cast are about the only reasons to recommend this movie.  Fans of powerhouse actors in period mysteries – think From Hell or those recent Holmes flicks – could enjoy The Raven in passing. The more I think about the movie, the more I think I might have enjoyed it a tiny bit too. Yet it mostly made me want to read some Poe or watch some of the beloved Poe adaptations that Roger Corman produced in the ’60s.  If the best a movie can do is inspire you to find something better, I can’t get entirely behind recommending it.

Time passed so quickly while I was watching Monsters, Inc. I was transported to such an odd world, and I wanted to spend more time with the characters I was exposed to while visiting. Unfortunately, this film is only 90 minutes long, as it’s an animated adventure aimed at adolescents. So is using alliteration so overtly, but you know, such aims can be enjoyed by everyone, assuming you’re in the right mindset.

Monsters, Inc. wants to tell you what many young children already know: Monsters exist, you dummy! And bring me more cookies! In this film, they live in a place called Monstropolis. They act very similar to humans, except that they look different. They’re almost all of various colors, the number of extremities and facial features they have can vary depending on which one you talk to, and many resemble creatures from our world. Many of them work normal jobs, and they mostly act just like a human being would.

Apart from their appearance, there are two distinct, closely-linked, differences. First, they don’t use electricity, gasoline, or any other type of energy source that we use. Instead, they run everything on the screams of little children. Secondly, the biggest workplace in the city is a factory where monsters go to work in order to generate these scares. It appears that only human screams work, but it’s certainly a more reliable and cheap energy source than humans currently utilize.

It proves unfortunate, then, that children are getting harder to scare. Maybe it’s all of these darned horror films that they’re getting their hands on, but the monsters are having difficulty meeting their quota of scares. As a result, the city is running out of energy. Two best friends working at the factory, Mike and Sully (voiced by Billy Crystal and John Goodman respectively), have to walk to work because they can’t afford to use energy using the car. They work trying to scare the screams out of children; Sully does the actual scaring, while Mike does all of the organizational work that’s required (and there’s more than you’d think).

The monsters only have one major rule when trying to scare these children: Never leave the closet door open. If you do, a child could enter the monster world and start causing trouble. Humans, we are told, can kill a monster with a single touch. Even a sock is deadly, and an entire bio-hazard team has to be called in to quarantine the area if a human object enters the monster’s.

Of course, that’s exactly what happens one night when Sully accidentally brings a human child back with him after entering her room. She’s only approximately three years old, and only says a handful of words, but she terrifies the entirety of Monstropolis. After word of her escape (and “she” is eventually named “Boo,” for future reference) gets out, the entire city is locked down, and the hunt is on. Mike and Sully just want to get her back to her room and get things back to normal.

What starts out as a simple plan quickly becomes a thrill-a-minute race against practically everyone else in town. That is, everyone except Boo, who quickly endears herself to Sully. Soon he begins questioning if he even wants to return her to her room, and also wondering why people claimed that humans are deadly. Boo just seems cute to him. She can’t hurt him. She can’t even try to hurt him.

Monsters, Inc. plays out in a very thrilling and compelling way. There are several sequences that will enthrall and engage you. This is a film that puts many “adult” action movies to shame in terms of pure adrenaline. Maybe it’s the genuine emotional attachment that you feel to these characters, or maybe the animated style just means that anything is possible, but Monsters, Inc. is a very exciting film, regardless of the age of the person watching it.

Being a Pixar film, you expect the animation to be really good. Monsters, Inc. doesn’t disappoint here. In fact, there are some parts of the film that I would have considered nearly impossible if I didn’t see them in the film. The most impressive is the way that Sully’s hair all appears to move individually (Pixar actually had a program developed to render this). The characters are also so expressive that it’s so easy to know what they’re thinking. Yeah, they’re cartoon characters, but look at the format we’re dealing with. That works well here.

Voice acting is also quite good. I liked the two lead voice actors in the role they were given, but I haven’t even mentioned the third big-name actor in the film. Steve Buscemi has a role as a chameleon-type creature, who works as Sully’s main rival at the scare factory. He has the type of sinister voice that works great for this role, and he arguably brings the character more to life than anyone else.

Monsters, Inc. is a very good film, animated or live-action, aimed at children or adults. It simply doesn’t matter when you have this type of quality production. I had fun, I was excited by some of the action scenes, I was genuinely attached to many of the characters, and I laughed quite a lot. And laughter, my friends, is much more important than fear. Don’t forget that.

Every year, a select few R-rated comedies come out. They’re much fewer in number than their PG-13 brethren, but they appeal more to adults because they can include a lot of swearing, sex and possibly even some violence that wouldn’t get by in the “family friendly” PG-13 films. Horrible Bosses falls into this category; it’s a “raunchy” R-rated comedy. I put “raunchy” in quotation marks because compared to some other films with the similar tag, Horrible Bosses is actually quite tame.

At least, it’s tame if you are comparing it to something like The Hangover. Horrible Bosses just has a lot of swearing instead of an excessive amount of lude content. Oh, and its plot revolves around a plan to kill a few people, although this isn’t really a violent film. It’s mostly just about a trio of dudes wanting to better their lives all while hanging out with one another. This is a guy comedy filled with all sort of male bonding. There’s only really one female in the cast, and she’s a villain. I would have to wonder if many women would enjoy this film.

As I said, the plot involves a plan by a few people to kill their bosses. The title wants us to believe that those in superior positions to our leads are horrible, although they’re more cartoon characters than anything else. They’re also not particularly evil or menacing; mostly, they just inconvenience these people. And we’re supposed to be rooting for the working class! This was already a difficult concept to sell to me, but luckily, once the plot gets underway, I started to like them.

Let’s describe these people and their bosses. The main guy is named Nick (Jason Bateman). I call him the main guy because he’s the smartest of the group and has the most sensibility. His “twisted” boss is played by Kevin Spacey. Despite hinting that Nick is going to get a promotion, Spacey’s character takes it for himself. He also occasionally makes Nick work late and doesn’t allow him to leave early. Clearly, he’s worthy of death.

Second is Kurt (Jason Sudeikis), who works for Colin Farrell after his real boss dies of a heart attack. Farrell is a cocain addict and wants Dale to fire the overweight and large people at the company. He also talks to Kurt without much respect, although he wants his company to be profitable. Because of his “trim the fat” comment, referring to firing the overweight, Kurt wants to kill him.

Finally, we have Dale (Charlie Day). He tells us in a voice-over that the one job he wanted in life is to be a husband. Luckily for him, he’s engaged. Unluckily for him, his boss (played by Jennifer Aniston), sexually harasses him every day. For reasons I won’t get into, he can’t leave the job. He eventually gets blackmailed into a position where he has to have sex with her or else his wife will probably leave him. So, instead of doing that, he begins to plot her demise.

The man helping them along in their murder scheme is none other than Duane “I Have Profanity in my Nickname” Jones (Jamie Foxx). He’s more of a con-artist than you’d think, although he also enjoys referencing movies to explain situations. I wanted more of this character and less of the others. I also wanted real reasons to kill these bosses, but I didn’t get those either. Oh well.

I did get some laughs, though, so I suppose this is one of those cases of “be thankful for what you get, lest you be killed by an ungrateful employee.” I generally had an okay time with Horrible Bosses because it made me laugh for most of the time it was playing. That’s more important than anything else in a comedy. The character motivations can be weak (and they are), the story can meander (and it does), and it can spend have boring points (there are some of those as well), but if it’s funny I can forgive most of that. For the most part, Horrible Bosses is funny.

That’s about as much as I have to say about the humor, though. I’ll mention only that this is more of a black comedy than anything else. Onto the flaws, of which there are a lot. I mentioned most of them in the previous paragraph, but I’d like to expand upon them. First: Why are these people killing their bosses? Their justifications are very weak, and it was completely unbelievable that these average people would even attempt this. I had a hard time thinking that the story could happen because of this.

Second: The script seemed to run out of ideas midway through, leaving us sitting around hoping to stall for time so that Horrible Bosses can call itself a feature film. There are still jokes and I was laughing, but not much really happened at this point. Finally, there are a few times in the film when I wasn’t laughing, nothing much was happening, and it really began to drag. Some further cutting might have helped its pacing. (Oh, and Colin Farrell was definitely underutilized in this film. That’s another flaw!)

In the end, I laughed frequently enough to say that Horrible Bosses didn’t feel like a waste of time. Was it a really good film? Not really, but because the script was sharp enough to make me laugh, I didn’t care all that much while it was playing. It’s a tamer R-rated comedy than you might expect, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. It did need more fresh ideas and better character motivations, but I had a mostly enjoyable time while watching it.

If an Edgar Allan Poe poem gets you excited, you can go see The Raven to calm yourself down. Here is a film that takes the poet, turns him into a Sherlock Holmes of sorts, and then gives him absolutely nothing to do. Even when looking for clues, the character is more along for the ride than actually directly involved. The famous poet is portrayed not as a hero, but as someone who happens to stumble upon things that lead to other things, with the steady hand of the law at his side, doing most of the real work.

Unfortauntely, it’s also extremely boring. This story could work if the characters were interesting and carried the film more than the plot, or if the police squad wasn’t also bumbling around, hoping to discover something important, but since neither of those things happens, this film is more dull than listening to someone recite Poe’s “The Pit and the Pendulum” for the 100th time in a single sitting. Don’t ask exactly how I know that, but imagine listening to the same thing over and over again and you’ll think of something close to the experience of sitting through The Raven once.

The film stars John Cusack as Poe, Luke Evans as the main Police Inspector, Alice Eve as the love interest, and Brendan Gleeson as the love interest’s father. I only wish that the character names were actually what I just listed, as it would have injected some much-needed humor into our movie. No such luck, I’m afraid. Anyway, there’s a killer on the loose who is using Poe’s poetry and short stories as a basis for the murders. A man is cut with a pendulum, the killer escapes through a window with a hidden lock, and so on. Poe, with his unique expertise, is brought in to help the police investigate.

The stakes only get raised once the love of his life is captured, giving us a time limit and also giving us an emotional attachment. Or it would, if the film handled it with any sense of decency. Instead of getting upset about the capture, Poe’s first thought is to accept that she’s dead and give up hope. That’s not exactly the best way to endear yourself to us, Mr. Poet. If you don’t care whether or not the love of your life is still alive, why should we? Almost as importantly, why should we care about you if you’re such a heartless person?

Most of the film moves in a straightforward manner, meaning that characters will go from one place to another, finding a dead body at each newly discovered locale, tangentially connecting something on the body to the location of the next one, and moving on again. You can’t criticize the film for not at least always having its characters on the move, but considering they don’t do a whole lot except discover a dead body and be told where to go next, it can be said that it’s repetitive.

This would be okay if the characters actually had to figure the clues out in order to discover the next one, but most of them are just guesses that they go on knowing that they’re going to be right because they’re in a movie. Other times, the clue is so blatant that there’s no need for a “brilliant” mind like Poe’s to help figure them out. There are also points when the killer just tells them because they’re not smart enough to figure it out for themselves.

There’s nothing thrilling about The Raven, and for a thriller, that’s a pretty big problem. None of the situations are any different from your typical murder-mystery, and because — despite what the film seems to want — the stakes are so low, nothing matters. You turn to the characters to pull you through a weak plot, and they can’t do so. Poe does develop, but not in any logical or consistent way, gaining and discarding personality traits whenever it’s convenient for the filmmakers. The Police Inspector is the same grizzled and determined man from start to finish, and the love interest is locked away in a box for most of her time.

The only real development comes from Brendan Gleeson’s character, in which he begins the film hating Edgar Allan Poe and finishes it tolerating him. You can see that there are really high expectations here. When a secondary character who maybe gets five or six scenes in the entire film, disappearing for long stretches for seemingly no reason, gets the most character development, you know something has gone wrong. In the case of The Raven, a whole lot was in that category.

Is there anything about this film that actually works? Well, I thought John Cusack was fine despite being given absolutely nothing to do. There are a few references to works of Poe that fans of his might giggle with glee at when mentioned. And … no, that’s really just about it. It’s a mediocre-at-best murder-mystery film and so much of it is boring, uninteresting and cliché that it becomes a chore to sit through. This is a two hour film that feels like it’s four.

The Raven is an awful film. Almost nothing works, from the uninspired plot, static and one-dimensional characters, a lack of actual intrigue in regards to the murders, and a complete lack of desire to use the main character for anything other than as a bystander. This is a boring thriller that sheds no light on Edgar Allan Poe, and will just make his fans shake their head in frustration. It’ll do that with non-fans, too, and will make you want to be a character in one of his stories by the time it concludes.

Election is a funny movie about the ins and outs of high school politics, while also taking shots at the everyman teacher, and also pretty much anyone else who might possibly even be tangentially related to the school environment. Alexander Payne’s film doesn’t discriminate, and that’s something to be grateful for. Anyone can and will be a target in this film, and yet the satire is done with good intentions and isn’t particularly mean-spirited, which allows the film to be fun even for those who might be the targets.

It’s also all done with a slightly unique style, allowing Election to stand out from the crowd, if only a little. For instance, all four of the main characters get their own voice-over narration segments. Freeze-frames are also used, not only to stop the action, but also to allow characters to talk about the other characters’ expressions during the freeze. There are also a few important flashbacks scattered throughout, and if you’re not paying at least somewhat close attention, you might get lost in the timeline. It’s always nice for a movie to force its viewers to pay attention.

I’m not sure who is supposed to be our main character, so let’s just begin with the oldest, a high school teacher named Jim (Matthew Broderick). He’s comfortable in his current position, is married, and enjoys his work. He recounts a tale in which one of his co-workers entered a relationship with a student, was subsequently fired and lost his wife. He doesn’t want to go down that road, which is apparently ever so tempting.

The student named in that story is one Tracy Flick (Reese Witherspoon), although through her voice-over, she denies that she had any hidden motives, that she really loved this teacher. We all knew of a kid like Tracy, the one whose hand was always raised, who always had the most school spirit, who joined all the clubs, and did it all for a college application — or maybe to win mommy and daddy’s approval. She’s entering an election to become the student body president, and is currently running solo. Jim, the one who organizes the government, is afraid that Tracy will attempt to manipulate him, so he comes up with a plan of his own.

That plan involves getting the most popular guy in school, Paul (Chris Klein), to run against her. Paul’s not too sure of this idea at the beginning, but eventually warms up to it. This is the kind of person who is nice, athletic (apart from his broken leg), and genuinely sweet. His sister, Tammy (Jessica Campbell) also decides to run, although her reasoning for doing so is forgotten about soon enough, as is her character. It’s really a two-person race.

Everything’s building toward election day, although a surprising amount of the film takes place outside of the school, focusing on Jim and his decision to balance his romantic life between his wife and that man’s ex-wife from that earlier story, a woman he’s decided he’s infatuated with. It’s all interesting and funny, told in a way that keeps our attention, and presented with characters who all act like they’ve jumped straight out of the cartoons.

Not that this is a bad thing, mind you, as it helps make the film’s jokes work better, but it’s hard to actually imagine any of these people managing to get through up to this point with the way they are presented in the film. The only “real” character in the film is Tammy, but once her purpose is fulfilled, she’s cast-off, never to be heard from again. The rest (the self-centered manipulator, the too-nice-to-be-true guy), can’t be believed. Certain features are highlighted and exaggerated to prove a point, and I can’t say that it wasn’t effective.

The actors are also all strong, particularly Witherspoon as Tracy Flick and Broderick as the teacher. Witherspoon nails the over-the-top eagerness that is required of the part. Broderick is generally sympathetic, even when his actions don’t necessarily lean that way. Klein and Campbell, while both quite good, were overlooked more and more as the film progressed, which is unfortunate because it would have been nice to see more from them.

Not all of Election works. The parts of the film dedicated to the teacher and his home life felt off, and I wasn’t too sold on the ending. Sure, it makes sense, and it’s not exactly what you’d expect, but if the film was trying to make a point, the ending didn’t help serve this purpose. The narration was also hit-and-miss, with some of it not helping our cause at all, and most of it feeling unnecessary. There are also a couple of scenes that appear as if they’re going to build up to something (like when Tammy stares at a soccer field in disrepair), but nothing comes of them.

Election is a funny, enjoyable little movie. Is it perfect? Absolutely not, but its flaws are minor when looking at the big picture, and its cartoon characters, while certainly over-the-top, are all somehow relatable. You either were one of these people, or you knew one. It’s not a film that’s going to hurt feelings, but you’ll appreciate the commentary that goes on throughout, even if the ending doesn’t help serve its point and it could have either been expanded upon or trimmed a bit more to help remove some redundancy. Regardless, it’s a very fun movie that I have to give a recommendation.

A man is born. He appears to have arthritis and several problems that only occur in the elderly. Doctors believe that he will die shortly. Nobody believes this man will make it a few more days, let alone weeks or years. That is, nobody except his surrogate mother, Queenie (Taraki P. Henson). She hopes and prays that he’ll live a long life. Well, we wouldn’t have a movie lasting 166 minutes if he died in infancy, would we?

The man I was talking about is the titular Benjamin Button (portrayed by many actors, but the main star is Brad Pitt). He’s born with some sort of rare disorder that makes him age in reverse. He’s born old, but gradually gets younger. Why he’s born as a baby (and dies as a baby, SPOILER ALERT) is beyond me, because I would think that if you’re aging in reverse, you would be born physically as an old man. But I guess an old man would be hard to give birth to. Besides, overthinking something so trivial like that is silly, right? (And also, how might bones and organs shrink to the point of a newborn child after they’ve been fully grown? Wouldn’t the skin fall off, even if they did? I’m overthinking this again, sorry).

Anyway, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button takes us through his entire life, from birth to death. It’s detailed to us through his diary, which is being read aloud by a woman who is reading it to her dying mother. The mother is someone who at one point of the story was romantically involved with Benjamin, and got his diary when he was still capable of writing out his life story. Her name is Alice, and for most of the movie she’s played, or at least voiced, by Cate Blanchett.

I had to leave the “or at least voiced” part in there because there’s a really odd couple of scenes near the beginning of the film where a very young Julie is talking to a physically old Benjamin, but the voice coming out of her sounds absolutely nothing like that of a 6 year old. Instead, it was dubbed over with Blanchett’s voice, only with the pitch slightly altered. I get it, we’re supposed to understand that this child is mature, but that comes through well enough in her dialogue, and this extra dubbing is distracting.

The most surprising thing about Benjamin Button is its budget, which was $150 million. I was in great shock about this number, because when you first look at it, there’s little reason to think it would be so high. At its core, it’s a basic drama film with only one scene with explosions, and there is little noticeable CGI to speak of. Sure, the two leads, Pitt and Blanchett might have cost a few (probably $25 million combined) million a piece, but that hardly gives us a budget of well over $100 million.

But then you look deeper, and you begin to see why the budget is this lofty. To begin with, the film spans decades, beginning on the day WWI ended, and continuing up until the mid 2000’s. That’s a lot of costuming and set-building that has to take place in order to realistically represent each of these time frames. And if you’ve seen other David Fincher films, you know that he’s one to make sure things are represented accurately.

Digging even deeper, you begin to question how much CGI was used. While several different actors were used to portray Benjamin Button throughout the film, I have a feeling that there was a lot of CGI used on his face. I’ve heard that almost every scene used some amount in order to make the actor older or younger, and given how much time passes, and how the character does seem to age with time, I’d believe that. Blanchett’s character ages too, although nowhere near as noticeably. And without wanting to spoil too much, in 2 years, she apparently goes from a perfectly able-bodied person to someone who is completely unrecognizable. It’s a little off-putting, but I suppose such things can conceivably happen.

There are parts of Benjamin Button that feel unnecessary. While we are, for the most part anyway, just watching Benjamin live his life, there are segments of the film that are largely unimportant. There’s a part where he meets a swimmer, Tilda Swinton, and the pair hit it off. And then she isn’t heard from again until near the very end of the film in a brief role. Benjamin didn’t grow from this experience, nor did it have any impact on the rest of the movie. It was just there, and just increased the already hefty runtime.

The biggest problem that Benjamin Button has is in its lead character. Benjamin doesn’t really have much impact on the story, even though it’s his story. He’s more of a passerby, observing life through the eyes of an outsider. But this makes him hard to relate to, especially when the other characters are rich and bring the film to life. Benjamin, on the other hand, is just there. He has no real character traits except that, yeah, he’s aging backwards. That’s good for him, but it doesn’t actually make much of an impact on the film except for in the beginning and at the end. It’s a gimmick and nothing more.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button isn’t an excellent film, but it’s good enough to recommend giving a look, especially if you want to see how well CGI can be used to alter a person’s appearance. If there’s one thing to take away from this film, it’s that we’ve come so far in our use of CGI that we can use it so that it isn’t noticeable — the best possible way to use it, in fact, is this way. The film is a bit of a mess, as there are pointless chunks of story and a character that is hard to care about, but it’s still worth checking out.

It’s hard to be down on a buddy comedy about two likable people who are involved in a mix-up that leaves them in a life or death situation. It’s even harder to be down on a film like this when weed is involved, because any negative you say will be interpreted as, “Well, you are just against pot”. This is frustrating, and it also means that a little acknowledgement towards the subject is something that I have to give before the review can commence.

So, for the record, I am not against the legalization of marijuana. I’m not for it either, I just really don’t care. I haven’t put enough thought into the matter to have a clear opinion, so color me neutral and somewhat ignorant on the subject, because that’s about where I stand. I just can’t bring myself to a point where I care enough to form a valid opinion, but just know that anything negative I have to say about Pineapple Express does not come from some deep-rooted burning hatred of pot.

The story is basically what I described in the opening paragraph. One character witnesses a murder, he involves another character, and most of the film revolves around them attempting to figure out what’s going on, while also running for their lives because the person who saw the murder was seen, and is now being hunted down because of that. The character who saw the murder is a process-server named Dale Denton (Seth Rogan), and the second character is his drug dealer Saul (James Franco).

There are a few more subplots than that, adding a small layer of depth to the film, but that’s the general idea. It’s a simple story, one that won’t feature any surprises, but it’s short, sweet and something else. I forget, it must have been all the pot that I– I mean, it’s also silly. There are a lot of moments in the film where characters do not behave how you’d expect them to, and some stunts that don’t seem like they could happen in real life.

It’s also silly in the sense that there are some funny moments. I’ll admit that I did laugh at fair amount of the film, at least during the first two-thirds of it. Characters are funny, charming and they grow on you, and when they’re talking to one another, you feel a connection. It’s clear that a lot of the dialogue was improvised, and this actually did make a lot of it humorous to listen to.

It’s unfortunate, however, that Pineapple Express took the “big, epic, climactic battle” finale, instead of the one that it easily could have pulled off given the subject matter at hand here; a mellow ending would have fit quite well in my estimation. Instead, we are treated to a rambunctious, overly dramatic and somewhat boring final third. There are some good action scenes scattered throughout, but it quickly becomes clear that bunching a large number of them together isn’t in the film’s best interest, despite it doing this anyway.

This lackluster ending also makes Pineapple Express leave a bad taste in your mind days after watching it. Most of the movie is funny, I’ll admit, but you quickly forget about that fact after the movie ends, because it closes on such a poor note. Rogan isn’t an action star, or at least, he doesn’t show that he can be one in this film, so seeing him shooting guns, and jumping around in a shootout bores, instead of excites. The action scenes before the ending work well because they break up any monotony you might be feeling, but at the ending, where it’s nothing but these scenes, you get bored with them.

There also does feel like a lack of tension for a lot of the film. Even when Rogan and Franco’s characters look like they could be in trouble, you don’t worry for them because you know that they’ll somehow get out of it. Maybe not entirely in one piece, but they’ll make it. This likely stems from their characters’ nonchalant attitudes; they rarely act in a way that makes you believe they’re in a rush. You will grow to like these characters, as they seem like they’d be fun to hang out with, but you won’t fear for them, making the action scenes, and the finale in particular, less effective.

Pineapple Express is a film that I enjoyed for most of its duration, but was really let down by its ending. Look past that, and it’s funny, and possesses a bunch of characters that you will grow to like. It lacks tension though, which, while not an incredibly important point, makes the action scenes less effective. Rogan and Franco play characters you will end up enjoying the company of, and the jokes are usually enough to keep you laughing, at least until the film stops having jokes, and decides to have a grand shoot ‘em up.

We begin with an average night in the life of Doug and Lois Riley (James Gandolfini and Melissa Leo). She stays at home and does nothing much with her time. He is much more active: He has a poker game, smokes a cigarette, goes for some food at the local diner, smokes a cigarette, has an affair with the waitress who serves his waffles, and then has another cigarette before he comes home for the night. His wife waits up for him.

You see, these two people have become disenchanted with the thought of living after their daughter died. They’ve drifted apart, and they’re generally unhappy people. Doug heads to New Orleans for a business trip, and Lois can’t even leave the house. In New Orleans, he ends up heading to a strip club and meets a stripper/prostitute named Mallory (Kristen Stewart). Or maybe it’s Allison. Brenda? She goes by many names. She also claims she’s 22, although Doug thinks she looks 15. He ends up going back to her house, but refuses her multiple advances.

The next morning, he has Lois on the phone. He’s decided he has to stay in New Orleans for an indefinite period of time. Why? He’s going to become a surrogate father for Mallory (which is the name I’ll go with for the sake of convenience). Of course, he doesn’t tell his wife that, so he’s essentially leaving her in the dark — “her” being someone who’s afraid to even leave the house because she’s overcome with grief. Mallory isn’t aware of his intentions either, but after fixing the electricity, plunging the toilet and doing her laundry, she warms to the idea. As long as he pays her $100 per day to stay at her house, that is. Where he gets the money to do this for months, I’ll never know, but he seemed to have an unlimited cash flow.

Most of the film deals with the relationship between Mallory and Doug, she so unsure of what the world can offer and he so kind, generous, and all other types of words one uses to describe a person with a huge heart. We also occasionally cut away to Lois, who continues to fight with the isolation that comes not only from losing her daughter but now also from seemingly losing her husband — and she doesn’t know the reason for the latter of the two.

The problem with the film is that it doesn’t really go anywhere, and when it does, it follows the precise pattern one can expect from this type of film. All tension feels manufactured, especially because the characters get along for the vast majority of their time together. If they’re to have a fight, it’ll result in an overreaction and eventual consolation which doesn’t change anything about anyone.

Really, the only reason this film works at all is because of the strong performances. The two lead grownups are highlights, with Gandolfini standing out because of his larger role, and because he comes across so warmly, but Leo makes do with her smaller, more understated role. Kristen Stewart doesn’t do a bad job either, although her character basically has two modes: Gloomy and angry. And I suppose a combination of the two as well, but she’s strong enough here at conveying these two complimentary emotions.

If it weren’t for the performances, this isn’t a film that would work all that well. The pacing is too slow, the plot often doesn’t go anywhere, it’s a predictable film, and it’s also quite silly when you step back and think about it. I mean, come on! Some dude has decided to become a fake-father to a teenage stripper, spending over $100 a day for the privilege? We’re supposed to believe that would happen? Get past that, and there are a few other problems the film has, but I found that basic premise hard enough to believe in.

It also seemed as if the death of their daughter fully encompassed the two adults’ personalities. I can be sympathetic toward someone who underwent such a traumatic event, but if that’s as deep as their character gets, and they base everything they do based on something like that, it’s hard to continually think “oh, it’s okay because they’re still grieving.” Some time had passed since their daughter’s death, but these people seem completely unable to function in society — at least, as much as we see them. Presumably, Doug runs a successful business as he can throw away hundreds of dollars a day on his “daughter” and cigarettes, but we never see him working and he can apparently just drop his business with the drop of a hat.

This leads to it being difficult to think that these are real characters. They’re simply not complex enough to feel real. I think this is also why Welcome to the Rileys feels as predictable as it does; if all of the character actions are guided by simple reasoning, then we can figure out what they’re going to do before the situation presents itself for them to act in that manner. I figured out the ending about an hour in, and was happy enough when I turned out to be right. I even got specifics of the ending — not just the big picture. There are no surprises here.

This is a film that continues to be watchable almost solely because of the performances. If it weren’t for them, I would have struggled to make it through. The plot is not well-developed, the characters act based solely on one event in their past, the pacing is very slow, nothing ever really gets accomplished, and it’s a very predictable experience. The actors are good, and it’s because of them that I didn’t mind finishing Welcome to the Rileys, but unless you’re a fan of one of the three leads, I can’t recommend giving it a watch.

The series of “Spawn” was created by renowned comic book writer and cartoonist Todd McFarlane. First appearing in 1992, the character of Spawn has become quite well-known in the world of comics, and even by some people outside of them. He even got a cameo appearance in the Xbox version of Soulcalibur II. Yes, he is a fun character, and in 1997, he got his first live-action film adaptation.

Spawn is a very visually dynamic film. Its plot isn’t actually all that important, and stripped away from the fantasy setting, (if it actually is fantasy), then the plot is closer to your standard revenge film. Man is betrayed by someone in a higher power than him, and wants revenge. This is how these types of films work, and the plot more or less follows this format to a tee.

The man who is betrayed is named Al Simmons (Michael Jai White). He’s a military assassin who gets sent on one final mission. Little does he know, his employer, Jason Wynn (Marin Sheen) means this quite literally. He has sent another assassin to kill Simmons during this mission. Instead of a simple bullet to the face, Simmons is burned to death.

Then, five years later, he comes back to life, disfigured from the burning, but otherwise seemingly unphased. Despite the fact that his body seems to be completely in ruins, he is able to move quite well. See, Spawn actually went to Hell, with The Devil keeping him there for those five years. The Devil wants Simmons to return to Earth to kill the man who betrayed him, and then lead Hell’s army to defeat Heaven’s army.

Al Simmons doesn’t seem too sure about the idea, but with the promise of being able to see his wife again, he reluctantly accepts. He becomes Spawn, and goes on a quest to murder Jason Wynn. He gets help from The Devil’s voice on earth, a clown called “The Violator” (played wonderfully by John Leguizamo). His quest takes him to many different locations, has a few fun action scenes and is quite a bit of fun.

But like I said, the plot of Spawn doesn’t really matter. The importance–if there is importance, which I think there is–is in the film’s visual direction. Despite coming out in ‘97, there are some parts of the film’s visual style that hold up even today. An example of this is in the way Spawn transforms from his disfigured, scarred body to his costumed attire. The transformation still holds up, and to me at least, that is impressive.

Unfortunately, some of the film’s visual techniques do feel really dated, and in these cases, it is really apparent. The Devil himself looks terrible, almost looking like he was ripped directly from an old video game. He shows himself as a dragon-like thing, one whose voiceover work doesn’t match his mouth movement at all. But it doesn’t look like they even tried to do that. The dragon itself was menacing enough, and back in ‘97, it definitely did its job. It just doesn’t look any good now, and does take you out of the film somewhat.

Something that may go unappreciated, but was a successful experiment, was the way scene transitions were handled. When a scene transition occurs, the previous one appears to melt, revealing the next one. It’s a little touch that goes a long way in adding some more depth to the visual style of the film.

Also looking good is Spawn himself, with his costume translating nicely to live-action. His cape flows beautifully through the air, and everything about him is detailed enough to make it seem somewhat realistic, despite the fantasy setting. The setting is also something that is worth mentioning, with the city Simmons lives in being shown as a dark place, with the only brightness coming from the home that he used to share with his wife.

Spawn does feel a lot like a B-movie, in many regards. The acting is completely over the top, the action sequences are loud, overly violent and incredibly explosive, and the film has an overall cheesy feel to it. This might actually make it more enjoyable, because if it was taken seriously, and if it did have a gritty, semi-realistic feel to it, it might not have been fun. That’s what the film really is, it is fun to watch.

Spawn may not the most memorable film, but is certainly an enjoyable one to sit down and watch for an hour and a half. It’s a fun film. It won’t make you think particularly hard, but it’ll keep you entertained. The visual style and effects used, for the most part, still stand up on their own, and they help give the audience more reasons to watch the movie. The action is fast and fun, John Leguizamo’s “The Violator” is hilarious, and the film is just an entertaining watch. Nothing more, but it doesn’t need to be. It accomplishes its goal to entertain the audience and bring its titular character into the public consciousness of mainstream Hollywood audiences.

The clue is in the title. Or, more precisely, the main clue is in the title. There’s a twist at the end of The Life Before Her Eyes, and if you’re looking for it, you’ll probably figure it out. With that said, there is more than one way to interpret it, and that added depth is beneficial, especially considering the majority of the story isn’t anything special. It’s not bad, but it’s more of a life film than anything, and the lives in this case aren’t all that interesting.

We begin with a couple of teenagers, Diana (Evan Rachel Wood) and Maureen (Eva Amurri) going about their daily life at the local high school. Through many flashbacks in the film, we’ll learn more about them. For now, we’re just going to follow them into the bathroom so that they can gossip about people. They hear gunfire, and before you know it, a classmate of theirs bursts in and announces that he’s going to kill one of them. We also zoom around the school and see the dozens of bodies that he’s already gunned down.

You’re going to have to wait a long time to find out what transpires after he enters the bathroom. Most of the film actually takes place 15 years after the massacre, as Diana (now played by Uma Thurman) is having some sort of post-traumatic stress symptoms now that we’re at its anniversary. She has a daughter and a husband now, although the shooting is weighing heavily on her mind, especially because a lot of the events that are occurring in her day-to-day life are mimicking things that happened earlier to her. Of course, those are used as seamless transitions for the audience, as we move back and forth between Diana’s present and past as the two overlap at every turn.

Most of the interesting parts in The Life Before Her Eyes come from the flashbacks in which we learn how Diana was before becoming the “mature” adult that she is now. We witness everything that she put herself through when she was a teenager, and we understand the relationship between her and Maureen. It’s strongly implied that Maureen didn’t make it through the shooting — we are, after all, following Diana afterward, and we never see Diana as an adult — but despite that, when the bullets begin firing, it hits fairly hard anyway because of the relationship that has been built up between these characters.

There are more clues regarding the twist than just the title, but to really get them, you’re going to have to watch the film a second time, or know what the twist is before hand. They start off very subtlety and get more obvious as we progress. There are a couple at the end that you’ll recognize as “off,” but won’t be able to place exactly why until the credits roll. I’ve read reports of some people being confused at the film’s ending, which leads me to believe that those people just weren’t paying attention. This isn’t too difficult of a film to understand.

It is heavily symbolic, and if you don’t like looking at gorgeous imagery, then you won’t have a good time. The Life Before Her Eyes is under 90 minutes long, and once you account for all the time used for the same flashback that’s been extended only a little, and the unnecessary yet beautiful shots of … flowers, or whatever, you probably only have an hour of film left. I struggle to call it a pretentious film, but some might see it that way, as it’s very lacking in actual content, focusing more on mood, atmosphere and scenery. It looks great, and the cinematography is beautiful.

It’s almost a little irritating just how many times the filmmakers decide to establish certain things. Every time that the gunner bursts into the bathroom, we have to watch him burst in, engage in the same benign dialogue, and so on. We get a little more of the picture each time, but we have to sit through everything that came before it. There are a couple of other scenes that are flashed back to and nothing changes at all. It feels more like padding than anything, and I was tired of it by the time the film ended.

Problematically, The Life Before Her Eyes has two stories, and one of them is far more interesting than the other. When Diana is a teenager, she engages in “questionable” behavior, but is at least an interesting character. The relationship between her and Maureen is sweet and engaging. As an adult, she has to deal with a husband who barely factors in, and a daughter who is annoying for the sake of being annoying. “What are you watching?” “The Magic Schoolbus.” Nope. It turns out she was watching an action movie. That is the kind of drama we have to sit through in the adult Diana’s life.

That’s not to say that Uma Thurman is bad in her role, as she’s just fine. It’s more that her character isn’t given a whole lot to do except look sad and thoughtful as she flashes back to Evan Rachel Wood’s interpretation of the teenage character. There are just so many more interesting events in the younger Diana’s life that it’s hard for a college professor mother to compete, I guess.

The Life Before Her Eyes is a decent attempt at telling an engaging story, although it falls flat for a lot of the time because it doesn’t do anything special. Still, the ending helps add a much needed layer of depth which will either leave you confused or appreciative — maybe both. It does feel like a very padded movie, and if you have symbolic shots of things that are seemingly unrelated to anything going on in the film, you might want to watch something else. Maybe try Stay, which is a similar film in many aspects.

I know that Eragon is supposed to be a serious movie, but there’s no way I’m able to sit through it without giggling. I’m not sure how anyone could. Maybe if you’re under the age of 6 you’ll think it’s the coolest thing ever made, but if you’re older than that, this film becomes an unintentional comedy. It’s just too bad that it’s too long and has too many moments of lackluster action scenes to become one of those film you must see just because of how terrible it is.

Ostensibly, Eragon is a man-with-a-destiny story cross-pollinated with a let’s-go-save-a-princess one. These are the making of a good idea, but this isn’t a film that does anything fresh with it, while failing at fundamentals like making us care, providing us with fun action scenes or being entertaining in any way other than as an unintentional comedy. This is a generic adventure film with below-average writing and a lead actor who makes serious lines hilarious. The rest of the casts is filled with good actors, but they only make Eragon seem like more of a waste of money.

We begin with a young man by the name of Eragon (Edward Speleers) who is less liked than his brother because, well, his brother is better looking and older, I assume. One day, he finds a dragon egg that quickly becomes a dragon named Saphira (voiced by Rachel Weisz). This dragon leaves a mark on his hand that looks like he grabbed the top of a cinnamon bun and forgot to wash his hands afterward. The dragon quickly grows (almost instantly, actually), and after he has a dream about a captured woman, Arya (Sienna Guillory), he decides to take his dragon and go save her.

The man who captured her is named Durza (Robert Carlyle), the only person in this film who seems to be having fun. There’s one particular scene when Durza laughs which I had to rewind and play over again just because of how ridiculous it sounds. Carlyle takes the role and runs with it. If everyone else had decided to do this, the film might have been more enjoyable as a whole. Durza takes orders from Galbatorix (John Malkovich), although Durza seems to be more than capable to deal with anything, especially after we see him take an arrow to the forehead, disappear, and then come back later on unharmed. Surely he can handle a kid.

But it’s not just Eragon that’s going to have to fight against Durza — he’s aided by an old man named Brom (Jeremy Irons) who has a slightly shady past that’s going to turn out exactly how you’ll expect. Djimon Hounsou also shows up at one point, although that’s not right before the final action scene. Oh, yes, there will be a final action scene involving dragons and riders. It’s very silly, but it’s more entertaining than other moments of the film.

Everyone is so serious in this film. I suppose the life of some woman is reason enough to be concerned, but these people never seem to have any fun. Everyone sits around with a frown on his/her face for the majority of the film. Like I mentioned earlier, the only one that seemed to be having fun was Robery Carlyle. Eragon has a dragon and even that becomes a solemn idea after the first time he rides her.

Characters don’t really have relationships in the conventional sense. They’ll accompany one another for a while, but because the plot wants there to be tension, they’ll have a fight and split up for a while for absolutely no reason. And since we’re following our titular character, this means that people like Jeremy Irons are forced to disappear for large stretches just because we need this whiny kid to get time to sulk with his dragon.

Speaking of Edward Speleers, he is by far the worst actor out of the principal cast. I’m not sure why he was cast in this role, but he can’t deliver lines at all, and every time he tried to act seriously, I laughed out loud. The writing doesn’t help, as most of the lines are silly for all of the cast, but they can at least stop them from being cringe-inducing — he can’t. I can listen to Carlyle or Irons deliver lines like the ones in this film just because of who they are, but Speleers simply did not give a good or even passable performance in this film.

The only thing that I like about this film, apart from being utterly hilarious despite not trying to be, is its visuals. Even though the visuals are never doing anything important, Eragon looks great. I liked the way the dragon looks, the ending battle is impressive just to look at (even if it’s very silly when executed), and the set design is quite nice, even if it does, at times, look cheap. A lot of work was put into the look of the film — it’s just too bad that the same effort wasn’t put into the plot, characters or action scenes.

Eragon is a really funny film, although that wasn’t its goal. Despite being quite hilarious, it fails on practically every level. Characters aren’t developed and their actions don’t make sense, the plot is simple and nothing here will surprise you, and the action scenes aren’t all that fun. This is a film that looks good, but that’s about all that works with this film. Unless you’re a young child, in which case this will be the best movie ever, this is a miss, even (or maybe especially) for fans of the book.

Love and Other Drugs is your generic romantic comedy that’s made for R-rated audiences instead of the PG-13 crowd. Does that make it any better? I don’t think so. It still contains practically all of the clichés you’d expect from the genre, yet it misses a lot of the humor that tamer flicks have had. If it would have ramped up the humor with the rating, maybe it would have worked, but I didn’t see where the “funny” was supposed to be coming from.

Or maybe it needed to focus on one of the two stories it features instead of trying to juggle both of them. In the first story we’re introduced to, there’s a charming man (Jake Gyllenhaal) named Jamie who gets fired from his job as an electronics salesman, so he goes to work for his brother selling drugs to doctors, essentially becoming a door-to-door salesman. It’s just that the clients can pay more and they’re also harder to sell to. Jamie had no problem getting the average consumer to buy a radio or television, but getting a doctor to by his company’s pharmaceuticals instead of a competitor’s proves to be fairly difficult.

The second story involves a woman. One day, while job shadowing one doctor, he comes across a woman who has Parkinson’s disease named Maggie (Anne Hathaway). After peeking in during a breast examination, she tracks him down at his car and begins to beat on him with her purse. He, being the charmer that he is, asks her for coffee. She ends up leaving, middle finger raised to the sky. He manages to get her number through unconventional — and likely illegal — methods, and after much pestering, she agrees to go to coffee. They begin a friends-with-benefits relationship.

You’ve probably already figured out where this is heading. No, there aren’t really any surprises with Love and Other Drugs. The only difference is that characters are allowed to swear at their leisure and both of the leads are frequently without their clothing. This works kind of like how new paint doesn’t really improve a car with a missing engine. In this case, the engine is the “comedy” part. Rom-coms don’t work without being funny. Love and Other Drugs simply wasn’t funny.

Maybe I just missed the jokes, but I didn’t hear many. There are a couple, but not enough to sustain an entire film. When the jokes aren’t there, the conventions that populate the vast majority of romantic comedies become even more apparent. As someone who often doesn’t mind them, this film aggravated me because of how bored I was. Make me laugh, and I’ll forgive a lot of flaws. Bore me, especially if you’re supposed to be a comedy, and I’m not going to have a good time. Laughter elevates the mood, after all.

But not making me laugh wasn’t the sole problem with Love and Other Drugs. The plot was the other major factor in me not having a lot of fun. There’s a balancing act attempted here. On one side, we have rival drug companies going after one another, attempting to gain favor with the doctors all around. On the other, we have this romance that starts off less a romance and more of a sex-with-random-insults type of deal.

This is a tough thing to balance, and this isn’t a film that was able to do it well. Any time I started to get involved with one story, we’d cut to the other. It was very apparent how it was put together, and we only rarely transitioned well from one story to the other. It was jarring and took me out of the story every time it happened. If the film wanted me to care, it was going the wrong way about it.

The leads are good enough, although this isn’t the type of film that an actor would put on his/her resume and during a job interview point and say “that’s the role I want you to watch and see the incredible amount of depth to my performance.” And if it were to be included on a resume, it would be to say “I look good. Look at how good I look without my clothes.” They both have energy, though, especially from Hathaway, who carries more of the film than she really needed to.

By this point, you’re probably wondering if I have anything really nice to say about this film. “The two leads have energy” isn’t exactly something one could steal without context and put it on the front of the DVD cover, now is it? Well, unfortunately, I have tried to come up with something, but I couldn’t. There’s nothing to really like about this from where I’m coming from. Maybe someone else will enjoy the humor which I’ve been told there is, and if that’s the case, good on them. I wasn’t able to find any, and that means that other flaws like the poorly balanced plot and the abundance of clichés were too apparent to ignore.

Love and Other Drugs is an R-rated romantic comedy. That’s the best description that I can give of it in one sentence. It has profanity and nudity you might not see in most rom-coms, but apart from those two elements, everything else is the same — and sometimes worse. It’s less funny than a lot of lower-rated films, and it uses more clichés than some of those movies as well. It’s sometimes like watching a how-to guide of how to make a romantic comedy, while other times, it comes across like a poorly crafted film about company rivalry. I can’t recommend this film to the majority, but if you just adore romantic comedy clichés and are looking for edgier affair, this might be for you.

The Perfect Storm begins with a few fisherman coming back into town after a (presumably) long time out on the sea. It hasn’t been a good season for this boat, and the captain, Bobby (George Clooney), is getting teased about it. After spending one night in the town, he decides that in a couple of days, he will take his crew back out for one last journey before it gets too cold. Apparently, he forgot to check the weather.

They depart after about thirty minutes into the film. In the half hour leading up to this, we learn a bit about some of the crew members. Bobby (Mark Wahlberg) has a girlfriend (Diane Lane) and a mother (Janet Wright), Murph (John C. Reilly) has an ex-wife and a son, Bugsy (John Hawkes) recently met a woman when they were in-town, and Sully (William Fichtner) came aboard just because it seemed like it would be fun at the time. That’s about as deep as these characters get, but at least those thirty minutes weren’t wasted on something stupid like pointless dialogue that won’t come into play later. Oh wait, that is what happened.

I jest. It does help us care a little bit about these people, but does a better job of caring about the families stuck on land. Maybe that was the point? We do cut between them and the crew members once things start to go wrong. Although it seemed to me as if we’re supposed to care for the men when their lives are in peril. I failed to be able to. They made stupid decisions and none of them were particularly likable in the first place.

Oh, and things definitely do go wrong. See, we sometimes cut to a meteorologist who decides to tell us that a couple of tropical storms/hurricanes are about to collide, just off the coast of some place. It doesn’t matter. If you really care, this is based on a true story, and you can look it up for yourself. The point is, the ship is going to be headed directly into the place where these storms are going to collide.

A great deal of the film focuses on how the crew mates are going to attempt to survive this storm. They catch a ton of fish right before they’re about to hit the storm, and they face a decision: Push through the storm, or go back. The fish will spoil if they decide to not go through it, and because making money is more important than their well-being, they make the wrong, and stupid, decision. As a result, we get somewhere around forty minutes of torrential downpour, waves crashing into their fishing boat, more rain, and strong winds.

If I had cared about these people, it’s possible that these scenes would have thrilled me. Some of them, just as standalone action scenes, were sufficient in working as suck. For any emotional resonance, though, there needed to be something else. I needed to care, and the simple fact of the matter is that I didn’t. If you somehow already cared about the 1991 storm, maybe this will be the film for you. It wasn’t for me, though.

Some of these “suspenseful” scenes didn’t work for one simple reason: I couldn’t see what was going on. With the gale-force winds, pounding rain and crashing waves, I sometimes wasn’t able to tell what was happening. This wasn’t a problem for too long, but there were scenes when this became an issue. This didn’t help my inability to care. This only became worse as the storm intensified and the waves became crashing through the windows of the ship, making it difficult to see even when the characters were inside.

There were also quite a few pointless scenes earlier on in the film. The first thirty minutes notwithstanding, there are a few other parts of the film that had me questioning what the point of their inclusion was. For example, Bobby gets attacked by a shark at one point. That never gets revisited or referenced later on. Murph falls overboard as well, but that doesn’t factor in either. There’s also a few scenes of a small dingy of a ship, and some more involving a rescue helicopter, full of characters that the film doesn’t even attempt to get us to care about.

What worse is that all of this could have been excluded, and it would have only improved the film. Nobody is really sure what happened during most of the time these men were out at sea, so there’s no reason to bog us down with these types of scenes. It’s not like anyone could claim that they were required to tell the story properly. I wager they played a larger role in the novel The Perfect Storm is based on, but after the role was largely trimmed for the film, they were kept in just to please fans of the novel.

At least the actors were okay. At the very least, most of them made me believe that they could be fishermen. There’s a strong supporting cast, and they actually help bring us in more than the leads do. John C. Reilly was particularly strong, which surprised me. And just on a personal level, I was happy to see Corner Gas star Janet Wright in a somewhat important role.

The Perfect Storm failed to keep me emotionally infested. If you already care about the 1991 storm, you might have a good time. I didn’t care about the crew, and I only marginally cared about the families of the crew. This is a film filled with a bunch of pointless scenes, some of which I couldn’t even discern what was happening during them. It has competent actors, but they didn’t save this film from being a waste of my time.

The Disappearance of Alice Creed begins as we watch a couple of people do some renovations. We see them go to the store, buy hardware supplies, begin fixing up a room and a van — all without saying a word to one another. It’s only at around the five minute mark when one of them says “okay.” They put on ski masks, load a gun, and before we know what has hit us, they’ve captured a woman, chained her to the bed, gagged her, stripped her down, taken her photo, and then sat down to eat dinner.

Before this portion, the only clear word that is said was the “okay” I mentioned earlier. Oh, the woman (whose name turns out to be “Alice,” and is played by Gemma Arterton) yells out for help, but since she’s got a rubber ball in her mouth, her screams and words are all muffled. It’s only after the men begin giving her orders (like “drink this water or else you will die”) that real dialogue begins. We learn, or at least, we think we learn, why Danny (Martin Compston) and Vic (Eddie Marsan), the two men, have decided to capture Alice.

Unfortunately for us, most of the time characters are talking to one another, they’re not telling the truth. Danny knows Alice from before, so maybe they’re planning to conspire against Vic. But we see Danny and Vic share a sweet kiss, so maybe they’re actually lovers and want the ransom money for themselves. Or maybe one of them wants the money for himself, and is going to kill the other one at some point in the plan. Most of the dialogue, because of this, is disingenuous. More importantly, little of what we see actually matters by the end, and the film drags on because of this.

Most of the film involves either watching either a chained-up Alice be, well, chained-up, or the two men doing something that isn’t at all interesting. We watch them eat food, suspect one another for absolutely no reason, disappear whenever it’s convenient to the plot, and so on. These are two of the least interesting criminals I can remember watching. They’re just so boring. Give them some personality, people, so that spending a lot of time with them doesn’t become insufferable.

Alice is slightly more interesting, if only because she uses colorful language and we want to find out what she did to deserve being held hostage. It turns out, her crime was just being born to a rich father, as the two men just want his money. That’s about all we learn about her, although maybe we don’t need to know anything else. I would have liked to, but keeping her ambiguous might have worked — but only if our male characters were interesting, as that would have worked as a nice contrast between the different groups of people.

The Disappearance of Alice Creed is a thriller, although I didn’t see it as particularly thrilling. It had a couple of scenes that worked well at getting me excited, but for the most part, it was just bland. It’s like watching paint dry, except that might have been more exciting. When the two men were fixing up the room and van, I was actually entertained. Once the real plot began, and we found out why they were doing these renovations, I lost interest fast because nothing much happened. The film treads on the same turf it recently covered too many times, and it feels repetitive because of this.

You could probably sum up the story of this film in a paragraph. Completely sum it up, mind you, not just summarize it. You know, that’s not necessarily a bad thing, but in this case, which relies a lot on misdirection between characters, it is. Things need to actually happen in order to keep the audience engaged. And if things aren’t happening, let us at least learn about the characters. When all they’re doing is lying and not doing anything physically, we’re left to sit there and wait for something to actually happen. I wanted to lie down and take a nap.

At least you can call this a “minimalist” film and not have anyone yell at you for it. There are only three actors, there are only a couple of locations, and there isn’t anything here that would up the budget. Depending on actor salary, this could easily be a film that cost under $1 million to make. It’s this that makes me think we should be thankful The Disappearance of Alice Creed got made at all, although sitting through it certainly didn’t give me that feeling.

If there’s one positive thing to take from this movie, it’s how committed the actors were to their roles. All three seemed perfectly willing to do whatever it took for the script to work. It didn’t seem like a fun place to film either, with the set seeming dirty, and a couple of the actors had to roll around in the filth — while naked. Their commitment made the film believable; it’s just too bad that it didn’t make it enjoyable.

I didn’t enjoy The Disappearance of Alice Creed. It’s a cheap, minimalist “thriller,” but it didn’t thrill and it didn’t entertain, even if the actors were all very strong. It needed something to happen to keep me interested. The characters talked about doing things, but they rarely got around to accomplishing what they promised. When action did happen, I’ll admit that it got me excited. Too bad this only happened a handful of times, and most of the film is a drab and boring watch. I’ll give it to the actors for almost elevating it to a watchable level, but in the end, it wasn’t something I can recommend.

Ian (Timothy Hutton) has grown tired of his wife, Louise (Meg Ryan). Instead of going to Chicago like he said he would, he has headed out to the couple’s country house, where he said he’s meet his wife the next day. He plans to leave a letter for her, telling her that he’s run off to Paris with another woman, Sara (Kristen Bell), and that their marriage is over.

Unfortunately for him, Louise decides to head to the country house one day early, and after discovering the rose petals lying everywhere — which were meant for Sara, not her — thinks that her husband had planned a romantic day for her. He tells her that it’s over, she throws a flowerpot at him, and when he comes to, he’s taped to a chair and she’s sitting on the bed, holding a glass of water. It’s offered to him, but he doesn’t want it. After all, he’s more concerned with getting out of this predicament at the moment to care about quelling his thirst.

Ian is informed that he’s going to be held captive until the time when he falls back in love with his wife. This happens despite his plans to head out to Paris first thing in the morning. Louise doesn’t treat him poorly while he’s duct taped to this chair, but she’s not letting him go until he can tell her that he loves her — and mean it. She can tell if he’s lying, as he’s not very good at it even though he managed to keep his affair with Sara secret for a year (which the film initially treats as a gigantic revelation, but then nothing comes of it).

So, most of what we get involves having Ian taped to a chair, and Louise attempting to fix their marriage. She shows him pictures taken over a decade ago, bakes him cookies, puts on a dress, and so on, all the while Ian attempts to convince her that the spark is gone and that she could hold him there forever and it’s not going to change his mind. There’s a lot of repetition in Serious Moonlight, and this makes the film’s 80 minute running time feel a lot longer than it actually is. For the most part, all we see are these two actors talking with one another.

The third act is more promising, as something actually happens. A burglar (Justin Long) comes into the house, tapes up Louise, throws her in the bathroom with Ian, and then throws a party downstairs. This excitement helped to re-engage me with the film. We now have more than one thing to do, meaning instead of focusing on the relationship that may or may not ever be reconciled, we can try to figure out how the characters can escape from their possibly life-threatening situation.

I have the feeling that Serious Moonlight would have worked better as a play, and it’s possible that the late Adrienne Shelly’s script was originally planned for the stage. It takes place in a single location, features a limited number of actors, and seems like it would easily work as a play. Without cinematic tools to distract us, we might feel an intimacy with these characters and it’s possible that their marriage might actually mean something to us.

As it is, I had a really hard time caring. We never find out why they got married in the first place, nor how they managed 13 years. They never seemed to have a spark after the initial honeymooning period, and because of this, it’s hard to hope that they get back together. Ian seems like he’d be better with Sara, and Louise has shown to us that she needs to be locked away. Imagine if this same plot happened, except all of the genders were switched. Would a male holding his wife hostage win an audience’s endearment? Somehow I doubt it. It’s creepy enough in the way that it’s presented here.

A balance between drama and black comedy is attempted here, but the balance is skewed in the former which doesn’t work for reasons I’ve already explained. We don’t care about these people; it doesn’t matter to us if they get back together or not. The comedy that’s attempted occasionally works, but it’s too scattered to make much of an impact or entertain us. Some of the situations made me laugh, and the final scene, while predictable, gave me a laugh regardless, if only for the face given by one of the characters. The bathroom fight between Sara and Louise was also pretty funny, but looking at it in a different light makes it feel more embarrassing for both actors. You laugh, but you feel bad for the performers.

This attempted but failed balance also leads to some uneven and unsure performances. The actors aren’t bad, but they rarely seem like they know what they should be doing and how to play their part properly. It’s as if rookie director Cheryl Hines just let them do their thing, and the result are actors who haven’t been directed and don’t what would fit best. Perhaps Hines gave them too much credit, or perhaps she should stick to staying in front of the camera instead of behind it.

Serious Moonlight is an inconsistent film that probably should have been a play instead of a feature film. It gets repetitive in order to get its runtime above 80 minutes, the actors don’t seem to have a clue as to they should be doing, and we don’t care about these two leads despite spending almost every frame with both of them. It picks up near the end, and a few of the comedic touches help liven things up, but on the whole it’s not a movie that’s worth your time.

The Cabin in the Woods is not your average horror flick, even though it utilizes many of the same tropes. Like the title indicates, most of the action takes place in a cabin at the end of a road in the woods, off the grid without cell phone support or GPS. Inside, a bunch of twentysomethings are planning to spend the weekend partying. Something goes wrong, and their lives are all put in danger. At this point, the film sounds like the most generic and boring horror movie you could think of.

Even the young adult characters are typecast. There’s the “Jock” (Chris Hemsworth), the “Joker” (Fran Kranz), the “Virgin” (Kristen Connolly), the “Whore” (Anna Hutchison), and the “Smart Guy” (Jesse Williams). Some of those might not be the exact words from the film, but they’re apt descriptions nonetheless. They’re your typical stock characters from any type of film with this nature, and it’ll be unsurprising to you that they act exactly how they’re supposed to, at least, for a while. Of course, that’s the entire point.

Now, I’m going to spoil something that’s given away right at the beginning of the movie, and you’ve probably already guessed it from the trailers anyway: There are some people controlling things from behind the scenes. We see them set-up the situation, manipulate it to their desire, and then let everything fall apart for the main cast. They don’t technically rig it all, as there’s still a hint of free will on the part of the archetypes, but they pretty much control the show. They can even release gasses which can alter a person’s thought pattern.

There is even more going on than just that, but for the most part, this is what happens. The twentysomethings release zombies, and have to try to survive not only the undead, but the people pushing the buttons from the other side of the fence. The Cabin in the Woods gets really strange later on, seeming like it was going to end before continuing on, tacking on a secondary motivation, and letting even more insanity unfold. I can’t remember the last time I saw a third act in a film that was this busy.

Let’s just give you a sample of what you’re going to get to see. When was the last time you saw a unicorn — which previously had no involvement in the film — stab a person to death? I can’t remember ever seeing that, especially not in the mainstream horror flick. And no, don’t start trying to figure out exactly how the unicorn plays into things, as you won’t be able to. You’re wasting your time even trying to figure out all of the twists and turns that The Cabin in the Woods takes you through. Even if you thought you figured it all out based on the trailer, you didn’t.

However, I don’t think you’re really going to appreciate the film unless you are a fairly big fan of horror films already. This is a film that plays with expectations, and if you don’t know enough about the genre going in that you build them up, the film won’t give you that sense of awe. You also won’t understand the criticism that it brings at the genre, showing you just how cliché and formulaic it has become. You’ll watch it, probably still like it, but won’t get anything more from it because you weren’t already in bed with the genre.

Still, there are points when I felt like it could have done more, like it should have subverted more tropes, poked more holes in them and made more references to classic horror films. Maybe I became a victim to hype, but I was a little let-down after coming away from Cabin in the Woods. I did have fun, don’t get me wrong, but I felt like something was missing. I can’t quite put my finger on it, but there was a certain factor that wasn’t quite all there.

I’m beginning to think it was coherency, as the final act really does come out of nowhere, as does a cameo that completely blew me away. I had to pinch myself to make sure I wasn’t just daydreaming when a fairly big name actor came on-screen, but, yes, that actually did happen. There was only one hint at the character earlier, and the actor’s name wasn’t at all hinted at, but it comes way out of left field. I’ll give you a clue: He or she also appeared in a cameo role in a 2011 film, right at the end. It fit better there, I think, but the cameo here is just so shocking that it’s impossible not to mention it.

If you are hoping to go see The Cabin in the Woods and be scared, you will be disappointed. Apart from a couple of very effective jump scares, this isn’t a scary film by any stretch of the imagination. Its tone is fairly light throughout, with a lot of jokes and memorable lines scattered along the way. There’s one character whose sole purpose is to be comic relief, and you’ll be laughing pretty much any time he’s on the screen. Mostly, the film plays out like a puzzle, one that will eventually solve itself but you hope to figure out everything before it tells you. Your mind is always working, and that’s generally the sign of a good film.

The Cabin in the Woods is an effective film. It’s smart, funny, has a couple of good jump scares, and always works your mind. It falters a tad in its plotting, which is inconsistent and slightly incoherent, but the way it manages to criticize its own genre while still finding a way to be effective while working within its constraints is worthy of applause. And it has a third act that will be busier and more spectacular than the majority of movies you will ever see. It’s definitely worth seeing at some point in your life, especially if you’re a horror movie fan.

We begin The Astronaut’s Wife with an interesting premise. Spencer Armacost (Johnny Depp) has gone up into space on a mission to do something. His wife, Jillian (Charlize Theron), is a school teacher. He calls her from up in space, and it’s quite a sweet moment. But, you can’t have a Johnny Depp character in space for too long, so disaster strikes, an explosion happens, he loses contact with the shuttle, and winds up back down on Earth in a coma.

Spencer had another man go up with him, although he’s not long for this film. He, and his wife, both die within a ten minute span. We’re told he died of a stroke, while she commits suicide via electrocution by sitting in a shower and bringing a radio with her. Spencer doesn’t spend a long time in this coma, because, well, he’s played by Johnny Depp and you’re wasting him if you just have him lie on a table for most of the film. He seems to be okay after leaving the hospital, but as the posters and trailers want you to wonder: Is he really the same?

A NASA representative named Sherman Reese (Joe Morton) isn’t so sure. He disappears for far too much of the film to really make an impact. He appears at the beginning, and we think that he’ll have a large role. That isn’t the cast, though, as he decides that he’ll only show up a couple of times after the plot really gets going, which doesn’t work as well as it might have if he had always maintained a presence. The Astronaut’s Wife ends up being a two person show (I suppose Clea DuVall shows up enough to be considered an important character as well, but really, her character serves no purpose).

We’re supposed to relate with Jillian, and we’re supposed to think something is wrong with Spencer. Or at least, that’s what I think The Astronaut’s Wife wanted me to feel. What really happened during those two minutes when the astronauts lost contact with everyone? We hear a tape recording that makes it sound like there was something, but Spencer doesn’t want to talk about it. And it’s not like he’s doing anything wrong or acting any differently.

A “twist” occurs at the end, which I almost guarantee you’ll see coming. It’s probably the easiest twist you could have in this type of film, and calling it a “twist” is being generous, because it’s alluded to throughout the entire film and will fail to surprise. The ending also came across as silly for me, and made me laugh instead of whatever it was trying to do.

Although I suppose the word “silly” goes hand-in-hand with the rest of the film, especially in the writing. A lot of the scenes have cringe-worthy dialogue exchanges. I actually had to shake my head that some of these words came out of these actors mouths, just because of how terrible they sound. The writing in this film is brutal, and I only wished that the script would have undergone some changes before production.

Eventually, the couple moves to New York. Spencer has decided never to go back into space, and has miraculously been offered an executive position at some company. There, he’s designing a plane which could be used in war, but only by sending out sounds, not bombs. New York, it appears, isn’t a place where mentally unsound people should live, as it makes Jillian really suspicious of everyone. The soundtrack starts getting jumpy, too.

This is a film that easily could have been exciting. There were parts that worked. Very few parts, most of which only worked for a small portion of their screentime, but parts nonetheless. The problem, I think, comes from the overall idea, and the way it was executed. The “twist” would have worked better if it was put out in the open earlier, for example, and then we would have been able to explore what it means for the characters. We’d understand certain decisions they make, and we’d be able to comprehend their reasoning behind everything that has earlier happened.

But that’s not what happened. We’re given a vague epilogue that will make you go “huh?” before we fade to black. There’s something to be said about ambiguous endings, but that’s not what this is. Instead, we don’t understand why certain things just unfolded, and now we’re just left confused and unsatisfied — the worst kind of ending.

Despite the terrible dialogue, the two lead actors actually do quite a good job. I felt sorry for them at times because of what they had to say, but apart from a couple of somewhat awkward scenes, they were strong. Depp was quite creepy as the husband we’re not supposed to be completely okay with, and Theron is strong as someone creeped out — even if she doesn’t have a real reason to be that way.

The Astronaut’s Wife isn’t a particularly good film. It didn’t keep me entertained, it didn’t make a lot of sense (I kept asking “Why are they acting this way?”), and the twist was poorly executed. The dialogue made me cringe, even coming from the likes of Johnny Depp and Charlize Theron, and I had to wonder why I was supposed to care about anything that was going on. There was no answer for me, and I don’t think this is a film that many people are going to enjoy.

The International is the type of film that you can watch, understand everything that happened, and then completely forget about it because there’s nothing to hold the audience. Oh, there’s a plot that has things to keep you engaged, but since it doesn’t have a real closure (and if you think about it, you’ll realize it really can’t really conclude), you’ll walk away feeling disappointed and upset that you gave it two hours of your life.

We begin with a murder, or so our “hero,” Louis Salinger (Clive Owen), thinks. I call him “hero” and not “lead character” because I don’t believe you can call him a character without a large asterisk defining what you believe a character to be. If it means being more than a body to fill a role, then he doesn’t count (nor does anyone else in the film, for that matter). He sees some informant pass out, or maybe get poisoned, and for whatever reason, this makes him mad. I think the guy was an informant for him, or something like that, but this doesn’t come into play.

It turns out, Louis and a woman named Eleanor (Naomi Watts) have been doing things behind the banks of their respective companies (he’s with Interpol and she’s an Assistant District Attorney, if you really wish to know). They’re investigating some large banking company, the IBBC, because they think its funds have been used for any amount of bad things. You know, things like buying weapons for terrorist groups or supplying missiles to warring countries because that’s just the cool thing to do.

A lot of the time we spend involves tracking down an assassin, which leads us to an impressive shootout that takes place in Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. This was the highlight of the film for me, and if all the characters had to do was get this assassin fellow, the shootout would have served as a great climax. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. Not by a long shot. Instead, there’s the overarching “let’s take down the bank” plot that we have to see to its conclusion. Or do we?

See, The International isn’t particularly concerned with when it ends. When it does come to a conclusion, you’ll probably continue to stare at the screen and wonder why they chose to end there. Luckily for you, newspaper headlines will fill you in on what you end up missing, and it’s not much. Truthfully, this is a fitting ending given the realistic feel of most of the film, but it’s a letdown for the audience. Sure, a cheap and clichéd ending wouldn’t have fit as well as the ending we do get, but I could think of a better way of concluding that keeps with the theme, but also gives us closure. (And I would discuss that if it didn’t involve spoilers.)

What we’re left with is an anticlimactic ending. We end after a “final” action, sure, but it doesn’t feel final. Instead, it feels like we could have another film, or at the very least, another half hour. And this would be easy to avoid! You’ll see this when you actually watch The International (or rather, if you watch it), but I’d reckon a lot of audience members aren’t going to be happy once the credits start to roll.

I said I’d come back to the lack of real “characters.” the truth of the matter is that there isn’t a single character in this film. If there are, they developed fully before the film began, and we’re seeing the aftermath. This doesn’t work. Why should I care about a guy risking his life for — actually, why is he risking his life? He has nothing motivating him other than him thinking that it would be a good idea. And what was the purpose of Naomi Watts’ character? She serves no reason to be in the film, and by the end, she’s told to leave for no reason at all.

Neither of these people have any personality, nor do we have reason to care about them. About the only thing that Louis has going for him is that he’s technically in the right. About as deeps as Eleanor gets is that she has a family. That matters in one scene, where we see her son asleep and her husband wondering if she’s ever going to get to sleep. Her character is also pointless, never actually doing anything useful except for the one scene where she was hit by a car. It showed us how she was tough, as she didn’t even get hurt except for the one scene where we see she got some bruises on her arm (not that this mattered either, though).

As I write this, I realize more and more just how little anything that happened in this film mattered. So many different things occurred that didn’t make any difference to later points of the film. The ending doesn’t give us a satisfying conclusion, and even it doesn’t have much build-up to it, with the short sequence that precedes it not being directly related to the earlier parts of the film.

The International suffers from a poor plot that features a great deal of unrelated content, as well as a lack of characters. It has people, but there is no development or depth to them. It’s like we’re already expected to know all about them and care about their plight. Well, I’m sorry, but I couldn’t care. This isn’t a poorly made film, and the shootout in the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum was actually very thrilling, but for the most part, nothing matters and this isn’t a film worth your time.

Harsh Times is another one of those films without much of a plot, but instead follows the lives of the characters it features. It’s a life film, for the most part. Motivations are few and simple, characters are few, and there’s little in terms of a goal driving them forward. In this case, the characters have a goal in “getting a job,” but spend most of their time drinking, driving around the city (often at the same time), and swearing because they’re “gangsters” and that’s what gangsters do.

Or at least, one of them is a “gangster,” while his sidekick might actually be one. Our lead is Jim Davis (Christian Bale), someone who used to be in the army before being honorably discharged. He suffers from Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), which results in him having bad dreams and occasionally seeing things canted and with a yellow tinge. He begins the film in Mexico, as he has a girlfriend there (Tammy Trull). He speaks Spanish, and we later learn he can speak both Korean and “gangster” as well. He’s polite enough when in good company, but when he’s with other tough street-dudes, he adjusts his behavior accordingly.

For example, when he tries to apply for a job with Homeland Security, he’s “sir” this and “sir” that. Little do they know that his spare time is spent cruising around the city, beer in hand, robbing people he doesn’t like, selling guns and pot, and other unlawful things. It’s no wonder that he gets turned down when he applies to be a cop. I know I certainly wouldn’t want to hire a guy like this. Although they haven’t seen what we see over the course of the film.

Jim’s best friend is named Mike (Freddy Rodriguez). Mike has a significant other, Sylvia (Eva Longoria), who, unlike Jim’s girlfriend, lives in Los Angeles with her partner. For whatever reason, Mike doesn’t have a job, and Jim has decided to spend time driving Mike around and hand out resumes. Why? Because that’s an excuse to get wasted with your best buddy, that’s why! It’s so obvious now. Why try to get a job when you cruise around doing illegal things with your wants-to-be-a-cop friend who acts like a gangster when he’s around you.

Oh, and by “gangster,” I mean the one that ends with an “a” and is more or less slang. I’m not talking suits and mafia, as that would be too classy for a film like this. These are the drug dealers, the street thugs, and the other types of people who apparently live in the shady parts of Los Angeles. Shady people like Terry Crews, apparently, as he makes what amounts to little more than a cameo appearance that I found to be absolutely hilarious.

There are a few things to take from this film. First is that PTSD is a serious thing and that if you suffer from it, getting help would probably be the best thing. Jim begins a decline from being mostly sane to, well, not as the film progresses, and watching this character go through the changes is interesting, even if most of it comes in the last twenty or so minutes and it ends up feeling quite rushed.

The second thing you can take from Harsh Times is that you can basically do whatever you want while in Los Angeles. To count the number of crimes that Jim and Mike commit would probably take up too much time, but suffice to say that there are many. There isn’t a lot of police presence, it would seem, and I liked to think that this was a film that wanted to critique the police system in America. Either that, or writer/director David Ayer just wanted to unleash a couple of mad character loose in a world that didn’t want to muster up the effort to deal with them. One of the two.

Another thing you can take away from the film is that you can make a film centered around a couple of unlikable characters if you make them interesting unlikable people. The final twenty or so minutes are a great example of this. It’s unfortunate that Harsh Times takes so long to figure that out and by the time it does, I had already lost a lot of interest. Obviously, the final moments of the film are supposed to wrap things up. That happens here, but it felt forced and rushed because nothing much happened before this point. Characters just did things that were largely unrelated to one another for most of the film, instead of having these actions lead up to the climax. It seems to come from out of nowhere because of this.

Since these earlier parts happens without much cause and effects, and because I didn’t care about our characters (they’re just driving around getting into trouble because that’s what they thought would be fun at the time), I was bored for most of the film. There needs to be something to keep us watching, and until the final portions of Harsh Times, there isn’t anything. It’s too bad, as this material could have been interesting (maybe as a documentary), but here it failed to engage me.

Harsh Times is a film that took an interesting idea, but didn’t do anything with it until the film was close to its conclusion. There was nothing to hold my attention for most of its runtime, and instead, I was searching for something more interesting to do with my time. Like maybe hop down to L.A. and drive around while drunk, robbing people and even shooting some of them. Harsh Times has taught me that this is acceptable behavior down there. Let’s hope it’s not right.

The City of Ember was a book I really enjoyed when I first read it. Finding out that it was adapted into a movie was something that made me happy. Finding out that Bill Murray was playing the mayor of the underground city was incredibly exciting to hear. Watching the movie ended up being a slight letdown for me.

It’s a shame to say that because, for the most part at least, the film adaptation is actually a fairly accurate translation of the novel. Unfortunately, it failed to capture the one key component, the urge to continue on, that made the book a good read. While reading the novel, I always wanted to press onward, to see what was going to happen next. Here, all I wanted to do was have the film end, because I wasn’t being entertained all that often.

The story goes something like this: There is a city underground. The people there have no idea whether or not they can leave the city. The generator that provides all the power for the city is starting to break down, and nobody knows how to fix it. The city is in danger, and apparently the only two people who can save it are our two leads, a couple of teenagers.

This is who the film centers upon, for the most part; we get to follow two teenagers around the city, seeing their antics up close. The older teenager is named Doon Harrow (Harry Treadaway), a “Pipeworks Laborer.” He gets to work with pipes all day long, which is at least close to his goal of fixing the generator. It’s much closer than the job Lina Mayfleet (Saoirse Ronan) ends up doing. She is a “Messenger,” running around the city delivering messages to people. There’s no email or phones in the city, and messengers are the only way people can send messages to one another.

The jobs that the two character receive are initially reversed, with Doon getting “Messenger” and Lina getting “Pipeworks Laborer.” The only point in having the jobs switched is to introduce us to each character, and have them establish some sort of relationship, but it seems that they already knew each other, making the entire exercise pointless.

One of the strong aspects of the film is its cast, the majority of which turn in strong performances. The two leads portray the characters from the book almost perfectly, (although in the book, Doon is the same age as Lina), and Bill Murray’s performance as the mayor is likely the best part of the film. He plays the role for laughs, even when events within the film are completely serious–as they are the majority of the time.

Something I still cannot understand is the reason why City of Ember is not as captivating as its novel counterpart. It might be due to the fact that we don’t get much development or characterization with our lead characters, meaning we don’t care when things happen to them, nor do we care when they do things. There’s a scene fairly early on when Lina’s grandmother passes away. If anyone sheds a tear at that moment, I would be surprised, as we haven’t been given any prior reason to care. The scene also fails to be dramatic, with seemingly no attempt to make it so.

Another reason why the film is less intriguing than the novel is how rushed things feel in the film. The novel got to take its time in developing its characters and setting. In the film, things head south right off the bat. Without all of this time building up characters before the downfall of the city, and without any time during the film to develop the characters, we have trouble caring for them. Whatever happens won’t matter, because we haven’t been given reason to hope for them.

I also felt that the film failed to capture the run-down feel of Ember as well as it should have. Yes, there are random blackouts and the food stocks are running low, but not many people seem to be worse for wear because of it. Even the characters who are supposed to be having difficulties with living their day to day lives seem to be just fine, despite being malnourished. Things just didn’t seem bad enough within the city, despite the fact that they should have seemed awful. The city was supposed to feel dystopic, in a sense, and that never came through in the film.

In terms of translating The City of Ember from print to film, director Gil Kenan didn’t do a terrible job. The portrayal of the city certainly could have been improved upon, but the important characters were all there, and stayed consistent with the novel. Unfortunately, the film failed to grasp the concept of intrigue that the book had; I didn’t really care if I saw what happened next, unlike the book where I always wanted to see what would happen to Lina and Doon. It’s not a total failure of a film, but it certainly could have been better.

Clerks follows the lives of two men going about their daily business working menial jobs. That’s rarely shown in movies, but I think that’s for a good reason: Many people watch movies to escape from reality, not to re-live it. This one takes place in a convenience store and takes us from 6:00AM until closing time. Well, not quite, but that’s essentially what we’re promised.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way for Dante Hicks (Brian O’Halloran), though. He wasn’t even supposed to work today. He gets a wake-up call from his boss, telling him that there has been an illness, and that he has to work. His boss will be there at noon to take over so that Dante can still get to his hockey game at 2:00. Off to the convenience store we go, and it’s where we’ll spend the majority of the rest of the film, with small interludes taking us outside (yes, there is still going to be a hockey game, which made me, a Canadian, happy).

Dante is frequently joined by his friend, Randal (Jeff Anderson), who works at the video store right by Dante’s choice of employment. Randal hardly works, though, as he frequently closes the store to hang out with his best buddy. Not really much of a problem, as the video store is so terrible that Randal goes to another video store to rent movies. He also cusses out at the customers, doesn’t help them make choices, and is a terrible employee. It’s a wonder he doesn’t get fired. Dante, on the other hand, does at least try to do a good job, even if he’s not the brightest bulb in the batch.

I’m not sure if I can say that Clerks has a plot. It has a bunch of subplots, but nothing that really drives anyone for a long period of time. Dante has a girlfriend, Veronica (Marilyn Ghigliotti), who appears infrequently. He wants to be back with his ex-girlfriend, Caitlin (Lisa Spoonhaure), whom he has recently learned is engaged; he found out by reading it in the newspaper. But that’s really the only constant, with most of the rest of the film just trying to live in the moment, never becoming too fixated on one detail.

There are more moments in the film that seem to serve just to make you laugh for a few seconds, and then moving on and never referencing them again. That works for this kind of film, as it means that we’re never bored — new stimuli is always being introduced — but if you want a coherent film, you’ll want to look elsewhere. Director/writer Kevin Smith doesn’t want that kind of thing in his film; he’s more concerned with making you constantly laugh.

As for the comedy, there are many humorous points in the film. This is good, because if a lot of the jokes fell flat, Clerks would get boring quickly. The types of jokes in the film typically fall into one of two categories: Offensive or trying-too-hard-to-be-offensive-but-still-funny-because-of-the-effort. This isn’t your highbrow type of comedy — it will push any and all boundaries as far as you can get away with. In fact, because of language only, it almost got the dreaded NC-17 rating until an appeal was won.

If you don’t like offensive and vulgar comedy, you’ll hate Clerks. If you do, there’s a good chance this will be a film for you. That is about as simple as this type of film can be broken down. It’s a good example and well-made (relative to the miniscule budget, that is) film that you could throw up there with any of these types of films. It’s nothing particularly special, but if it makes you laugh for 90 minutes, it’s a success, right?

I think what makes the film work better than the jokes themselves are the ways that all of the dialogue is delivered. Apart from a couple of awkward deliveries, and a couple of errors that I assume were left in to keep the budget in-check, everything felt natural — like we weren’t watching a film. This helps make the film feel grounded in reality, and helps us laugh at some of the gags just because of how funny that would be in real life instead of in a movie. The actors don’t feel like actors, most of the time.

Speaking of that budget, Clerks was filmed on only around $27,000 and was shot in black and white. That it got made at all, and was any good, is definitely something to be congratulated. It also contained a lot of long takes, and the actors managing to keep a straight face while spouting some of the ridiculous lines they have been given should be celebrated. It feels low-budget, but it’s funny enough, for the most part, that this only helps add to its look and doesn’t become a deterrent.

I was about to close when I realized I hadn’t mentioned two other characters in the film. The now-infamous Jay and Silent Bob (Jason Mewes and Kevin Smith, respectively) made their first appearance here. Why? I can’t honestly tell you, as apart from one dialogue exchange, they serve no purpose except to goof around and make us laugh a couple of times. But I wasn’t a fan of them after this film. They needed more to do, really, but they weren’t given much to work with.

Clerks was funny. Simple as that. I laugh quite frequently while watching it, and that’s really the only mark of a good comedy. Is it offensive and overly vulgar? Yes it is. Does that make it unfunny? No it doesn’t. It lacks coherency and had a few characters that didn’t need to be included, but it felt natural thanks to the actors not feeling like they were acting (most of the time), and ended up being quite funny.

Taken is a 2008 action directed by Pierre Morel. Bryan Mills (Liam Neeson), is a former CIA agent, and has recently retired so that he can spend more time with his daughter (Maggie Grace). They haven’t seen much of each other in the last few years, and he wishes to rekindle the relationship they once had. Soon after moving, he finds out that his daughter is going away to Europe for the summer, meaning he won’t get the time alone with her that he wanted. After reluctantly signing the forms allowing her to go, he receives a phone call late at night. Her daughter is telling him that her best friend has been kidnapped, and that the kidnappers were on their way to find her. Calmly telling her what will happen, Mills soon traces the call, and begins the hunt for his now kidnapped daughter.

The plot is incredibly simple, taking a slightly different spin off the classic revenge style of storytelling. The first minutes of the film are set up to allow you to get some depth into the characters, while the rest of the film has Liam Neeson finding people who have information regarding the whereabouts of his daughter, and subsequently beating them up before, during or after they tell him what they know. The subplot of the film deals with the issue of human trafficking, which the film actually somewhat disregards. Mills ends up finding dozens of girls throughout the film who have suffered a similar fate to his daughter, and yet doesn’t do anything to save them. You could pass this up to him being a man on a mission, but in all honestly, it seemed somewhat odd to see him not even feel empathy towards these imprisoned people.

As for the acting, there isn’t all that much to say. Liam Neeson is great in his role, and his casing actually works well for an action style movie. The rest of the cast doesn’t deserve such high praise, which, while unfortunate, doesn’t ultimately matter that much. The majority of the other characters within the film are nameless people who have the job of being beaten up by Liam Neeson. The main exception to this being the daughter, played by Maggie Grace. There are a couple of issues I have with this character. For one, she doesn’t look seventeen years old. She was around 24-25 while shooting Taken, and she just doesn’t quite have the appearance of a seventeen year old. The second issue is less about her age, and more about the fact that her character doesn’t seem to have any emotional depth. She gets scared, and she can be happy. There is nothing else that she does, and it takes away from the way the film is set up, as it makes you care less about Bryan Mills’ quest, as you don’t really care for his daughter.

What I can say about the film is that the story is handled quite well. The character development at the beginning is more or less all that we get in the film, but it is enough to make us empathize with Mills. After his daughter is kidnapped, the film doesn’t slow down. That is a good thing. If it had, some of the contrived events might have made it closer to the front of my mind, but since after about 30 minutes in, it is pretty much “all action,” I never really had a chance to ponder why certain things actually happened. The quick pacing helped the film stay together, and the action scenes allowed the pacing to work.

”

Liam Neeson manages to play the action star well, despite the fact that you might think he is physically too old to be one. He is rugged, and actually makes the many fight scenes seem believable. There are also many, many action sequences within the movie, making it an incredibly exciting film to watch. There are many methods that Mills uses to interrogate, punish or just outright kill people, and they get shown in an incredibly brutal manner. Thankfully, the filmmakers kept these scenes as realistic as possible, not using much, if any, CGI blood. The fights feel real, and when a character that you care about it in them, you can really get behind both him, and the fight itself.

Taken is an adrenaline-pumping film. The plot is fairly basic, and keeping it that way actually works towards the film’s advantage. It allows more time to be allotted to the action scenes. These scenes are plentiful, as well as exciting. Character development more or less stops occurring after the opening few scenes, but there isn’t really any required after that. It basically is just a father hunting down the people who kidnapped his daughter. That is all, but it plays out in an exciting, and interesting way. The acting on the whole is about average, with the main character played by Liam Neeson being well performed, while his daughter detracts from every scene she is in. The supporting cast is not noteworthy, as the majority of the other characters are just there to be beaten on by Liam Neeson. If there was ever a film to convince you of the love that a father has for his children, this is it.

Eight years ago, Tom Adkins (Jon Hamm) had his son taken from him. They were at a diner, he went to the bathroom, and when he returned, his son was missing. He’s a police officer, and has been on the case ever since, off and on. It’s always on his mind, though, and he has nightmares about the day seemingly every night, despite protests from his wife (Rhona Mitra) telling him that it wasn’t his fault.

One day, a body is unearthed at a local construction site. Tom immediately thinks that he’ll finally get some closure, but, as it turns out, the body has actually been dead for fifty years. Tom makes it his new mission to figure out who killed this child, and bring that person to justice — that is, if that individual is still alive and kicking. It has been fifty years, after all, meaning that this person is likely at least 70, if not much older, or even dead.

However, despite outward appearances, Tom’s story isn’t the one we’re going to follow for most of Stolen. Instead, we’re going to follow Matthew Wakefield (Josh Lucas) and his son, John (Jimmy Bennett). We flashback to the 1950s, and we get to see how John ended up dead and buried. We find out how the economic climate wasn’t particularly good to Matthew and his son, how John was developmentally challenged, and all of the events that lead up to the murder of a seemingly innocent little boy. Meanwhile, Tom is working on the case in the present day.

The problem here is that the two stories don’t add up. When something happens in present day, it has no correlation to events that transpired in the past. You’d expect one to have a direct link to the other, but that’s not what Stolen does. Instead, these are two more or less separate stories that are going to take place at their own pace regardless of what information a character discovers in the other one. It’s like watching two shorter films that were spliced together and tangentially linked by a plot device so that the final product can be called a “feature film.”

The other problem is that neither of the stories is particularly interesting. One is a lackluster noir, while the other is a drama about … nothing, really. A drifter and son wandering from place to place, hoping that the father will find work and maybe love. And then the kid dies. Apart, these stories would be laughed off the screen, and together they’re not much better. You should feel somber for most of Stolen, but I found myself laughing at the unintentional comedy during some of the scenes, or dozing off because of how dull the production ended up being.

It’s a marvel that Stolen is only 90 minutes long. It feels like it’s at least two hours. At the end, during the scene that’s supposed to be the climax, I was wondering if I was supposed to feel something. Anything at all, really. This final confrontation was supposed to be the high point of the film, but in a good movie, it would mark half-way into the experience. It doesn’t feel thrilling like you’d expect, nor is it particularly interesting thanks to the apathy you’ll feel for most of the time you watch this movie. There’s just nothing of interest happening for the majority of the time it plays, leading to an ending that doesn’t satisfy.

I don’t know what the budget for Stolen was (I’ve heard $2 million from an unreliable source), but it probably wasn’t very large. The film feels cheap, especially during the flashback scenes — which is unfortunate when you realize that these take up the majority of our running time. Instead of looking authentic, it feels like bad actors playing dress-up. I couldn’t believe that they were actually in the 1950s, even with the orange tinge given to these scenes to contrast them against the blue hue of present day.

If it wasn’t for the aspect ratio (approximately 2.35:1, if you’re wondering), I would have assumed that Stolen was made for television; it just feels that cheap. Nothing is done to make it feel worthy of the limited theatrical release it was given, and it’s kind of astonishing ot realize that, yes, this did get released in theaters. There are television show episodes that contain more depth and intrigue than this movie does, and they accomplish that in a far shorter time.

I like most of these actors, but they all gave one-note, uninspired performances. The actor I’m not a big fan of out of the main cast, Jimmy Bennett, actually turned in the most impressive performances. He at least made himself seem developmentally challenged — and his character even called for it. Some of the adults of the cast appeared that way even though they’re supposed to be quite smart. I swear that at one point, one of them actually watches another put a body into the trunk of a car, and yet does nothing about it.

Stolen is worse than a 30-minute crime drama on television. Does that tell you all you need to know about it? It feels like it uses a couple of rejected scripts from Law & Order or something, and then tried to tie them together hoping that the audience would just go along with the fact that they’re not really linked, and they’re not really interesting. This is a film that never should have left pre-production. It looks cheap, it feels cheap, and it probably was cheap. Good filmmaking does a lot with very little, while bad filmmaking will alert you to how bad it is without a hint of irony. Stolen is the result of the latter.

There may have been a plot at the beginning stages of production on The Raid: Redemption. There might have even been one filmed. If so, it was mostly edited out in the cut that is getting a theatrical release. There are hints at one — a pregnant wife, brothers who haven’t seen each other for six years, betrayal from people of higher authority — but apart from being brought up, they don’t have much bearing on the actions of the characters. This is about as pure as an action film can get; it doesn’t have time to establish much of a plot.

From what is established, here’s the basic setup. A group of police officers are going to perform a raid on an apartment building where illegal activity takes place. Nobody’s tackled it before because the kingpin, Tama Riyadi (Ray Sahetapy), has paid off the right people. Essentially, these police officers, while noble, are going against the force for the greater good. They’re led by Sergeant Jaka (Joe Taslim) and Lieutenant Wahyu (Pierre Gruno), and have no idea what to expect once they enter the building. Neither do we.

Things inevitably go wrong, the majority of the SWAT team members die, and we’re left with only a handful of people who are at the apartment residents’ mercy. They have to fight their way out through a series of hand-to-hand martial arts scenes in order to get through alive, and maybe capture Riyadi, although that has now become a secondary objective; staying alive is the first, as it should be. That’s about all you get for the next 80 or so minutes after the basic premise is given to you, save for a few breaks in the action when characters give you a brief idea that a plot was thought about at some point or another in some part of the film’s production.

Everyone in this film has at least an exceptional grasp of the martial art called pencak silat, which comes from Indonesia, just like the film. If The Raid is going to do anything, it’ll act as a showcase for the martial art, as it’s everywhere. Once the team runs out of bullets, all of the fighting is done with hands and feet, with a handful of weapons thrown into the mix. With it on such a prominent display, I can understand how a lot of people are going to leave the film and search it up. The filmmakers certainly make it look impressive.

That is the first major thing to note when talking about The Raid: The fight choreography is tremendous. Not only are the fights well-choreographed, but they’re also edited together without too many cuts, and shot without too much shaky-cam, meaning we can actually see the brilliant choreography in action. The fights themselves feel visceral and like they’re actually happening. At least, up until their conclusion, when enough blood squirts out of the deceased to remind you that you are still watching a movie.

Apart from the finale to the fights, the fight scenes allow for several highlights throughout. While I don’t want to spoil any one kill or scene, many of the fights last several minutes, each one tops the one prior, and the endings, while incredibly bloody, frequently come in inventive ways. This is an action film that understands that you shouldn’t show all your cards right away, so it is able to top itself each time that a fight begins. When one ends, you’re exhausted from watching it, and you can’t imagine how tiring it must have been to film.

I guess I should mention for the few of you that care that The Raid isn’t in English, even though it was directed by a Welsh man by the name of Gareth Evans. Truthfully, since dialogue is so sparse and everything takes place within hallways and secluded rooms anyway, having to read a few subtitles every now and then shouldn’t dissuade anyone from seeing it. There are long periods where there isn’t anything coming out of the mouths of these characters except grunts and blood, and since the plot is basically nonexistent and none of the characters have more than one dimension to them, you could easily get away with not reading anything and still enjoy yourself just fine.

I did find myself wanting real characters, especially in the few lulls in the action. Truth be told, the film tries to give us a few character scenes, but they come out of left field and don’t ever add up to anything, leading me to question if there was a longer cut of the film that was trimmed so that it could have more all out action, or if the filmmakers just weren’t quite sure how to give us real characters. I mean, about midway through, the character who I thought was supposed to be our protagonist dies and we begin to focus on someone else. Everyone is so woefully underdeveloped that it didn’t really matter who was involved in the fight scenes, and that makes it hard to care about them beyond mere spectacle-level.

The Raid: Redemption is a really fun action film, but it never does come above that. It’s comfortable in being a balls-to-the-wall martial arts film, and if you’re comfortable with seeing just that, then you’ll have a good time with this incredibly violent film, wonderfully choreographed film. If you want a plot and characters to latch onto, you’ll definitely want to be looking elsewhere. But for my money, this is probably going to be one of, if not the best action film of the year. It just isn’t more than that; it’s not a complete film, but it is a really fun one to watch.

I wasn’t looking forward to watching Ratatouille. Yes, I know it’s a Pixar film, and yes, I’m well aware that it got great reviews, but the premise, for me, was difficult to overcome. When the trailer played, I had to laugh at the absurdity of the premise. Here is a film where a rat attempts to become the greatest chef in all of France while using a human surrogate to hide his true identity.

That rat is called Remy (Patton Oswalt), who has always had a proficiency for cuisine. He can smell whether a food will taste good before another rat tasting it can. His father (Brian Dennehy), puts him on poison control duty. If there’s rat poison in the garbage they’re eating, Remy will find it, much to his disdain. Remy dreams of making things, not just stealing garbage that the humans throw out. He studies a book published by Chef Gusteau (Brad Garett), despite the kitchen being owned by a lady with a shotgun who will shoot rats that she sees.

That’s exactly what happens one day. All of the rats living in the ceiling of her home are revealed, and they have to escape from her. Remy’s family ends up getting separated, while Remy reemerges from the sewer they all used to escape in Paris, conveniently right outside the late Chef Gusteau’s restaurant, which is now owned by chef Skinner (Ian Holm). The restaurant is in disarray, has been downgraded from five to three stars — in large part thanks to a scathing review from Anto Ego (Peter O’Toole) — but Remy wants to check it out anyway.

It’s in the restaurant where he finds the perfect pawn for his diabolical scheme. Alfredo Linguini (Lou Ramano), is just starting work as a garbage boy. Remy sees him tampering with the soup, and decides to go in and make alterations, fixing Alfredo’s mistakes. The rat is caught, Alfredo is told to kill it, but the soup ends up being enjoyed by the customer. The garbage boy and the rat make a decision: Remy will control Alfredo’s body, making all of the food, and the human will allow him and get all the credit. Remy’s love for food will suffice; he doesn’t need accolades. He is, after all, just a rat.

What follows is a pretty basic story told in an engaging way. Of course there will be conflict between the human and rat, of course the head chef will be angry and try to thwart the duo’s plans, and of course there will be a love story at one point or another. And that critic from earlier will inevitably come back for one final round with the restaurant, because that’s what his job is. The critic and head chef serve as our villains in this movie, although only one is particularly “evil.”

There’s one twist thrown into the mix, although it didn’t factor in as much as you’d expect. Alfredo hands a letter to Skinner early on in the film, and its contents become very important. Or, you’d think they’d be important, but once the reveal happens, it gets passed on through and doesn’t get much thought. At that point in the story, there are more important things like real characters for the film to focus on.

While it’s not particularly surprising in the way it plays out, Ratatouille is always involving and quite touching. Despite its main character being a rat — and make no mistake, this is a film to make sure you know it’s a rat in a human’s world — Remy feels more like a human than many of the actual human characters. He’s very personified, and not only because he gets a voice actor. This is a very heartfelt film, and as we progress through it, we grow to care a lot about this rat. He has a dream, and he’s going to see it through. That’s a message that anyone can take from this film.

Ratatouille looks great, but do you expect anything different at this point in Pixar’s history? All of the animation is smooth, the detail put into everything is superb, and you’re not going to find a flaw in the aesthetics of the film. You can mute it and simply watch the skill and artistry on display here, and you’d still probably have a good time. Voice actors imbued their characters with distinct personalities — most of them lending life to the wonderfully animated models.

Where Ratatouille doesn’t quite work is in the villains. While Skinner was sinister and the food critic initially seemed evil, none of them seemed particularly menacing or difficult to overcome. I never worried that the characters wouldn’t be able to defeat them, and as a result, the times when the film is going for tension don’t quite work. The predictability also doesn’t help, even if the quality of Ratatouille overall makes up for a fairly basic plot.

Ratatouille is absolutely worth watching. It has gorgeous animation, a very solid cast of voice actors, a ton of heart, and an inspirational — albeit very simple and predictable — story that’s enjoyable to watch for both kids and adults. It’s another winner from Pixar, and ends up being a very fun watch. While I laughed at the premise when I first saw it, I wasn’t after the film was over. Instead, I felt bad for initially mocking it. Remy became a character to root for. You have no reason not to watch Ratatouille, even if it would have benefited from stronger villains.

When a film is titled “Monsters,” one might actually expect monsters to appear once in a while. This time, this doesn’t happen very often, so if you choose to watch this film, know that you aren’t getting yourself into a true monster film. What you’ll get here is a drama — and an ultimately unsuccessful one at that. At least, I didn’t feel anything after watching it, but I suppose one must care in order for a drama to work.

The story follows two people — not monsters — who are attempting to get back to America. They begin in Mexico, and meet a large amount of resistance in their attempt to accomplish their end goal. Along the way, they meet a lot of people — also not monsters — who are either willing to help or hinder their quest. In essence, it’s a film that plays out like a travel log of their journey. There’s a reason that random travel journals don’t get made into movies: They aren’t interesting.

By now you’ve probably gathered that I was disappointed that there weren’t many monsters within the film. This isn’t a problem by itself, but when the film is advertised in a way that leads you to believe that there are a lot of monsters, and the opening scene also leads you to this belief, getting a character study instead is likely to lead to you to become disappointed. The opening scene shows some soldiers shooting at the aforementioned monsters. This scene looks like it was taken directly out of Cloverfield, except that there’s a different filter applied to the camera, and the monsters that are being shot at are different than the one in Cloverfield.

But let’s forget for a moment that we’ve been mislead. Let’s put that thought out of our minds, and judge Monsters as a drama that focuses on the budding relationship between its two lead characters. It’s still not very good. There are a couple of reasons for this, but the majority of the problems come directly from the film’s script, which is just terrible.

It’s terrible for a couple of reasons. Firstly, and probably most importantly, the dialogue is just awful. The characters don’t speak or relate to one another like regular people would, which makes it hard to see the film as an attempt at realism. When you’re making a drama, this is something that you need. You need the audience to believe in these people, and you need the characters to be ones that the audience will want to see make it through to the end. I wanted the monsters to show up randomly and eat them or crush them with their tentacles. Sorry, I guess I’ve still got monsters on the brain.

The second issue with the script is the situations that it puts its characters into. Now, the first 50 or so minutes of the film can be summed up like this: The two characters try to get back to America, but have trouble in doing so. After that, things actually happen that are entertaining. But by this point, the film has lost your attention, and caring past here is something that I couldn’t bring myself to do. I’ll give you an example of what I mean by giving the characters poor situations to deal with. The man (Scoot McNairy), someone who has only known his travel companion, the girl (Whitney Able) for a day or so, ends up getting drunk and ends up spending the night with some other girl. Our lead female finds this out, and instead of talking to him about it — even though she’s engaged and shouldn’t be jealous anyway — runs away.

And what does this lead to? Absolutely nothing. He chases her, she stops, they converse, and then the trip continues after we find out the first major problem that the pair has to overcome. There are so many reasons that this scene feels unrealistic, and the poorly written dialogue hurts it even further. There are similar scenes (not in nature, but in the same spirit), that are scattered throughout the film, leading me to believe that if all of the pointlessness was removed, we’d have about 35-40 minutes of film left.

I’ll give the filmmakers credit in one area, though: Their film looks nice. Shot on a budget of under $1,000,000 and without filming permits (they hired locals to play all of the extras as well), the film actually looks quite good. Now, some of this credit comes from the scenery. The film was shot entirely on-location, which means that it should look good by nature. The special effects used for the monsters are, like I said, sparse, but they function when they pop up. And considering the film’s budget, I’d say they look pretty darn good.

Monsters did not impress me. From the misleading opening to the fact that once I accepted that it was a drama, it still wasn’t entertaining. The script is the biggest detractor, which gives the characters awful dialogue and uninteresting and unrealistic situations. The film looks nice, and for its low budget, the monsters it has do look pretty good. It’s just that we needed more of them, as well as some characters we could believe in. Because we don’t get either, Monsters fails.

I don’t really understand how someone can dislike a film like Terminal Velocity. Here is a film that is chock-full of action scenes, doesn’t take itself too seriously, has a ton of enjoyable one-liners, and has a plot so ridiculous that it’s laughable to even try to describe it. It takes someone taking life too seriously to dismiss something like that. No, it’s not exactly a good film, but it’s an incredibly fun one.

It does, however, take a long time to actually get to these silly action scenes. That’s the first problem that Terminal Velocity has. We get one right off the bat, a seemingly random scene which involves a woman being tortured inside of her apartment. Then we cut to a man named Ditch Brodie (Charlie Sheen) hang gliding down into the middle of the city, breaking numerous laws in the process. He’s a skydiving instructor, and has managed to amass 12 safety violations in the last month. He’s charming, though, and nobody seems to take these violations too seriously.

One day, that same woman from earlier, Chris (Nastassja Kinski) comes in and wants a skydiving lesson. Despite having some business to attend to, Ditch agrees and, before you know it, they’re up in an airplane thousands of feet above the Earth. While Ditch is talking to the pilot, Chris jumps out of the plane, refuses to pull her shoot, and dies. Soon enough, manslaughter charges are being considered, the skydiving business has been shut down, and this seemingly suicidal woman has effectively ruined Ditch’s life.

If only the film ended there. It would be a meditative little mood piece that might work perfectly as a short film. “Why did she jump?” would probably be the primary question on the audience’s mind. Anyway, she’s actually alive, and after a series of events, she and Ditch have to team up in order to save all of Russia from former KGB agents who are planning to overthrow the government using stolen gold. I only wish I was kidding about the plot, and believe me when I say that it unfolds just about that quickly.

So, after all of this is revealed, we basically just move from set-piece to other set-piece with very, very basic reasons for doing so. Ditch is basically dragged into what amounts to a small war between one Russian woman who speaks very good English, and other Russian dudes who all also speak very good English. Cast members of the former KGB include James Gandolfini and Christopher McDonald — not exactly the most Russian actors you’ll see out there.

I think that someone like Charlie Sheen is why this film manages to be as fun as it is. Not necessarily him exclusively, as any actor with decent comedic timing and the kind of “I don’t care” attitude that he possesses would do, but that’s the kind of person that’s required. I doesn’t matter what situation he encounters, he’ll always be the one to crack a one-liner and smirk as he laughs through the ridiculousness that’s being thrown his way. It’s fun to watch action heroes enjoying themselves, especially when the entire experience is silly, and it’s for this reason that Terminal Velocity is an enjoyable watch.

Well, there’s Sheen, and then there are also all of the action scenes that he and Kinski are put through. After the movie gets going, it really gets going. Apart from one short scene that contains possibly the best line in the film, Terminal Velocity throws everything it can at you. While this amount of action can become tiresome, the joking really helps ease tension and makes sure that you’re never too worried or too exhausted by the events you’re watching. You can’t help but laugh at the way some of them end, as well, even if there are some genuinely thrilling moments.

Unfortunately, nobody else seems to be having as much fun as Sheen is, and the film suffers because of this. All of the other actors play their roles straight, taking this project way too seriously and giving it far more credit than it deserves. The energy dies down whenever Sheen isn’t the focus. This kind of film needs its actors to realize that they’re not in a serious film, but the supporting cast (including Kinski) are far too serious and grim. Their acting is the main reason that Terminal Velocity sometimes doesn’t work.

The other reasons are less bothersome, but I can see them making the film less enjoyable for some. The too-ridiculous-to-believe plot is sometimes distracting, the one liners are annoying if you don’t enjoy them, and the long period of time before the action begins needed to be drastically shortened. That one breather scene also felt out of place, but was required. More might have actually been beneficial, and if that were to have occurred, that one scene wouldn’t seem so out of place.

What you get for most of the time is a ridiculous action-packed thriller that doesn’t take itself too seriously and ends up being a whole lot of fun. It has a plot that you’ll laugh at, one actor that knows the film’s a joke while the others think it’s serious, and a bunch of spectacular action scenes. Even if you laugh at the plot, you’ll at least be wowed by the set-pieces. Skydiving, conveniently, makes for a perfect area to stage action scenes, especially ones involving heavy objects falling fast toward the ground below. This isn’t a good movie, but it’s a fun one, and is worth recommending just for that.

I’m unsure how to go about this. If you’ve heard of The Room, you probably already know all about it, as just hearing what some people have said about it is intriguing. If you haven’t, and still somehow managed to read just this sentence, skipping over the earlier ones of this review, then you’re better of not learning anything about it, never watching it — don’t even skim over the Wikipedia page. Exit your browser now and go take a nice bath. It’ll be better for you.

Assuming you’re still with me, The Room is a film that was directed, produced, written by, and starring a man named Tommy Wiseau. Despite looking like it was made in the late 1980’s for about $500, I’ve been told that it was made for $6 million and was shot at some point between 2001 and 2003. It stars actors who had never before been in a feature film, has a story that is incomprehensible, dialogue that harms the ears more than listening to your MP3 player on full volume, terrible production values, a ton of asynchronous sound, and is probably one of the most hilarious things I can remember seeing.

I only just listed some of the main problems that The Room has. There are many more, but I could just list things for the entire review, point at the list and say “this is why The Room is terrible.” That would suffice, but there’s a difference between being a terrible film that’s boring and being a terrible film that’s incredibly entertaining. For better or worse, this one falls into the latter category. It is absolutely awful, and if anyone is studying film, this is a perfect “what not to do” film, but the fact remains that I can’t remember the last time I laughed this hard at a film.

Even the opening title credits violate the unwritten rules of how to introduce your film. To begin with, we see not once, but twice, that the film is distributed by Wiseau Films. Like, separate logo screens and everything; not just text! Then we see a shot of San Francisco, something you’ll get very used to if you choose to sit through the entirety of this abomination. We cross cut between more San Francisco shots and cast member names. This might make sense if the film took place primarily in San Francisco, but this could have been filmed anywhere and you’d get the same result.

Wiseau plays Johnny, who begins the film walking into his apartment with dress in hand. His “future wife,” Lisa (Juliette Danielle), will eventually don the dress and make love to him to some completely inappropriate and not-at-all-fitting music. Note how I said “future wife” instead of “fiancée.” That’s because none of the characters in the film ever use the word “fiancée.” Maybe that one isn’t in Wiseau’s vocabulary.

It turns out, Lisa is cheating on Johnny with Johnny’s “best friend,” Mark (Greg Sestero). We’re reminded constantly that the relationship between Johnny and Mark is “best friend,” even when Lisa and Mark are about to go at it. If you somehow manage to forget these character names, don’t worry, as The Room has your back. Whenever a character sees another, they’ll acknowledge them with a “hi, [insert character name here].” This is hilarious, especially when random characters just sort of pop in and out whenever they want, always to be greeted with a “hi.”

Cringe-worthy dialogue doesn’t stop there. Many characters have phrases that they’ll repeat whenever it’s opportune. Lisa constantly remarks “I don’t want to talk about it,” often right before or after already having done so. Johnny tells people “whatever” even after the majority of conflict in the film has been revealed (and right after he got in a fight). Mark asks “what are you doing?” every time Lisa tries to come onto him, even after she’s done so frequently.

The dialogue fun continues. Motivation seems to be an overly convoluted concept for our junior writer, so instead of having one action or sentence lead to another, each one seems to stand alone. The example that I instantly think of is when Lisa delivers this line: “I’m going to do what I want to do, and that’s it.” She follows that with this, just a couple of moments later: “What do you think I should do?” Another time, she receives a negative response to her question “Did you get your promotion.” About five seconds later, she repeats “You didn’t get it, did you?”

This holds true for events in the film as well. Some things come up once, and are never mentioned again. Others are focused heavily on, but are later changed for absolutely no reason (a late-game character turnaround is a good example of this). Other points of the film seem to make no sense in terms of the story, like in the (infamous?) scene where a few of the males get dressed up in tuxedos, seemingly are going to some big event, and end up playing football instead.

The acting is also terrible. I mentioned that none of the actors had previously appeared in a feature film before. This is probably for the best. Many lines are said with absolutely no emotion (possibly because that’s the only reason they could say them with a straight face), but others are overacted about as much as you could. It looks ridiculous, sounds insane, and if you’re not laughing, you need to lighten up.

I could go on for a lot longer, but I think you get the point. All of this adds up to something that is absolutely hilarious and definitely worth your time. Is it good? Not in the least. There isn’t a single element of The Room that works. And yet, that’s why it’s so much fun. When there’s a car crash, people turn their heads to see it. This is a car wreck that somehow managed to involve enough vehicles to take down the Golden Gate Bridge. The sheer insanity of it makes you want to watch. It’s an absolute atrocity, but it’s definitely worth your time; you won’t see anything funnier in a while.