VideoCritics movie reviews

Final Destination 5

Ben Lee writes: "It's easy to recommend "Final Destination 5" to those who are fans of the series. This newest effort in the long-running series is an enjoyable flick and serves as a return to form after the terrible "The Final Destination". For that very reason, though, folks who never appreciated the early "Final Destination" films will probably find nothing to like here. For the most part, it recycles the same formula and its biggest selling point remains the elaborate death scenes. "

Senna

John Natsis writes: "Leaving the cinema after the screening of "Senna", the cinephilic documentary of the Formula One driver tragically killed in the prime of his career, I knew I had seen something special. It just took a bit of time to justify, in an articulate manner, exactly why I had enjoyed it so much. I was impressed that a modern-day filmmaker (Asif Kapadia) could so astutely compile a documentary in the same style as that of the Maysles brothers in "Gimme Shelter". Unlike that film about one famous rock concert featuring the Rolling Stones, though, "Senna" focuses not on one key event, but on a tumultuous life driven by a combination of pride, justice and God-given humility. "

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

John Natsis writes: "Before I begin, there is something I need to get off my chest. Rise... of the Planet... of the Apes? I can understand the producers' desire to link this film with the rest of the series, but I'm sure audiences would've made the same connection if it was just called Rise of the Apes. But fear not, because an overly clunky, lame title is by far the worst aspect of this movie. It falls short of replicating the thematic genius of the original, yet wipes the floor with Tim Burton's ridiculous remake. "

The Change-Up

Jason Venter writes: "While peeing into a fountain in the park after a night of too much drinking, long-time best friends Dave Lockwood (Jason Bateman) and Mitch Planko (Ryan Reynolds) simultaneously say I wish I had your life. The lights around the block suddenly flicker out for a moment before power is restored. The two men assume that they were caught in a rolling blackout and head home for the evening. The next morning, they wake to find that the wish has come true. Dave is Mitch and Mitch is Dave. They have gone through The Change-up. "

The Tourist

Ben Lee writes: "On paper, "The Tourist" looked like it had every chance of being a worthwhile and entertaining popcorn flick. Not only is it set in the beautiful city of Venice, but it also stars Hollywood icons Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie and has the director behind the Oscar-winning film "The Lives of Others", Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, at the helm. However, "The Tourist" is a disappointing affair with lacklustre set-pieces, weak writing, and - perhaps most detrimental to the film - no spark at all between Depp and Jolie. "

Crazy, Stupid, Love.

Jason Venter writes: "Crazy, Stupid, Love. is a comedy that begins with a crisis. Cal (Steve Carell) is seated at a table finishing up a meal with his wife of 25 years, Emily (Julianne Moore) and contemplating desert. He suggests that they say the name of what they want at the count of three, and when she responds it's with an unexpected word: divorce. "

Cowboys & Aliens

Jason Venter writes: "Cowboys & Aliens knows how a movie should start. It begins as Jake Lonergan (Daniel Craig) wakes up in the middle of a desert with a cut on his gut, a picture in his pocket, a strange bracelet on his wrist and no idea why or who or what it is, respectively. In that first crucial 30 seconds or so, the movie has provided enough questions to keep the audience curious, and it spends most of the another two hours answering them in the mostly satisfying manner that you would expect from Jon Favreau, director of Iron Man. "

Captain America: The First Avenger

Mike Suskie writes: "For a while, I dismissed the subtitle in Captain America: The First Avenger as an attempt to sell one of Marvel's less-popular franchises to audiences who have already been told in the Iron Man movies who the Avengers are. (A friend of mine who's stationed in England tells me that the folks over there are laughing at the trailers, apparently unaware that such a character existed.) As it happens, this movie exists less to establish Captain America for future sequels and more to establish him for next year's Marvel crossover titan, The Avengers. I enjoyed Captain America quite a bit, but its incompleteness as a standalone film prevented me from truly loving it the way I wanted to. "

Friends with Benefits

Jason Venter writes: "If you're looking for a romantic comedy that makes the genre's tropes credible, that makes its lead characters relatable while giving them personality quirks that actually matter, then you need not look any further than Friends with Benefits. It's a movie where people find themselves caught up in a crowd of dancing people as the music blares. It's a movie where there's a horse-drawn carriage and there are well-intentioned talks from off-beat people who know more about love than the main protagonists. In short, it's a movie that goes through the same tired motions as so many other pictures before it. The difference is that it works much better than usual. "

Winnie the Pooh [2011]

Jason Venter writes: "In the 1970s and sporadically throughout the years that followed, Winnie the Pooh was a delight. In the new millennium, surrounded by computer-animated cars and robots and mice, he's an anomaly. A morose donkey, a know-it-all owl who doesn't actually know anything important, a bouncing tiger, a sharp-tongued rabbit, a timid little pig and--most of all--a bear who wants nothing more than a pot of honey seem to have been relegated to a past where things were simpler. It's as if, in the name of progress, the movie industry has decided that no one wants more of the stuff that amused us all so reliably when we were children. "

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2

John Natsis writes: "Finales with real magnitude seem to come around once every few years in the case of television shows, but we very rarely see them for feature films. The conclusion to the Harry Potter franchise is one of those rare occurrences. Filled with fan-servicing closure and genuinely emotive scenes that appeal to even the less devout followers such as myself, the film falls short of being the ultimate experience in filmmaking but still proves to be engaging from start to finish. "

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

Ben Lee writes: "As long as robots are brutally kicking robot ass in spectacular CGI fashion, the "Transformers" series will continue to be highly profitable, at least for the foreseeable future. Much of its success can be credited to Michael Bay, who returns to helm the third film in the series, "Transformers: Dark of the Moon". Shia LaBeouf also reunites with the director, starring as Sam Witwicky, but this isn't third time lucky for the pair where quality is concerned. "

Get Him to the Greek

Jason Venter writes: "Get Him to the Greek feels a lot like a sequel. It features Russell Brand as the lead singer of a fictional band named Infant Sorrow, for instance. He played that character in Forgetting Sarah Marshall, you might recall, but in that film he had to deal with an irritating waiter named Matthew (Jonah Hill). Here, Hill returns but now his name is Aaron Green and he works in the music industry. Yet Sarah Marshall is still Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell in a cameo appearance) and Aldous Snow still dated her and survived for seven years without touching alcohol. "

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

Jason Venter writes: "Movie titles don't come much more descriptive than the one with which Forgetting Sarah Marshall has been blessed. The film, written by and starring Jason Segel, tells the story of a sad sack named Peter Bretter who for five years has dated a woman he loves very much: Sarah Marshall (Kristen Bell). She's an actress in a television series and he scores the soundtrack, but their lives have begun to follow separate paths. One morning, Bretter is forced to accept the naked truth: there's no immediate future for the pair. "

Zookeeper

Jason Venter writes: "You don't have to change who you are to be happy. That's the message that Griffin Keyes (Kevin James) learns in Zookeeper. It's a non-conformist message delivered in a generally slick fashion and there are parts that children and some parents will probably adore. There's one problem, though: the story that's trying to teach that lesson isn't told very well. "

Larry Crowne

Ben Lee writes: ""Larry Crowne" reminds me an awful lot of one of my favourite current comedies, NBC's "Community". On that show, Joel McHale plays Jeff Winger, a lawyer forced to attend a community college after his degree was found to be less than legitimate. He then becomes part of a tight-knit study group. On "Larry Crowne", Tom Hanks is the title character, fired from his job at a Wal-Mart-esque superstore because he lacks any college education. Larry is quickly inspired to sign up for a nearby community college and befriends everyone in a small speech class. "

Horrible Bosses

Jason Venter writes: "Most of us who have been in the work force for any length of time can recall bosses we didn't much care for, because part of the whole package when you're a boss is that you're the one people have to respect and listen to. So most workers get that, and they don't like the bosses but then they go home at the end of the day and the boss isn't an issue until the next day at work. Horrible Bosses is a movie about three close friends who share a common malady: their bosses. The problem, for the most part, is that their bosses aren't just bad; they're ruining lives outside of the workplace, too! "

Cars 2

John Natsis writes: "In the modern age, people typically associate the quality of a film with its director or cast, but very rarely do entire studios develop a similar reputation. The Pixar studio is perhaps the best example of an exception to that rule, having churned out mostly excellent films that have forever changed what we expect when we hear the phrase fun for the whole family (once loosely translatable as a yawn-fest for anyone over five) and created movies that are designed for kids at their most basic level that genuinely can be enjoyed by people of all ages. The newest film from that studio is Cars 2, and while I wouldn't suggest that it ranks with Pixar's greatest accomplishments, it isn't a total flop either. "

Bad Teacher

Jason Venter writes: "To enjoy some movies, you have to be willing to suspend your disbelief. You have to forget for two or three hours the elements in a film that should never be questioned, only accepted. Maybe a person who died hundreds of years ago really could return in spirit form to haunt a potato farmer. Maybe a slacker from New Jersey could discover a way to travel through time and maybe he would use that ability to assassinate whoever was about to invent bellbottoms and disco. In the case of the latest Cameron Diaz vehicle, maybe a self-absorbed stoner chick really would decide that her calling is the education of this nation's youth. "

Green Lantern

Ben Lee writes: "Despite prior concerns over whether the Norse God of Thunder would translate well from comic form to film, "Thor" delivered a smart and enjoyable experience. Thor may have started as a ridiculously overpowered superhero, hailing from a foreign world, but by stripping away his powers and forcing him to go through a journey of self-discovery, he became a relatable and lifelike character we could get behind. By contrast, on the evidence of this latest comic book adaptation, the Green Lantern is a boring superhero, his story full of clich�s. "