If anybody had told me Liam Neeson would be a top action star in 2012 at nearly 60, I would have laughed and said “Sure, and they’ll nominate a silent B&W movie for an Oscar in 2012, too.”

Oops.

I spent most of The Grey wondering why Liam had the muzzle of his rifle in his mouth for so much of this movie.  That’s when I realized that this was his nose.

Hey wait a minute, this is a survival adventure!  If it’s a survival adventure I want I’ll watch Lindsay Lohan dodge paparazzi on TMZ!

And it’s a survival adventure in the farthest reaches of Alaska, where the only females are female wolves and female flashbacks and even flashbacks of female wolves.

By the way, did you know that in color theory “grey” is lighter than “gray”?  And The Grey’s palette runs from grey to gray, with the occasional fingers turning blue.

Liam is is the oldest-ever member of an Alaskan oil drilling team.  He boards a tiny plane in bad weather, and everybody’s bad weather air travel nightmare comes true when the plane ditches and Liam and a band of survivors must battle the elements and the hungry wolves until they reach civilization or the two-hour mark, whichever comes first.

“The odds of our band’s survival would be better if we actually were the band Survivor,” said Liam, “whose big hit ‘Eye of the Tiger’ has survived 30 years longer than any hungry wolf would ever allow.”

“I thought that Duran Duran song ‘Hungry like the Wolf’ was just an expression,” said one member of Liam’s crew as he was being scarfed up by one of our hungry four-footed friends.

“Wry to the end,” lamented Liam.

So here they are, stuck in the bitter cold, alone, amidst dozens of hungry predators.  ”I don’t see this movie ending well,” said a member of Liam’s tribe, “unless the wolves start talking to each other with the voices of Ian McKellen and Jeremy Irons.”

“You don’t suppose this is all an Andy Serkis motion-capture dream, do you?”

“Well,” said Liam, “that one wolf over there does seem to be walking like he’s on his way to the pub for a pint.”

So five minutes go by and somebody says “let’s build a fire.” Because every five minutes somebody says “let’s build a fire.”  I don’t know who fire’s agent is but I’ll have the first-look deal he’s having.

So around the fire, our heroes tell stories of their various triumphs, such as the one about the “53-year-old, 250 pound hooker,” who, we’re led to understand, was at least a woman.  ”That’s twice the triumph if valued as two 26-year-old 125 pound hookers,” notes Liam.

This is followed by one blinding-white scene after another.  It’s where we learn that wolves have a kill range of 30 miles, and Liam and company never seem to be more than 29 miles away.

“I survived Julia Roberts – I should be able to survive this,” said Liam. “I played Zeus, for God’s sake,” he added in the ultimate mixed metaphor.

Invariably, it’s time for a tightrope climb over a cliff.  Liam et. al. dangle over a very scary blue screen.

“This screen is as captivating as Scarlett Johansson’s blue eyes,” said one survivor.

“Hey, look at my eyes – these are the eyes of an actor who can open a movie,” said Liam, quite rightly.

Once back on the ground, Liam sets out to gather up the wallets of his fallen comrades.  ”I know my timing is bad, but I want to create an art collage,” he says.  ”Maybe the wolves will stick it on a pole outside their lair instead of my head.”

All joking aside, The Grey is a really good movie, especially given its genre and its release date.  I wouldn’t call it the “feel-good movie of the year” unless the sight of wolves having dinner makes you feel good. But The Grey will stay with you long after the credits roll.

If it’s time to pay the Time Warner cable bill, it’s time for Kate Beckinsale to climb into a skin-tight black catsuit for another go at Underworld.

And this particular go will be gone before you know it.

What’s this? Underworld: Awakening, the fourth installment in the more endless than endlessly entertaining series, may be followed by a fifth? What a surprise!  Who would have guessed!

“Daddy needs a new boat,” said director Len Wiseman, also known as Mr. Kate Beckinsale.

“We’re hoping to make as many Underworlds as my other acting gigs permit, and that’s an infinite number of Underworlds,” said Kate.

“We’re going to keep on trying until we get it right,” said Wiseman.  ”Or until we get it again, whichever comes first.”

Who doesn’t love franchise with colons in the titles?  ”It’s a sign of either creative bankruptcy or irritable bowel syndrome,” said a Screen Gems executive who, like all Screen Gems executives, wished to remain anonymous.

“We’re out of ideas,” Kate acknowledged.  ”As a result all future Underworld titles will borrow the words after the colon in the Resident Evil series, since they’re basically the same movies except we draw our cast from a different Starbucks.”

Pity poor Scott Speedman who did the last Beckinsale-intensive Underworld and appears to be reduced in this one to recycled stock footage combined with stunt doubles and CG.  He’s a constant theme in the movie but is nowhere to be found in the cast.  ”That means I don’t get paid,” said a despondent Speedman on the set of his latest film which is being produced on his iPhone from the porch of his trailer home in Covina.

And while we’re at it, pity even more poor Wes Bentley, who is dispatched so early in this flick one is left asking “Did I just see Wes Bentley’s career flash before my eyes?”

Yes, Kate Beckinsale is back from a variety of forgettable roles to cement her claim as the world’s favorite auburn-haired  ass-kicking vampiress.  She’s also back from whatever cosmetic surgeon froze her forehead such that her face in an ice bucket can chill Len Wiseman’s champagne.

“My forehead is my instrument,” said Kate.  ”and this instrument plays one note.”

This new chapter of Underworld adds humans to the mix.  It also adds a daughter for Kate Beckinsale, and like all teenaged daughters, she’s a hybrid.

“One day,” Kate assures her, “you, too, will grow up to dress like a restaurant server in San Francisco.”

What a great idea for the next chapter in the franchise:  Underworld: Check Please.

Dolly Parton is starring in a new movie!  Hey, Hollywood, what part of 1980 don’t you understand?

I’m going to pull out my hair and replace it with one of Dolly’s interchangeable yellow wigs.  Honestly, I didn’t expect to see her face back on the big screen unless they were using it as a projection surface.

But no worries, Dolly Parton brings on the big star-power with…Queen Latifah?!

What, Florence Henderson wasn’t available?  Latifah couldn’t open a movie if it came in a DVD case – and this one will go straight to the DVD basket case.

Joyful Noise continues the long string of movies begun with A Star is Born where Kris Kristofferson dies prematurely.  ”I specialize in guys who die long before the end credits roll,” said Kristofferson.  ”If you want a Kris Kristofferson-type who lives to see the final scene, call Jeff Bridges.”

At this late stage of the game, Dolly Parton is less an actor/singer than a steak:  A bundle of body parts plowed over, harvested by a Caterpillar tractor, rearranged by a bulldozer, stitched back together and displayed on a shelf at the Piggly Wiggly beside the well-marinated fillets of Faye Dunaway and Darryl Hannah.

“Do you need to pound this meat before grilling it?”

“No one has pounded this meat since the late ’70’s,” said the butcher.

“My body is the newest Dollywood attraction: The Bride of Frankenstein Safari, music by Dixie Dead and the TaTas.”

In an effort to get to the bottom of Dolly Parton, Lewis & Clark set out on an expedition to circumnavigate her breasts.  It has been over 200 years and neither has yet returned, although the cynics say it’s because neither one wants to.  As a precaution, the Coast Guard airdrops supplies every Spring after the snows melt.

Joyful Noise is a movie about a small-town choir, where two headstrong gals must get along for themselves, each other, their choir, and the town which desperately needs them more than the 25 million dollars worth of jobs this movie’s budget could have created.

Buy a ticket to Joyful Noise and get two needles to stick in your eyes and two hours of reasons to stick them.  The only thing joyful about this noise is the knowledge that it will eventually end, and we have only 32 more years to wait for another Dolly Parton cinema extravaganza.  ”By then I’ll be 263, but I won’t look a day over 210,” crowed Dolly out of whichever corner of her mouth continues to possess mobility.

“At Dollywood we have artisans blowing glass,” she said.  ”But here on the set I blow into a respirator.”

If Dolly could make an expression, it would be one of disgust. “My face hasn’t moved since the concrete set in 1978,” she explained.  ”If my face were gold you could find King Tut entombed in it.”

“My lips have been inflated so I can float away in case of emergency.  Hold on, Lewis & Clark!”

What does it mean that this movie opens on Friday the 13th when it should have opened on April 1st?

It means bad luck is no joke.

Has there ever been an amber field of grain that can’t be just a bit more sun-drenched when also drenched in a John Williams score?

Or a purple mountain more majestic thanks to the majesty of a John Williams crescendo?

“Can you pass me the TV remote?”

Cue John Williams crescendo.

“Wow, I hope I am going to watch a very special episode of Celebrity Wife Swap.”

Crescendo swells to thrilling conclusion as the remote flips from one grand, magnificent channel to the next, its plastic frame glinting in the midday sun.

There’s always time for a sentimental tale of a boy and his horse. And War Horse is the kind of evergreen holiday movie that will play annually on TV like Judy Garland in Easter Parade – except with dead horses and poison gas.

It’s early 20th century wartime, and a boy has to have his horse sold to support the family.  And so begins the horse’s journey from home to war and, we hope, back home again.

“I had already visited this theme with an animated mouse named Fievel in An American Tail,” said director Steven Spielberg, “but now it was time to make the same movie, this time with a goyim horse named Joey!”

“The audience got confused by the original title, An American Tail, Joey goes to War,” said Spielberg, “but maybe the idea that we weren’t in America had something to do with it.”

So Joey is traded from one kindly protector to another in the midst of war.  ”I have more suitors than Jennifer Lopez, and a bigger schlong, too” said Joey in an early screening, before the filmmakers decided not to make this a talking horse movie, let alone a talking horse movie that referenced Jennifer Lopez. “Yes, Rhianna would be way more relevant,” advised producer Kathleen Kennedy.

“It took everything we had not to make this horse talk,” said producer Frank Marshall.  ”After all, the last animal in a major motion picture who didn’t talk was Free Willy - assuming you don’t count Mickey Rourke.”

“At least the Germans and the French speak perfect English,” added Marshall, “unlike Mickey Rourke.”

There’s a war on!  Forget the artillery!  Bring in the swords and the horses!  And let’s all stand together in what the military experts call the “kill us where we stand formation”!  You have to love the British and their oh-so-civilized wartime rituals, including their primary victory strategy, called “asking nicely.”

And now it’s time for War Horse to meet up with young Emilie, a sickly French girl who couldn’t act her way out of a loaf of French bread.  But she goes gaga all over War Horse, even changing his name to “Tea Party with My Dolly” Horse and dressing him like a French Maid.

War Horse was co-written by the guy who wrote Notting Hill, which is why Hugh Grant travels across the war-torn countryside to publicly express his love for War Horse at the movie’s climax.  ”You’re not the strangest animal I have ever loved,” says Hugh, “nor the one with the largest mane – that honor goes to Julia Roberts.”

Where’s the scene where Peter Coyote tries to kill War Horse as he gallops into the moonlit sky?  Will that be in the extended DVD version?

I don’t know, but one thing’s for sure, War Horse does what it means to do.  And that’s as much as anybody can ask of a good movie.

Tom Cruise has two kinds of roles:  The kind he has played before and the kind nobody really cares about.  Thank God for the first kind!

Wherever and whenever in the world there’s a need for a federal employee to rappel down a high-rise, look no farther than Tom Cruise! Tom spends as much time clinging to mirrored glass as all the Kardashians combined!  Need to gain access to a computer room on the 2,000th floor to enable the guy from Shaun of the Dead to remotely operate the elevators?  Show me the money!

If more Federal employee could rappel down a high-rise, then surely some of them could speed up the line at the DMV.  What if we line up along a high-rise, will that help?  And I’d like to buy some commemorative postage stamps while I dangle from a tower.

We begin with Tom Cruise in a Russian prison, and for all I know, that’s where he has really been since the last Mission: Impossible in 2006. Tom is keeping himself busy by bouncing a ball against the wall.  ”If my balls need to bounce against something in this prison, let it be the wall,” he says.

As usual, our IMF team has all the great spy gadgets, including an “ID the Assassin” iPhone app, which I definitely want.  It will go great with my “Translate Katie Holmes’ Baby-Talk into English” app and my “Watch Penelope Cruz’s Career Go Into the Virtual Reality Toilet” app.

So to complete this mission, such as it is, Tom and his crew need to penetrate the Kremlin, and I don’t mean that Sumo dude three cells down from Tom in that Russian prison.

Penetrate the Kremlin?!  Just apply a fake mustache (and is there any other kind?), gray your hair, put on a Russian General costume, and stroll into the place speaking not a word of Russian and carrying along a hallway-sized projection mechanism.  Who doesn’t carry a hallway-sized projection mechanism around Moscow, anyway.  Especially if it can project shelves of Vodka onto the wall or, in Tom’s case, shelves of Oscar statuettes.

But something goes wrong and the entire Kremlin blows up.  Oops! “The wattage of my smile has overpowered the antiquated Russian electrical grid,” explained Tom.  ”I don’t know how much money I have on me,” says Tom.  ”But maybe if I wash dishes for the next 200 years….”

“Wait!  30 minutes of movie have passed!  It’s time to put on some thigh-high shorts and hang from something high,” says Tom, “which is how I used to swing all day long from Nicole Kidman.”

As a result, the President invokes Ghost Protocol, meaning the entire Federal government will be run by a team of part-time paranormal investigators.  ”You can find it on the Travel Channel,” says Tom.  ”Just don’t ask what paranormal investigations have to do with travel – the answer is classified.”

“Don’t shoot until you see the white of their orbs,” says the lead member of our crack paranormal investigation team.  And I say “crack” because they are literally on crack.

To redeem himself and the many gift cards he received over the holidays, Tom must chase down code-name Cobalt.

Why “Cobalt”?  ”Because it’s the shade of blue I felt after critics panned my recent action movie with Cameron Diaz,” said Tom, “the one where the chemistry was so thin even LeAnn Rimes offered it a bagel and a bowl of ice cream.”

Pity co-star Jeremy Renner, who doesn’t get to hang from anything besides Tom’s every word.  He does get to float in a magnetic suspension thanks to an anti-gravity shirt and a Roomba that chases dust bunnies.

Where’s Ving Rhames, you may ask?  He’s at the bar for a cameo, that’s where.  ”And I had to pay out of my pocket for that,” said Ving. “My agent called it ‘humanoid product placement.’”

Tom’s mission is to prevent the end of the world, and you can bet he does just that.  So as the closing credits approach and he raises the itty bitty hood of his little tiny hoodie, what’s his mission?

To make another Mission: Impossible movie, I hope.  Because that’s one mission all of us will choose to accept.

Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol can haunt my theater anytime.