Review: LOCKOUT

While this has been a personally disappointing year in cinema so far, I still find myself at the movie theater. Perhaps to escape the early nice weather, I don’t know. The string of disappointments started with “Tailor Tinker Soldier Spy” and at least continued through Guy Pierce’s bicep showcase, “Lockout.” In the interest of full-disclosure, shortly after leaving the theater, I must have been bludgeoned over the head as I cannot recall a startlingly large amount of the movie. Thankfully, the plot was neither a primary nor secondary nor even tertiary concern to the film production. I suspect the crews’ catering occupied more deliberations and concerns. Why some action movies cast themselves as so defiantly passive is beyond me but it makes for a nice exercise in viral criticism.

Review: NEW YEAR'S EVE

The Time’s Square Ball Drop on New Year’s Eve is perhaps to be the most anticlimactic event all year. Thousands of people gather on Time’s Square, many more watch on their TV’s across several time zones (a rather lame thing to be doing on New Year’s Eve in my opinion, go find a party somewhere please), as a medium size ball of light is lowered towards a screen where a Panasonic ad is displayed. The whole thing takes about a minute; and there are no fireworks at the end. So if the last wish of a dying old man (Robert DeNiro) is to see the ball drop one more time from the rooftop of the hospital, I suspect he led a rather boring life.

Review: IMMORTALS

Not since the 1998 “Godzilla” monstrosity has a movie so brazenly promised a sequel that everyone immediately knows will absolutely not come to fruition. I loved “The Fall,” and at least appreciated “The Cell,” but Tarsem Singh’s latest film, “Immortals,” exhausted all my goodwill within ten minutes. And for the remaining hundred minutes in the auditorium, I found myself counting the virtues of this film’s spiritual predecessors: “Troy” and “300.” These last two films rank among my guilty-pleasures and I would have freely admitted as much for “Immortals” but, frankly, this may be a film with no redeeming qualities and, worse, no earnestly enjoyable moments.

Review: A VERY HAROLD AND KUMAR 3D CHRISTMAS

Here is once again another example of a great franchise (yes, the Harold & Kumar franchise is great) ruined by the insistence that it needed one more sequel… even worse a Christmas Special. The previous installments drew their strengths for being desire-driven comedies. In the first movie Harold (John Cho) and Kumar (Kal Penn) had the munchies and they desired White Castle sliders; in the second movie they wanted to get to Amsterdam; both times, their weed induced trips and NPH (Neil Patrick Harris) got in the way. This time what they need is a Christmas tree, they are surprisingly sober most of the movie, and NPH actually saves the day (sort of). Is it just me, or are the stakes not high enough this time (no pun intended)?

Review: APOLLO 18

No, the moon may not be made of cheese, but let me assure you that the latest film about it is.

To the eternal delight of conspiracy theorists, Apollo 18 is sold to us as a found-footage project recovered from a secret mission to the moon, which would have been easier to swallow if it wasn’t so comically serious in its presentation. As it is, I found myself chuckling 10 seconds in and I was not alone.

Review: PRIEST

This a movie set in a steampunk/western/medieval post apocalyptic world; its main character is a vampire hunting, motorcycle riding, cowboy-ninja-priest played by Paul Bettany. And somehow… somehow it managed to be uncool. Somehow it managed to make such a setting feel dull, empty, and unworthy of all those adjectives. Somehow it managed to make its main character even more uninteresting than the setting he inhabits. And most surprising of all, Priest manages to be a movie without any stylistic sense, even when clearly this material would only work under heavy stylization and a very literal interpretation of “the rule of cool”

Review: HOW DO YOU KNOW

You know that little thingy in your brain that stops you from saying everything you are thinking about out loud? Well, not one character in this movie has that. This provides and interesting experiment in acting but unfortunately a terrible film comes along with it.

Review: LITTLE FOCKERS

There was no reason to ever make this movie. The studio could have made a funnier movie starting the same actors "by the people who brought you Meet the Fockers" and it would have been just as successful, if not more so because it would have been funnier. The funniest moments in this film occur within the first ten minutes as the film gives a quick recap on the quirkiness of each character and the relationships amongst them. It takes a dive to the pits of boredom from then on.

Review: PRINCE OF PERSIA

I want to find the people that wrote this movie and throw up in their mouths.

Boaz Yakin, Doug Miro, and Carlo Bernard ought to be ashamed of themselves. Prince of Persia has the year's most dreadful dialogue, flat and uninteresting characters, and worst character development. This movie, though I'm sure it wasn't, seems like it was written in one draft. Why Jerry Bruckheimer didn't hire Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio to write this movie is beyond me. This project demands their names. They are the number one leaders of the action/fantasy/comedy genre, and because of the failure of a script this movie has, it is absolutely awful. It's one step better than Clash of the Titans, and that's only because the story in this is somewhat logical. If you are going into Prince of Persia expecting to see a movie with the level of fun and laughs found in the first Pirates of the Caribbean, you better start saving up for On Stranger Tides, because at least Ted and Terry are writing that.

Review: CLASH OF THE TITANS

I'm going to keep this short because, frankly, to even review this movie is giving it too much credit.

It sucks and is awful.

Basically, if you took all the exciting parts from 300 and Percy Jackson: The Lightning Thief, and took out all traces of fun, humor, originality, or character development, you would get Clash of the Titans.

Review: LEGION

If you, like the filmmakers, imagined that Legion would be a cool, stylistic and biblical movie about the end of the world similar to the great Constantine, you had better turn around and go see Youth In Revolt instead, because at least Youth In Revolt is a comedy on purpose.

Legion is easily one of the dumbest movies I have ever seen, filled with characters you don't care about, minus one or two great ones that die trying to help the other useless people.

Film Review: DRAGONBALL EVOLUTION

You must understand how painful it is to publish this review; in doing so, I am confessing that I have actually spent money and time in watching this piece of feces. Why would I even go and watch such a lowly film, you ask? Well… to be honest I am not sure maybe some nostalgic sentiment won me over… maybe I had nothing better else to do. This however it is not an excuse. Staring blankly at a wall for an hour and a half is much better use of anyone’s time than going to see Dragonball Evolution.

Review: X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE

Well it's not Iron Man, but this movie definitely delivers more punch (or claw... sorry cheesy I know, but I couldn't resist) than X-3.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine naturally tells the story of everyone's favorite piece of man, Logan aka Wolverine, and his rise to the hero we know him as in the first X-Men. For the purpose of satisfying the three specific categories of audience members let me break this down in three parts from this point.

Review: STREET FIGHTER: THE LEGEND OF CHUN-LI

So I pulled myself away from Street Fighter 4 long enough to check this movie out. I mean, the studios can learn from the abomination that was the first Street Fighter movie, right?

NOPE!

Review: EXTREME MOVIE

"Penis? I haven't heard that word for a long time. I usually just call it dinner."

Yep, this is probably the worst movie I have ever seen, ever. If possible, this is worse than all of the movies that Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer (Date Movie, Epic Movie, Everything-that-happened-in-pop-culture-in-the-last-five-years Movie) have ever made put together. The most amazing thing about it is that this Straight-To-DVD piece of garbage was not, in fact, made by the aforementioned filmmakers. This film was directed by Adam Jay Epstein and Andrew Jacobson. I haven't seen anything else by them, and now I never want to. The film was written by, and I suppose I should take a sharp inward breath before I recite the mammoth list of people that piled their vacuous ideas into this script, Adam Jay Epstein, Andrew Jacobson, Will Forte, John Solomon, Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone, Erica Rivinoja, Phil Lord, and Chris Miller.

Review: INKHEART

Do you remember how much silly fun you had watching the last Brendan Fraser movie? Which one was it? Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D? The Mummy 1, 2, or 3? Or was it George of the Jungle or Dudley DoRight? Brendan Fraser has always seemed comfortable doing cartoonish caracter in cartoonish movies. Sure he has done more serious roles, such as the pool boy in the James Whale biopic Gods and Monsters, but when you think of the next Brendan Fraser movie that is not what you think. Inkheart is a movie that in concept would have worked as the next Brendan Fraser adventure. It is a shame that it is only in concept because it does not even work on paper since is writing is one of the worst I have seen on adventure movies since the new Hulk movie.

Review: FOUR CHRISTMASES

It says a lot for Vince Vaughn that he still made me laugh during the otherwise mind-numbing Four Christmases.

Yes children, this movie is perfectly stupid. But it is also the kind of stupid you expect - and I don't know whether that makes me happy or sad. It's already a dumb idea. Visiting four families on Christmas is not something that should be the plot of a movie. It's something that should be one comical act of a movie, amounting to something more. Thing is, this doesn't amount to anything more.

Review: MY BEST FRIEND'S GIRL

I have absolutely no idea how to review this movie.

This probably stems from the fact that I have no idea what I thought of this movie.

I walked in with little to no expectations. I am a fan of Jason Biggs. He was very funny in the American Pies, and Saving Silverman. I am a fan of Dane Cook's stand-up, but not really of his movies. However, I was still looking forward to him in this. Kate Hudson had never made an impression on me, and I didn't know what this movie would be like.