expendables

this movie is terrible.  it does better at following through on the promise of its premise than the first one, a bunch of 80's action stars teaming up for the first time, but it still couldn't be classified as 'good'.  the only thing that lifts this from a 1 star review is the 5 minute glorified cameo of chuck norris.

hemingway and gellhorn

an interesting hbo movie about the romance between the famous writer and the war journalist he fell for.  it follows the ups and mostly downs of their life together, through marriage and divorce, and all that lead up to each of those life choices.  owen plays an angry hemingway who doesnt quite seem to have given up on life just yet, while kidman is a feisty gellhorn who isnlt too impressed with all that she's seen.  it's ok, but not really worth the time.

Benny and joon

i'm sure this is one of those movies that was a gem at the time, but i didn't see it when it came out, so i don't have nostalgia-colored glasses on.  its a pretty basic movie with the only interesting part being the 'quirky' performance by johnny depp.  since we have now come to understand that that's the only sort of performance he gives, it certainly dulls the sheen of this one...

your highness

about as good as you would expect from a stoner fantasy movie.  there was a ton of weed jokes and a ton of dungeons an dragons jokes.  its wasn't terrible, but it certainly wasn't good either.  there were a couple good jokes, but i can't say that the laughs were good enough to sit through the rest of it.

live!

meant to be a commentary on the evils of reality tv, the film is about a live game show of russian roulette where each contestant may die on live tv.  the whole thing was pretty cheesy and obvious.  clearly the writer thought they were being profound and deep about the evils of where reality tv will end up, but instead its just a preachy and self important chintzy looking movie.

who am i?

a chinese import, poorly dubbed to capitalize on jackie chan's fame in america.  the stunts are great, as always, but the movie itself is pretty lame.

prometheus

what a disappointment.  this one had so much potential.  the original director returning to the alien franchise to bring us the great story of the xenomorph's origin?  my expectations and excitement was really high.  the movie looks really great- the 3D was incredible, but the story that was told was so scatterbrained and stupid that the whole thing just came up empty.  it went in too many directions, none of which were what anyone wanted.  and the characters just acted in such so stupidly!  its like the writers thought to themselves 'whats the stupidest decision that this character could make right now?' and then proceeded with whatever they came up with.  but it does look amazing, so that keeps it from a one star.

synecdoche new york

a charlie kaufman film that is very strange.  granted, that's all charlie kaufman films, but this one is especially weird.  its the story of a director who wants to put on a play of his life, but he wants to make it as accurate as possible, so he hires people to play himself and everyone in his life.  not just the people he knows and loves, but also everyone in the street that he passes by and everyone in the apartments that go unnoticed.  and he wants it performed in real time, just the day to day events of his life.  on a set that's exactly the same as his real life.  yeah, its every bit as weird as it sounds.  i didn't quite get it myself.  i would probably appreciate it more on a second viewing, but on my first watch i didn't really care for it.

unknown

one of the many movies that liam neeson did after his 'taken' success, this is unfortunately one of the lesser entries into the aged action star category.  he plays a man who wakes up and is going in for an important meeting when, for some unknown reason, no one seems to know who he is.  it's kind of anti-amnesia.  he knows who he is and what his life is, but no one else does.  his boss doesn't recognize him, his wife doesn't know who he is.  an interesting premise, but not that well executed.

beetlejuice

i used to love this movie!  actually, i don't think my parents let me see it when it came out, my first contact with it was actually through the terrible cartoon that was on saturday mornings.  eventually as a teen i saw the movie and really liked it, but i'm sorry to inform you- it doesn't hold up.  the biggest problem with the movie is the fact that beetlejuice is hardly even in it!  he's by far the best part of the movie, but he really only interacts with the rest of the cast for all of 7 minutes of the runtime!  michael keaton is fantastic in the role, but the role is a lot smaller than you remember.  i wish i could say it holds up better than it does, but i'm not going to lie just for nostalgia's sake.

priest

i've got to be honest, i don't really remember this one at all.  its not very good though, i do remember that.

three men and a little lady

not nearly as fun or cute as the original.  the story is much weaker and the humor is a lot more miss than hit, but the charm of the three leads saves this one from being a total disaster.

9

a kinda weird post apocalyptic animated movie about 9 robots who have a part of the soul of the man who caused the apocalypse in the first place.  yeah, its even stranger than that.  it doesn't make much sense and the animation is less than stellar.  this is one that would have been better as a stop motion style film.  oh, and a couple more passes through the script before going ahead...

splice

this movie asks the question 'what if you created a new life form a la frankenstein, and then as it grew to maturity, you kinda thought it was hot?'  yes, its creepy and kinda skeevy, but that's the premise.  where it goes from there has some scary moments, but for the most part it falls flat and is relatively bland for such a dark and twisted premise.

knight and day

a kind of lame take on the secret agent and the girl who gets caught up in the latest assignment.  cruise and diaz are great together, as they have shown before in vanilla sky, but even the good acting, competent directing, and beautiful locations can't save this stinker.

repo men

the premise of this sci-fi story is that in the future you can buy new organs when yours goes bad.  the problem is that its really expensive and if you miss a payment, well, the repo men are coming to take that organ back.  jude law and forest whitaker are the guys who come to take back the organs from those who are past due.  sure, this removal usually results in death, but that's just part of the job.  for an interesting concept, it really falls back into the tropes and cliches of an action/sci-fi film.

timer

a light sci-fi romantic film that adds an interesting element to finding your soulmate: you can get a digital implant in your arm that is a countdown clock to when you will find the love of your life.  sure, it hopes you don't ask any big questions like 'how could it know the future?', but don't worry, you can look past it pretty easily.  we follow a woman who decides to get the implant and when she turns it on she finds out that its blank!  what does that mean and how does she deal with that is where the film goes.  its more interesting than it is good- a great premise, but not that great of a follow through.

movie 43

the marketing for this movie is definitely correct: this one is very outrageous.  its a sort of series of short stories linked together, each story is filled with famous people doing really gross-out and crude things.  now, is it funny? some of it is, but not enough to make it worth the effort.  its mostly just gross for the sake of being gross.  for as much talent as there is in front the of the camera, that same talent is missing behind the camera.  the farrelly brothers really dropped the ball on this one.  some of the stories have good elements, but they just weren't crafted enough to make them actually good stories.

the killer elite

this one should have been really cool: the staith, clive owen, and de niro.  now thats a pretty cool tough guy cast!  unfortunately the whole thing is very lame and convoluted.  i basically love anything with the staith, but this one was rough even for him!

futureworld

i really loved the original westworld movie.  it was written and directed by michael crichton, an author i really enjoy.  it was a huge hit when it first came out, so of course they made a sequel!  the only problem is that they didn't have any of the talent from the first one back.  somehow they snagged peter fonda for the film, but that's about all this one has going for it.  the most ridiculous thing about this movie: it touts yul brynner being in it- he was the villain and best part of the last one- but that is really a lie.  he is only on screen for less than 10 seconds, and the only shot of him in the film is actually just a cut scene from westworld.  see that poster image for the film?  the character with the hat?  yeah, he's not actually in the film.  how's that for truth in advertising?
the movie itself had an interesting premise: the company that created westworld has been inviting world leaders to their parks and then replacing them so they can take over the world.  the problem is that this explanation is more interesting than anything in the actual movie though...