let me in

a simple story of childhood friendship.  this film tells the story of a boy with no friends who gets beat up at school, as he befriends a neighbor girl who seems a bit unusual.  a premise we have seen before, but there is one big difference: the girl is a vampire!  yikes, that sure changes things, huh?  the two kids do a fantastic job of creating believable characters, the boy is kind of sad and withdrawn, when he meets the girl he sees that she is the same way, not exactly realizing that there is a reason for that!  the movie is slower paced, allowing the audience an opportunity to get to know the characters and their situations well.  i feel that this movie would benefit a lot from knowing as little as possible about it.  in fact, my telling you its a vampire movie kind of ruins what could be a really interesting reveil.  i figure i would just go ahead and tell you about the vampire part anyway since it was all over the marketing, posters, interviews, etc. so they certainly did not try to keep it a secret.  too bad because i would have enjoyed it more if i didnt know what to expect.

real steel

this one is pretty predictable but still fun to watch.  in a world where robots do the boxing now, hugh jackman is cast as the down and out former boxer who, due to a good run of bad luck, is stuck at the controls of a low end robot boxer.  the story follows as he must take care of the son he never wanted, and try to get back to the top of the robot boxing game.  you know exactly where the movie is going, we've seen it all before, all but analog, in almost every sports movie ever made.  they do just enough to take the old tropes and keep them fun to watch.  and those robots are pretty cool!  one huge flaw with the film: that kid!  every time that child actor is on screen i would get annoyed- his voice is grating, the character is a self entitled pompous kid who seems to magically know how to program and rebuild these robots even though he's never seen one in person before, and has every annoying kid quality that these films always seem to give so that the young audience can relate to them.  thankfully hugh jackman's charisma covers a multitude of sins!  with almost anyone else in the lead, the predictability and annoying child would have suck this one immediately, but jackman is able to keep it afloat and even fun!

paranormal activity 3

the wife and i went to see the first two in the theater to diminishing results, so we figured we could wait this one out until video.  wise choice.  we both loved the first one and may or may not have slept with the light on for a couple nights after seeing it...  the second was ok but not nearly as good.  this one would probably go in that category as well.  the 'found footage' element is still used this time around, the big change though is that these videos are from when the characters in the first two films were little girls growing up and is a series of recordings their father made when things started to get a bit weird during the night.  i think this film suffers from being the third entry into the series- we've seen all the tricks before and can see the scares coming minutes ahead.  some of the tense moments are pretty good, but the newness is gone and so is the intensity.  also, the ending for this one is pretty weak.  they pull in some lame elements at the end to explain it that the series has so far been pretty good at avoiding.  oh well, the first one was still really good!

earth girls are easy

i remember watching this movie a lot growing up.  my friend aaron had recorded it off of tv and thought it was hilarious, so we would watch it regularly when i would go over to his house.  upon rewatching, i was a bit confused...  first of all, i realized that i havent ever actually seen the whole movie.  i guess he just recorded about half of the movie, because the first half of it was completely new to me!  the movie was way different than i remember, thats for sure.  all i remember was that there were these three hairy aliens who bother gena davis and go to a dance club.  i mostly remember that one of the aliens was super funny- turns out that its jim carrey before he hit it big with ace ventura!  as we rewatched it, it turns out there is a whole plot about davis' character breaking up with her fiancee and her as a hairdresser.  and also its kind of a musical.  what?  there are a few musical numbers in the film which i didnt remember at all!  the totally 80's style is rather embarrassing as well- this thing is totally a relic of its time.  i'm pretty sure that you can pass on this one without missing anything!

waynes world 2

i really loved the first movie, but this one is pretty bad.  i realize the first 'wayne's world' was pretty bad too, but my nostalgia for it blocks out all the detractors.  well, i never saw this one when it came out, only now catching up with it after recently rewatching the original.  unfortunately, this one doesn't hold up very well when compared to the original.  it makes sense, since this film is basically a rehash of the first one, not really adding anything new to the premise.  in this film wayne is trying to find some direction in his life and decides that he is going to create a music festival in downtown chicago.  along the way they hit the exact same beats as the first film, singing a song in the mirthmobile, stopping at the hockey donut shop, going to a concert, problems with wayne's girlfriend, etc.  which brings up a really frustrating this about this film: one of the driving forces is wayne's relationship with his girlfriend cassandra.  i know we are supposed to root for our hero wayne to keep the girl, but everything he does proves over and over again that he is a jerk and she would be better off without him!  he is constantly questioning her, he is a controlling boyfriend who wont let her be around any other guys or else his jealousy really kicks in, threatening to break up with her at the drop of a hat, and as soon as she starts to find success he becomes bitter and angry toward her.  also, he never does anything at all that should endear her to him, he never shows her any sort of affection other than objectifying her as 'hot'.  anyway,  back to the movie itself: the jokes are recycled and the plot is lifeless.  for some reason, as was the case in the first movie, garth has a completely unrelated story that never plays into the narrative of the movie.  this is definitely wayne's movie, with only a couple minutes here and there dedicated to his long suffering sidekick.  over all, these problems far outweigh any silly gags (which are just reinterpretations of gags from the first film anyway) or humor that may have been intended in the movie.  an unfortunate follow up to a pretty funny original movie.

relic

this movie is a rare anomaly: the movie is actually better than the book!  i remember reading this book when i was in high school, in anticipation for the movie.  the book, though, was filled with generic characters and a really really bad ending.  it was so bad it kind of ruined the fun tension of the rest of the book.  the movie, though, fixes that problem and gives an impressively explosive ending that corrected the major failure of the book.  the story is set in a museum and follows the workers there as they prepare for a big fundraising ball to show off their new exhibit.  a few crates recently arrived from the congo, but they were strangely empty.  well, they weren't really empty, instead what was in them leads to a bunch of gruesome deaths.  as the mystery behind these deaths escalates, the ball is about to begin.  this is, in its simplest sense, a creature feature.  there is a really cool looking nasty creature who is causing all these terrible murders and one of the policemen and an important museum employee must try to get rid of the creature before it ruins the museum's biggest fundraiser of the year.  the creature itself, a stan winston creation, is pretty cool and very creepy.  i remember being blown away by it when i first watched this movie in the theater back in 1997.  the special effects hold up fairly well, especially when the creature is lurking in the dark.  when we finally get a good look at it, the effects are a bit dated, but the suspense and build up do a nice job of creating tension and setting up the action packed final act.

red riding hood

from the director of the first twilight film.  that's really all i need to write.  she tried to take the exact same elements that made twilight successful and incorporate it into the little red riding hood story.  except that those elements are not successful here, and its not really the red riding hood story at all.  i must admit i didn't understand this film at all.  the big bad wolf is turned into a generic monster that attacks a small town.  nothing in this film works because the only thing that worked in the first twilight movie was the cast- even overcoming a terrible script and an even worse director.  here she is up to her same tricks which failed the last time out too.  this one is just bad on top of bad on top of bad.

contact

i have mixed feelings about this movie.  on the one hand i really like it, its one of those rare big movies that has heart and really challenges the mind. but on the other hand, they so totally botch the ending that i walk away from it annoyed.  the film follows jodie foster's character, an astronomy scientist who has dedicated her life to finding life on other planets.  she spends her days listening to radio signals in outer space, hoping that she will hear a signal or response from somewhere else.  she is mocked and jeered by everyone else, about to get her funding taken away, when she finally hears something!  the signal she hears makes the news and everyone scrambles to try and make sense of it.  along the way she befriends a man of faith, played by matthew mcconaughey, who challenges her stance on scientific proof.  she blows off his beliefs because they cannot be proven.  as the extra terrestrial signal is decoded they discover that it is actually blueprints for a giant device.  the planet unites to try and build this device and the world prepares to find out what this device does.  the story itself is very interesting: uncovering the meanings, deciding what to do about it, dealing with the different opinions about how to proceed with the realization of intelligent life out there.  all of it is really cool!  the main theme of the movie is a weighty one: proof versus faith.  an interesting conversation and one that is dealt with seriously.  the frustration though, is that the last minute or two of the movie throws everything out and makes it a moot point by banging us over the head with an answer to the question of faith and proof.  all the wrestling over the struggle is thrown out the window in order to give a pat answer, and in so doing, destroy all the progress made in defending both points.  arg.  if this movie would have left off the last two minutes, it probably would have deserved a 5 star rating, but as is- only 3.

time traveler's wife

oh man, give me a time travel movie and i am one happy fella.  give it a melancholy mood and i am totally in!  well, this one has those elements in spades!  a man stuck out of time, traveling back and forth without his control, and the woman who loves him and must deal with the reality of never knowing when or if he will ever show up again.  this one is so moving and sad i could hardly stand it.  and that's why i loved it!

father of the bride part 2

i really loved the first movie, 'father of the bride', but this one falls pretty flat.  the first movie sets up the family, steve martin as the father who cant quite accept that his little girl has grown up and is going to marry.  well, this one plays that exact same note, only this time he cant believe his daughter is going to have a baby.  that would have been a fun set up, considering the well crafted characters from the first film, but then they have to take it one step further and have diane keaton, steve martin's wife, also become pregnant.  i had a really hard time believing that a 49 year old woman could get pregnant, so that alone ruined the movie for me.  also, the light hearted over-the-top qualities of the first film are pushed even farther this time around.  but this time it went too far over the top and landed somewhere absurd and unbelievable.  steve martin does a good job in this, as does the planner martin short, but the whole premise and follow through are just too much.  it takes everything that was sweet and believable in the first film and takes it too far out of the realm of realism.  a disappointing follow up to a wonderful family movie.

in time

a very intriguing sci-fi premise that takes the old idiom 'time is money' and makes it into reality.  in this dystopic future everyone stops aging at 30 and will die if they don't keep buying time.  their paycheck is uploaded into their arm (it makes sense, trust me) as time, when the timer runs out they die.  well, one of the upper one percent commits suicide and gives his millions of hours to some random guy.  we follow him as he tries to understand what happened and why the suicide happened in the first place.  this director has done the high concept sci-fi thing before to great effect with gattaca, but this time to lesser success.  justin timberlake does a good job, but the story falls apart in the second half.  the concept and acting carry it a long way though.

percy jackson & the olympians: the lightning thief

another young adult lit series translated to the screen that falls flat.  there have been so many of these over the past few years, and this one does nothing to distinguish itself from the rest.  the influence on this one is rooted in greek mythology, playing with the idea that it was all real and a young boy is actually one of the demigods.  he tries to uncover the mystery about himself and discovers his place in all of it.  clearly an opening gambit trying to start a new series to rival harry potter, this one suffers from bad writing and poor casting.  i'm not surprised that this one fizzled out after the second one- actually i'm kind of surprised that it made it to the second one!

a muppet christmas carol

at this point, this one is a classic, right?  for most people my age this film is not the preferred de facto version of the christmas carol.  the iconic story is now almost inseparable from kermit, gonzo, and michael caine.  the original dickens story is told with a more knowing style and plays a bit with the elements, tying them in with the muppet characters we all know and love.  a lot of the muppet work and design is very impressive, and caine is surprisingly game for the strange situation of making muppets feel real.  this one is an annual tradition in our house, as i'm sure it is for many others!

shrek the third

at one point these shrek movies were pretty good.  i don't know if i just outgrew them or if the pop culture references became dated, but what ever it is- they don't hold up!  i finally got around to watching this one and time as not been kind to it.  the story about shrek and fiona starting a family plays very bland and lifeless.  all the comedy beats lack comedy, which is a bit of a problem.  mike myers and eddie murphy are still a bit of fun as the voices of shrek and donkey, and puss in boots is a highlight, but the rest is not good at all.

unknown

the story of a job gone wrong, the people who were involved find themselves stuck in a warehouse.  the bother is that none of them really know or trust each other.  this sort of set-up has been done many times, but in this one the actors and writing are actually pretty good!  there are some interesting reveals and developments that keep it interesting.  definitely a recommend.