Inception: A Must See!

From the mind of Christopher Nolan, the man who helped make Batman a legitimate film superhero again, Inception was a caper film of a different breed for the objects that Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his crew are usually looking to steal are not diamonds or cash, but thoughts and ideas. But instead of stealing ideas this time around, he is hired by mysterious billionaire Saito (Ken Watanabe) to perform (surprise) inception on a rival businessman Robert Fischer (Cillian Murphy). The concept of inception is that Cobb and his crew will go deep into the subconscious of Fischer and plant the idea of breaking up his father’s business, thereby giving Saito the largest energy company in the world. Their task is made all the more dangerous by the constant threat of Cobb’s dead wife Mal (who is now a projection in his mind) plaguing their attempts to complete the task.

Now before I loose you amongst an attempted explanation of the multiple dream layers, host of symbolic visuals that riddled the various conscious and subconscious arenas involved in planting an idea into someone’s mind or even the ending, which could make a person’s head hurt trying to decipher just what was real, the main point you should take away from this review is that Inception was an amazingly complex, audacious, thought-provoking and original film that is leaps and bounds above any and all movies you will rent from Redbox or Netflix for quite some time. It deserves such high praise because it challenged the audience to think and try to comprehend its labyrinthine story, quite a heady thing to ask in this era of Michael Bay-ish one dimensional Hollywood action film story structures. Add to that the dazzling visual brilliance of the picture as well as some career defining performances by the cast and the audience cannot help but be sucked into the multi-layered dream world.

It doesn’t matter how many times you watch Inception, upon each viewing you are bound to catch something different than the last time, perhaps in the way a certain shot was composed or the way a character said a certain bit of dialogue but that’s the beauty of the film. The fact that you can view the same movie over and over and still find new things, still be thoroughly engulfed in the story of a dream within a dream within a dream is incredible

Grade: A

Altitude: Should have kept this one in the hangar!

Sara, an inexperienced pilot, rents a plane to take herself and her friends to a concert. But when they experience mechanical failure, bad weather and an unnatural force, their joyride takes a deadly turn.

Altitude could have been an intense, claustrophobic thriller with a Twilight Zone-ish tinge to its story, instead it turned out to be an exercise of bad directing and even worse acting. First time director Kaare Andrews tried to build tension in the film by slowly turning the screws on the cast and having them face bad break after bad break in their flight. But every time it seemed as though the story would turn the corner and give the audience a reason to gasp in horror or turn their eyes in terror the moment was ruined by the ineptitude of the mostly unknown actors (and after this film, their unknown status should remain that way). The range of emotion from actors such as Jessica Lowndes, Jake Weary, and Julianna Guill consisted of either dumbfounded panic or outright screaming at one another in a truly teenager-like fashion.

Their behavior made them so unlikable, it turned Altitude into one of those films in which you rooted for the monster (yes, there is a monster in the movie) to win and put the audience out of its collective misery.

Grade: D

The Expendables: Clever homage or silly excuse for explosions?

Barney Ross leads a ragtag group of mercenaries called The Expendables that take on assignments most teams would not. Their latest, however, might be their last as they are tasked with overthrowing a tyrannical South American despot with shady ties to a group of Americans.

It is unclear if writer/director Sylvester Stallone intended The Expendables to be a cleverly disguised homage to the kind of action films that made him a megastar in the 1980’s, given the fact that the story was as thin and transparent as the moustache drawn on his face and that there were more explosions in the final fifteen minutes of the movie than a person sees in a typical round of Call of Duty: Black Ops, or if it was a “serious” attempt to create a slick and entertaining action film. However one chooses to interpret it (I prefer the “homage” take personally), The Expendables delivered the goods and provided enough gun/fist fights, explosions, and continual violence to satiate action fans of any and all age. The all star cast surrounding Stallone (including names like Jet Li and Dolph Lundgren) played their parts well but Sly was right to focus parts of the film on his co-star (and seeming replacement as the new action film leading man) Jason Statham. There is only miniscule development in both he and Stallone’s characters, but it is enough to pique the audiences’ curiosity and give their ear drums a rest before the next round of deafening explosions and gun play started. The part that truly helped to make the film watchable were the cameos by two of Stallone’s follow action hero icons, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The verbal jabs that Sly and Arnold exchanged were enough to have most in the audience rolling in the aisles.

This film is destined to become a staple on the cable channel Spike TV because it is the prototypical guy film.

Grade: C

Predators: Finally, a sequel that delivers!

A group of warriors are dropped into the jungle of an alien world with no explanation. But soon after they realize that they were brought there for a nefarious purpose, to be hunted. If they want to survive, they’ll need to band together and fight off their hunters.

No one expects to go into a film such as Predators and see Shakespearian style acting and storytelling. For the most part, an audience is just looking to be entertained for an hour and forty-five minutes. Not only did Predators have to capture the attention of people new to the film series, but it also carried the extra burden of having to satisfy fanboys and girls of the Predator franchise who had suffered through two lousy Alien Vs. Predator films and were ready for something good.

Thankfully, the fanboys and girls have no reason to fear this new take. Under the watchful eye of Producer (and Predator fan) Robert Rodriguez, director Nimrod Antal delivered a highly entertaining action movie with an effective mix of homage to the Schwarzenegger classic to go along with new characters, environments and creatures. Adrien Brody is no Schwarzenegger, but he more than held his own as Royce, a former Black Ops soldier turned mercenary whose sole purpose in the beginning of the film was to get off the planet, with or without the help of the others. His character seemed to mirror, in a broader sense, that of the current “Me” generation that has to tweet their every move and then post a clip of what they did on You Tube moments later. Schwarzenegger’s Dutch was a soldier, a leader, so his struggle to defeat the Predator in the original made it easy for an audience to pull for him. With Royce, there needed to be some internal conflict in which he was given the opportunity to possibly change and grow from a selfish bastard into a redeemable man an audience would root for. His dilemma of staying a self-interested mercenary or teaming up with the other “targets” (including the beautiful Alice Braga as Isabelle, an IDF sniper) formed the emotional backdrop to the story and succeeded in further sucking in the audience when they were not busy squirming in their seats as Antal effectively built the tension throughout the movie.

Predators is a welcome return to what made the original such a blast to watch.

Grade: B

Law Abiding Citizen

After his wife and child are murdered and their killer set free, Clyde Shelton decides to take matters into his own hands and begins punishing all of those people (the killer, the judge who set him free and even the prosecutor) who were responsible for the miscarriage of justice.

For the first part of Law Abiding Citizen it was easy for the audience to get wrapped up in the story. They were shown just what happened to Clyde, his wife and child and could empathize with him as he watched prosecutor Nick Rice (played in a very uninspiring fashion by Jamie Foxx) let the killer walk free. In their minds, they were confronted with the same dilemma Clyde was, what would you do if the legal system failed you? The morality of the situation formed the backdrop of the rest of the film, with Clyde choosing the “eye for an eye” approach when it came to dealing with criminals and Nick (obviously) representing the side of the law. Each tried to convenience the other that their way was the way justice should be done, however after the major twist to the story was revealed (regarding Clyde’s past), that moral showdown was put on the backburner in lieu of bigger explosions and more insane ways for the people surrounding Nick and the case to be killed. Perhaps most disappointing, aside from this incongruous change in tone, was Nick’s own actions at the end of the film. His final solution for how to deal with Clyde ran counter to everything he had said and fought for up to that point, rendering the entire meaning behind the film mute and making Law Abiding Citizen just another monotonous crime thriller with nothing new to say.

Grade: D+

Jonah Hex: As bad as the scar on his face

Former Confederate soldier turned bounty hunter Jonah Hex is a scarred man, not only physically but mentally as well. He is haunted by the memories of his murdered family and the man who killed them (a guy named Turnbull). When the Union Army ask Hex to hunt down Turnbull, he jumps at the chance for revenge.

You feel bad for Josh Brolin (a good actor in his own right), because he was given so little to work with script and story wise. He tried to make Hex a likeable (or as likeable as a bounty hunter could be) character but the lack of a cohesive story and total absence of character development truncated that and the audience was never given the chance to start to root for him in his quest for vengeance. Not only was the story sloppily hacked together from the remnants of other comic book film adaptations but the action was lacking, which made the running time of about an hour and fifteen minutes feel like an eternity. And what of the other major actors in the film, could they save it mediocrity? Sadly not, John Malkovich had it on cruise control as the baddie Turnbull, Will Arnett was on the screen for only about two seconds and Megan Fox showed why people should start thinking that Michael Bay was a genius for firing her from Transformers 3.

Hollywood has once again succeeded in turning a very cool anti-hero from the comic book world into a clichéd, one-liner saying joke of a character. Jonah Hex is an awful mess.

Grade: D-

A Nightmare on Elm Street: One, two, this remake is nothing new!

Nancy and her friends are having problems sleeping. They are being haunted by a man with knives for fingers who has a strong desire to do them harm.

Unfair or not, this film is going to draw comparisons to the 1984 modern masterpiece of the same name by director Wes Craven. The director of the remake, Samuel Bayer, was able to utilize superior sets, subtle CGI and other visual goodies in order to give this version of Nightmare a very slick look and some impressive visuals. Jackie Earle Haley produced his own unique take on the infamous movie monster Freddy Krueger. Whereas Robert Englund’s (the actor who portrayed Freddy in the original) Krueger carried a Joker - ish glee when he stalked the teenagers in the original, Haley was just creepy with a capital "C" and more apt to mangle than crack wise. Even though Haley’s Freddy was more vicious in the remake, there were not many scares to be had as the jumps were predictable and standard for newer horror films (which seem more concerned with showing buckets of blood rather than merely hinting at mayhem and letting the audiences’ imaginations fill in the nasty details). In the end, what separated these two films was the fact that the original had some sustenance behind its story whereas the remake lacked not only in story but in characters as well. The original had an underpinning of social commentary in that the story seemed to be exploring the disintegration of the American household thanks to divorce and other factors unique to the Reagan Era. In order for Nancy’s mother to deal with the implosion of her life, she turned to alcohol and drugs, and expected her daughter to do the same when her friend’s started dying. But Nancy (an ultra whiny but still affective Heather Langenkamp) was willing to take on the problem of facing Freddy and not slip into the bottle. The result of this was that the audience (teenagers for the most part) were better able to relate to Nancy’s struggle for self-preservation and root for her while at the same time have the bejesus scared out of them. The Nancy in the remake (played by Rooney Mara), had little to no personality and, again, the story focused more on the many ways Freddy could dispatch the teens as opposed to drawing in the audience with a substantial story to punctuate the scares.

In light of this, it begs the question, why remake a superior horror film when you cannot hope to top it?

Grade: D+

Get Him to the Greek

Intern Aaron Green wants to rise to the top of the music business. To do this, and impress his boss Sergio, he accepts the challenge of getting unruly rock star Aldous Snow from London to Los Angeles for an anniversary concert.

A film like Get Him to the Greek can be a challenge for an audience to watch. There were a number of absolutely hilarious sequences, usually involving Aaron cleaning up or covering for Aldous for any number of things including (but not limited to); hiding drugs in an unusual place or partaking of all of the drugs Aldous was carrying (in order to keep him clean) and destroying the set of The Today Show. Russell Brand was a hoot as Aldous, reprising a role most people remember him playing in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. He behaved exactly like most people think rock stars behave and indulged in the drugs, money, debauchery and insanity excessive fame brings. The guy who stole the show however was Sean Combs (or P. Diddy as the kids still call him I think). As record executive Sergio, almost everything he did or said was hysterical, the best bit being when he joined Aldous, Aldous’ Dad and Aaron in partaking of a drug neapolitan called a “Jeffrey” and destroying a Las Vegas hotel room.

The challenge for the audience was trying to connect to any of the characters. Aldous was a morally bankrupt rock star that the audience wanted to root for but could not thanks to all of the horribly destructive things he did to himself and Aaron. He was a callous man, and even when he “found” himself via his music at the anniversary concert, the happy ending felt and hollow and tacked on. Aaron’s character arc was not any better. In his quest to get Aldous to Los Angeles he did some very bad things, all of which were conveniently pushed to the side when the time came to successfully patch things up with his girlfriend Daphine. Again, another tacked on happy ending that seemed to come out of nowhere.

There were a number of thing that made you laugh out loud in Get Him to the Greek, it is just too bad the film did not have the heart to make it a complete comedy.

Grade: C

Gamer: I liked it better when it was called "The Running Man"

In the year 2034 a large scale online game called “Slayers” allows people to control convicted felons and them face off in a life or death struggle. But a wrongfully convicted soldier named Kable looks to change this by bringing down the online worlds’ evil architect, a man named Castle.

From its chaotic beginning, which dumped the audience into one of the online Slayer battlefields and left them to dangle as they tried to figure out just what was happening, to the obscenely pornographic levels of violence throughout the multiple battles Kable (a sadly underutilized Gerard Butler) went through in order to get to Castle and gain his freedom, Gamer was an absolute mess of a film which failed to be entertaining. The only thing the directors (there’s your first sign that a movie is not going to be Oscar worthy, the need for two directors) seemed interested in was trying to show newer ways to dispatch human lives. There were no redeeming qualities to the characters, no logic to the story or any remarkable special effects.

If you’re looking for a film that somewhat successfully entertains an audience while positing and even attempting to answer the big moral question of whether allowing prisoners to win their freedom by participating in a death match for the amusement of the masses, check out 1987’s The Running Man with Arnold Schwarzenegger and keep a safe distance from Gamer.

Grade: D-

Legion: When good premises go bad

A group of survivors has taken shelter at a truck stop after the apocalypse. All hope seems to be lost until they are visited by the archangel Michael, who has joined them in order to protect one of the survivors who is baring the Messiah.

The premise behind this film was that God was angry and had essentially lost faith in all of human kind. Therefore he unleashed the apocalypse in order to rid the world of most of the bad apples and start again. Michael intercedes in this for he loves mankind and believes that man can change. On paper the film sounded like it could have been an intense theological thriller, however you do not watch a film on paper. Legion failed on every level to be anything close to entertaining. The characters were unlikable, so much so one halfway through the film one started hoping that God’s little reboot would work. The story was never fully developed and the plot had major holes in it. So director Scott Charles Stewart decided to see how many inept shoot outs or car crashes he could plaster on the screen in order to kill the rest of the film’s running time when the characters weren’t emotionally bashing one another or spouting dialogue for which the term “dreadful” would be complimentary. Worst of all he turned the character of Michael into a pseudo “Terminator” who seemed more worried about killing folks than protecting the mother of the Messiah and carried more guns than a Special Forces unit.

Uninspired, dull and silly, Legion was an insipid waste of time.


Grade: D-

Date Night: A good watch for married people

Phil and Claire Foster are your typical married couple with jobs, kids and a number of other responsibilities and problems which have made their lives somewhat stale, especially in the romance department. To rekindle the romance, they head to the big city for a date night, but when they take the reservations of the Tripplehorns at a fancy restaurant, their evening takes an interesting turn.

Steve Carell and Tina Fey made for a terrific on screen couple and each was able to bring their own unique comedic style to the table against the backdrop of some truly outlandish situations and circumstances. Carell delivered the laughs with his dry style while Fey was able to make the audience chuckle with her sharp wit and reactions to being a “fish out of water” as Mrs. Tripplehorn. The laughs were there, but director Shawn Levy also took the time to show how Phil and Claire were feeling when they were not being chased by thugs or working the pole at a strip club (one of the more hilarious comedic bits in the movie). Without the serious conversations between the two of them regarding where their marriage was going or why the romance had stopped and what they needed to do in order to reconnect, Date Night could have been nothing more than a series of slapstick setups with no real heart to it. Thankfully however, there were those quiet moments where Phil and Claire were able to talk and draw the audience in.

Date Night has its amusing parts which were punctuated by the fact that its main characters were easy to relate to and faced the same problems most real life married couples do (minus the whole being mistaken for another couple and then having to endure a number of crazy situations in order to clear their name thing).


Grade: C+

Iron Man 2: Another average sequel

Tony Stark, aka Iron Man, has made the world a safe place again. But his days of being a superhero might be cut short after he is asked by the US Government to hand over his incredible suit and its technology. He also faces the threat of a new villain named Ivan Vanko, who teams up with one of Stark’s corporate rivals in order to destroy not only Stark Industries, but Iron Man himself.

Credit needs to be given to director Jon Favreau, screenwriter Justin Theroux and Robert Downey Jr. for they tried to further develop the character of Tony Stark and make this sequel stand out in its own way. Downey still played him like the narcissistic ego-manic with a good heart and a desire to make the world a better place that audiences could not get enough of in the original but there was also a tinge of self-destruction to him this time around. Stark looses faith in himself and his ability to be the hero the world expects him to be, and Downey was able to portray this devolvement masterfully. The audience felt the weight of the world on Tony’s shoulders, when they weren’t busy chuckling at his sharp witted retorts, and for an actor to accomplish a feat like that in a comic book adaptation is remarkable. Another enjoyable aspect to the film was the relationship and interplay between Downey’s Stark and Gwyneth Paltrow’s Pepper Potts. Their snappy dialogue and crackling chemistry provided plenty of laughs and tender moments. However these juicy bits of character development and intrigue were overcome by an inordinate amount of tedious backstory which made the film drag and the audience loose interest. Add to that a couple of lackluster villains in Justin Hammer (an uber sleazy Sam Rockwell) and Ivan Vanko (Mickey Rourke, who looked like a ghetto version of Dr. Octopus when he had his suit on), some mediocre action sequences (including the final showdown between Iron Man and Vanko which redefined the term “anti-climatic”), plus Scarlett Johansson's lack of any meaningful screen time (we only get to see her kick butt for a minute or so) and you get a so-so action film which wasted the efforts of its two greatest assets, its lead actors.

It’s true that Iron Man 2 is supposed to serve as a sort of pre-cursor to a number of other Marvel comic book film adaptations that will be heading to the big screen in the coming years, (Thor, Captain America and The Avengers to name a few), but setting up all of these other characters and stories could have been accomplished without watering down Iron Man 2 so much that it became more of a tedious exercise than a good old fashioned popcorn flick like the original was.

Grade: C

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time; Good for a two hour break

Prince Dastan must team up with Princess Tamina to not only clear his name in regards to the death of his father King Sharaman but also to keep a mystical dagger called “the Sands of Time” from falling into the wrong hands.

All the ingredients were there for another Jerry Bruckheimer produced mega-smash film (he is responsible for producing, amongst many films, The Pirates of the Caribbean, National Treasure and Bad Boys movies). There was a hunky male lead in Jake Gyllenhaal, who was believable as Dastan albeit with an unbelievable British accent, a beautiful (and completely underused) female co-star in Gemma Arterton as well as a breadth of story telling material from which to create an entertaining adventure given the fact that there are more Prince of Persia video game titles than there are Kardashian sisters. So why wasn’t it the slam bang desert adventure one was hoping for? The action was there as the audience was given plenty of sword play and rooftop shenanigans from Dastan (a staple of the video games I am told) plus the chemistry between Gyllenhaal and Arterton was palpable. Their characters did not automatically fall for one another as one might have been expecting in a film such as this but, through some nice chunks of dialogue, grew upon each other (and grew as characters) so that when the final climax of the film came, the tension facing Dastan and Tamina actually gripped the audience and sucked them in. However that was the issue with Sands of Time, the plot was convoluted to the point of being frustrating and ultimately forgettable. The reason for Dastan and Tamina’s quest to keep the dagger safe and the dagger’s true purpose and power were explained, but even those explanations were lost amongst the poorly constructed sub-plots of the struggle amongst Dastan and his brothers for their dead father’s crown, the true intentions of his dubious Uncle Nizam (Ben Kingsley) and a boat load of ineffective CGI.

In the end, Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time was nothing more than a nice two hour distraction, which one immediately forgot about when they hit the stop button on their DVD player.

Grade: C-

The Losers: It's like The A-Team lite

After their handler Max sets them up and tries to kill them a group of CIA operatives go into hiding in order to plot their revenge. Their chance to settle the score arrives with the appearance of a mysterious woman who offers them the opportunity to capture the elusive Max. But can they trust her?

The Losers did not carry the darker tone of some of its comic book adaptation brethren. The characters were not gloomy, brooding types that dressed up like winged creatures or awkward teenagers that were bitten by radioactive spiders. They were a group of regular people, albeit regular people who happened to be highly trained CIA operatives. In this way, the film felt less like a comic book film and more like an ordinary action thriller. Between comedic quips about how their boss Clay always fell for women that were “volatile” and the usual cool swagger that one would expect to see from a group of CIA guys with nifty codenames such as Roque, Cougar, and Pooch, there were a myriad of stylized action sequences which capitalized on their comic book source material be more outlandish than run of the mill and keep action junkies satisfied (for an example of this, see the ending showdown between Clay, a motorcycle and a plane). Chris Evans shined in his role as Jensen, providing the bulk of the laughs with well-timed smart ass remarks, Zoe Saldana sizzled as Aisha and Jason Patric almost stole the show as Max, channeling all of the best bits of all those old time James Bond villains with just a tinge of Dr. Evil kookiness.

It is certainly not going to evoke comparisons to The Dark Knight or other heavier comic book films but The Losers does its part by keeping you entertained for about an hour and a half.


Grade: C

Black Dynamite: He's superbad, He's out of sight!

When his younger brother is murdered, former CIA agent Black Dynamite swears vengence. His pursuit to discover the killer leads him into a deeper conspiracy that not only threatens him, but his friends and neighborhood as well.

Just as the Austin Powers movies playfully paid homage to a specific genre of film, (the spy/secret agent film), Black Dynamite paid homage to a film genre, the blaxploitation films of the 1970’s. And what a tremendously entertaining homage it was, full of camp, action, martial arts and one bad dude in Black Dynamite. Michael Jai White played the title character to the hilt. Dynamite had the muscle to back up his promises to find the people responsible for his younger brother’s death, clean up the drug infested streets, plus the smooth game to make any woman his. The fact that White played the part seriously made one want to laugh even harder at his exploits. Everything else one would expect to see in films like Super Fly or Foxy Brown (two blaxploitation classics) was featured prominently in Black Dynamite as well. There was a conspiracy by “The Man” to hold the black community down, colorful characters with imaginative names that incited uncontrollable giggling, (Chocolate Giddy-Up and Cream Corn were two of the better ones), and the kind of street slang that only makes sense when the characters spouting it are decked out in wide-lapelled mack daddy suits that all of the cool cats sported back in the decade of disco. Even if a person was not familiar with the movies White (who co-wrote the script) and director Scott Sanders were lampooning, there was still plenty which could keep them laughing hysterically. Boom mics appeared in frame at random points, actors that were present at the beginning of a fight scene were suddenly replaced about halfway through by another actor who, although wearing the same costume, looked nothing like the first actor, the final showdown featured Black Dynamite facing off against Richard Nixon (no joke!), heck there was even a catchy refrain of “Dynamite, Dynamite” sung every time Black Dynamite would dramatically walk into a room or take out another jive turkey.

Hands down Black Dynamite was a fun film which reminded the audience that sometimes a little silliness can go a long way. Can you dig that suckas!

Grade: A-

Hot Tub Time Machine: Not so hot!

Four friends travel to a ski lodge they used to frequent when they were younger to relive their glory days. But after an alcohol and energy drink fueled night in a hot tub, they discover that they have traveled back to the year 1986.

Hot Tub Time Machine was like most recent gross out comedies. It featured a group of friends that faced a dilemma and had to rely upon one another (thus rediscovering their friendships) to succeed. And while there were some hearty laughs to be had, most of which were supplied with sarcastic bravado by Clark Duke who played Jacob, most of the jokes and pratfalls had that “seen it before” feeling to them. Rob Corddry’s performance as Lou stood out, but only due to the fact that it was so over the top, one either thought he was a comic genius or he took things a tad too far and distracted from the film (which is the way this reviewer felt). There is nothing wrong with unleashing a flurry of f-bombs or being somewhat crude but when a character seems to do things simply for shock value, as Corddry did throughout the movie, then it comes off as trite more so than genius.

One walks into Hot Tub Time Machine expecting to see a silly little comedy. But it needed a few more laughs and a little more class to make it something beyond run of the mill.

Grade: C

Heat: Pacino vs. De Niro, what more do you need?

The lives of two men, at the opposite sides of the law, intersect when one, Neil McCauley, pulls off a heist which catches the attention of Lt. Vincent Hanna. Each one becomes obsessed with defeating the other while trying to maintain a semblance of a normal life.

The joy in watching a film like Heat comes from witnessing a pair of actors and a director at the top of their respective individual games. Though top heavy in characters, depth of story and plot, director Michael Mann masterfully orchestrated every facet of the film and unleashed an impressive crime thriller. A prime example of this was the bank robbery shootout sequence, which was set in downtown Los Angeles, between the cops and Neil’s crew. Not only was it epic in its scale, intensity and realism but it was an integral part of the plot and moved the story forward rather than serving as a useless action piece (which seems to be a normal occurrence in most recently released crime thrillers). For their parts, Pacino and De Niro elevated the film, turning it into an almost mythical showdown between good and evil. Pacino’s Lt. Vincent Hanna snarled and stomped his way through his scenes, never apologizing for what he was, a man on a mission to stop the bad guy no matter what the cost. De Niro’s Neil McCauley was just as intense as Hanna, but never let that intensity get the best of him because he was a professional. True film scholars could spend pages upon pages pontificating upon the scene where Hanna and McCauley chat in a diner but it is easiest just to say that it was incredible to witness two actors take a simple scene and turn it into something more, a pseudo - showdown in which both confess respect for the other but promise to show no quarter when the time comes for a final confrontation.

Both Pacino and De Niro could have carried the movie on their own, their individual performances were that good, but together they combined to make Heat something more than the typical crime thriller.

Grade: B

Kick Ass: Take it or leave it

Inspired by his love of comic books, high schooler Dave Lizewski decides to become a masked super hero himself named Kick Ass. Soon he becomes a media sensation and he inspires others to do as he has done. But his fame also makes him the target of the evil crime boss Frank D'Amico, who wants him dead.

The bright side to Kick Ass was the story of Dave Lizewski (or Kick Ass as he is known to his adoring fans). His intentions in taking up crime fighting were pure (i.e. to do good) and provided the back bone for the story. It was absorbing to watch him wrestle with the problems one always thought heroes like Spider - Man or Batman had, but never got the chance to explore on the big screen. It made him a character one could easily identify with and root for. The film got sketchy however when Kick Ass' story was hijacked by that of Big Daddy and Hit Girl. Inspired by Kick Ass, these two decided to don costumes as well and pursue vengence at one specific target, crime boss Frank D'Amico (an underused Mark Strong). Big Daddy and Hit Girl were not burdened with the sense of "doing the right thing" like Kick Ass, rather they simply went about their business in an ultra-violent fashion that mirrored the other comic book anti-heroes like The Punisher. The most unnerving part of their pursuit was the fact that Hit Girl was 11 years old, and doing and saying things that would make even The Punisher blush. It was almost surreal to see her whirl around in those John Woo inspired slow motion shots, guns blazing, spouting curse words but after a while, it became almost abhorrent and made one wish the film had continued to focus on Kick Ass' internal conflict. Instead the filmmakers tried to mask the holes in the plot with the insanity of more shoot outs and four letter bombs involving a girl who should have been more worried about getting the latest Hannah Montana cd instead of storming the strong hold of the city's most nefarious crime boss.

There was a time, years ago, when I would have lauded Matthew Vaughn's Kick Ass as a well deserved jolt to the comic book adaptation genre for it did not shy away from breaking the well worn standards of said genre  in order to bring fresh new verve to it. However I am older and wiser (though my family and friends would probably tell you differently I imagine) and that "fresh" new verve in the film seems more unnerving and lazy to my weathered eyes.

Grade: C-

The 5 Levels of Inception Chart: A Cliffs Notes for those who have and have not seen the film

Inception has become such a worldwide phenomenon and sparked a good deal of debate as to what exactly happens during the film. The below chart cleverly summarizes just what (we think) is happening at each level  and can be used as a handy guide to try and understand the where, why and how of the movie.

Sherlock Holmes: More brawn than brains

Another day, another reboot. This time around it's the erstwhile detective from the Sir Arthur Conan Doyle novels that gets the Hollywood retreatment.

The game's afoot as the brilliant detective Sherlock Holmes and his faithful sidekick Dr. John Watson tackle another mystery. The nefarious Lord Blackwood has apparently risen from the grave after he was hung. He intends to create a new world order in which he and his evil group will rule. Can Holmes and Watson stop their seemingly supernatural adversary?

While this reimaging of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson might be missing the usual verbal hyperboles such as "elementary my dear Watson," the fashionable deerstalker hat that became a costume trademark of Holmes during the Basil Rathbone films of the 1940's and a plausible mystery which an audience had a chance in hell of figuring out, it did feature a number of good things. Robert Downey Jr. excelled in the title role, creating his own unique take on the classic detective. He was a scatter-brained sleuth who could cleverly deduce the evil plans of a villain before thoroughly kicking his butt and describing how he was going to do so in detailed fashion via internal monologue and oh so cool looking slo-mo shots (the boxing match in the middle of the film is a prime example of this). His interaction and chemistry with Jude Law (as a tougher than nails Watson) gave the film a much needed emotional backbone. Director Guy Ritchie infused Sherlock Holmes with his signature visual style of quick cuts, slick editing and fight sequences which were extremely intense. For all of its imagistic bluster however, it felt as though he sacrificed too much of the story and Holmes' intellectual persona, a persona that audiences are accustomed to seeing from the Holmes character, in favor of more brawls, scraps and explosios. Lord Blackwood's evil plan for world domination seemed to have gotten lost between the fisticuffs and the subplot of Watson's plans to walk away from the mystery solving gig in order to wed his lady in waiting Mary (and Holmes many attempts to stop Watson from leaving). There was so much going on and so many holes in the plot that when the audience got to the climax of the film, they might not have been entirely sure just what Blackwood was trying to do or how Holmes was going to be able to stop him.

Sherlock Holmes might have been more brutish than brainy, but it was still a lot of fun to watch.

Grade: B-

Sunshine: Brainy sci-fi at its finest

We as human beings like to believe that we control our own destinies and, if threatened by something such as mass extinction, we would do everything in our power to stop this. But there is also another school of thought which posits that perhaps a threat such as mass extinction is beyond our control and it should be left to a higher power to decide if mankind goes the way of the dinosaur. No, I am not starting a theological debate, merely outlining what the film Sunshine attempted to explore.

Eight astronauts take off in a spacehip called Icarus II to deliver a nuclear bomb to the sun's core in order to restart it. They not only face the usual dangers associated with space travel, but their journey is also complicated by the fact that they discover Icarus I (the spaceship which made the first attempt at restarting the sun) abandoned.

Beyond the solid acting provided by the international cast, the filmmakers are to be commended for creating a sci-fi film that was not only entertaining but also challenged the audience to think about just what Sunshine was trying to show/say. Director Danny Boyle's stunning visuals and screenwriter Alex Garland's smart script were able to draw the audience in by presenting them with an intriguing sci-fi plot. They then ratcheted up the intensity, both action and thrill-wise, during the final quarter of the film before the decisive showdown between Kappa (Cillian Murphy), the scientist and Pinbacker (Mark Strong), the man of religion which was essentially a philosophically-driven throwdown for the fate of humanity. It is hard to believe that filmmakers would tackle a complex debate like science vs. religion and how each could figure in destroying or saving mankind but Boyle and Garland did it in such a way as to not seem preachy or overbearing. They utilized the sci-fi genre to explore this matter and did so with tremendously effective gusto. There are probably naysayers that will point to the lack of sustained action or the somewhat obvious visual cues Boyle seemed to borrow from another thriller set in space (i.e. Alien) as detriments to the film but Sunshine was never meant to be seen as a monster movie.

Sunshine was a bombastic journey that did not shy away from exploring the type of philosophical debate one would not expect to have after the credits rolled.

Grade: B+

Zombieland: A breath of fresh air

With a title like Zombieland one would expect to see ghoulish flesh-eating fiends terrorizing innocent victims as a major part of the story (if the filmmakers even decided to put a story in there, I mean, it is a horror film!) But could said film not only contain the standard scary zombie stuff but also fully realized characters and a solid story?

Columbus is heading back to Ohio in the hopes of discovering that his parents are still alive after a plague wiped out most of humankind and turned the rest into zombies with a taste for human flesh. Along the way he runs into other survivors (Tallahassee, Wichita, and Little Rock) whom he decides to tag along with. Together they must not only fight to survive the zombies, but each other as well.

One of the best things about Zombieland were the performances of the lead actors, specifically Woody Harrelson and Jesse Eisenberg. Harrelson was a hoot as Tallahassee, a man who reveled in finding his true calling in life (i.e. killing zombies) while blindly obsessing over finding some Twinkies. Eisenberg's paranoid, yet relatable Columbus provided the moral center for the story. His often hilarious rules for surviving Zombieland kept him alive but also kept him from getting what he wanted more than anything in life, a real family and a girl. It's only after he met the other survivors, including a beautiful young woman named Wichita, that he realized the life he was living (essentially as a shut in) made him a zombie in his own right and sometimes rules need to broken in order to get what you want. For a character to undergo that type of development and have said development drive the story is rare to find in most movies nowadays, let alone a horror film. The story was another plus for the film because there was actually one present (and a good one at that). Between the comedic quips and tense action the audience learns that Columbus was not the only one looking for something more in the post-apocalyptic world. Tallahassee's hunt for the elusive Twinkie, Wichita's desire to get her younger sister Little Rock to Pacific Playland amusement park, each was seeking something that seemed normal in an insane world. And by the end of the film, each came to realize that the most normal thing in their lives was the pseudo-family they had formed. I can't remember (if ever) the last time a Freddy Krueger or Michael Myers film dealt with something so simple, yet so real in its story.

When a film is able to breath fresh air into a genre full of staleness and unoriginality, it is a welcome change. Zombieland was that breath of fresh air for it not only provided the type of action and chills the audience was expecting, but also gave them witty dialogue, dynamic characters and a wholly satisfying story.

Grade: A

Green Zone: You might not like what you see

A word of advice for those of you checking out this film. It is not another "Bourne" movie. Green Zone took on topics much closer to reality than a super soldier who lost his memory.

Army Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller is sent out to find weapons of mass destruction in the provinces of Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. When the intell he and his troops receive fail to uncover anything, Roy sets out to discover why. The answers he finds lead him into a world of lies and cover-ups perpetrated by factions within the U.S. Government.

It is rare to find a film that not only provides excellent action but also has the courage to make a meaningful statement, Green Zone is one of those films. Director Paul Greengrass delivered the same kind of frenetic, hand-held camera shot action pieces audiences have grown accustomed to seeing from his previous work on the last two "Bourne" films. Matt Damon was solid as Roy Miller, a soldier whose singular focus on discovering the truth about the weapons of mass destruction propelled the story and kept the film moving. But where Green Zone distinguished itself from other action thrillers set during the second Iraqi conflict was in its portrayal of the U.S. Government. Inspired by true events or not the film painted quite an unflattering picture of certain Government agencies. Those agencies, the CIA and Defense Intelligence, bickered amongst themselves as each attempted to weld power and create an Iraq that they could control. The question of if the United States even had real intell to justify invading Iraq to overthrow Saddam was posited in the film as well, further pushing American viewers out of their comfort zones of believing their Government had nothing but the noblest of intention when freeing the Iraqi people. Clearly this depiction of events might upset some viewers but one has to admire the statement both Greengrass and Damon were trying to make. Green Zone was not just some action film filled with funs and explosions but a complex war thriller with loftier aims of making the audience face some truths they might not have wanted to.

Grade: B

Whiteout: One bland thriller

Maybe it's the Midwesterner in me but I've always enjoyed films that take place in isolated frozen places like the Artic (or maybe it's my undying love for the scenes on Hoth in The Empire Strikes Back that would account for this!). Something about that icy environment lends itself to creating the perfect backdrop for an intergalatic throwdown or a thriller (see John Carpenter's The Thing) which is why I was excited to watch Whiteout.

U.S. Marshall Carrie Stetko is trying to put her life back together after she was betrayed by her old partner. But when the body of a geologists is found near the Antarctic research facility she is stationed at she must face her demons in order to catch the killer.

On paper the film seemed like a slam dunk to be at least somewhat entertaining. There was a beautiful lead, an exotic loaction and a mystery as to why there was a dead geologists in the middle of an ice field. Unfortunately, Whiteout failed to utilize any of these things in order to be remotely intriguing and was nothing more than a bland, by-the-numbers thriller. If the filmmakers would have taken the time to develop Carrie's character arc, perhaps the audience would have been able to take more of an interest as she attempted to put the clues together and figure out just what was happening. Instead, she was saddled with the usual trappings facing a female protagonists in a thriller, and even those standard plot trappings were stale and insipid. Burdened by the lack of character development, a dynamic story or even lively dialogue Whiteout seemed like more of a chore to watch than anything.

Grade: D