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