Insidious: Genuinely scary!

Soon after they move into a new house Josh and Renai's son Dalton falls into an unexplainable coma. Not only that but his comatose starts to attract malevolent forces, forcing the family to move into another home in order to escape the torment. But when the malevolent forces follow them to their new house, the family decides that they must fight these evil forces if they want to live a normal life.

It is hard to find horror films nowadays that do not automatically resort to using excessive gore, violence or other exploitative measures to "scare" an audience. And given director James Wan's previous horror outings (Saw and Dead Silence) it is easy to understand why the audience might have expected the same kind of results with his latest effort, Insidious.

Surprisingly enough though, Insidious was able to not only scare the audience without the blood and gore but keep them involved in the story/plot as well. Wan was able to keep the audience on edge by slowly building the tension, giving away just enough story-wise  to make the audience wonder what was keeping Josh (Patrick Wilson) and Renai's (Rose Byrne) son Dalton in a coma or why he and the family were being plagued by evil spirits while at the same time making them scoot just a little closer to the edge of their seats whenever they thought they saw a shadow or Renai thought she heard a noise. It's those kinds of scares/jumps that are legitimately effective as they are things an audience member could experience and maybe even wonder, "was it just the wind or something else?" There were some scares/jumps that could make even the most harden horror film viewer shiver, including one particular scene which was shown in the trailer for the film but still caused goose pimples to run up and down one's spine. Beyond the things that went bump in the night the cast was successful in drawing the audience in emotionally and making them care about what was happening on screen (another rarity for a horror film).

Insidious was a good old-fashioned horror film that did not require buckets of blood or other nastiness to deliver some genuine scares.

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+

Knowing: I know this...

It's great when the star of a film is able to give a performance that is not only memorable, but elevates said film into something more. However there can be times when an actor's performance, like say Nic Cage in Knowing, can be so awkward and distracting that it's hard to even pay attention to the movie.

A time capsule unearthed at his son's school holds dire predictions for John and the rest of the world, one of which is that the end of life on the planet will happen soon. Will John be able to stop that prediction from coming true?

As it was pointed out to me by a good friend that saw Knowing before I did, the religious overtones in the film are heavy, even if director Alex Proyas tried to mask that by adding an extraterrestrial element to the whole thing. John (played by Nic Cage) was a broken man who had lost faith after the death of his wife, turning away from religion and family. His story arc, the road to redemption by trying to figure out just what the mysterious predictions from the time capsule meant, was a compelling one, but it was severely mismanaged via poor storytelling on the part of Proyas and the screenwriters and the aforementioned bad acting. The film seemed to become bloated and plodding when it got away from John's search for answers about the numbers or attempted to bring other characters into the mix (I love Rose Byrne but she seriously added nothing to the film). The whole relationship between John and Diana (Byrne's character) felt forced and silly at points as she took him at his word one minute then yelled at him for being a crackpot the next. The bland characters and gaping plot holes did nothing but hurt the film and if redemption and family were truly what the movie was attempting to explore, then more time should have been spent doing so and not trying to awe the audience with badly CGI'ed plane crashes. Then there's Nic Cage, whose own unique brand of acting might work for some, but clearly is not for everyone. He really was just unlikable as John, and the staccato-like unevenness of his performance could leave one wondering how the guy still gets work.

On paper Knowing seemed like a cool concept with predictions about the end of the world, creepy numbers which could help save everyone from destruction and a main character whose journey to salvation would make for a gripping viewing experience. Too bad it turned out to be another spasmodic sci-fi junker.

Grade: C-