John Carter: A continuation of Taylor Kitsch's bad summer

Civil War veteran John Carter finds himself transported to Mars, where he becomes entangled in a different civil war between the inhabitants of the planet. He must decide if he will help the Martian Princess or simply continue to drift through life as he was doing back on Earth.

At this point, you almost feel bad for Taylor Kitsch. Both of the major summer blockbusters he has starred in (this one and Battleship) have lost their respective studios money and were soundly drubbed by film critics. However John Carter, like Battleship, was not such a horrible movie. The story, while overburdened with an excess of useless subplots, cutesy Disney moments and unnecessary characters, was accessible enough for the audience so they could at least have a basic understanding of what was happening on screen (i.e. John needed to unite two of the warring factions against the third in order to save the planet and rescue the beautiful Martian Princess). The action became repetitive (yes, we know John can jump really high, that was clear the tenth time we saw it on screen!) but it was palpable and kept the audience engaged. Kitsch tried his best to play up John as an anti-hero who was torn between those incidents which broke him back on Earth and the need to become the warrior and leader he seemed destined to become, and there were some scenes which were effective (the part where there are cuts between a battle sequence and John burying his family comes to mind) but there were some points where he just seemed lost and looked more like Abercrombie & Fitch model who accidentally wondered unto the set. The rest of the cast failed to rise above the mediocre dialogue and character development provided to them by the cliched script.

It is never going to be considered a classic or even a great sci-fi fantasy film but John Carter is not the most horrible way to spend two hours of your life.

Grade: C

Red Tails: George Lucas strikes again (and not in a good way)!

A group of African American pilots, who were part of the Tuskegee Airmen training program, are finally given the chance to engage in aerial combat over the skies of Europe during World War II.

You knew that since this film had George Lucas as its executive producer and it was being produced by Lucasfilm, the CGI and action sequences were going to look and sound amazing. In those aspects, Red Tails did not disappoint as the dogfights, bomber runs and other aerial action kept the audience engaged and intently watching the exploits of the squadron. However, the story and characters tried too hard to fit into the mold of all of those other Hollywood war films and came off as cliched and uninteresting. Films like Glory, which examined the first black regiment in the Civil War, worked so well because the ferocious action on the screen was accentuated by the thought-provoking storytelling and dynamic acting. With Red Tails, the story seemed out of focus, trying to deal with so many insipid and unnecessary subplots, and the characters failed to add anything more than mediocre performances.

If the story could have been reigned in to focus specifically on the bonds between the pilots and show their struggles in combat, as well as in facing bigotry from their own white counterparts, perhaps Red Tails would have been more than a standard war film which never distinguished itself from the rest.

Grade: D+

Black Swan: A disturbing masterpiece

Ballet dancer Nina lands the role of the lifetime when she is cast as the Swan Queen in Swan Lake. But she soon starts to believe her dreams of stardom will be crushed by her rival Lilly and, as opening night approaches and the pressure builds, her obsesion with being the "perfect" Swan Queen drives her into paranoia and delusion.

The first thing one remembers after turning off Black Swan is the career defining performance given by Natalie Portman. As Nina, she was able to grow character-wise, from the timid and scared girl in the beginning of the film who could only hope to land the part of the Swan Queen to the mature and confident woman who was able to give the performance of her lifetime in that role. Her actions and reactions between those two points were filled with so much emotion, including anger, confusion, despair and desire that it was nearly impossible to tear one's eyes from the screen for Ms. Portman so totally lost herself in the role that it was hard to imagine this was the same woman who played Queen/Senator Amidala in the recent Star Wars prequels. It was almost as if Ms. Portman felt as though her own real life career mirrored that of Nina's and, having grown tired of always playing the good girl, she was looking for a role that would not only break that typecasting mold, but bust it inot a million pieces. As with Nina's transformation this role seems to be Portman's transformative performance.

Beyond Portman's performance, Darren Aronofsky's direction merits attention for he was able to not only bring out stellar performances from his lead actress as well as the rest of the cast, but he also kept the audience on the edge of their seats by playing up the torment Nina was facing. Her decent into a psychological spiral preyed on the minds of the audience, causing them to question whether Nina was truly turning into the mythologial Black Swan or if she was simply loosing her mind. Aronofsky was able to further toy with the audience by including some of Nina's visions, which contained some of the more unnerving images seen on film since movies such as The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby.

A film about a mentally unhinged ballerina does not seem like something many people would be calmoring to watch, however the strong acting and storytelling of Black Swan made it a disturbingly, entertaining thriller that an audience could not help but be enthralled by.

Grade: A

Annie Hall: I'm no longer bitter.

If you've read this blog for any amount of time you realize that I am a huge Star Wars honk. To that end I was always curious as to why Episode IV did not win the Academy Award for best picture when it was released in 1977. This film, perhaps the best in the Woody Allen canon, took home the Oscar that night and I never understood why, until I watched it.

Comedian Alvy Singer seems to be unlucky at love, till he meets Annie Hall. Soon their relationship begins to grow but like all relationships, must endure some rough spots. But can Alvy and Annie survive these trials and tribulations and stick together for the long haul?

First and foremost, the film was funny. From the first drink that Alvy and Annie shared on a rooftop to his driving experience out in Los Angeles the film kept the audience chuckling throughout. To go along with the humor the film presented a great love story. Alvy and Annie seemed like typical people facing those good and bad times in a relationship that most regular people face. Their story was very accessible and easy to relate to. The way in which the film was presented, going back and forth in time and showing things in a non – linear fashion, made it interesting. It kept the audience more entertained than a straight forward linear film would have. Woody Allen was terrific in the lead role. He was a neurotic comedian that could quip one – liners with the best of them, but also had a serious and caring heart. Diane Keaton’s Annie was the real treat of the film. When she first appeared on screen she was a timid country girl unsure of herself and her abilities (she wanted to be a singer). By the end of the film she had become a modern, independent woman capable of doing anything. Hollywood tries but fails to make films like this nowadays, which makes watching Annie Hall quite a treat.

Grade: A

Spaceballs: May the Schwartz be with you!

Parody, when it is done right, it can not only pay homage to the subjects it is parodying but also take on an existence of its own, becoming something more than a series of bad one - liners and pratfalls. When done badly,...well you get most of the Scary Movie sequels or any of the most recent parodies done by the guys who wrote the Scary Movie sequels. Leave it to comic legend Mel Brooks to deliver a parody that hits the mark.

When Princess Vespa is captured by Dark Helmet it’s up to Captain Lone Starr and his sidekick Barf to save her. But after they rescue her they must evade capture by traveling, (actually crash landing on) to a distant planet where they encounter a mystical being named Yogurt who teaches Lone Starr about the ways of the “Schwartz” so he can defeat Dark Helmet.

The film not only excelled in parading Star Wars but other science fiction movies like Star Trek, Alien, Planet of the Apes, and others. Fans of the aforementioned Star Wars films easily distinguished which characters in the film were lampooning those of the beloved trilogy. There were numerous scenes which made laughing quite easy including Dark Helmet (Rick Moranis at quite possibly his funniest) playing with toys of himself and other characters of the film, a cross-eyed gunner on the Spaceball ship doing his best to fire a warning shot, and Yogurt revealing how “merchandising” was where the real money of the movie was made (damn you George Lucas, you're the one that forced me to spend all my allowance money upon action figures and other assorted pieces of plastic!). From sight gags like jamming the radar with a really big jar of jam to the use of an instant VCR tape to discover where the heroes escaped the jokes came at lightspeed (yes, I wrote that, it was cheesy but hey, it's six in the morning, what are you going to do?) and left the audience begging for more. It's true that if a person was not a fan of the science fiction films lampooned in Spaceballs, they might not have caught some of the jokes. But Spaceballs the movie is something everyone can enjoy.

Grade: B

Fanboys: One of us! One of us!

Disclaimer: I am a giant Star Wars dork. I swear, George Lucas could do a puppet show and, so long as one of those puppets mentioned the Force or used a lightsaber, I'd see it five times and go out and buy the corresponding action figures. So when a film comes out that not only shows, but celebrates that kind of passion (or blind faith depending on who you talk to) that people like myself have, I am going to definitely check it out. Fanboys is that movie.

The year is 1999 and the world is anxiously awaiting the release of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. But four friends in Ohio just cannot wait to see it, so they hatch a plan to drive cross country to George Lucas' Skywalker Ranch home in California and swipe a copy for themselves.

Sounds ridiculous right, even more so if you are not a fanboy and your life doesn't revolve around figuring out things such as why Greedo shot first in the Special Edition of Episode IV (probably lost some of you there, let me get back on point). But to the four friends, Eric, Linus, Windows and Hutch, this is what their lives are composed of. They dress like characters from the Star Wars movies, quote the films constantly and it leads to some awkwardly funny moments as they make their way to California. However it's also cool to hear those guys have some of the same arguements regarding the Holy Trilogy that I myself have been in. This makes the film more endearing to fanboys who are aware of the in - jokes and will shout the answers to the various quizzes that the group faces throughout the film to prove their fanboy-ness. But beyond the typical road trip movie trapping which litered the film, beyond the appearance of Kristen Bell (who played Zoe) in a slave girl Leia outfit (one word, spectacular!), beyond the cameos of Star Wars vets such as Billy Dee Williams and Carrie Fisher and other stars such as William Shatner there was a soul to Fanboys. The film effectively showed how the love of a group of movies and their characters could bring friends together to just geek out and be who they are (unless you're a Trekkie).

Yes, the regular viewer might not like Fanboys because they have no clue as to why grown men and women would get so emotional over Wookies or a small green Jedi Master, and the sight of a Ewok humping a leg during a peynote enduced hallucination might go over their heads but for those of us who live and breathe with everything coming from the mind of George Lucas, it is an ode to the joys of never really growing up and still being able to enjoy adventures that happened a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away.

Grade: B