Thor: Another solid comic book film!

Thor, a powerful warrior from the distant planet of Asgard, is banished to earth by his father Odin for his arrogance. He must use all of his powers to protect the friends he makes there from evil forces sent from his home world by a sinister villian.

Thor can almost be viewed as a companion piece to the other Marvel superhero film adaptation released this summer, Captain America. Both featured richly, complex protagonist that had to learn to deal with the high and lows of the great responsibility of having great power. But whereas Steve Rogers grew up never knowing what it was to have power before he became Captain America, Thor grew up always having that power. He grew into an arrogant prince that needed to have that power yanked from him in order to realize what it meant to be a true leader. This might sound a little complex for a simple action film about a Norse God with a cool looking hammer but director Kenneth Branagh tempered the Greek tragedy overtones of the story with some solid action sequences as well as some truly amusing comedic bits as Thor adjusted to life on earth (the parts featuring his introduction to the taser and modern medicine were the highlights of the "fish out of water" stuff). Where Thor fell short was in showing the audience the Thunder God's transformation from selfish brat into selfless hero. It is true that, once on earth, he meets a beautiful scientist in Jane Foster (the always stunning albeit under-utilized in this particular role Natalie Portman) but it should take more than one romantic conversation under the stars to convert him into someone other than the egotistical brat he was.

All in all Thor was another solid entry into the growing lineup of Marvel superhero films.

Grade: B-

Paul: A close encounter of the hilarious kind!

Graeme and Clive are two sci-fi fanatics that are on a quest to find out what is really going on in Area 51. But on their way to investigate they run into an actual visitor from another planet named Paul, who is on the run from the authorities. Together they hatch a scheme to get Paul back to his mother ship and back home.

Paul was essentially a buddy road trip film that happened to have an alien and some other screwball shenanigans added in to make it atypical for the genre. Simon Pegg and Nick Frost were hilarious as Graeme and Clive respectively, showing the same kind of comic talent and timing that made the other flims which they have starred in together (Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz) memorable comedic fare. There were plenty of sight gags, thinly veiled references to other classic sci-fi films (the audience was finally shown who truly inspired Stephen Spielberg to create E.T.) and just enough dry "British" humor to cause the audience to geniuely chuckle throughout. But the best (and perhaps most unexpected) part of the film was the fact that title character (voice by Seth Rogen) was so entertaining, effective and believable. Usually when one thinks of a character that is completely CGI unfortunate mistakes like Jar Jar Binks pop into their heads, but Paul was different. He was different in that he did not act like one would expect a visitor from another world to. He wasn't screaming, "take me to your leader" or threatening passers-by with death rays, he just seemed like a regular person. He smoked, cursed and acted crude at points but there was a heart to him which made him endearing. Director Greg Mottola was wise to seize upon this and accenutate those moments where Paul, Graeme and Clive were just hanging out having a good time because those were the moments where the audience could gravitate toward the guys and the quest they were on.

This film was one of those rare comedies that was actually funny, and it is definitely worth a look.

Grade: B

Sanctum: Not worth the dive!

Expert diver Frank McGuire and his teenage son Josh head an expedition to map a network of underground caverns but when a tropical storm cuts off their exit, they must use all of their wits and strength to find a route to the surface.

What should have been an uplifting drama about the struggle and eventual triumph of a group of regular people to survive some rather unfortunate circumstances turned out to be a dull, dreary and even malicious waste of the audience's time.

It felt like it took Alister Grierson (who directed the film) forever to get the film setup and then moving. That was due to the fact that both the characters and conflicts they were dealing with were monotonous. The audience would be hard pressed to find a character within the cast to root for as they were all aggrevating and/or insipid in some way. Even when there were moments for the audience to gravitate to someone like Josh, Frank or another member of the cast, something awful would happen to someone and they would suffer a fate worse than what would happen to some hapless teen in a slasher film.

Not even the name of James Cameron (who served as Executive Producer) could save Sanctum from being a depressing waste of time.

Grade: D

Source Code: Make every second count, by checking this movie out!

US Army helicopter pilot Colter Stevens wakes up on a commuter train in Chicago. His last memories were of flying sorties in Afghanistan but soon he realizes not only is back in the United States, but he has also assumed the identity of another man. Eight minutes later his train blows up but he does not die, he awakens to discover himself in a pod where a woman named Goodwin tells him he must go back to that train and stop the bomb from blowing it up or else the entire town of Chicago will be destroyed.

Source Code was another example of a sci-fi thriller that not only attempted to blow the audience away with its high tech premise, but also use that unconventional storyline to explore the human condition.

The futuristic premise, which featured Gyllenhaal's Stevens reliving another man's reality in order to stop a terrorist attack on Chicago, might seemed far fetched but writer Ben Ripley and director Duncan Jones did it right by setting the story in modern times. This grounded the story in a reality that the audience was acutely aware of. Ripley and Jones also did a good job of roping the audience into the plot by keeping the mystery of who planted the bomb and their ultimate motives in foregound of the story, not buried in the back in favor of more special effects bells and whistles.

The story was intriguing (some have described it as Groundhog Day meets 12 Monkeys) but what truly set it apart from other films (sci-fi or otherwise) was the humanity Jake Gyllenhaal brought to his role. If handled in the wrong way the film could have easily become laughably cheesy, like Jean Claude Van Damme's Timecop, in that the action would have swallowed the narrative whole. But Gyllenhaal brought emotion and soul to his performance, a set of talents sadly lacking in most action heroes nowadays. Through his struggles in trying to understand just what was expected of him in his attempts to locate that bomb, he came to realize a number of things about his life, deeper personal realizations which caused him to rethink and question just who he was and what he stood for. Source Code challenged the audience to rethink along with Gyllenhaal, a quality not seen in most recently released films.

Source Code is an intelligent and emotionally satisfying sci-fi thriller that you should not miss.

Grade: B+

The Adjustment Bureau: The choice is yours (maybe!)

Politician David Norris is on the brink of winning a seat in the U.S. Congress when he has a chance encounter with a beautiful ballerina named Elise. As David begins to fall for her he realizes that there is a group - The Adjustment Bureau - who will do everything in their considerable power to keep them apart.

While The Adjustment Bureau attempted to mirror the “Bourne” films which Matt Damon starred in, it lacked the dynamic action and comprehensiveness in story/plot that made those movies modern action classics. This is not to say that it was not a good film, Damon was certainly convincing in his role as David Norris and he shared excellent chemistry with Emily Blunt’s Elise Sellas. That chemistry was important if the audience was to buy into their characters and the struggles they went through to fight against “the plan” that the evil (or maybe not, guess it’s how one views the film as a whole) Bureau had for them. The plot for the film (it was based upon a short story by Philip K. Dick) presented quite an interesting twist for a sci-fi action story as it made the audience ponder if humans can choose their own fate or if everything was predetermined in their lives. It's rare for the audience to have to think at the multi-plex nowadays, so this thought provoking story was a nice surpise. Writer/Director George Nolfi did his best to not only keep the audience engaged in the complexity presented with the story but also ratcheted up the tension and blended in some (but not enough) action while at the same time building the bond between David and Elise, however he neglected to give the fedora wearing members of the Bureau any depth and left many things regarding their role in the universe of the film unexplained.

Ultimately The Adjustment Bureau provided the audience a change in pace with its provocative story but lacked the action to make it a memorable sci-fi thriller.

Grade: C+ 

Captain America: The First Avenger - The Summer Blockbuster that delivers the goods!

Steve Rogers, a kid that has been rejected for military service on a number of occasions, volunteers for a top secret program which seeks to turn the average soldier into a superhero. This program successfully turns him into Captain America, a hero dedicated to the truths, ideals and defense of the American way of life.

In this summer of blockbuster sequels and comic book adaptations it might be difficult to sell a film like Captain America to the movie - going public, but there are a number of reasons why they should not skip over this tale of The First Avenger.

The story gave the audience the necessary nuts and bolts of the good Captain's origins to draw them in without overwhelming them in miniscule details that could derail it. Director Joe Johnston effectively mixed solid action sequences along with properly timed bits of humor to give the film an almost "Indiana Jones -esque" quality. But what set Captain America apart from those other lackluster sequels or comic book films was the performance of Chris Evans as the title character. When the audience is first introduced to Captain America, he is a skinny kid from Brooklyn named Steve Rogers who has been rejected by the Army four times due to his poor health and other medical problems. One got the sense that Steve had been picked on most of his life, but that did not stop him from standing up to bullies or taking on challenges that stronger men shied away from. He was the prototypical underdog and if Johnston had just jumped straight into showing Captain America cracking skulls and kicking Nazi butt without showing the audience who he was before, the film would have lacked the depth to story and character that it exhibited throughout (a trait sadly missing in the bulk of films released this summer). The humanity and heart that Evans endowed Steve with at the beginning not only made him the perfect subject for the Army's Super Soldier program, but also gave the audience a hero that they could relate to on an emotional level.

It was easy to stand up and cheer for Captain America for it was the first summer blockbuster of 2011 to deliver the goods (and make sure you stick around after the credits for a special surprise, you'll be glad you did).

Grade: B

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-

Transformers: Dark of the Moon: Action, yes...Story/Plot....not so much

When the Autobots learn that a secret Cybertronian spacecraft was discovered on the Moon by the United States back in the 1960's, they race to recover what was on the ship before the Decepticons can.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon delivered the kind of breathtaking and grandiose action one would expect for a summer blockbuster. The finale of the film (where the Autobots attempted to retake downtown Chicago from the Decepticons) in particular was superlative not only for the robot on robot fights, but also the action taken by the human cast members (or their stunt doubles), including some very cool "flying" suites and a sequence in which a high-rise building collaspsed on its side with Sam Witwicky and the rest of the human heroes still trapped inside.

What was missing from the film was any semblance of plot, story or character development. After the credits started to roll and even upon reflection the following day after seeing Dark of the Moon, the audience will probably find it hard to remember just why Sam was running around again trying to save the world. Although this is Shia LeBeouf's third turn as Witwicky, he seems to have lost his edge or even credibility with the part (the inferior script from Ehren Kruger didn't help). He has a new girlfriend in this one in Carly (a shoddy Rosie Huntington-Whiteley) whom he is trying to keep around by getting and holding down a job but that was all the audience was given to work with as the rest of the screen time was spent following Optimus Prime and the other Autobots around as they attempted to save humanity (again). The only time there have been believable/relatable characters in this film series was in the original Transformers, when director Michael Bay had to give the audience Sam's backstory in order to establish his character. The story for Dark of the Moon lured the audience in at the beginning with the whole U.S. Moon landing that doubled as a chance to uncover the Cybertronian ship which crashed but shortly thereafter Bay develled into his old tricks of lame jokes, useless characters and an over-abundance of scenes which served no other purpose but to kill time until the next big action sequence. It's not like an audience goes into a film like this expecting to see Shakespeare but it would have been nice to have something more than what Bay and the rest of the crew delivered.

Brainless, summer blockbuster entertainment, they name is Transformers: Dark of the Moon.

Grade: C

The Rite: Wrong in so many ways

When Michael, a Catholic priest in training, begins to question his faith, he is sent to The Vatican in order to attend a special class on exorcism being taught by the church. Once there he is introduce to Father Lucas, a man intent upon showing Michael the true power of the devil.

The "exorcism" film really begins and ends with the classic which started the entire sub-genre, The Exorcist. In that respect, it is hard for any new film which deals with the same subject to match or even surpass what most people consider to be one of the best (and scariest) films of all time. The Rite had a chance to at least match The Exorcist due to its seemingly compelling storyline as well as the acting prowess of its star, Sir Anthony Hopkins, however it falied to be anything more than a substandard by-the-numbers supernatural thriller which did not even thrill. The story of Michael was never interesting enough to follow or take seriously, this was due to the pedestrian acting of Colin O' Donoghue (who played Michael) as well as the second-rate directing by Mikael Hafstrom, who simply recycled all of those ideas and plot points from films like The Exorcist and failed to introduce anything fresh or exciting to the sub-genre. Perhaps the most disappointing part of the movie was the performance of Hopkins for it felt like he channeled Hannibal Lector for half of his time on screen. His act got so tawdry at points that the audience could not help but feel as if the man who made fava beans famous was in the film for nothing more than a nice paycheck.

The Rite was wrong in so many ways that it never came close to being half as good as the movie it was trying to imitate.

Grade: D

The Green Hornet: Bruce Lee would not be pleased

Newspaper heir Britt Reid never really cared for much in life except for partying and having a good time. But after the death of his father he decides to don a disguise and make a difference as the crime fighter The Green Hornet. Along with his trusted sidekick Kato they set out to clean up the streets of Los Angeles.

Based off of the 1960's television series of the same name The Green Hornet had something of a Batman vibe to it given the backstory of the main character (Britt Reid, like Bruce Wayne, is a rich kid who decides to take justice into his own hands after the murder of his father). However with Seth Rogen in the role of Reid, the audience was no doubt expecting quite a few hilarious one-liners  and other comic gems to complement the action expected in a superhero film. While the action was present (most of the said action was supplied by Jay Chou who played Kato), the sloppily scripted story never connected with the audience. Rogen's Reid/Green Hornet failed to be anything other than an unfunny, spolied brat who was completely unbelievable as a good guy, let alone a superhero. Christoph Waltz, as the bad guy Chudnofsky, was whinier than a seventeen year old girl who didn't get asked to prom and never amounted to anything menacing or convincingly evil while Cameron Diaz did nothing more than show up and look hot. Even the directing by Michel Gondry (who has directed visually unique films such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and The Science of Sleep) seemed ordinary and added little to an already underwhelming film.

The bad jokes, shoddy story/plot, poor acting and stagnant directing all combined to make The Green Hornet nothing super at all.

Grade: D