RocknRolla (2008)

For director Guy Ritchie, returning to the genre that helped him make his mark must be a bittersweet homecoming. The over-stylish British ganster genre really hasn't existed without him, and having him back ought to be enough to recharge the batteries in a single shot. But alas, no. The inventive grittiness present in both Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and Snatch, is gone, replaced with the relative gloss of real estate extortion gone wrong. The style of filmmaking itself is still present, thankfully, with the ever-fun smash cuts and whip pan cutaways. It's never dull to look at. Though little of that matters when the script tries and fails to be funny as often as this one does. Winding and wacky as much of the film manages to seem, a lot of it still feels like a hollow shell, or a vain attempt to reproduce something that the director has simply grown out of.

4 out of 10.

Knowing (2009)

You get these sometimes: movies that start out pretty good, get about half way in, then start to fall apart. By the time you get to the last fifteen minutes of this film you'll want a refund on your time. In the early going, as the catastrophic numerology starts to pull things together, it feels pretty good—there's palpable tension as the disparate threads introduce themselves, the characters have interesting tweaks on familiar dynamics, and Nicolas Cage manages not to make a mess of himself. Then things swing into the second act. The more everything starts to make sense, the less interesting it becomes. There's a lot of potential carelessly discarded by the time the credits roll. The few effects sequences are still pretty decent, and the first act holds up well, but if you need a sci-fi thriller fix, you can do much better.

4 out of 10.

Dragonball: Evolution (2009)

Perhaps the most shocking part of this film is that it isn't garbage. Nobody is going to come out and say that this is a triumph of cinema or anything, but this generally unnecessary live-action remake of the wildly popular martial-arts action cartoon has a thing or two going for it. Best among them, a complete lack of taking itself seriously. The characters, the situations, even the costumes all reference back to just how preposterous everything is. It gives the film a breezy air of silliness, resulting in a pleasantly kid-friendly series of fights, sprinkled with light humor. The production values aren't half-bad either. None of this changes that it's generally a stupid movie with a nigh-incomprehensible story and dull action sequences, but the camp value the film knowingly dumps on the audience is, if nothing else, excellent grist for drunken cynicism.

4 out of 10.

Hancock (2008)

Had it actually bothered to have a beginning, this might have been a fun flick. Unfortunately, the very moment you start to care even the least for the characters, the credits start to roll. So what does that leave us with? A bunch of players who remain bland until the very end, a smattering of action sequences that barely make any visual sense, and jokes that lack the proper setup and context to be genuinely funny. It needs a first act, but instead we just leap right into the thin of things. But even worse is that there really wasn't a lot of potential squandered to begin with. Beyond the most basic premise of a homeless alcoholic with superpowers, the rest is almost all gristle. Past a few clever bits toward the middle, there's pretty much nothing to see here.

4 out of 10.

The Last of the Mohicans (1992)

Michael Mann can be a very hit or miss director. For every Heat or Collateral, there's a Last of the Mohicans. It isn't that the film is bad necessarily, just that it's hard to like something that is missing so many parts. Great waves of plot simply wash over you with little to no emotional attachment to spur interest, leaving you with setpiece after impressive setpiece. It's like if someone made a movie of only the good parts, without anything in between to make it mean anything. Sure there's a story in this muddled, schizophrenic tale of trappers and British in Colonial America, but so little time is spent giving it context that it all collapses. This isn't a terrible film, and at times it's a fairly attractive one, but there simply isn't enough weight or heft to make this worth the time.

4 out of 10.

Note: This review is based on the 1999, 2-hour re-edit of the film. Unfortunately, it's the only version available on DVD in the US.

Lord of War (2005)

Gallivanting across the globe, we watch a broke nobody slowly turn his life around on a foundation of gunpowder. Nicholas Cage playing an immigrated arms dealer seems like an easy enough story to buy into, but there's a strange disconnect going on throughout the film that keeps much of any of it from coming alive. Like a lot of lacking movies, though, it sure looks good, with highly stylized environments and some generally appealing camera work. And some of the situations our anti-hero finds himself in are certainly amusing. Yet though there are some good moments, between the odd start-stop pacing and a strangely apathetic performance by Cage himself, you simply wind up with too many missed opportunities.

4 out of 10.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009)

You can tell a franchise has gone on long enough when you start to see the quality cycles in which it runs. James Bond fans will know what I'm talking about. Here is a series that began with a halfhearted nudge out of the gate, picked up speed by the third film, and was at a full-on gallop by the fifth. Someone must have hidden some Ritalin into everyone's morning coffee for this outing. Unlike the better entries, Year Six at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry feels lethargic and drowsy. It lacks the excitement and surprise and fascination with itself that made the third through the fifth movies so engaging and charming. This one feels detached, with acres of dead space between the characters and the events, sparse highlights of barely conveyed emotion, and moments of action that feel designed to distract the audience from nap time rather than contribute to the story. You could argue that maybe there's too much story to tell in this, yet the previous film did a fantastic job in the telling and the source for this is almost a third shorter. Whether or not the magic is gone, it seems to have skipped over this entry.

4 out of 10.

Terminator Salvation (2009)

Everyone who has followed the series thus far has been waiting for this. Up to this point, everything Terminator has been about preventing Judgment Day, the nuclear apocalypse set off by rogue computer Skynet, who would later go on to send robots back in time to assassinate the future leader of the resistance. Now Judgment Day has passed, the world is a blasted nuclear hellscape, and the surviving humans struggle against a ruthless robot army. Sure sounds exciting, doesn't it? In truth, it's quite bland. While the film has an inexhaustible special effects budget, and more explosions per minute than even the most accident-prone fireworks factory, the story, the characters, and sadly even the action consistently fail to impress. What could have been an interesting reset for the series instead inexplicably skips the early part and dives straight into the middle chapter, with the resistance up and running, and Connor already positioned to be the anti-robot messiah. There's no character struggle, and surprisingly little humanity given the series's themes so far. It jettisons almost everything fans have come to care about and fills in the blanks with bigger, more opaque blanks. And yet, there's still the nuggets here and there, where even the most jaded observer gets curious, or is wowed by a great effect or explosion. It's at these points, and only these points, where the film has a purpose. See it to munch on popcorn, turn your brain off, and watch the white noise. Do not see it because you care about the franchise.

4 out of 10.

Street Fighter (Live Action - 1994)

Whether they intended to or not, the creators of this film managed to make one hell of a B-movie. Labeling itself as a martial arts epic was probably the first mistake, but this videogame-based flick drips unique style and kitch in quantities that should be toxic. And it does so almost completely by mistake. Watching martial arts star and professional blowhard Jean Claude Van-Damme present every bit of acting acumen he has, and seeing it completely and hilariously marginalized against the simple grace and perfectly self-mocking arrogance of the great Raul Julia is truly cinematic fodder for excellence. In fact, Raul Julia's (sadly final) performance as dictator M. Bison may have been one of the finest B-movie performances out there. Julia drips 90s silliness, overblown self-importance, and even a very slight sense of good humored menace with so little effort that it's a shame this isn't a better film. Or even a good one. No, this is a terrible film with delusions of grandeur. But still, with as much good-natured hilarity on display, it's hard not to recommend a film that failed its way to watchability as well as this one has.

4 out of 10.

Waitress (2007)

Uncomfortable, unfunny, and at times even a bit uncouth, Waitress is an indie romantic comedy that tries its damnedest to win some lightheaded respect but is weighed down by its crushingly melancholy story. Though the resolution offers a bit of sugar, it's just too little too late to drag up the previous ninety minutes spent with miserable, insecure people bemoaning their respective situations. A big part of this has to do with its attempts at deadpan humor. If used right, this can result in wonderfully sly laughs and clever winks. Here the tone is so morose that almost all the good lines are sucked into a void. I give it credit for finishing strong, but as a whole the film is just too much bitter and not enough sweet. Good to see Nathan Fillion is still getting work.

4 out of 10.

Note: A bit of additional research turned up why this film might've fallen short: writer/director/supporting actress Adrienne Shelly was murdered in her New York apartment in November of 2006, before the film was complete. I stand by my review, but offer my condolences.

Silent Hill (2006)

Perhaps the best of the videogame-to-film conversions yet, Silent Hill is still a movie at odds with itself. Some of the imagery at work, and the general mood of things when the lights go out are the stuff of beautiful Lovecraftian nightmare. The gore present is not only the gooey-bloody stuff, but also effective and disturbing; the way it ought to be. And the audio design is spot on (which it should be, since it's from the same person who made the games' soundscapes so damn frightening). It's scary the way a good horror flick should be scary. But the plot? Just sub-par. It's told in an overly simplistic, ham-fisted style that still manages not to make sense. To be fair, the games weren't much better, but that's not an excuse. This film has got the scare-factor down in spades, with thick atmosphere and excellent pacing, but it can't surmount its mismanaged script. I give it serious points for effort, but a bad story is still a bad story.

4 out of 10.

Gracie (2007)

guest review by Phineas Gopher

Even though it is based on true events, Gracie doesn't ring true. It asks the viewer to look at the world (specifically the 70s) through the eyes of a teenage athlete who is denied the privilege of playing high school soccer because she's a girl. The politics behind this perspective get in the way of the story because the titular heroine isn't painted as a real person, but as a walking lump of stereotypical female rebellion. The cliches are so numerous, this almost becomes a sports movie parody. Its only effort to be unpredictable consists of making Gracie not really that good at soccer. What are we cheering for exactly? The inevitable triumphant ending is satisfying if you stick with the movie that long, but the feel-good fix is only a chaser to a pretty bland brew.

4 out of 10.

Shoot 'em Up (2007)

This film may be the most enthusiastic mess released to theaters since the original Saw. It even has close to the same hook: Saw showed jaded moviegoers brand new ways for characters to die onscreen, while Shoot 'em Up has brand new ways to conduct a gunfight. It's actually very easy to see how this got greenlit. The script is light and breezy with just enough story to set up the next crazy gunfight, the action concepts on display range from tried-and-true-with-a-twist to bet-you've-never-seen-THIS-before, and the dialogue is virtually one cheesy one-liner after another. It has popcorn muncher written all over it. And then the movie starts and you realize the director is nigh untested, and his vapid-but-fun script is all of the former and precious little of the latter, which wouldn't be such an issue if there were more than two funny lines in the whole film. A pair of particularly fun action sequences show up, though by the time they roll around you're already checking your watch. On paper, a gunfight between a man with ten broken fingers and another who's lost so much blood he can't even lift his pistol sounds hilarious. In ideal circumstances it could have been Charlie Chaplin with guns, but it just never comes together like you beg it to. The ideas are here, the enthusiasm is here, but the craft isn't.

4 out of 10.

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