Moonrise Kingdom (2012)

Wes Anderson films are sometimes a hard thing to judge. Sure they’re comedies, but they're often so deadpan it can be hard to tell. Is the film failing when it isn’t funny, or is it simply not trying to be funny at that moment? This approach works much better in some films than in others. This is one of those others. There are certainly moments in this quirky tale of a runaway boy scout, but they’re too few and too far between. In the meantime, we’re treated to some pleasantly bizarre camerawork, and intermittent appearances by the usual Wes-Anderson-film suspects spouting off the occasional one-liner or standing in a pleasantly preposterous setting. Generally, it works, but it’s missing something. The child-actors that make up the focus of the film are great as an ensemble but are very uneven when they’re off on their own, while the plot wanders with all the certainty of a child’s storybook. It’s served up with a wink, yet with little of the cleverness.

5 out of 10.

The Box (2009)

Someone drops a box off at your door. Inside is a button. You are informed that if you press the button someone you do not know will die, and you will be given one million dollars. You have twenty-four hours to decide whether or not to push the button. And from that, things get weird. What starts out as a great bit of mental torture and suspense quickly gives way to an extended episode of The Twilight Zone with all the trimmings. Unfortunately, it's just about as cheesy too. There's some excellent weirdness going on in this movie, but while the scope of events from one reveal to the next is spot on, the sense of mystery doesn't quite follow suit. Lots of things change for the cooler, but it's hard to really care beyond curiosity. That's a shame too, because with a bit more love and a lot less runtime this could have been a perfect popcorn muncher. The same Richard Kelly that brought us the excellent Donnie Darko does a very good job capturing the vintage 70s television vibe throughout, but alas it just doesn't quite come together in a way that does its far-out ideas justice.

5 out of 10.

Burn After Reading (2008)

Seeing the CIA's braintrust crash against the jagged rocks of clueless stupidity should be more fun than this. When the wrong information falls into the hands of a a batch of barely-competent fitness instructors, there should be some play on what 'government intelligence' is, or some laughs that play up a lack of preparation, or something. This is more of a drama about things that are difficult to get invested in than it is a straight up comedy. Deadpan presentation may be the Coen Brothers' M.O. but this one takes itself too seriously to be anything more than passing funny. Then as a set of twisting traps and back-and-forth entanglement it also comes up short. It has a few moments that stand out, and at least one excellent left turn, but largely this is a bit of well presented, interesting-but-not-compelling fluff. It's inconsequential and innocuous, too serious to be silly, too silly to be serious.

5 out of 10.

Body of Lies (2008)

Although his visual sense has only grown with age, the same cannot be said of director Ridley Scott's consistency. This twisting tale of a pair of CIA agents butting heads over anti-terrorist operations in the middle-east is big on visual punch, but is too self-important to settle comfortably. Difficult names with complicated alliances are thrown around casually, and in ten minutes all the thinking committed to sorting out where they fit in the story is rendered irrelevant as they either die, or some difficult revelation switches up the playing field. Its eye candy is opulent throughout, but it lacks a pace slow enough to be understood or, sadly, cared about. By the time it's over and done there's no great message, no single “wow” moment, no lasting flavor. It's not a waste of time, but neither is it a particular good use of time either. But it sure looks good.

5 out of 10.

Across the Universe (2007)

You know going into this whether or not you'll like the music at least; it's all by The Beatles. Now, whether you will like the arrangement of those songs is another story. In its attempt to lend these classic songs a sense of context and fit them all into a plot, the results are incredibly mixed. In a lot of ways, this weird mix of iconic rock and sixties America comes off as pretentious and pointless, stretching favorite songs to an end they were never meant for. But even so, it has its moments. The setting and re-branding of Let It Be is beautiful and heartbreaking, Strawberry Fields Forever gets a decent send up, and even Hey Jude manages to wring out a few smiles. Sadly these are the minorities, and many excellent songs, including personal favorite Dear Prudence, just don't get a worthy interpretation or setting. As an experiment in reconfiguring such well-known music there is definitely merit, but whether or not you'll enjoy it probably depends heavily on your tolerance for reinterpretation and how (ahem) psychedelic your mood is.

5 out of 10.

Observe and Report (2009)

Anyone going into this film expecting yet another Seth Rogen raunchy comedy is in for a rude awakening. Likewise, anyone going in for the more sick and twisted side of the film will also be left wanting. You have to wonder exactly what kind of film writer-director Jody Hill set out to make. It starts out innocent enough for the genre, as Seth Rogen's foulmouthed, bipolar, gun-obsessed rent-a-cop decides to make to make it his mission to track down a serial flasher terrorizing a shopping mall. But instead of leaving things at surface-level shenanigans and predictable laughs, it instead dives further and further down the rabbit hole of Rogen's self-delusion. Except the comedy gives way to an uneasy and unsure drama and by the end the whole thing is just creepy. It evolves from 40-Year-Old Virgin into Taxi Driver. There's no denying that it's a brave decision but the end result is extraordinarily uneven, featuring left-field joke setups that don't fit into the drama, and dramatic choices that don't work with the comedy. The real shame of it is that Rogen does show some decent acting chops here. In the hands of a more certain director with a more balanced script, this film could have explored some genuinely interesting places, but what's on hand is unfortunately just as choppy as it's lead's mental state.

5 out of 10.

Idiocracy (2006)

Once upon a long time ago, writer/director Mike Judge dealt a blow for the common cubicle dweller with Office Space. Now he's back, this time telling the sci-fi tale of an extremely average joe flung into a future populated by the offspring of dozens of generations of society's lowest, dumbest, horniest common denominator. Much like the flawed but smartly wry Office Space, Idiocracy starts off strong with likable characters and some great laughs, but also like its forbear it becomes considerably less entertaining as soon as it decides to develop a plot. As pure satire it still manages to stay witty and clever throughout, but the funny bits become too rare to sustain more than passing interest. It really is a shame, as the first half hints at something truly special, and manages to present moments of sheer stupidity that have already become iconic. Too bad that pesky plot had to get in the way.

5 out of 10.

Taken (2009)

For all of Liam Neeson's considerable acting talent, for the cinematic history he's made as a Jedi, a Batman villain, an Irish revolutionary, and Oscar Schindler himself, he just can't seem to pull off an American accent. Or smile, for that matter. Luckily, for this tale of a father on the rampage to retrieve his kidnapped daughter, he has little time to speak and almost no reason to smile. All told, this is very much a by-the-numbers action thriller, but there's a sense of uncomfortable awkwardness both in Neeson's performance, and the director Pierre Morrel's apparent inexperience in the big chair. The result is something far more spastic, and far less dramatic, than necessary. You're rarely, if ever, given the chance to buy in to the events going on. This holds true to the action as well, which frequently uses obnoxiously disorganized editing in place of actual choreography. Still, there's a nugget of fun to be had in its time—the situation presented is appropriately horrifying with or without the actor's help selling it, and when Neeson has to appear threatening and moody, well, history shows us he's quite good at that. The result is a film with a few decent high points among a mostly droning, passive spectacle. It'll scratch an itch, but it's quite forgettable.

5 out of 10.

Dark City (1998)

Proof positive that it takes more than amazing art direction, fantastic camera work, and a stellar concept to make a great movie. Set in the tone of quasi-sci-fi film noir, wherein an amnesiac seeks to remember who he is and why the whole world seems to stop at midnight, the story winds and weaves around mind bending ideas that speak of memory, of humanity, and of reality. It's all heady stuff, but writer/director Alex Proyas doesn't quite seem to know how to get his exceptionally talented to sell it, nor his editor to preach it. Things smooth out some after an exceptionally rough first act, but the film's quality never quite matches up to its bold underpinnings. The eye candy and plot are still enough to keep you engaged through to the end, but many moments of the movie seem to fall flat for no reason. It's good fodder for film students or folks looking for a fresh narrative, but in the end it's just too uneven to recommend wholeheartedly.

5 out of 10.

Jumper (2008)

Last time Hayden Christensen and Samuel L. Jackson were on screen together, Jackson got his hands chopped off with a lightsaber, while Hayden insisted everyone start calling him “Darth,” then went off to slaughter children. Shame to see they haven't quite patched things up. Also shame to see neither has taken an acting class since, as while the concept of a teleporting bank robber fighting a quasi-religious assassin seems like popcorn-munching heaven, both actors' performances are more wooden than a spruce. That isn't to say the film doesn't have its moments. The teleportation conceit is is utilized impressively, with action scenes and conversations leaping from Cairo to London to New York to Rome to Tokyo to Dubai and a dozen points in between with such regularity it almost becomes mundane. I would have hated to be working continuity on the film! And while the acting across the leads is pure B-movie fare, it still remains sufficiently amusing. I guess what I'm saying is it'll kill ninety minutes, but you'll have a hard time remembering what you saw.

5 out of 10.

The Thin Red Line (1998)

Terrance Malick isn't known for making bad movies, which is just one of the reasons why The Thin Red Line is so surprising. This intensely introspective World War II drama isn't really about war at all, but about the internal dialogue and mid-traumatic stress disorders folks get while in the thick of a firefight. The problem is it's so laboriously paced and thoughtfully meandering that most of the film is taken up by copious amounts of the beautifully shot scenery. Still, it's got a ridiculously great cast, which includes at least a half-dozen household names (George Clooney, Nick Nolte and Sean Penn, for example), and a good ten other folks that any film geek could easily recognize (such as John C. Reilly, Thomas Jane, and Adrien Brody), almost all cast as mere extras or single-line, single-scene characters. That such a huge amount of talent and money was used on a film that is at least an hour too long by a director who many consider one of the eccentric greats is such a shame. While I give some credit to the gorgeous scenery, and even a fantastic performance by Nolte, the majority of the movie seems to just drag on and on and on. If you're wanting a thinking man's war film, go ahead and slop another point onto my score. Otherwise, there are far better ways to look inside a soldier's head than this, both figuratively and literally.

5 out of 10.

The Invisible (2007)

Needlessly tragic and scripted with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, there are a lot of reasons to dislike this movie, but enough good things going on to keep you from turning it off completely. If nothing else, this trippy tale of a kid's struggle to solve his own murder is at least original in both concept and execution, but for the most part it just gets used as a venue to vent gigantic gobs of teen angst. You've got your standard issue absentee parents, faux friends with confused alliances, and a soundtrack piled high with “no one understands me” alterna-rock. And all the voyeuristic wanderings where we see everyone's reaction to our protagonist's death makes it come off like a charmless retelling of It's A Wonderful Life. Still, the story is complex enough to not be dull and even includes an unexpected twist or two, and the scenery is wonderful in a wet and cloudy sort of way. One's enjoyment here probably depends on how sturdy your gag reflex is for typical adolescent melancholy. Neat story idea aside, what's here isn't much of anything special, but not particularly bad either.

5 out of 10.

The Golden Compass (2007)

Swing and a miss! When New Line Cinema bet the house on Peter Jackson's interpretation of Lord of the Rings, the result was an unquestioned masterstroke. Here, New Line is at it again with a less beloved, far more complicated tale of alternate universes and the churches that try to control them. The result is a mish-mash of uneven film making, incomplete exposition, and confusing ideals. Sure, the effects are spectacular, and newcomer Dakota Blue Richards has more acting chops than most Oscar winners (and she's 13 and this is only her first movie!), but it's tough to love the good in the movie when you can't understand what's going on. The concepts that run the fiction here are labyrinthine and far-reaching, but they're rarely given a good moment or two to properly sink in, and since the entire story is built on these imaginative ideas a lot of the drama suffers. It really is a shame because there is a good story being maimed here. If the movie had been given enough wiggle room to set the world and the story properly, New Line's gamble might have paid off. As it stands, for every triumph the film has, there are sparks of confusion and frustration to match.

5 out of 10.

Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters (on DVD!) (2007)

If you've ever seen the Aqua Teen Hunger Force television show on [adult swim], then there's really no reason for you to read this review. You will already know what it's like and whether or not it's your cup of tea. For the uninitiated, ATHF is a quasi-sitcom about a box of fries, a milkshake, and a lump of beef living together and fighting off leprechauns, dragons, aliens, sentient mold, demons, cursed club sandwiches, robots, their loathsome neighbor Carl, and each other. Weird doesn't begin to describe it. Neither does coherent, but that's one of its charms. It's foulmouthed, nonsensical and deeply niche stuff, but if you're tuned to the kind of oddities it offers it can be quite funny. The film pretty much follows suit, offering up ninety minutes straight of non-sequitur humor and the series' signature heroes and villains. While it goes a long way toward resolving some of the stranger questions viewers probably posed with regards to the show itself, the movie is so full of in-jokes to the series that most first-timers and even casual fans will likely be lost. Similarly, the breakneck pace of the program is lost with the expanded time frame, leading to long segments where little of anything worthwhile occurs. Aqua Teen is clearly aimed at the die hard fans of the series and while there is certainly the chance that newcomers will get a good chuckle out of its unique brand of silliness, this film never aspires to be anything more than what's been on TV for years.

5 out of 10.

Ultraviolet (2006)

Vapid, ridiculous, self-important, and nearly indecipherable, Ultraviolet still packs enough visual punch and audacity to earn begrudging respect. Director Kurt Wimmer's follow-up to 2002's generally excellent Equilibrium serves as a cogent example of Style over Substance. When the action is piling on hot and heavy the film is at its peak but the moment the bullets stop flying you find yourself checking your watch and hoping the next poorly accented “thespian” walking around the corner is hiding a gun behind his back. The good news is they often are, the bad is that it's not nearly often enough. When the body count is rising there are an astonishing amount of things happening on screen, most of them further extensions of Wimmer's semi-brilliant “Gun Kata” martial art invention from Equilibrium, all wrapped around a color palette that pushes straight past nauseating into downright experimental. The film doesn't involve your brain in any way that matters, and when the loud techno music and gunfire lullaby stop the film is just plain awful, but when the film kicks into fight mode there's enough visual flair to warrant a watch.

5 out of 10.

We Own the Night (2007)

Chiefly underwhelming is the descriptor that I would donate to this film's ad campaign. Here we've got a generic but inoffensive cop drama that plays by the numbers while trying its damnedest to ride the coattails movies like The Departed. You've got your generic drug deals, your generic mob connection, your generic undercover subplot, and your generic “it sucks to be a cop” melodrama. It's all here, and none of it is particularly good. That isn't to say it's a bad film. For instance the car “chase” scene is disproportionately good, and the overall production values and cinematography are excellent, but the movie as a whole just fails to impress.

5 out of 10.

Open Range (2003)

For what it's worth, this is probably the best looking western I can recall seeing. It's just too bad that the rest of the film doesn't match up to the cinematography. That isn't to say the film is bad, but it isn't particularly good either. In trying to paint his wild west, Kevin Costner has tried to make a John Ford film. It's got the classic slow pacing, the great big scenery, and Costner himself trying to act like John Wayne with post traumatic stress disorder. The problem winds up lying somewhere at the bottom of a giant pile of clichés. Everything that's supposed to be in a western is present and accounted for, but there's nothing here you haven't already seen in a better film. Meanwhile, the acting is best described as “fair” and the editing was probably done with a rusty butter knife. Short of that, it's got an okay script that can be at times compelling, but sadly never involving. It's really a shame that such great visuals didn't wind up in a better film.

5 out of 10.

Shooter (2007)

One word: overcooked. Shooter has all the markings of a decent action-thriller but despite its long range barrel, the film still manages to shoot itself in the foot. Stereotypes abound, from the morose protagonist, country-bumpkin lady person, too-green government agent, and villains lacking any sort of creativity or actual malice (to say nothing of character development). Still, the plot ducks and weaves in a feigned effort at being unpredictable, there's a pretty neat shoot-out toward the end, and overall the movie has some great camera work. If only it didn't crib so much from the Big Book of Standard Characters, there might have been some real meat here.

5 out of 10.

Rent (2005)

AIDS! Woo! Lets all sing about it! Look, I won't deny that the music is about as catchy as you can possibly cram into a musical, or that the cast isn't... uh... well cast. I just think it was a mistake to have Chris Columbus direct. His tendency to take deep, dark, complex themes and turn them into sterile, safe films goes against the very grain that this story deserves. This is a tale of slow painful deaths, poverty, and homelessness. Instead we get pretty-boy actors singing about how much it sucks to be gay/sick/a documentary filmmaker in a supposedly poverty-stricken part of New York City that, while home to an unusually high population of homeless folks, still somehow seems like a nice place to live. The whole film just feels disingenuous. Part of the reason that musical theatre is fun to watch is seeing real live people sing their hearts out and dance their feet off in front of you. The magic of film editing means that anyone can pull off even the most impossible dance steps, and computer tech can easily alter a failing voice to make sure it's exactly on pitch. I don't question that there's a great show in Rent, but I question the wisdom of putting to film something that worked so damn well on stage and shoehorning it onto the silver screen, especially under the direction of someone incapable of making a movie with any real dirt in it. The soundtrack remains nearly brilliant and the story still works, but whatever it is that makes this show a phenomenon never made it past the proscenium. Good to see Alan Tudyk's stunt double is getting work.

5 out of 10.

Apocalypto (2006)

I guess by number 10 they just slide right out (if you've seen it, you know what I mean). Well, for those of you wondering about Mel Gibson's post-zombie-carpenter oeuvre, you can rest assured that it has all the heart-ripping, face-chewing, and ball eating (yea, I went there) that you'd expect from Hollywood's most talented masochist. But is it any good? Honestly, it's a great big pile of 'meh'. While the scenery is nice (though somewhat ruined by first-gen HD cameras), the non-loincloth costumes impressive (jawbone pauldrons? I like!), and the language dead (and you thought Aramaic was hard to come by!), it just doesn't have a lot to offer. Sure there's a lot of violence, but the question I kept asking myself during the movie (and any time I start asking a lot of questions during a movie, there's a problem) is why? Why was this movie made? There doesn't seem to be any overall message I can discern. Sure the main character's struggle seems genuine, but just because you've got a solid reason to show two hours of jungle-running doesn't mean you can slack off on actual development. I have to say I was really disappointed in this film. I wasn't expecting Braveheart, but I still think if you're going go to the trouble of drudging up dead dialects, you could also put them around a thoroughly built movie. At least in Passion, we had some idea of who the main guy was, though even there it was no thanks to the movie itself.

5 out of 10.