12/23/07:  "Once again, let's ponder the eternal question:  why are sequels so rarely as good as the originals?  Specifically, why does National Treasure:  Book of Secrets, the follow-up to one of my favorite movies of 2004, fall short of its' predecessor?  Let's check my official list of Sequel Traps.

1)The cast's heart isn't in it this time:  Nope, led by the always-game Nicolas Cage, the heroes of the original are in fine form, and it's nice to spend another two hours in their company.

2)New filmmakers can't recapture the original's spirit:  New?  Nothing new here:  director John Turteltaub, screenwriters The Wibberleys, producer Jerry Bruckheimer, composer Trevor Rabin and just about everyone with a speaking part but Sean Bean is right back where they started, and if anything they're a little TOO determined to make everything as globe-trottingly fun as possible.

3)A story that serves no purpose other than to allow more money to be made: DING DING DING DING!  We have a winner!"  MORE

3/23/08:  "Here's the thing:  99% of movies are telling a story that's been told before.  75% of movies are telling a story that's been told before A LOT.  Most of the time, the trick is to make it feel like that's not the case.  But there are some genres where the very hitting of specific, well-worn notes is an integral part of the experience, like watching a classical orchestra perform a beloved piece.  It's not about innovation, it's about doing what the audience wants to see and doing it well.  In that regard, Never Back Down, the umpteenth movie in which a wise mentor teaches an unpopular high school student to master a talent so he can outperform the school bully, is a smashing success.  Filled with high energy, game performances and bone-crunching action, it's also delivered with the slightest wink.  Yeah, writer Chris Hauty and director Jeff Wadlow know you've seen this all before, and they also know you paid good money to see it again.

Jake Tyler (Sean Faris) is a Troubled Teen.  After the Tragic Death of his Father (Steve Zurk), Jake Can't Stay Out of Trouble.  But he, his Mom Margot (Leslie Hope) and younger brother Charlie (Wyatt Smith) have a Chance at a Fresh Start when she moves them to Orlando so Charlie can pursue a tennis scholarship." MORE

2/28/09:  "It sure would be something to see a great movie every single week, or even a really good one.  But in lieu of that, particularly in the non-holiday seasons when the studios tend to unleash films that fall somewhere between “disaster” and “filler”, sometimes pleasantly OK will do.  New in Town, a modest romantic comedy that winks at easy-target contrasts between Big City and Small Town and warm weather and icebox states, aims no higher than the middle of cinematic achievement and doesn't even hit all of those marks.  But it's cute, fronted by an excellent couple in Renee Zellweger and Harry Connick Jr., and the kind of perfectly adequate entertainment that'll go down easy in its' real home as a TV staple for lazy, chilly Sunday afternoons.

Lucy Hill (Renee Zellweger) is a hard-driven executive at a Miami corporation looking to expand into a new kind of energy bar.  They've got a Minnesota factory that could be retrofitted to manufacture the bars (albeit with a smaller workforce), and Lucy is assigned to take over the plant, supervise the retrofit and decide who stays and who goes.  When she arrives, she's horrified by two things:  arctic cold and townspeople who seem to be auditioning for a road show production of Fargo." MORE

4/29/07:  "Poor Phillip K. Dick.  I've never read any of the famous sci-fi writer's mind-bending stories, and I suspect the same is true for many moviegoers to whom he's nonetheless become a brand name.  Some very good movies (Blade Runner, A Scanner Darkly, even the underrated Paycheck) have been made from his works, but they've just as often been used as clotheslines upon which to hang poorly thought-out sci-fi idiocy.  This has never been more true than in the case of Next, a movie that takes Dick's novel The Golden Man as an excuse to ask the question “What would you do if you could see two minutes into the future?”  The answer provided by screenwriters Gary Goldman, Jonathan Hensleigh and Paul Bernbaum:  pick up Jessica Biel and then... uh, what was the question?

Cris Johnson (Nicolas Cage) is a Las Vegas magician whose cheesy lounge act is a cover for real powers:  born with the ability to see two minutes into the future, he knows what number you're thinking of because he can see what would happen if he just asked you."  MORE

1/7/07:  "Children of the 80's such as myself will recall the heyday of Amblin Entertainment, Steven Spielberg's hit factory that churned out a couple dozen hit movies that followed the formula he's hit on in E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial:  crowd-pleasing sci-fi fantasies the whole family could genuinely enjoy.  The Back to the Future trilogy, the Gremlins movies, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? and The Goonies helped to define what escapist moviegoing meant to our generation, and while my tastes have matured as I've grown into my 30's, part of me still misses the simple pleasures of those innocent adventures.  And that's probably why I absolutely loved Shawn Levy's Night at the Museum.

Larry Daley (Ben Stiller) has failed at everything he's ever tried.  The would-be inventor/entrepreneur behind “The Snapper” (it turns the lights on and off when you snap... if only everyone could snap) finds himself at the end of his rope, facing yet another eviction and threatened by his ex (Kim Raver) with losing visitation rights for his son Nick (Jake Cherry) if he doesn't find a real job.  So, he takes the only thing he can get, as a Night Watchman at the local Natural History Museum."  MORE

5/23/09:  "Hollywood love sequels for two big reasons.  The first is that if you loved the original, they don't need to do much to convince you to pay to see a follow-up.  The other is that even once you're there, you're far more likely to enjoy an otherwise flawed movie if it takes you back to your fond memories of a previous adventure of the same characters.  I loved the 2006 Ben Stiller hit Night at the Museum to pieces and will defend it against all criticism:  it's a rock-solid action comedy for the whole family bursting at the seams with imagination and creativity.  Night at the Museum:  Battle of the Smithsonian is more of a big ol' sandbox in which returning director Shawn Levy and writers Robert Ben Garant and Thomas Lennon riff on how cool it would be if its' central conceit was transplanted to the world's biggest museum.  The result is lots of fun on a moment-by-moment basis, but logic and structural integrity are mostly left in the plastic tray by the metal detector.  Don't make this your first night at the Museum, but if you liked the original, odds are you'll have a great time once again at this high-spirited reprise.

Everything's going right for Larry Daley (Ben Stiller):  his inventions have taken off, making him the owner of his own successful company complete with late-night infomercials with George Foreman."  MORE

4/25/08:  "One of the first things you learn when studying film is that all movie stories have three acts.  Act 1 (The Inciting Incident) and Act 3 (The Climax) are bridged by Act 2, the meat of the movie, where the goals of the characters meet one setback after another as they struggle toward what either will or will not go their way in Act 3.  So odd, then, to see a movie with only two acts:  in Nim's Island, problems emerge, characters form plans to deal with those problems, and successfully enact those plans.  Sure, they're bumpy roads they go down, but there are no twists, no reversals, nothing but a slow and steady march to a place we know we're going very early on.  This bright, sunny kids' movie is pleasant enough and sports a couple of game, energetic performances.  But in the end, as Simon Cowell once said, it's like ordering a hamburger and only getting the bun.

Jack Rusoe (Gerard Butler) is a scientist who lives on a deserted volcanic island with his daughter Nim (Abigail Breslin).  He writes articles for National Geographic, but still manages to keep the island's location a secret.  Nim's friends are the local, highly anthropomorphic animals and the books she reads.  Her favorites are the Alex Rover novels, concerning a globe-trotting adventurer not unlike Indiana Jones."  MORE

9/26/09:  "A cold, hard lesson for Hollywood, circa 2009:  not everything was meant to be a feature film.  I think we can all agree that Viewmasters and Slinkies and the video game Asteroids weren't meant for those distinctions, although at least two of those are on the way (I honestly can't remember if the Slinky got a movie deal or someone was just joking about that).  And while some graphic novels, old TV shows and “character toys” have successfully made the transition to feature-length storytelling, many more have crashed and burned.  Yet another source of ready-made protomovies favored by studio brass who just hate having to read a screenplay and imagine it as a movie is the expansion of short films.  Since May, we've seen Battle for Terra and District 9 essentially tack whole other movies onto the end of the tales told by their shorter counterparts, and now Focus Features backed by a big-name crew of producers including Tim Burton and Timur Bekmambtov gives us an 80-minute version of Shane Acker's Oscar-nominated 2005 animated short 9.  The 11-minute version is a bizarre, visually unique adventure that tells you virtually nothing about why a living rag doll with the number 9 on his back is battling a soul-sucking monster made of pieces of skeletons and found objects amidst a landscape of apocalyptic ruin.  So it seems easy enough to just stuff in backstory like so many rags and let it roll, but the feature-length 9 finds itself as empty and familiar in its' storytelling as its' visuals are inventive."  MORE

1/3/10:  "You may gasp and/or look down upon me with derision if you desire, but I must confess that not only have I never seen 8 ½, but I have never seen any of Federico Fellini's films (in answer to your question, I call myself a film critic because I have the $7.00 a month for the web space and the time to do the writing, but that's beside the point...).  Perhaps if I had, I'd have a better appreciation of Rob Marshall's Nine, the film version of the Broadway musical version of Fellini's best-regarded film.  Or perhaps not.  Because 8 ½ couldn't possibly rank as IMDB's 165th greatest movie of all time if it in any way resembled Marshall's thudding, self-involved and draggy tale of a fictional filmmaker's mid-life crisis.  Luckily, the project has attracted a constellation of Hollywood stars who put the work in to become quality singers, because Nine's saving grace (as in “saved from being unbearable”) is that its' hard-working cast sings their hearts out leading to scene after scene where I marveled at the previously unknown vocal talent of the star singing whatever uninspired or downright dreadful song was being performed at the moment.  Daniel Day-Lewis leads a series of game performances as cardboard characters, resulting in a movie that, like the one its protagonist is planning to direct, resembles a first-rate production in every way except that it has no script."  MORE

11/29/09:  "They travel under cover of darkness, melting in and out of the shadows in their all-black costumes that break only for the tiniest opening to reveal their fearsome eyes.  The masters of a million deadly arts, they could kill you with anything from a thumb tack to one of their arsenal of lethal weapons, the coolest, et, deadliest of which is a circle of five razor-sharp blades known as a throwing star.  They are ninjas, and the very mention of their name set the heart of every self-respecting 10-year-old aquiver back in the early 80's, when I knew more 10-year-olds than I do today.  And it is for the grown-up, cinematic carnage-hardened versions of those little nunchuck-swinging boys that director James McTeigue and his long-time collaborators the Wachowski Bros. and Joel Silver have created Ninja Assassin, a brutally cheerful large-scale B-movie that packs all the ninja action you could possibly ask for.  Those pining for a more realistic depiction of the ninjutsu will likely be left out in the cold, but if you just wanna watch ninjas wield superhuman powers and kill hundreds of people without breaking a sweat while dodging dozens of throwing stars simultaneously... have I got a movie for you!"  MORE

12/6/08:  "I'm no actor (although I was highly acclaimed as Teddy Brewster in our high school production of Arsenic & Old Lace), but I assume most would rather play a good scene in a bad movie than a be an unmemorable cog in a good one.  At least that's how I assume many a Film Festival Special like Nobel Son is able to assemble a cast deep with familiar faces in the service of a truly wobbly story.  Son, a comic thriller about kidnapping, cannibalism and the Nobel Prize, gives its' talented actors loads of cool stuff to do.  That it often contradicts what the other actors are coolly doing or seems pointless in retrospect presumably mattered not to them while they were enjoying a week or two on the set plying their thespian trade.  And all that cool business does keep Nobel Son interesting through a couple of storytelling false starts until it settles into a cold blooded climax designed to appeal to people you don't want to mess with.

Eli Michaelson (Alan Rickman) is a movie college professor, so it comes as no surprise that he's a pompous ass.  He's also a genius, and a Nobel Prize win for a 30 year-old physics discovery surprises no one, least of all Eli." MORE

11/25/07:  "I've often said on this site that I'd always rather be one of those people that thinks a movie is awesome than the one that thinks it sucks.  I know some people take joy in being the one folding their arms and saying “You lemmings can have your Titanic, but I happen to know it is nothing but syrupy dreck”.  But in my case, nothing pisses me off more than watching the rest of the country hold its' “This Movie Rocks!” parade while I must stay home and ruminate on what it is they're smoking.  Alas... No Country For Old Men, Joel & Ethan Coen's return to their blood-drenched ironic noir origins, has been steadily building a tsunami of hype ever since its' premiere at Cannes this past May, allegedly falling somewhere between the Best Coen Brothers Movie Ever and the Best Movie of Any Kind Ever.  But I sit here hours after seeing it, able to admire the quality of its' performances, some great scenes, really nifty dialog and thrilling, suspenseful direction, but forced to admit that the movie as a whole simply left me cold.

Retired welder Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is out hunting near his Texas trailer park home one day when he comes upon a strange scene:  five vehicles parked in the middle of the desert surrounded by dead bodies."  MORE

8/5/07:  "It's not all that uncommon to see a movie at war with itself:  is it a drama or a comedy, a crowd-pleaser or an artistic statement?  Sometimes it's because of a filmmaker with a conflicted vision, but more often the committee nature of the movie business is to blame.  So many constituencies to please:  stars, directors, producers, studio executives, financiers, and test audiences, just to name a few.  But it's rare to see a movie as unable to choose between two diametrically opposed visions of itself as the Catherine Zeta Jones vehicle No Reservations.  In its' heart, it's a grim drama about an emotionally stunted chef forced to care for the young daughter of her late sister.  Except that every 10 minutes or so, somebody jabs it in the ribs with a cattle prod and shouts “You're a comedy!!!!” at which time a wacky musical montage breaks out or Aaron Eckhart starts singing.  The resulting mess is too sad to work as a comedy, not serious enough to work as a drama, and too unfocused to work at all.

Kate (Catherine Zeta Jones) is “one of New York's top chefs”."  MORE

2/11/07:  "Human beings need certain things to physically survive:  food, water, clothing and shelter.  But our highly evolved brains require something else as well: connection.  We seek it through friends, lovers, pets, soap opera characters and, in certain desperate situations, soccer balls.  Without it, we will surely go mad.  Mad like the aptly named Barbara Covett (Judi Dench), who, in the extraordinary new film Notes on a Scandal, turns her attention to a new co-worker in her desperate, endless quest to... connect.

Both Barbara and newly hired Sheba Hart (Cate Blanchett) are teachers at a British high school.  Embittered Barbara has retreated into a position of being feared enough to babysit her students without incident.  While the other teachers turn in bound, book-length reports on their plans for their classes in the new year, hers consists of two sentences hand-written on a piece of paper.  Sheba has spent a decade caring, along with her much-older husband Richard (Bill Nighy), for their Downs Syndrome-afflicted son and is now trying to re-enter the workforce. "  MORE

2/28/07:  "Making connections:  it's what our brains do.  Touch the stove, get burned, don't touch the stove again.  Others work hard, others get promoted, I'll work hard so I can get promoted.  Jane and Tom both know me, Jane and Tom are talking, Jane and Tom are talking about me.  Bob doesn't like me, Bob owns a gun, Bob is trying to kill me.  A simple definition of madness is when the brain can't stop making connections, particularly when it can't stop connecting things that don't really connect.  Like the connections that start occurring to Walter Sparrow (Jim Carrey), a simple dogcatcher who has the misfortune to read a book called "The Number 23".

It's February 3, Walter's birthday, and his wife Agatha (Virginia Madsen) has bought him an interesting-sounding detective novel about “One man's descent into madness”.  There's a warning on the first page that anyone recognizing people or incidents inside should read no further, but even when Walter notices odd similarities between himself and the hero, Fingerling (Carrey again), he can't put it down."  MORE