OK, has anyone ever seen Brick? If you have, then you know why I love this kid Joseph Gordon Levitt. “That skinny kid in 3rd Rock From the Sun?” you ask. Why yes. That one. So, the preview for this one looked cool and I was bored, so I went to catch a matinee. I was the only one there except for one old dude who sat creepily right behind me and has inspired me to purchase pepper spray and a taser.

Anyway, about the movie. JGL plays Chris Pratt, a high school hockey star that is involved in a serious car accident which leaves him brain damaged and unable to handle complex mental tasks. He drives 90 minutes one way to work as a janitor in a bank. One night while drinking “near beer” in a local bar, a “friend of his sister’s” from high school sits down and starts to chat. They become friends, Chris starts to think he’s cool and suddenly he’s helping them finalize a plan to rob his bank.

You know, this movie isn’t deep, but it’s a fun little bank robber flick. I really enjoyed it and would recommend it to others. You’ll probably have to catch it on DVD cause it should be on its way out as we speak. But it’s definitely worth catching just to see Jeff Daniels play Chris’s blinded-by-meth-fumes-as-a-young-man roommate, Lew. He gives us such jewels as a diner he wants to name Lew’s Your Lunch. How can you possibly resist?

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I don’t really have much to say about this movie. So, really, if you’ve seen the preview you should be good.

Sandra Bullock plays Linda, the mother of two children, who finds out on Thursday her husband has died in a terrible car crash on Wednesday. When she goes to sleep, she wakes up on Monday. A day she has already lived through and one on which her husband is still alive. It goes like that. Thursday, Monday, Saturday, Tuesday, Friday, Sunday and finally Wednesday. Sounds confusing, but it is actually easy to follow. Which made it easy for me to find the flaws. One in particular that drove me crazy which I won’t spoil.

Anyway, this movie could have used a little more explanation. It lacked something that would have made it so much better than it was. I left the movie not caring one way or the other how it all turned out because I never became emotionally invested in the characters.

The movie is fine, but if you’re paying full price, you might want to see something else. This is a DVD rental if I have ever seen one. I don’t even have a funny quip about it.

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I really loved this movie. I wasn’t sure what to expect, as the only other movie in which I’ve seen Adam Sandler play a serious role was a very strange one, and I was pleasantly surprised. The biggest surprise was how funny it was. When you read the description you wouldn’t imagine that you would be able to laugh.

Adam Sandler is Charlie, a former dentist, whose wife and children were on one the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center. This tragedy caused him to completely withdraw from life and block out all memory of his family. One day his old high school roommate Allen, played by Don Cheadle, runs into him on the street and they rekindle their friendship. Allen was looking for something to break up the monotony of his days and instead of a fun filled friendship, he discovers that Charlie is a very damaged man that he must help.

I know it is cliche, but this movie made me laugh and cry. It makes you long for those moments when there was nothing else but you and your best friend and you were having the time of your life. And it makes you long for the times when your best friend was there for you, even when it was hard on them as well.

I think this movie is worth the time. Plus it has lots of good music all the way through, in case your significant other is complaining about sitting through a chick flick. Also look for Jada Pinkett Smith, Liv Tyler, Donald Sutherland and BJ Novak (from The Office!).

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Disturbia is your run of the mill teen thriller. You’ve seen it before. But you haven’t seen it with Shia Lebeouf (he is just so cute). He plays Kale, a teenager placed under house arrest after he assaults a teacher who pressed his emotional buttons.

It’s a little bit of Rear Window mixed with Fright Night without the vampires. Kale gets bored and starts watching the neighborhood to pass the time. He sees his hot new neighbor move in and quickly learns her schedule. Then he sees his other neighbor (David Morse) with the blue Mustang attack someone. And off we go.

Like I said, it’s not an original movie, but the characters are so likeable that I couldn’t help myself. I went along with the paranoia and the theories and in the end I was a little surprised at how easily drawn in I was.

Plus, I love love love the tag line. Every killer lives next door to someone. Ain’t that the truth?

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I know this is becoming a little predictable, but I love Ryan Gosling. Have you seen Murder by Numbers? In the scene when he licks Sandra Bullock on the cheek, it was completely spontaneous and perfect for the character and the moment. So, we have Ryan Gosling as Willy, an assistant district attorney, and Anthony Hopkins as a man that murders his wife. With these two, how could it go wrong?

With a weak and uninventive script. Hopkins plays Ted Crawford and Ted decides to shoot his wife in the head. Then he confesses to shooting her. And then he is acquitted. Willy becomes obsessed with figuring it out, to the detriment of his new cushy corporate law job. There are twists, but you see them coming a mile away.

Wait for video. It is still worth watching at home to hear the banter between the lawyer and the killer, which is surprisingly funny in a movie that is supposed to be tense and riveting. I’m beginning to think there truly is a Curse of the Oscar Nomination.

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I’m not going to waste time on this one. This movie was awful. I was bored and the dialogue was horrible and Halle Berry was terrible (remember that Curse I’ve mentioned before?). Bruce Willis was great (actually the best thing) and Giovanni Ribisi was very creepy.

I knew most of the twists before they happened and the final twist is something that is not possible to see coming. After the reveal, you can look back over the movie and find absolutely no clues to lead you to that conclusion.

Do not waste your money.

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Hot Fuzz was fantastic. Brought to you by the makers of Shaun of the Dead, I go into this realizing that this movie will not be everyone’s cup of tea. I don’t care. You should all go see it.

Nicholas Angel, played by Simon Pegg, is the best officer in “the service” (we can’t say force b/c it’s too masculine), and because he is making his fellow officers look bad he is transferred to a tiny English village with no crime. There he meets fellow officer Danny Butterman, played by Nick Frost (Ed in Shaun), and proceeds to answer question after question about Angel’s experiences in the cop world versus those in the movies (mainly Point Break and Bad Boys II).

Hilarity ensues. Yes, most will say it is “stupid-funny”, but there were so many clever bits that it all balances out. So, is Angel losing his mind and seeing crimes that aren’t there? Is there a giant conspiracy afoot? It almost doesn’t matter. You just want to watch the characters interact in various situations. It’s brilliant. Go see it as soon as possible.

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Well, it arrived. And people flocked. Records were broken. Yeah. The whole crew returns to reprise their roles from the first two Spiderman installments and all I can figure is that no one really wanted to do it, so they made everyone’s part in it as small and painless as possible. This movie is two hours and forty-five minutes long. And almost nothing happened.

First of all, don’t go thinking it will be like the first two. The movie centers around Spiderman and Mary Jane. Lots of Spiderman. And his inability to listen to his girlfriend without talking about himself as a superhero. He is just really obnoxious. So when he ends up in the black-suit-alien thing his bad qualities magnify. Right into a campy/cheesy Saturday Night Fever walk down a New York City street. I saw some people look around for the exit.

However, there are still cool action scenes (mostly in the first 20 and last 30 minutes of the movie). Sandman was a very sympathetic bad guy with very little back story and Venom was totally awesome and I wish his involvement had been increased. And overall, the comic book cartoonish feel of it seems to be heightened, which does add an interesting twist. The first two, though of course full of unusual elements, still seemed to be grounded in reality. This one seemed to try to be more fun.

I’m kind of ambivalent about it. The first and second films have earned repeat viewings from me, but this one won’t. I’m really ok with just seeing it once, forever and ever. It comes down to the fact that they tried to do so much that you get very little. I wanted more of this story and these villains, and another installment will not provide that.

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Oh, this movie could have been awful. 28 Days Later, a little independant horror film that became a surprise hit, just begged for follow-up. What happened to the survivors? They went through so much. Well, this won’t tell you. As a matter of fact, I don’t think you need to see the first one at all to follow along with this one.

I really enjoyed this movie. Horror movie sequels, admit it, are hit or miss. Usually miss. But I was always fascinated by the original plot point that turned the island of Britian into a quarantined zone. They just let all the infected people die of starvation. Then in swoops the US Army to rebuild and repatriate the area. And guess what? No one knows anything about the disease that killed everyone. They have no cure or vaccine. So they bring in 15,000 citizens to live in a “safe zone” in London to go ahead and get everything started back up. And everything goes to hell. And the Army starts to shoot everyone.

It was fun and it was worthy of watching. I love the fact that it is a horror movie, but it isn’t. And it is a zombie movie, but it’s not. Even as a sequel, it is still more original than most of the other efforts that are supposed to scare us. You can feel the characters’ bad decisions in the pit of your stomach. Would it be overly indulgent to hope there will be a third installment of this wicked story? So be it.

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‘Tis the season for hyped up sequels to sequels. I had to convince myself to go see the 3rd installment of the pirate adventure after that convoluted, useless, Dead Man’s Chest.

All the players are back, including Geoffrey Rush (Barbosa) from the freewheeling, fun-loving original. Oh how I miss when Jack Sparrow was a new character and his mannerisms were a surprise. Johnny Depp oes his thing, Orlando Bloom glowers, and Keira Knightley simpers. This movie is looooong and I was wishing for an intermission.

My final verdict is that the movie is fun, and better than the second, as long as you have the patience to sit through 2 hours and 45 minutes of pure pirate movie. And fair warning, I found myself laughing the most at the bits with the monkey. Interpret that as you will.

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