When Rob Zombie brought us his remake of Halloween in 2007, it reeked of corporate greed. Whereas the original 1978 John Carpenter film was a true suspense film and a labor of love, Zombie's version was just a crude attempt to cash in on the famous name. Now we have Halloween II, which is not only a greedy movie (Zombie originally stated he had no plans to do a sequel, but changed his mind when the last movie made money.), but it's also a vile, ugly, and contemptible one.

There's no reason for anyone to see this movie. There's also no real way to defend it. There's no style, no detectable plot, and no fully developed ideas. It's a murky, gloomy, depressing experience. I have nothing against movies that are dark. They can be very enjoyable as long as the filmmaker is trying to make a point or has a vision. If this movie does have a vision, it seems to want to be an endurance test. There were many times when I wanted to bolt for the theater door and let the outside world wash the film's images from my mind. But, I toughed it out, hoping that a scene would come along that would explain why this movie needed to be made. It never came. All we get are a lot of images of depression and brutality until the end credits come. Anyone who pays to see this movie at a theater that is also showing The Hurt Locker (a film with more suspense than anything this movie musters) gets what they deserve.

Before I start talking about this movie and why you should not see it, let's clear the air - The movie is not a remake of 1981's Halloween II. The opening 20 minutes or so are set in and around a hospital, which seem to be an homage to that film, but it all turns out to be an elaborate dream sequence. The returning heroine, Laurie Strode (Scout Taylor-Compton), has gone from a happy and bright teen in the first movie, to a morose little thing who dresses in black, has a lot of nightmares about Michael Myers, and screams a lot. She's living with two survivors from the original movie - Annie (Danielle Harris), and Annie's father, the Sheriff (Brad Dourif). All three of them sit around, looking glum, as if Michael is on their minds a lot. It would be hard for him not to be. The one year anniversary of his rampage the previous Halloween is coming up, and Michael's former therapist, Dr. Sam Loomis (Malcolm McDowell), is all over television, promoting a trashy new book he's written about his former patient and the murders. McDowell's presence in this film is strange indeed, as his scenes often seem to belong in a different movie altogether. The strangest scene is when he goes on a talk show where "Weird Al" Yankovic is the co-host. I expect a lot of things in a Halloween movie. Weird Al is not one of them.

Meanwhile, Michael Myers himself (Tyler Mane) survived the last movie, and has been living as a hobo the past year. He begins to have visions of his dead mother (Sherie Moon Zombie) on a white horse, along with visions of himself as a child (Chase Wright Vanek), who tell him it's time to track Laurie down again. How does he know where she lives now? Never mind, I guess. A better question is what was Zombie thinking when he included so many of these bizarre dream sequences and visions that Michael keeps on having? They make less sense as the movie goes on, and eventually turn into an excuse for the director to throw a lot of random images and strange special effects up on the screen. When Michael's not having cryptic visits from ghost mom, he murders anyone unfortunate enough to get in his way. These murder scenes are murky, brutal, and vile. They often come across as grisly images that make little sense, while screams and pitiful cries ring out on the soundtrack. There is a strong undercurrent of hopelessness throughout the entire movie. This can be a powerful thing in the right hands, but this movie uses it like a gimmick. It takes a morbid delight in its own pain and suffering. This is entertainment for masochists.

For those of you who never bothered to watch the last movie, this one features no exposition or explanation about the characters or how they relate to each other. They're simply up there on the screen to suffer until Myers comes along and stabs them mercilessly. It doesn't tell a story. It wallows in its own misery, gives us a couple killings, then sends us home. When you consider how much a great horror movie can do, Halloween II seems like even more of a cheat. Horror can be exhilarating, funny, sad, exciting, and even oddly touching sometimes. This movie does not accomplish any of this in its 100 minutes. It doesn't create a single emotion except contempt for the filmmakers. Whatever a theater is charging for such an experience, it's too much. As if all that's not bad enough, the film's ending leaves a sour taste in our mouths. It saves the final insult for right before it lets us get back to our lives.
I advise anyone who is considering watching this movie to think twice. There are a lot of good movies out there right now - Movies that can do so much more than this does. Don't let it steal your precious time and attention. If you want to be scared, there are much better alternatives out there. This is one of the absolute worst films of 2009.

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You'd think since The Final Destination is the fourth film in the long-running horror franchise, the filmmakers would try to shake things up a little. You would be wrong. Aside from adding some 3D effects (which are only available in select theaters), director David R Ellis and screenwriter Eric Bress (both of whom worked on Final Destination 2) seem to be going through the motions. It follows the exact same plot as the previous movies, the gore scenes (the obvious selling point of the series) are frequently flat and uninspired, and not even the cast seem that involved. There are a lot of horror movies that fail to deliver any thrills, but this is the first in a while that also made me feel completely indifferent as well.

If you've seen any of the earlier films, you know the drill by now. A group of kids narrowly escape death, thanks to a psychic vision one of the kids has right before a terrible accident that should have taken their lives occurs. This time, the accident occurs during a car race, and the kid with the vision is bland nice guy Nick (played by bland and wooden newcomer Bobby Campo). His vision not only saves the life of him and the friends he was with, but also a few other bystanders. (Although, a woman who initially escapes from the carnage does get decapitated by a flying tire when she thinks she's safe.) The kids think they're safe, but we know better. We know that a mysterious invisible force (presumably Death itself) is going to start hunting the survivors down one-by-one, and killing them in the order that they were supposed to die the day of the accident. We know this, because it's the same thing that happened to the kids in Final Destination 1-3. Only now, things have been dumbed down considerably.

The kids at the center of the film don't go to school, don't have parents, jobs, or friends outside of each other. They've also been given the shallowest of personalities. Nick's the nice guy who's haunted by visions (which are represented by lame CG sequences), Lori (Shantel VanSanten) is his girlfriend, Hunt (Nick Zano) is the womanizing jerk of the group, and Janet (Haley Webb) is Lori's friend. We know that they exist to be killed in over the top ways, but couldn't the movie have given them something to do before their big scene? The only character who raises our interest is a security guard named George (Mykelti Williamson), who survives the accident thanks to Nick, and begins to wonder if maybe he should have died, as he feels deep guilt for a past drunk driving incident that claimed the life of his wife and child. His character arc could have brought some meaning to the story, but the movie has to speed right along and get to a scene where a character is crushed to death by a bathtub falling through the roof of his hospital room. (Shortly after this happens, George himself is hit by a semi truck.)

Other deaths include a racist redneck being dragged by his tow truck and catching on fire, a woman getting a rock shot through her skull by a lawnmower, the womanizing jerk character getting his guts sucked out of him by a pool drain, and even an explosion at a movie theater that personally brought back memories of the climax to last weekend's Inglourious Basterds. You would think that these sequences would at least be interesting, but they are frequently clumsily shot and filled with bad CG blood effects. The movie itself is barely 80 minutes long (including credits), so these unimpressive sequences are pushed into the foreground, since there's no time for characters or real dialogue. This is what turns The Final Destination into a total waste of time, especially if you end up paying almost $17 to watch the thing in 3D, as if having the blood fly off the screen will somehow make it a better movie. Whether the movie is in 2D or 3D, you still get some of the stiffest and lamest acting to hit a mainstream movie this year.
This is presumably the last film in the series, but it already seems to be on the way for a big opening weekend thanks to the 3D gimmick, so expect a fifth go-around sometime soon. Might I make a suggestion for the next movie? Have it be about Death invades the set of a Final Destination movie, starts killing off the actors, and the filmmakers try to hire him, because he's better at it than the stuff they come up with.

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Ang Lee is a filmmaker with many great films to his credit, including The Ice Storm and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. His latest, Taking Woodstock, probably won't be joining the list of his greats anytime soon, but there's nothing wrong with that. This is a small and slight movie, but it has a lot of charm, a few laughs, and a lot of likable characters. Even when the movie seemed to be more than a little aimless at times, there's a certain sweet-natured approach that Lee and screenwriter James Schamus bring.

Rather than focus on the actual Woodstock concert itself, the movie instead acts as a behind the scenes look as to how it all came together. I've heard a lot of people complain about the fact that the movie deliberately keeps the concert in the background the entire time. For those people, I recommend Michael Wadleigh's 1970 film documentary of the event. Ang Lee's movie is centered on Elliot Teichberg (Demetri Martin), the one who made it all happen. He's a young man helping his parents Sonia (Imelda Staunton) and Jake (Henry Goodman) manage a run down motel that's on the brink of closure. We can see why business is not good. The pool is full of bleach instead of chlorine, and the penny pinching mother insists on rarely changing the sheets and charging an extra dollar for pillows on the beds. The bank is threatening to foreclose, and it's probably going to be their last summer in business. Elliot sees an opportunity to make a lot of money when he notices in the local newspaper that a youth music festival set for Wallkill has been canceled. Making a few phone calls, he brings the festival to his small town of White Lake, New York, and offers his motel as a base of operations and a place for the concert organizers to stay.

Taking Woodstock is very direct and low key. There's no real crisis motivating the plot. Sure, some of the locals are not exactly happy with the fact that thousands of Hippies are descending upon their quiet town, but it doesn't try to play up the melodrama. We see him strike a deal with local dairy farmer Max Yasgur (Eugene Levy) to hold the concert on his land. We also get to see how the event grows larger than he ever dreamed. Lee does a great job depicting the time period and the turn out, especially during a scene where Elliot takes a ride on a police officer's bike down the road, which is filled with people walking to the concert that is miles away. This sequence looks very complex, and must have been hard to set up, as there's literally thousands of extras on screen. We may not get to see the actual concert itself, but we do get to see a lot of the impact it had on the culture at the time. The movie gets a lot of the details right and feels authentic. There are even some sequences that seem like actual footage of the event, with the actors spliced in. (I couldn't tell if this was the technique they used, or if it was just a very believable recreation.)

We never really get a sense of things outside of Elliot's world, because the movie seldom leaves the motel grounds. Fortunately, there are some very memorable supporting characters that make it worth while. Staunton and Goodman get a lot of laughs as his traditional parents, who are at first not sure what to make of the strangers coming to their motel, but eventually get into the spirit of things. Liev Schreiber is surprisingly convincing as Vilma, an ex-Marine turned transvestite who acts as security at the motel when local teens start writing hate messages on the wall of the motel. The key to Schreiber's success is that his performance is played straight, and he lets the laughs come from his dialogue and his character, not from the clothes he's wearing. Emile Hirsch is also very good as Billy, a Vietnam vet who suffers from flashbacks. While the performance is faultless, the character never comes across as strong as it should. I suspect many of his scenes were left on the cutting room floor.

Oddly enough, it is Demetri Martin as Elliot who drags things down just a little. It's not that he's bad, he's just kind of a boring lead, and doesn't grab our attention as much as the other characters do. He's likable enough, but the movie doesn't give him enough to do. He acts as an observer for most of the movie. When he does take center stage, such as in a lengthy sequence where he has an acid trip, it brings the pace down to a near crawl. There are also some scenes that hint at sexual discovery for him, but these moments don't come across quite as strong as they should. It lends the film a strangely uneven tone that the movie never escapes from. Parts of it are very funny and lively, while other moments seem to be lacking life. At least the movie remains likable throughout, and that's why I'm recommending it.
For all of its faults, Taking Woodstock is an interesting little movie. It also manages to give us a side of a famous story that we haven't heard. That's the one thing audiences should keep in mind before walking into the theater. Those expecting a lot of actors posing as famous music faces of the era will be disappointed. It may not work all the time, but it worked enough for me.

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It's not supposed to be this way. The strongest contender for the best film of 2009 is not supposed to come out during the dog days of summer. And yet, here it is. Am I getting ahead of myself, with four months left in the year? Maybe so, but I can't help it. The Hurt Locker has everything you could want in a movie. It's compelling and dramatic, it's frightening and intense, it's full of wisdom and honesty, and it's also exciting as hell. This is a sensational movie.

Hollywood's attempts to bring the current Iraq War to the screen have been met mainly with indifference by either critics or audiences. The Hurt Locker quite brilliantly sidesteps the biggest problem that hindered movies like Lions for Lambs, The Kingdom, and Stop-Loss. The problem? A lot of those movies carried an obvious political agenda. The solution that screenwriter Mark Boal (who worked on an earlier Iraq-themed film, In the Valley of Elah) comes up with? He completely dodges all personal beliefs and hidden agendas, and just gives us the reality of the battlefield. The soldiers in this movie have a job to do on the battlefield, and they are here to do it. They are devoted to their duty, and that is it. It's an unflinching look into their lives. There is no real structured plot that leads us from point A to point B. The movie throws us into the middle of their tour of duty (they have 38 days left in their rotation we're informed early on, and a subtitle keeps track of how many days are left), and gives it to us straight. It's an intense slice of life that few of us ever get to see, and director Kathryn Bigelow (Point Break, Strange Days) creates a total sensory experience to the point that we find ourselves going through the same emotions as the characters up on the screen.

The focus on the film is on the EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) squad of the Bravo Company. They are called to dismantle bombs that are discovered on the streets, in cars, and in one particularly intense scene, attached to an innocent person. At the beginning of the film, the squad is made up of lead technician Sergeant Matt Thompson (Guy Pearce), Sergeant J.T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie), and Specialist Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty). It's clear they have a close bond, so we feel Sanborn and Eldridge's pain when Matt is killed in a failed attempt to dismantle a bomb. A new member joins the squad in his place, Staff Sergeant William James (Jeremy Renner). He's brash, cocky, and in the eyes of his fellow squad members, dangerous. This is nothing new in a war movie, but the way the screenplay handles their relationship is. James is not your usual cocky young recruit. He doesn't do what he does for glory. He does things his own way, but we never get a sense he's trying to show up his comrades. The movie shows how all three men handle the situation they're in differently. All three of them, and the way they react to the war feels natural, instead of like war cliches. We feel like we're listening to actual stories from the battlefield, and the movie never once goes for manipulation or bombastic showmanship.

The movie showcases the different missions that the men are sent on, as well as their private time back at the base. The mission scenes are done in an almost documentary fashion, and we feel the tension and fear that the men do. They are constantly being watched by locals, who view their efforts to dismantle the bomb from the street corners, house windows, and from the rooftops. The men are never sure who to trust, and neither are we. This is how the movie puts us into the middle of the action. There is no central villain figure lurking behind the scenes, planting bombs. We feel just as lost and confused in this strange foreign land as they do. When they return to the base, they're allowed to be themselves, and we can identify with them. Eldridge visits with a on-site therapist (Christian Camargo), and talks about his fears of dying in battle, thinking that it's almost inevitable. Sanborn wonders who outside of his family would miss him if something were to happen to him during his tour. And James feels torn between his job, and the wife and baby he has waiting for him back home. Once again, the movie does not take a wrong step here. The emotions are genuine, and avoid heavy-handed melodrama. We're not being manipulated to feel for them, we're listening to stories that genuinely feel heartfelt.

The film has a somewhat unstructured tone. There's no real overall plot to carry it. Sometimes, a single scene seems to almost be a self-contained short film. One of my favorite moments is when the team comes across another American squad, who is stranded in the middle of the desert. As James and his men attempt to help the other team, they are suddenly attacked by snipers. This leads to a slow-burning, dragged-out, but certainly not boring sequence where the two teams must work together to survive. It's a fantastic example of tight editing, precision pacing, and a genuine sense of dread and fear that the scene creates. Another fantastic sequence concerns a subplot, where James befriends a young local boy named Beckham (Christopher Sayegh). The ultimate fate of the child (which I will not reveal) is one of the most chilling sequences in recent memory, and when James comes across his "replacement" just a few scenes later, we share his disgust. The Hurt Locker contains more individual scenes of raw power than most movies contain in their entire running time.

The cast, in turn, deliver some rightfully knock out performances. In a rare movie, big name actors like Guy Pearce and Ralph Fiennes (who appears as the head of the stranded team) are placed in cameos, while relative unknowns (although some of them have been working in small roles for years) get the leads. These are explosive roles, and equally powerful performances. Renner, Mackie, and Geraghty are intense and real here. They don't seem like actors stepping into the boots of soldiers. We can see the exhaustion on their faces, and it's credible to believe that these men have spent the past year or so living through hell. What's amazing is how the performances and the movie itself keep us on edge the entire time. When the movie is over, we feel just as emotionally and physically drained as the characters must feel. I watch so many movies where I just don't feel anything. Watching a movie like this is not only rare, it's worth celebrating.
The Hurt Locker is indeed worth celebrating, and should definitely be seen as it is slowly brought into wider release. Summit Entertainment (best known for bringing us the disappointing teen vampire romance, Twilight, and its upcoming sequels) deserves admiration for bringing this small movie out to the masses. This is one of the best movies about war to come along in years, but you don't have to be a fan of the genre to enjoy it. To be honest, I knew very little about the movie, and wasn't expecting to be completely captivated. Those expectations were met and surpassed five minutes in.

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It's no secret that August is usually the month of summer when the studios dig through the bottom of the barrel on their release schedules, but to be honest, we've been pretty lucky so far this year. We got Funny People (Okay, so that technically came out July 31st, but it's close enough to August, darn it!), Julie and Julia, District 9, and Inglourious Basterds. Even indie favorites like (500) Days of Summer and The Hurt Locker are starting to get wide releases. I was starting to feel a little spoiled. Good thing Post Grad is here to remind me what the month of August usually means for film.

Don't let the movie's ad campaign fool you into thinking this is a story about a recent college graduate who is looking for her place in the world, finds employment impossible, and has to move back in with her family. This premise is merely a launching point for one of the most banal romantic comedies to come along in a while. The whole thing plays out like a failed sitcom pilot stretched to feature length. It's a shame the movie never finds a human angle that would have made it work. Post Grad centers on Ryden Malby (Alexis Bledel), who has been a star student throughout her entire school career. She got the right grades, the right letters of recommendation, and even though she barely missed being valedictorian of her graduating class to her life-long academic rival (Catherine Reitman), she's still confident when she strides into the interview at her dream job at a publishing company. Her rival ends up getting the job, she can't pay for the luxury apartment she picked out for herself, her car gets totaled in an accident, and Ryden is forced to move back home.

It's a situation many people Ryden's age probably find themselves in, and walking in, I had hoped the movie would deal with it honestly. All hope for honesty flies out the window when we meet her family. Her dad, Walter (Michael Keaton), is a bungling dreamer who hopes to make his fortune selling novelty belt buckles. It's later revealed that the buckles he bought from a dealer were stolen, and he gets arrested in a pointless subplot that goes nowhere and has no real resolution. Her kid brother, Hunter (Bobby Coleman), is a weird little boy with a passion for licking people's heads and sock puppets. His contribution to the plot is that he wants his dad to help him build a soap box racer. They end up building one out of a funeral casket they happen to have lying around the house. (I wish I was making this up.) She has a mom (Jane Lynch) and grandmother (Carol Burnett), but they don't contribute much. Ryden also has a best friend named Adam (Zach Gilford from TV's Friday Night Lights), who is in love with her, but she sees him as just being a companion. He's been accepted to go to law school in New York, but he sticks around so he can be her confidant, I guess.

The screenplay by newcomer Kelly Fremon seems much more interested in Ryden's love life, than her career problems. That explains why her job hunt is all but forgotten about for most of the film's middle portion, and instead focuses solely on her trying to decide which guy to go with. You see, there's a cute older guy named David who lives across the street (Rodrigo Santoro). Ryden meets him when her dad accidentally runs over the guy's cat, and they have to hold a funeral for it. This leads to Ryden and David having sex on his inflatable couch. Their relationship progresses, and Adam feels hurt. Ryden tries to apologize, but Adam won't answer his phone, so she decides to do the most logical thing - Swipe an ice cream truck and interrupt his basketball game by declaring her apology over the truck's loud speaker. (Once again, I wish I was making this up.) Adam accepts the apology, but wouldn't you know it, he decided to go to law school after she hurt him that night. By this point of the movie, Ryden has gotten that dream job at the publisher (her rival got fired), and now she has to decide wether she should stay at her successful job, or quit and leave everything behind to follow Adam to New York.

That's the kind of climax that makes audiences want to throw stuff at the screen. If that's not bad enough, the conclusion also relies heavily on mistaken identities and the age-old Idiot Plot, where all the problems and misunderstandings would be solved if one character would say something, and the other character would listen rather than jumping to the wrong conclusion and running away. I disliked Post Grad pretty much all the way through it, but its final moments made me downright hate it. It doesn't treat its own subject matter with an ounce of respect or integrity, I only laughed one time during the cat funeral scene, and the script reads like a bunch of bad romantic comedy cliches stitched together. There's also not a single thing about the movie that stands out, or is even noteworthy. Everything's average at best, including the performances. Maybe it's the fact that it's director, Vicky Jenson, is working in live action for the first time here. (She's previously worked on animated films like Shrek and Shark Tale.) Whatever the case, absolutely nothing works.
The movie tries to be quirky with its humor, as if it's trying to distract us from how boring the central romance is. It ends up being a lost cause. Post Grad is the kind of immediately disposable entertainment that August is meant for. It doesn't have anything new to say, and doesn't do anything particularly well. It's simply there to make you wonder who gave the project the green light. Considering what movie theaters are charging these days, it's too expensive to sit through a movie just to ask that question to yourself over and over.

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Robert Rodriguez's Shorts is a series of ideas in search of a movie that's big enough to hold them all. The movie's opening moments promise a sweet and quirky coming of age story that was starting to grow on me. I smiled, especially during the opening scene concerning the two kids having a staring contest that literally goes on for days, the kids staring at each other no matter what they happen to be doing. The main plot kicked in, with the young heroes finding a magical wishing rock at the end of a rainbow, and I was still in good spirits. I was interested in where the story was going. Too bad the movie wasn't. As soon as the magic rock enters the story, the movie loses control of itself, and turns into a special effects demo. As the movie started to throw out microscopic aliens, killer crocodiles, and even man-eating booger monsters at me, I wanted it to go back to the staring contest.

The story is told out of sequence, and divided into five separate chapters, which made me think of Inglourious Basterds - The last movie I thought would be on my mind while I was watching this. It's all centered around a corporate community called Black Falls, which is run by the tyrannical businessman, Mr. Black (James Spader), who has invented a handheld device that can literally do anything. Everyone who lives in the neighborhood works for Black, including the parents of our young hero, Toe Thompson (Jimmy Bennett from Orphan). Toe feels ignored by his parents (Jon Cryer and Leslie Mann), who seem constantly on the verge of being fired by their boss. He's also picked on by bullies at school, especially by a girl named Helvetica (Jolie Vanier), who is the daughter of Black. While escaping from the bully and her gang, Toe stumbles across the magic rock, which grants his wish that he had friends by sending tiny aliens down from outer space to obey his every command.

This is some magic rock. It keeps on bouncing into the hands of different people who live in Toe's neighborhood, and granting their desires to the point that the entire city is in danger. A trio of young brothers (Trevor Gagnon, Rebel Rodriguez, and Leo Howard) wish for a giant fortress, and wind up giving their baby sister super intelligence, so she can speak to them telepathically. A germophobic scientist and his son (William H. Macy and Jake Short), end up accidentally creating a giant man-eating booger when they wish their experiments would work right, and have to venture out into the germ-filled world to stop the creature. (They wear radiation suits at all times whenever they're outside their germ-proof house.) And when the rock falls into the hands of the evil Mr. Black, he wishes to be the most powerful thing in the universe, and turns into a giant robot. It doesn't take long for the wishes to start to get out of control, such as when Toe's mother wishes that her husband and her could be closer, and they wind up with their bodies fused together.

As the wishes spiral out of control, so does Shorts itself. What starts out as being charming and clever eventually becomes monotonous. That's because Rodriguez isn't interested in letting anything sink in. Here's a movie that features a little girl wishing that she could be a giant wasp so that she can battle her father, who has turned into a towering robot, and treats it as a minor event. I became frustrated. I wanted the screenplay to slow down, or at least go back to the stuff that was working during the first half hour or so. I became especially frustrated that the movie wasn't even going to follow through on most of its own ideas, and simply use them as an excuse to parade CG monsters across the screen. This is a film that talks down to kids. It throws a lot of bright colors and creatures up on the screen, and expects them to be entertained. It didn't seem to have much of an effect on the kids at my screening. They know when they're being talked down to.

The cast at least does what they can, even if many of the actors seem to be above the material they're given. I'm trying to figure out what William H. Macy saw in his role, which consists entirely of him grappling with a CG booger. Sure, it pays the bills, but is it really worth it in the end? Also underused are Cryer, Mann (who should have quit while she was ahead with Funny People), and Spader, who brings plenty of smarminess to his role as the evil Black, but never really gets a character to play, since his role is so underwritten. At least the kids are good and seem to be having fun, especially newcomer Jolie Vanier as Helvetica. She brings a lot of comic energy in her role of a bully who may actually be harboring a secret crush for her target. I'd like to see her in a better movie, one that deserves her obvious talent.
Shorts is not unwatchable, and is certainly better kid's entertainment than Aliens in the Attic, faint praise as that might be. Even so, it is tremendously disappointing. The opening half hints at something much smarter and funnier than what we get. If Rodriguez wants to do another family film, he should leave the special effects at home, and just focus on the characters. He obviously knows how to attract talented people, he should do them the favor of giving them interesting characters to play. Couldn't hurt, is all I'm saying.

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The film's structure is divided into five individual chapters. The first four are focused on a certain character, or characters, who plays a large role in the overall story. In the opening chapter, we're introduced to SS Colonel Hans Landa (Christoph Waltz). Nicknamed "The Jew Hunter", he has a calm and almost charming manner about him as he pays a visit to a local farmer who is harboring Jewish refugees under his floorboards. This entire sequence (which seems to last for over 20 minutes), introduces us not only to the character of Hans (who is perhaps the most memorable Nazi villain on film since Ralph Fiennes in Schindler's List), but also to the film's gift of dialogue. It creates an incredible amount of tension, even though Hans or the farmer he is questioning never raise their voices once. Their conversation is casual and serene, but we can see the intensity in their faces as they try to break one another's will. It's a wonderful scene, and the ensuing violence when the refugees are discovered is all the more shocking considering the tone of the entire conversation. One of the women who was hiding under the floorboards manages to escape, and will play a larger role in a future chapter.

In the next segment, we're introduced to the Basterds themselves. They're a gung-ho group of Americans who are under the command of Lt. Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt), a fast-talking Southerner who wants one thing and one thing only - the scalped heads of as many Nazi soldiers they can find. The few Nazis they choose to let live are branded for life with a swastika that Aldo carves into their forehead with a knife. Even though Brad Pitt is at the center of the film's ad campaign, he actually has limited screen time in comparison to Shosanna Dreyfus (Melanie Laurent), who is the focus of the third chapter. She's the woman who escaped from the farm in the opening scene, and has since been running a movie theater in German-occupied France under a fake name. When she is approached to hold a grand premiere of a Nazi propaganda film at her theater, she begins to plot to blow up the building with everyone inside during the screening as a desperate act of revenge. This ties into Chapter 4, where a German actress serving as a double agent named Bridget von Hammersmart (Diane Kuger) teams up with the Basterds to get them inside the movie premiere to pull off an assassination plan of their own. It all builds to Chapter 5, where all the characters and storylines come together for one explosive finale the night of the premiere.

Calling Inglourious Basterds a war movie is quite a disservice, as it's also features nods to Spaghetti Westerns, exploitation, and over the top revenge films. Tarantino manages to keep things pretty much under control, however. Despite the multi-plot structure and large cast of leads, it never becomes confusing or overbearing. It does come dangerously close to slowing to a halt a couple times, though. That's because Tarantino apparently loves his own dialogue so much, he seems to have refused to cut a single word of his screenplay. Therefore, we get scenes that go on for literally 30 minutes or more, with just the characters sitting at a table, talking. In some instances, this is wonderful and highly suspenseful (such as the previously mentioned opening scene at the farm). But there are some sequences, such as one based around a 20 questions-like game in a tavern, that had me fidgeting just a little. It's not so much I found the dialogue bad, I just did not find the pacing of the conversation as tense. I also found the Basterds themselves largely uninteresting. Despite Brad Pitt's winning and often very funny performance, they never come across as real three dimensional characters. Maybe that was the point, but I found myself much more interested in the plot that theater owner Shosanna Dreyfus was hatching, other than the one Aldo and his men were.

Speaking of the performances, Laurent's turn as Shosanna is definitely one of the highlights. This is the first time I have seen her in a film, and she almost walks away with the entire movie. A lot of this has to do with the fact that we sympathize with her the most. She's the only character with a real background story, so we feel the most attached to her. The other main highlight is Christoph Waltz as the main Nazi villain. He is the perfect combination of charm and menace. He smiles brightly, is soft-spoken, and hardly (if ever) brandishes a weapon. It is his manipulation and his use of words that make him chilling, and hopefully a strong contender come Award time next year. The other performances are strong, but don't stand out as much, due to the screenplay treating them as avatars rather than actual people. I have a strong hunch that were it not for Pitt's performance, the character of Aldo would be a lot less memorable than he comes across.

If I was somewhat disappointed with the storytelling, the visual style of the film helped me get over any hurdles. This is easily Tarantino's best looking film yet, with grand wide shots, and tight close ups that manage to up the tension as much as the dialogue in many of the scenes. The climactic sequence at the movie theater is just as explosive as any action sequence you can find this summer, probably more so. But it's the way he stages his smaller scenes that impressed me. He gets so much out of his performers, you can almost look forward to an acting highlight in nearly every scene. The only thing that took me out of the movie is his tendency to dip into stunt casting. Horror filmmaker Eli Roth (best known for directing the Hostel films) shows up in a small role as one of the Basterds, who has a passion for bashing Nazi's skulls in with a baseball bat for the entertainment of his fellow men. ("It's the closest thing we have to a movie", Aldo says.) It's not quite as distracting as it would have been if Tarantino initially got his way, however. Originally, he wanted Adam Sandler to play the role, but fortunately Funny People got in the way. More distracting, though, is a strange cameo by comic actor Mike Myers as a British General during a mission briefing scene. He sticks out like a sore thumb, and briefly takes us out of the film.
I think the best way to summarize Inglourious Basterds is what I read in one on-line review, which stated "Ideally, the movie should be seen twice, the first time to adjust to what it isn't and the second to appreciate what it is". I don't think I could say it any better. For all its faults, this is a strong piece of entertainment. It doesn't quite climb to the top of my favorite Tarantino films, but it mostly proves he still has what it takes behind the camera after being out of the limelight for a little while. The movie itself may not be as memorable as I would have liked, but it's certainly not forgettable.

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Okay, so here I am doing Mini Reviews again. I promise this is the last time. I had problems posting photos with Blogger the past few weeks, which prevented me from adding my reviews last weekend. So, I fell behind. So, I'm just going to do two mini reviews of films I saw last weekend. Starting this Friday, full reviews, all the way. Now that all the problems have been fixed, I can go back to my regular format. Expect full reviews of Inglourious Bastards, Post Grad, Shorts, and The Hurt Locker this weekend. For now, here are the two mini reviews of the other films I saw last weekend...

The Time Traveler's Wife - An interesting concept is brought down by a half-hearted execution. Eric Bana and Rachel McAdams play two people who fall in love, despite the fact that he is inflected with a strange and unexplained disease that causes him to suddenly disappear and reappear in another place and time. They try to make the marriage work, but find it hard to deal with simple things, such as having a child. The movie also tries to make it work, but finds it hard due to a lack of passion between the two leads. The pace is sluggish, the story never really grabs your attention, and the whole thing just seems like a lot of wasted talent.

The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard - Jeremy Piven (from TV's Entourage) leads a talented and energetic cast in a movie that just doesn't deliver. It's not for lack of trying. This comedy, about a band of "mercenary" car salesmen who try to save a failing auto dealership by staging a grand Fourth of July sale, has some laughs and everyone seems to be giving it their all. Problem is, the movie never takes off. Too many gags fall flat (They hire a D.J. for the sales event named D.J. Request, who refuses to take requests - ho, ho.), and the whole thing is never as funny as it should be. Will Ferrell shows up in a cameo as a guy who dies in a parachuting accident dressed as Abe Lincoln while holding a sex toy. After Land of the Lost and now this, the guy should really start being a bit more picky about the projects he chooses.

I repeat - Full reviews to start again tomorrow. Thank you for your patience.

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The aliens arrived in a massive ship that hovered over most of the world's major cities, then suddenly stopped overhead Johannesburg, South Africa. It hung motionless in the air for several months, until a crew of humans finally found a way to enter the ship. They discovered the inhabitants onboard were sickly, malnourished, and in need of care that the humans could not provide. Instead, the aliens were sent to live in a run down habitat area known as District 9. We learn all of this through documentary-style footage, which is a lot more convincing (and less likely to cause motion sickness) than in other recent attempts at "monster movie documentaries", such as Cloverfield or Quarantine. We also learn that this all happened nearly 30 years ago, and the people are starting to get restless about these visitors who seemingly refuse to leave. We see "interviews" with people who view the aliens as second or third class citizens, and we also see signs that designate certain buildings or places as being off limits to the creatures.

A government agency known as the MNU has been formed to study the aliens and their technology, as well as keep them under control. The plot kicks in when the agents are ordered to relocate the aliens dwelling in District 9 to a new concentration camp-like setting, and Wilkus Van de Merwe (Sharlto Copley) is placed in charge of the operation. Wilkus is upbeat and optimistic when we first see him being interviewed for the cameras, but he quickly finds himself over his head as he tries to reason with the aliens and convince them to come with them to the new area that is to be their home on Earth. While exploring a shack belonging to one of the creatures, he foolishly picks up a canister, which ends up spraying him with a strange chemical fluid. Nothing seems wrong at first, but soon, he begins to show signs of illness and is hospitalized. I will not reveal any more or what happens to him. It's best to walk into District 9 knowing as little as possible. Avoid talking to people about this movie before you see it if you can.

I think knowing little about the film beforehand greatly enhanced my experience. I knew the basic idea about aliens living amongst us and being discriminated against, but the turns the story eventually takes and the way it is told is genuinely gripping. At last, we have an action movie that grabs the mind and the senses at the same time. The questions it raises about how different people react to the visitors (some fear them, some sympathize, and some even try to exploit and make a profit off of them) are challenging and direct. It may not exactly be subtle, but it is effective, and never heavy-handed. I liked the way that the aliens generally view the humans with resentment. They know that they are being exploited, but they have little choice in the manner. They don't want to be here as much as we want them here, but they don't have a choice. When the MNU come knocking on their doors to move them to a different area, they react in different ways. Some are compliant, some question the move, and some don't even understand what's going on. It gives a sense that the aliens have a class system of their own with different ideals. Some are more aware of what's going on than others, while others are content to dig through scraps for survival, living day-by-day.

The movie isn't all talk, though. There are some intense and well-edited action sequences, especially during the last half of the film. They're certainly more involving than any other action movie you've seen this summer, and very brutal without being unintentionally over the top. It's this mixture of intelligence and mayhem that shows Blomkamp understands how to speak to a well-rounded audience. He can give us the tension of a big budget shoot out without dumbing it down. Hopefully the studios will know how to use this gift once he starts getting signed onto bigger projects. He also gets a lot of emotion out of his lead human star, Copley, and his computer generated actors. We find ourselves sympathizing with both sides as the worlds of the humans and the aliens are forced to collide. It's a truly rare movie that can make us forget that most of the cast wasn't even there on the set. We buy into the existence of the aliens while we're watching the film, and I never once found myself taken out of the story by commenting on the effects work.

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I don't like doing this, but due to technical problems with Blogger and other things, I am unable to provide a full review of Julie and Julia. It's a shame, too, because I greatly enjoyed this film.

Writer-director Nora Ephron was once reliable, but due to recent flops like Lucky Numbers and Bewitched, I approached this movie with caution. Fortunately, this turned out to be her strongest film in years. Meryl Streep and Amy Adams (their second film together in less than a year) may not share any screen time together, but they both give wonderful individual performances. Streep's potrayal of famed chef, Julia Child, is amazing not just for how perfectly she captures everything about the larger than life TV chef, but because she manages to make her so human and relatable. I can easily picture Julia Child coming across as a caricature or merely an imitation of her unforgettable voice, but Streep goes deeper than that, and makes her a three dimensional character.

Adams has a little less to work with as Julie, a frustrated woman in 2002 who is bored with her job, and decides to write a blog where she goes through every recipee in Julia's Child cook book during the course of a year. Nonetheless, her performance captures our attention, just like everything Adams has done. She's sweet and immediately likable, but flawed, which is shown as her blog begins to run her life at home with her husband. The movie cuts back and forth to two different time periods, focusing on each individual woman's life, and finding parallels. Some of these may be examples of Ephron's screenplay stretching to find similarities, but it's never distracting, and the performances keep us riveted throughout.

This is a perfect movie for the summer, as it's light and not very deep, but still manages to be entertaining throughout. It certainly helps that the movie is frequently very funny. There may be a lack of tension in the film, but I strangely didn't mind. The movie is likable, and the characters are interesting enough to hold our interest.

Full reviews to return on Friday, provided Blogger is working right.

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Remember Scream, the 1996 slasher movie about self-aware teens who knew about slasher movies? Well, here's A Perfect Getaway, a plot twist thriller about self-aware people who know about plot twist thrillers! The mystery at the center of the story is fairly easy to figure out on its own. Writer-director David Twohy (The Chronicles of Riddick) makes it even easier, by constantly bringing stuff like "second act twists" and "red herrings" to our attention by having the characters talking about it.

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I know I'm going to be in the minority with G.I. Joe. Heck, the reviews over on Rotten Tomatoes are already confirming that. But, I strive to report my honest reaction to every movie I see, and the honest truth is, this movie left me with a big, dopey smile on my face. Maybe I was in the right mood for a lot of outlandish silliness. Or maybe this movie managed to reach my inner 10-year-old that Michael Bay's Transformers and its sequel could not.

Heading home, I was trying to figure out what this movie did to work for me that Transformers was lacking. After all, they share a lot of similarities. They're both filled with wall-to-wall action, special effects, and noise, the characters spout dialogue that would make me cringe if it wasn't so intentionally goofy, and neither film has a plot that make a lick of sense. I know all this, but I walked out happy with this movie. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that director Stephen Sommers (Van Helsing) gets the vibe right. There's a joy here that's lacking from Michael Bay's mechanical heroes. It also gave me everything I wanted from a G.I. Joe movie, and nothing I didn't. There are no needless comic relief characters that have nothing to do with anything (like the parents in Transformers), and the movie doesn't waste any time with pointless exposition. Sure, the plot suffers because of this, but this was one of the rare times where I didn't care. When I heard the Accelerator Suits the Joes use in battle described (it generally allows them to move at inhuman speeds), I smiled. When I actually saw the Suits in action, I not only smiled, I was genuinely excited. And when I saw the evil Cobra organization's secret base (which, in the tradition of best evil secret bases, is located underwater and has its missiles aimed at the White House), it was like watching the pretend war games I used to play with my friends come to life.

That's the real secret. The movie felt right to me. The tone is completely right, balancing frantic action with one-liners flying left and right, but never becoming so dominant that I wished the characters would stop talking for a while. The characters look right, too. When we're introduced to two of the main Joe members, the flame-haired Scarlet (Rachel Nichols) and silent ninja Snake Eyes (Ray Park), I smiled out of recognition. It was nice to see that the characters actually looked somewhat the way I remembered them, and not giant, walking whirling piles of CG junk like Optimus Prime and the gang. And yet, this is not the only way that the movie worked for me. Not only does it touch upon nostalgia, but it also creates some truly fun action sequences. I liked the sequence set in Paris, with the Joes racing to stop the terrorists from setting off a nanomachine weapon aimed at the Eiffel Tower. I also liked that the movie actually gave us a good look at the action. So many movies are edited so fast, we barely get to see what we're supposed to be looking at. Here, we get to see everything. We get a lot of well done public destruction, and a surprisingly large body count. One warning to parents about G.I. Joe - The movie is pretty violent. No blood is actually depicted, for the sake of the PG-13 rating.

The movie doesn't seem to care much about the plot, so I won't spend much time recapping it. The G.I. Joe team are a group of highly skilled military warriors, who have names like Duke (Channing Tatum), Hawk (Dennis Quaid), and Ripcord (Marlon Wayans, who is surprisingly more reigned in than usual here). Their job is to protect the world from the plans of a mysterious supervillain (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, a long way from 500 Days of Summer here) who has teamed up with an arms dealer named McCullen (Christopher Eccleston) to create a secret terrorist army that will take over the world. Why, you ask? What else would an army with an underwater base and guns powerful enough to literally melt the Eiffel Tower to nothing do? Also on the side of the evil Cobra army is the Baroness (Sienna Miller), who used to be Duke's girlfriend in the past, but now is working for the bad guys, and looks like she bought out the world's supply of black leather body suits. I almost forgot Storm Shadow (Byung-hun Lee), an evil ninja who used to train with the Joe's ninja, Snake Eyes, until he murdered their master, which we witness in a flashback. There's a lot of flashbacks in this movie, because everyone seems to be connected with everyone else. I love the way the movie handles the flashbacks. Someone will say something which triggers a memory, and the character will get this faraway look in their eyes as they look off into the distance, almost as if they're mentally preparing themselves for the flashback that's about to start. It's cheesy, but hey, so is G.I. Joe.

If you ask me to explain the plot, I'll shake my head. It's a futile effort, and the movie knows it. So, why am I recommending it? Doesn't fun count for anything anymore? I was able to look around the film's numerous problems. Something I couldn't do with a lot of big, dumb summer movies that attempted the same thing. The action I missed in Wolverine, the sense of joy I missed in Terminator Salvation (even though I didn't mind as much as most people seemed to, it was a little too grim to be labeled as a "joyful" summer movie), I found it here in spades. Sometimes my brain hungers for cinematic junk food, and at least this is well done junk food. I guess the real question, since the movie's sole purpose is to kick start a new franchise, is does this make me want to see more? All I can say is, I want to know what happened to the President of the United States, and how did he know the man who approached him the last time we see him?
So yeah, the movie worked for me. I actually liked it a lot more than I expected. Your milage may vary, and will most likely be based on your tolerance for movies like this. Here's a good test to judge if you're the right audience for G.I. Joe. At one point, General Hawk mentions that they have to learn more about the enemy, because "knowing is half the battle". If you got that joke, you'll probably find something to like here.

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Judd Apatow's Funny People feels authentic. The movie is about the lives of stand up comics, and it feels real, because it is real. Before becoming a filmmaker, Apatow did his time on the stand up comedy circuit. So did his good friend and former roommate, Adam Sandler, who stars in the film. You can tell that this is a personal film for a lot of the comic actors involved, and that you are watching the closest roles to their real lives that they will probably ever get to play. Funny People is one of the summer's best and biggest surprises.

The film opens with actual home video footage that Apatow took of a young Sandler making comic prank calls to various businesses. The sequence is all at once hilarious and immature, which is a good way to describe the character that Sandler plays. He's George Simmons, the kind of guy all comics dream of being. He was able to move beyond stand up to TV, and ultimately feature films that may not exactly be viewed as classics, but have made him famous and wealthy beyond his wildest dreams. George's life is one of excess. He lives in a huge mansion by himself, he's got a different girl in his bed each night, and he has legions of fans and well-wishers. What he does not have is any sort of personal relationship. George has spent his entire life isolating himself from others, a lot of it having to do with personal pain. He's obviously been hurt more than he cares to admit. He's been living this way for years with no problem, but when he is diagnosed with a rare form of leukemia, he suddenly doesn't know what to do. He has no one to turn to.

He starts re-evaluating his life up to this point. He starts thinking about and calling a woman from his past named Laura (Leslie Mann). Laura is the closest thing he ever had to a personal relationship, and he almost married her, but he cheated on her. Now she's married to an Australian man named Clarke (Eric Bana), who is equally unfaithful to her, but they have two kids (Apatow's own daughters, Maude and Iris), so she can't walk away. George also tries to go back to his roots and start doing stand up again, but his first night is a disaster. He's so preoccupied with his own mortality and feels so strange on the stage that he thought he left behind years ago, that he chokes. That same night, a wannabe comic named Ira Wright (Seth Rogen) takes the stage. He doesn't get a lot of laughs either, but George sees something in him. He asks Ira to be his personal at-home assistant, as well as his joke writer for future stand up appearances. Ira has idolized George since childhood, and sees it as a great opportunity, especially since he currently works at a local deli, and shares an apartment with two other comics (Jonah Hill and Jason Schwartzman), one of whom has a leading role on a NBC sitcom, and likes to leave his $20,000 paychecks on Ira's pillow to remind him how much better his career is going.

The relationship that grows between George and Ira is not exactly the one we expect. George does not become a better person through Ira, nor do they learn to open up to each other during the course of the film. They actually remain fairly guarded, though good friends. George's view of Ira seems to constantly change. Sometimes, he seems to be the only person he can trust. He's the first, and for a while the only, person he tells about his disease. Ira goes along on his doctor appointments, makes a mix of songs to help cheer him up, and writes a lot of his stand up material. He also takes the verbal abuse when George needs to lash out, and has no one to scream at. As for Ira, he seems to view George as a friend, though with more than a little idol worship. He wants to be there for the guy, because he understands his situation, but we also get a sense that just being with the guy alone is enough. Though George never actually takes on the role of a mentor, we can tell that Ira is using this as a learning experience of just what success can do.

It is a credit to Apatow's screenplay and Sandler's performance that George does not become an entirely sympathetic character. He is manipulative, and is not above using his grim diagnosis to get what he wants from others. This includes his ex-fiance, Laura, whom he has a reconciliation with when he starts re-examining his life. They begin to rediscover their feelings for each other, but then, George starts making mistakes. He will not change his ways, and Laura realizes this. They are not the mistakes we expect, though. Funny People does not follow convention. It is not a medical drama, and it is not a story of redemption. Much like the movie itself, the conclusion it reaches is genuine. The characters are where they need to be, better or worse. As George, Sandler finds the perfect mix of self-obsession, self pity, and charm that allows us to understand why people are drawn to him in the first place. Much like his underrated turn in Punch Drunk Love, Sandler shows that he is an extremely capable actor able to tackle tough material. He's vulnerable, but guarded at the same time. Is he opening up to Ira or Laura out of trust, or is he doing it for personal gain? It's a surprisingly complicated performance, and easily his best turn on the screen so far.

As Ira, Seth Rogen continues to grow on me. He never impressed me in some of his past lead roles, such as in Knocked Up or Zack and Miri Make a Porno. He seemed wrong to be the lead (especially a romantic one), and seemed more comfortable as the goofy best friend character. He's starting to become a lot more natural to me. He impressed me with his darkly comic turn in Observe and Report earlier this year, and he impressed me even more here. He ditches his usual goofy slob persona, and gives what is probably his most honest screen performance yet. Unlike George, there is no manipulation with Ira. He's likeably open, and has obviously been dealt more than this share of life's slings and arrows. Unlike George, however, he has not gone into isolation. He embraces it, tries to better himself (much is made that he is trying to lose weight, which Rogen is doing in real life), and hopes to become a better person and comic for it. It's a great performance. He doesn't command the screen like Sandler does, but he does grab and hold our attention throughout.

Many critics have accused Funny People of being too long, and that the entire last hour or so of the movie (dealing with George and Ira visiting Laura's home) could have been removed. For me, these scenes are what the movie is leading up to. This is when most of the surprises happen, and when we learn the most about the characters. It would be incomplete without it, in my eyes. Even at a length of two and a half hours, the movie never dragged for me. In fact, I'll venture to say that this is probably Apatow's best-paced movie yet. A lot of this has to do with the fact that he seems to be speaking directly from his heart in almost every scene. You can see the personal touches throughout, and I personally was fascinated. Besides, a great movie is never too long. I would gladly sit through two and a half hours of this then 90 minutes of Aliens in the Attic.
And this is indeed a great movie - one of the better ones of the summer. It shows that Apatow has come a long way with only three directorial efforts under his belt. He's come a long way here, not just in making us laugh, but also in his storytelling. This is his most personal film yet, and he does not disappoint. I loved this movie.

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The original title for Aliens in the Attic was "They Came From Upstairs" - a much better title, you must agree. Still, I can understand the change. Everything else about the movie is generic, bland, and unmemorable. The title was the last part of the movie to have any ounce of inspiration sucked from it.

What we have here is a children's movie that should have been fun and mischievous, but is instead overly safe and tedious. It doesn't even bother to give us any real characters. The kids who act as the heroes are dull, the adult actors may as well not even be there, and exist mainly to pop up every now and then to say, "What are those kids up to now?", and the aliens are even more boring than the adults. Shame about the aliens. They kind of look like Yoda's angrier and shorter half-cousins, but they hold absolutely no personality. I remember they had names, but darned if I can remember what they were. The aliens themselves are a ragtag group that are pretty much interchangeable. There's a girl one (voice by Kari Wahlgren), one who turns out to be nice and helps out the kids (Josh Peck), and two whom the movie didn't even bother to give personalities or real dialogue to, so naturally they are played by the best actors in the cast. (Thomas Hayden Church and J.K. Simmons)

Why are the aliens here on Earth? From what little the movie tells us, it has something to do with an invasion campaign. The little creatures arrive at the vacation home of the Pearson family, who are having a sort of family reunion for the weekend. There's apparently a device the aliens want hidden under the basement of the house. The Pearson kids learn about their presence soon enough, but the adults remain completely oblivious throughout, and don't even seem to question why the kids are trashing the house and running around with hand-made guns that shoot potatoes. The six kids who act as the heroes basically act as one giant unit, and have very little individual personalities. The leader of the kids (Carter Jenkins) is flunking school, much to the shame of his clueless parents (Kevin Nealon and Gillian Vigman). His sister (Ashley Tisdale) is dating an older guy who's a jerk (Robert Hoffman). That's about all we get from them. Speaking of the jerk boyfriend, he becomes the victim of the alien's mind control gun, which turns him into a zombie that can be controlled with a device. Fortunately, said device looks and works like a video game controller, so when the kids get their hands on it, they can control him easily enough. The kids' grandmother (Doris Roberts) also falls under alien control, leading to a scene where the boyfriend and the grandma have an elaborate kung-fu fight, with the kids controlling granny, and the aliens controlling the jerk. This scene should be fun, but it's really very boring.

So is the rest of the movie. Aliens in the Attic is cinematic junk food for kids that doesn't even have the decency to go down easy enough for accompanying adults. No one seems to be that involved, not even the kids themselves. They're going through the motions as much as the adult actors are, almost as if they're already planning to wipe this movie from their screen credits before they hit 17. It's bad enough seeing people like Andy Richter and Tim Meadows cashing paychecks in the worthless adult roles this movie gives them. I found myself wondering what was going through the minds of the filmmakers. Did director John Schultz (2005's The Honeymooners) think kids wouldn't care, as long as there were cute CG aliens added in later? Speaking of the CG, not even that impresses. Not only have they been given no personality by the credited writers, but they're boring to look at. They don't even get any real one-liners. I have to question if anyone even cared about this movie.
The premise for this movie calls out for a director like Joe Dante (Gremlins), someone who knows how to mix fun with creature terror. Instead, we've been given a toothless commercial product that will probably fade from theaters long before August ends, and sit forgotten in the back corners of video store shelves the world over. Kids deserve more and better.

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A lot of critics are labeling The Collector as "torture porn". I guess it does fit the mold, as the movie is built around a series of grisly deaths and booby traps that the film's masked villain has placed about an innocent family's home. But, I enjoyed this movie a little bit more than I did such similar films as Hostel or Captivity. It has an interesting plot hook to hang the death scenes upon, and actually manages to create some genuine tension for most of its running time.

The film is the brainchild of Marcus Dunstan and Patrick Melton, who are currently writing the Saw films. With that particular horror franchise growing stale, it's probably smart that these guys are trying to jump start another one. The film centers on a carpenter named Arkin (Josh Stewart, who bears a strong resemblance to a young Sean Penn), who is doing a job for a wealthy family, and is also taking stock of their valuables as the film opens. Arkin's ex-wife and young daughter are in trouble with some loan sharks, and in order to save their lives, he plans to break into the family's home that night and steal what he can for some money. The family is leaving for a vacation that night, so he figures it will be an easy job. When he returns to the house that night, he quickly learns that he's not alone. A silent and masked figure (Juan Fernandez) is lurking about the house, and has rigged the entire home with various deadly traps. Not only that, he has taken the entire family hostage, and is slowly torturing them for his twisted amusement. Arkin becomes an unlikely hero as he tries to help them escape, while also trying to avoid detection by the mysterious madman. He also has to search for the family's youngest daughter, Hannah (Karley Scott Collins), who is hiding from the killer somewhere in the house.

Like all horror movies, The Collector is not really one for logic. The obvious question that screams at the viewer while they're watching it is how did the villain turn the family's home into an unescapable death trap during the time Arkin left the house that afternoon, to the time he returned that night? In that short amount of time, the madman has rigged seemingly hundreds of deadly tripwire traps in every room of the house, boarded up all the windows and doors, lined the stiarcase with sharp needles, and even covered the floor of one room with flesh-melting acid. This guy could make a killing in the home redesign business with how fast he seemingly works, if only he didn't rely on knives, guns, and acid. Despite this, the movie still does a good job of making the character menacing. He doesn't really get a lot of screen time, but he's always there, and the movie keeps on reminding us of this from the screams Arkin hears throughout the house. We don't learn anything about the villain or his motivations. All we know is that the man seemingly loves his work, and he's very good at it. Should there be a sequel, I hope they don't make the mistake of giving this guy an origin story.

The characters and victims aren't exactly deep, and mainly exist to be cut up, bloodied, and tortured in various ways, but Arkin makes for an interesting enough unlikely hero. He doesn't get a lot of dialogue, but Josh Stewart is able to convey enough in his performance for us to get behind him. He's doing the robbery to save the life of his little girl. This fact is also what keeps him inside the house in the first place, as the family's youngest daughter reminds him of her, and he wants to make sure she's all right. The scenes where he is sneaking around the house, trying to avoid detection by the shadowy figure patrolling the house creates some strong tension. Here again, the mystery of the villain pays off. We know as much about what's going on as Arkin does, so we almost know how he feels. It's not until the fairly standard slasher movie final half that the spell is broken, and everything goes according to formula.
The Collector has some artistic sensibilities in its dark visual design, but it's really just a simple and mostly effective thriller. It's very to the point as well, with a running time of just under 90 minutes, which doesn't waste its time and ours with a lot of pointless exposition. It's obvious the filmmakers are hoping for a franchise here. More power to them, though I think the idea's a little thin, and I can see it wearing out quickly. I still look forward to the inevitable sequel where the villain booby traps a spaceship. Because all horror franchises eventually go into space at one point. Hey, if the Leprechaun and Jason can do it, so can The Collector.

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