This is a little family drama/comedy that interested me for Ellen Page’s role (from Juno fame) while my wife enjoyed the Sarah Jessica Parker role.

This is a family that’s trying to cope with life after the mother’s death. The husband is a very sad and not very kind professor, who’s also a little snobbish. That might be my biggest problem with this movie, I just didn’t feel much for this character played by Dennis Quaid.

Worst of all I just didn’t feel any chemistry between him and Parker. I didn’t know why she would keep going back to him, even after their failed pathetic dates. At least the husband was not portrayed as a miserable suicidal widow.

The uncle played by Thomas Haden Church was at least funny, he was the only one trying to help this family. But his relationship with his niece felt a bit weird. I didn’t think it went anywhere, it didn’t develop any of the characters.

I did like Ellen Page as a similar character to Juno, but a little more vulnerable. Again, I think her character was a little wasted in her relationship with her uncle.

Overall I felt this movie was created with good intentions, but ultimately it failed. I didn’t hate it, there were some interesting characters, but in the end I wouldn’t recommend it.

Rating: 2 Stars

Everyone will compare this DVD to Animatrix. The concept is similar, a series of short stories animated by famous Anime production companies, direct to DVD to bridge the gap between two successful movies.

The difference here is that Batman is a very well known character, and there have been many stories about him. So there isn’t anything new in this DVD. The novelty is watching Batman portrayed as an anime character.

Overall the visual look of Batman was satisfying. At times he looked more like an eagle, other times he had a clear armor. But I liked all those interpretations. In particular I loved the first story, which presented 4 different interpretations of Batman. Those were really fun to watch.

There is a small thread that carries over throughout the movie, but it’s so small that it’s almost inconsequential. But I did like seeing some of the same charaters pop up in more than one story. Those were Gordon and his two detectives Allen and Ramirez. We also see the Russian and the Italian mob.

There are obvious ties to the movies, Scarecrow being the obvious one. Killer Croc also makes an appearance, as well as Deadshot. There are plenty of fun action scenes, and a lot of atmosphere. Not a lot of characterization going on, the only exception is the story where Bruce flashes back to his time in India, where he learned to deal with pain. Very good story.

Even though the writers are American, everything else is done by Japanese, so all stories have a definite Anime feel, both in looks and atmosphere. One thing that links all these stories are the voices. Kevin Conroy comes back as Batman/Bruce, and he does an excellent job as always. He’ll always be Batman’s voice for me. All other voice talents are good as well, but the only one I recognized is Gary Dourden.

Each story is only about 10 minutes long, so these are at most teases and don’t go in depth. I wish they would have chosen fewer stories and given them more time. As it is, this feels more like a teaser. But the visuals are definitely worth a look.

Rating: 2.5 Stars

This is more traditional rom-com, but I like the premise. Will tells his daughter how he met her mother (which reminds me of the TV show). Of course there are more than one love interest in the story, so it’s a fun game to actually discover which one he will end up marrying.

The premise is fun and it actually really works. I had to stop halfway through, and even though it was past midnight, my wife and I were very curious to continue it and learn the truth.

The three women in this story all had their charm. Emily (Elisabeth Banks) looked like the typical girl from a small town, not very ambitious and innocent. Of course that will change by the end, but we don’t really get to see the reasons for that change.

Her friend Summer (Rachel Weisz) is the most rebellious and open women, in fact I wonder if Emily sent Will to Summer so that he would break up with her. Kevin Kline had a fun role as Summer’s lover, I hardly recognized his look though.

The last girl is April (Isla Fisher), who looks a lot like Amy Adams. But she’s also the cute lovable girl who is not naive but intelligent.

Will has fallen for all of these women, but only one will end up with him. In hindsight I guess it was obvious who it’d be, but it was still fun to find out.

My major problem with this film is that I couldn’t care less about Will. I just don’t think Ryan Renolds can carry a movie. I don’t hate him, his performance is fine, but he just doesn’t have enough charm or presence. Since he’s the star of this movie, this was obviously a big problem for me.

That said, there are so many worse comedies out there, this is actually not too bad.

Rating: 2.5 Stars

I’ve read the comic this movie is based on and I loved the concept. But I didn’t think there was more than that premise to the story. The same can be said about this movie.

Apart from the clever concept (vampires in Alaska for 30 days without sun) this just feels like a zombie movie, with normal people hiding from the vampires. There is enough tension here to be entertaining, but the vampires themselves didn’t feel scary at all. I do like that they always have blood on their chins, it makes sense they wouldn’t clean themselves after feeding.

The characters are ok, not very well developed but enough to understand where they come from and their past. At least for the main ones. What doesn’t make sense is why in 30 days the vampires couldn’t check every single house in that town, or why people would be safe inside their houses. It’s almost felt like the vampires couldn’t enter the houses.

What I did like was how Eben decided to solve the situation, by injecting contaminated blood into himself and becoming one of them. However it still doesn’t make up for the fact that he alone fought the entire group off.

Then I go back to liking this in the final scene with Eben and Stella. Overall though, this is not anything special.

Rating: 2.5 Stars

When I first heard of this movie I was excited. I loved Donnie Darko, so I was very curious to see Richard Kelly’s follow up. Then news of the bad reception at Cannes and the delay in release lowered my level of excitement, but I was still determined to watch it and judge it by myself. I wish I hadn’t…

This movie is a mish mash of many different ideas and themes. There’s the commentary on US politics and the war in Iraq. There’s a commentary on the movie industry, on talk shows on TV, on radicals, on advertising etc… All this sprinkled with sci-fi and time travel. It was just a mess. Plot-wise I really couldn’t follow it too well, and it just didn’t interest me. For a moment I was intrigued by the time-travel explanation, but that didn’t bring to much of anything at the end.

There are many characters here, but unfortunately I also didn’t care about any of them. I never cared for the Rock, and here he has to portray a serious but also a little bit crazy movie star. I thought he was just horrible, I really hated his little tick with his fingers, I suppose it was purposely forced, but I was just annoyed by it.

Gellar didn’t give me any emotion at all, she just felt bland. I have no idea why Jon Lovitz was cast as the cop, I thought that was just so wrong. Sean William Scott also felt bland, and I really hated Justin Timberlake’s narration.

This is certainly a different movie, probably an ambitious movie and I at least appreciate filmmakers trying to create something new. Unfortunately the end result just doesn’t work here.

Rating: 2 Stars

In preparation for my daughter’s birth, I decided to watch this film about teenage girls (or that’s the excuse, in reality I just wanted something girly for my wife).

The story is simple, four girls grow up as best friends, but they will be separate for an entire summer. Each have their own adventure, each made their own discovery about themselves. The premise of the magic pants is not that fantastic, it’s just an excuse to somehow connect these different stories.

I’d seen two actresses in their TV series (Alexis Bedel in Gilmore Girls and Blake Lively in Gossip Girl), so I was at least familiar with them. Their stories were about romance, and they felt typical of a romantic movie.

The other two stories were different though. Ironically the other two girls are not as pretty (being sarcastic here), so they deal with something that felt more profound and meaningful.

Carmen deals with her father’s new family. I must say I hope I don’t become as stupid as that father, he really could have been more sensitive with his daughter. I also like that the new family was not branded as “the bad guys”, instead they’re a normal family like everyone else. I also liked the resolution to this story, it didn’t really wrap up neatly, even though we did get the inevitable happy ending.

The last story was very touching but not overly dramatic. I must say that little actress did a very good job, and I really found her endearing. It had a sad ending, but again they didn’t make it melodramatic.

I would say this movie was ok, I am certainly not the target audience, but it had its moments. There’s a sequel coming, but I don’t think I’ll rush out to watch it.

Rating: 2.5 Stars

I haven’t watched a Rambo movie in years, but I did like and remember the first one, I think it’s one of the best action movies. However I don’t remember the sequels very well, maybe I should re-watch them all some day.

Unfortunately this latest installment of the franchise didn’t excite me at all. I was hoping Stallone would give Rambo as good a closure as he did to Rocky with Rocky Balboa, but he failed me.

The plot couldn’t be simpler, but all you need for Rambo is an excuse for cool action scenes and maybe some dramatic moments. So I don’t complain about the plot. It does a good enough job of setting the action up.

Rambo himself is the usual moping character we’ve seen before, but he’s lost his little bit of “innocence” he had before. Now he’s older, but his view of the world hasn’t changed, which is why he’s living in a country at war.

The secondary characters don’t bring much more to this movie, including the female lead. I’ve been a fan of Julie Benz when she was playing Darla in Buffy/Angel, but her role here is of a typical scared woman who needs saving. And in some scenes she didn’t look that scared to me.

But what about the action. I must admit I was not very excited about any of the action here, I didn’t feel much tension or adrenaline watching this movie. I also think there’s a bit too much over the top gore, things that looked ridiculous and took me out of the movie.

What I wanted from this movie was a more personal story about Rambo himself, but this was only hinted at in the very last scene of the movie. This might mean there will be one more Rambo movie that hopefully will be more personal. But I don’t even know if I want to watch it after this.

Rating: 2 Stars

After enjoying The Squid and the Whale I was looking forward to Noah Baumbach’s next project. This movie does have many resemblances to Squid, but it falls short on many levels.

The main star of the story is Margot, played by Nicole Kidman. She’s so annoying and spiteful that I have no idea why her husband ever married her or even wants her back.

I can see why her son would still love her and want her attention, but at times she still treats him as bad as anyone else. These are not plain evil acts or just her being a bitch, she just speaks her mind all the time and behaves righteously as if she knew better than anyone.

I felt really bad for all the other characters who were trying to be friendly with her. Her sister Pauline is really trying to tolerate her and be her friend, and her fiance’ is also trying to deal with her. I actually liked Jack Black in this role, even though he’s playing more or less the same character in all his movies.

Even when Margot is verbally attacked by her lover Dick during a public interview, I didn’t feel bad for her at all. Yes I agree he was a jerk, but I just had no compassion for her at all.

I appreciate that Baumbach is working out some personal issues with this story, Margot being a writer that writes everything about her private life, just like Baumbach does. I just couldn’t find any appealing factor in the star of this movie at all.

Rating: 2 Stars

If it weren’t for Johnny Depp’s nomination for the Oscars, I wouldn’t have watched this movie. Nothing against the Burton/Depp pairing, I’ve actually liked their work together, but I’ve had enough of musicals. After Once, I don’t think any other musicals will compare.

The problem with songs in movies is that I don’t understand what they’re about most of the time, which is not good for understanding the story. That’s true for this movie as well. Depp is not a bad singer at all, his performance is actually not bad. I don’t think he deserved the Oscar, or at least I wasn’t touched by his performance.

However the main problem is that I had no idea why he killed all those people. That didn’t help with his revenge, we don’t even know these people. That montage of all those killings didn’t seem to have any motivation except that it was the premise of the story.

On top of that I also didn’t understand some of the dialogs, their accents were way too thick (especially Helena Bonham-Carter). I guess it’s realistic since they’re supposed to be in London, but I am also supposed to understand them and follow the story.

I guess what I did like was the ending, there was no other ending for this type of story, but I liked it and it at least made sense. Unlike the rest of the movie.

To me this movie failed both as a musical and as a story. Depp’s performance was ok, I just didn’t feel it.

Rating: 2 Stars

This is an experiment by director Steven Soderberg to emulate an old movie from the 50-60’s. He actually created this movie with the same technology of that era (cameras, film, rear projection etc…), same type of story and even acting style.

However he inserted some modern touches to contrast it, and that is the language. He can have a PG13 or R rating and insert as many swear words as he wants, which they couldn’t do at the time.

The story is a mystery, with plenty of romance behind the characters’ motivations. George Clooney’s character is trying to help the woman he loves, however he has no idea what is going throughout the film. He’s constantly trying to catch up.

Cate Blanchett’s character is almost the typical femme fatale, but her past is shrouded in mystery, and her motivations are not very clear. The main mystery of this story is actually about her, a mystery that is not solved until the last minute.

That ending recalls the ending of Casablanca, however it does not have the same emotional impact. Her secret is not that shocking really, which is a let down since the whole story was based on that shocking revelation.

However the build up to that revelation was very interesting and it kept my attention. 30 minutes in there is a murder that changes things and made me wanna discover the truth.

I think this experiment was worth trying and watching. This actually reminded me of those old noir stories, where I was confused throughout the movie, but still interested. Unfortunately the payoff at the end is a bit of a let down.

Rating: 2.5 Stars