Jared Rasic

Dear Movie Gods,
Now that's how it's done. All I had to do was complain in four straight reviews about the death of the Hollywood blockbuster and you, the movie gods, answered my prayers. With the excellent Rise of the Planet of the Apes, I'm sure I must owe you a blood sacrifice or at least a back rub at some point.
You know my biggest complaint about this summer at the movies has been the uniformly strong first acts (Transformers notwithstanding) and a fizzle when it comes to the final third of the films. In the cases of Cowboys and Aliens, Captain America and Green Lantern, they all have this really fascinating origin story, only to let us down when it comes to the final battle and the denouement (fancy nerd talk for conclusion, but you knew that). They all seem to just be doing their best to set up a franchise instead of telling a complete story and that's where Apes succeeds grandly: it has a beginning, middle and an actual end that it earns instead of just stopping until they can start shooting the next one.

I like a lot of really bad movies. Movies that are so bad they actually force me to examine my life choices and rationale behind why I think a movie called Mega Python vs Gatoroid is going to be worth my time (answer: it has Debbie Gibson and Tiffany in it.). It's easy to watch bad movies because it's fun to tear into them with friends afterward and dissect them like the hidden meaning of Pink Floyd lyrics (answer: drugs). What's much more difficult to discuss are movies that are just… good. Middle of the road, perfectly satisfactory movies that don't stick out, one way or the other. Cowboys & Aliens fits this model perfectly. It made me smile and has several exhilarating action sequences that wrap you up in the spirit of the picture, but it feels like it could have been so much more and I know it will be completely forgotten in outside of a week.

I don't think I'm ready for this yet. Superheroes have been such an integral part of my life for so long that I don't even know who I'd be without my love for Captain America, The Punisher, X-Men, both Green's (Arrow and Lantern, screw Hornet), Batman, Spidey and The Avengers. I know these people better than I know my friends and family. Now that I've seen Captain America right on the heels of Thor and Green Lantern, I'm afraid I might be growing out of superhero movies or, more accurately, I'm growing out of the formula that they all have in common, which I call the Batman Begins syndrome.

I am a bad luck theatergoer. No matter the movie, the time of day or day of the week, I will always sit within one row of the drunkest, most obnoxious human being in the entire auditorium. If you see a person answer their phone at the climax and say “Hey what's up man? Oh nothing, just watching a movie,” look directly behind them and there I'll be, fists clenched, wondering if I could get away with punching them in the back of the head and running like a bearded cheetah.

Michael Bay has a few fetishes. He likes supermodels, cars, high-tech military weaponry, hunky military personnel, jingoistic flag waving and giant, flaming explosions. I like models and explosions, so that was enough to plant me in the seat for the third film in a trilogy that could at best be called “special.” Rain Man
special, not first-kiss special. If you like either the first or second offering in this trilogy, you will enjoy this one as well – it's easily the best in the trilogy. Before you accuse me of damning with faint praise, let me first admit that I am, in fact, damning with faint praise.

This summer we've already had mutants battling the Cuban Missile Crisis and Norse gods realizing that Natalie Portman is hot, but up next is Green Lantern, based on the DC Comics series that originated in the 1940s. It's a space adventure where the costumes are made out of willpower and computer-generated people fly around shooting stuff out of their rings. I'm not mocking, I've been collecting the comics for 15 years. And now you're mocking me. Real cool, guys.
The Green Lantern Corp. is an intergalactic police force created by the Guardians of the Universe, a group of short, blue senior citizens who are tasked to be… guardians of the universe. Then they created power rings that use the wielder's willpower to create anything they can imagine. The rings are the primary defense the Corp. has against any threats, domestic or interstellar. I have one, but it only changes color and makes my finger smell funny.

Buried tells the story of Paul Conroy (played by Ryan Reynolds) an American truck driver in Iraq whose convoy is attacked by Iraqi insurgents. Rather than simply kill him, they abduct and bury him in a wooden box several feet below the desert. His kidnappers leave him with a pencil, a Zippo, a Blackberry and some instructions for what they want him to do. If I told you any more, it wouldn't be fair because part of the fun of this movie is discovering things as Paul does. Suffice to say, we are just as stuck in the coffin as he is, only hearing what he hears through the phone and never leaving the coffin to get another point of view.

The found-footage genre is not for everyone, but for some reason it works for me like gangbusters. I saw Blair Witch before all the hype, so it scared the crap out of me and the original Paranormal Activity had me spellbound for most of its running time until the dodgy CGI-enhanced ending. The Internet tells me that people are sick of the found-footage genre because it's boring and nothing ever happens except at the end so this review comes with a caveat – if you hated Blair Witch or the original Paranormal Activity, then don't bother with this sequel because it doesn't break any new ground, but at the same time, it actually enriches the original and gives it an interesting mythology.

This movie really shouldn't work, and not all of it does, but when it is working you'll have a smile from ear to ear as some of our country's most distinguished stars (and Bruce Willis) take on a government hit man. Red is loosely based on the graphic novel written by Warren Ellis and penciled by Cully Hamner, but if comic book movies aren't your thing, don't worry because Red feels more like an episode of Burn Notice than The Dark Knight.

This is one of those movies where you find yourself smiling and even laughing out loud a few times while it's running, but then it ends and you feel a little violated. It made me wonder if director Andy Fickman had actually ever met a real live woman before, or if he'd only read about them in Misogynist Weekly. Every woman in this movie is vindictive, petty, cruel and duplicitous. Every man in the film is simpleminded yet benevolent. And every audience member is punished during the seemingly endless 105-minute running time, except for the shrieking pack of high-school girls in the back of the theater. They loved every single word of You Again, causing me to fear for the future of this country. Again.