Jared Rasic

It might not be fair, but I don’t judge martial arts movies by the same standard as I do other genres. I don’t need character development, brilliant acting or nuance when it comes to a new kung-fu movie. I only need exhilarating action, an under-reliance on wire work and some savage ass-kickery. The Raid: Redemption not only delivers on those three fronts, but executes them perfectly (especially the ass-kickery part). I would even go so far as to say that there hasn’t been such a relentlessly action packed movie since Hard Boiled came out in 1992 and introduced Chow Yun-fat to America.

I suppose I should get this out of the way up front: I don’t think I am in this film’s target demographic. And for large stretches of the film’s running time, I’m not sure the writer and director were entirely sure who the movie's audience is.
At first, I thought the film was a drama about the United Kingdom reaching out to Yemen in the hopes of creating some positive PR. Then the script delved into questions of faith and religious certainty. Then it slipped the shackles of being a “message movie” in favor of a fairly straightforward romantic comedy.

Most everyone I know fondly remembers the 1981 version of Clash of the Titans. It had it all: Greek mythology, the Stygian Witches, Calibos, Medusa, the Kraken, giant scorpions and, of course, Bubo the mechanical owl. I watched this original version again, for the first time in 20 years, before watching Wrath of the Titans. I wanted to remind myself of the main story points and remember how much better it was than the remake. That was not the best idea.
While it is still much better than the remake, the original really didn't stand up too well. Aside from Ray Harryhausen's effects work (his last before retiring), it's somewhat dull and lifeless. Harry Hamlin, with his bronzed, hairless legs, just isn't a hero that I care about. It's all too campy to take seriously as an epic adventure. That's to say that Clash of the Titans is not a sacred cow for me, so my feelings for Wrath aren't related to nostalgia for the original.

Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl back while simultaneously learning a profound life lesson. Rinse, repeat. That's the timeworn formula employed by every romantic comedy. Some films rest comfortably within the format and fail. (Good Luck Chuck, All About Steve) Others can work within those parameters and create art (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, When Harry Met Sally). Friends with Kids falls disappointingly between those two extremes. The screenplay has a fascinating central conceit that creates dramatic tension, but then falls back on all of the typical genre conventions for the final act.
WriterDirectorStar Jennifer Westfeldt has built a career writing films that playfully deconstruct traditional relationships in favor of something more experimental. In Kissing Jessica Stein, she told the story of a heterosexual woman burned by too many horrible blind dates who turns to lesbianism. With Ira & Abby, she focused on what would happen if two people got engaged after just one conversation.

It's difficult to be too hard on Gone because everyone seems to be trying really hard. The problem is that every aspect of the film is at war with itself.
The PG-13 rating neuters it and keeps it from being as twisted as it should have been; the script loses so much focus in the final ten minutes that the entire premise of the film is lost.
There are characters that exist only as red herrings. When their purpose is fulfilled, they are discarded and never seen again.

The further I get away from my high school years, the more those days seem like a rose-tinted ball of nostalgia, even though at the time I was pretty miserable. I was a senior when the Columbine shootings happened and, until graduation, that event seemed to bring everyone in school closer. As school shootings have become either less frequent or less publicized, films set in high school have once again become focused on the us-vs.-them mentality.
Characters are drawn as black and white, leaving no room for shades of grey. Chronicle addresses this by having three complex main characters that don't fit into any of the boxes in which Hollywood normally places teenage characters. They are heroic, selfish, hopeless, moral and morally bankrupt. In other words, they're human, which makes them fascinating to watch. Oh, and they have superpowers.

Liam Neeson, the actor best known for playing thoughtful, sometimes heroic men, has somehow managed (in his late 50s, no less) to reinvent himself as a steely-eyed action star in the vein of Clint Eastwood or the late Charles Bronson. Watching him beat the living hell out of absolutely everyone in his path in movies like Taken and Unknown proved more fun than anyone imagined. Because of that, the marketing campaign for The Grey has almost exclusively been focusing on the novelty of Liam Neeson fist-fighting giant grey wolves. However, if the film trailer's shot of him taping broken glass to his hands and charging a wolf is the only thing that has you excited about this movie, then you will likely walk out of the theater disappointed. Director Joe Carnahan had more on his mind than wolf punching.

Everybody likes a good scare and, judging from the $35 million that The Devil Inside made this weekend, they like a bad one, too. I realize it's very early to say this, but if The Devil Inside doesn't turn out to be one of the worst movies of 2012, then I fear for the year ahead. I had high hopes for this one since it had a pretty effective advertising campaign and it combines two of my favorite horror subgenre's: faux documentary and exorcism. Even with the immediate realism of the documentary genre and the unknowable horror of an exorcism movie, The Devil Inside manages to not only feel miniscule in scope, but is also free and clear of any and all scares and comes fully packaged with one of the worst endings in cinematic history.
Don't let the awesome trailer fool you into thinking this is more than just your average beginning-of-the-year crap. January is typically the dumping ground for films the studios are too afraid to release around awards season and normally won't even screen them for critics. Most of the time, if you're sitting down to a movie in January, it's probably going to be terrible, but there are exceptions to every rule. The Devil Inside is not one of them. If anything, it solidifies the rule in poopy-flavored shame.