The Cabin in the Woods. TulaneLSU's 2011-12 movie review thread

#s
21 Jump Street 5/10

A
The Adventures of Tintin 4/10
Arthur Christmas 9/10
The Artist 7/10


B
Bad Teacher 1/10
Beautiful Boy 5/10
Biutiful 4/10
Burlesque 3/10

C
The Cabin in the Woods 7/10
Captain America 2/10
The Change Up 3/10
Chronicles of Narnia 7/10
The Company Men 5/10
Conan the Barbarian 1/10
Contagion 5/10
Country Strong 6/10
Courageous 3/10
Cowboys and Aliens 4/10
Crazy, Stupid Love 8/10

D
A Dangerous Method 5/10
The Debt 7/10
The Descendants 3/10
The Dilemma 8/10
Dolphin Tale 8/10
Drive 5/10

E
Everything Must Go 8/10
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close 7/10

F
The Fighter 9/10
Footloose 5/10

G
Glee 3D Movie Concert 6/10
Good Deeds 1/10
The Green Hornet 3/10
The Green Lantern 4/10
The Guard 7/10
Gulliver's Travels 0/10

H
The Hangover II 1/10
Harry Potter (2nd to last) 4/10
Harry Potter (the last one) 7/10
The Help 8/10
Horrible Bosses 3/10
How Do You Know 2/10
Hugo 7/10
Hunger Games 6/10

I
The Ides of March 4/10
Iron Lady 2/10

J
J. Edgar 7/10

K
The King's Speech 9/10

L
Larry Crowne 4/10
Little Fockers 3/10
Love, Wedding, Marriage 0/10

M
Margin Call 8/10
The Mechanic 3/10
Megamind 6/10
Midnight in Paris 9/10
Mirror, Mirror 8/10
Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol 2/10
Moneyball 4/10
Monte Carlo 2/10
The Muppets 5/10

N
Never Say Never 6/10; 10/10
No Strings Attached 6/10

O
One Day 7/10
Our Idiot Brother 5/10

P
Pina 7/10
Prom 2/10

R
Rango 8/10
Redemption Road 3/10
The Road Home 7/10
The Roommate 1/10
Rise of the Planet of the Apes 7/10
The Rite 6/10

S
Sanctum 1/10
Sarah's Key 9/10
Season of the Witch 5/10
The Secret World of Arrietty 7/10
Seven Days in Utopia 3/10
Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows 5/10
Smurf's 3D 0/10
The Social Network 9/10
Soul Surfer 7/10
Source Code 8/10

T
Take Me Home Tonight 2/10
Tangled 8/10
Thor 8/10
The Tourist 4/10
Transformers III 3/10
The Tree of Life 10/10
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy 2/10
Tron: Legacy 6/10
True Grit 7/10
Twilight: Breaking Dawn 0/10

V
The Vow 4/10

W
War Horse 8/10
Warrior 5/10
Water for Elephants 2/10
We Bought a Zoo 7/10
What's Your Number? 4/10
Winnie the Pooh 0/10

Conan the Barbarian Edgar in Shakespeare's King Lear boldly states, "The worst is not / So long as we can say 'This is the worst.'" Somewhere along the way, I picked up the idea that Conan was to be a big movie, one of those classics of adventure that come along only once every couple of years. The facts that it opened the week after school began and had not one decent actor should have tipped me off.

If there is anything redeeming about this movie, it's that the lead actress is not butt ugly. Besides that, this movie is nothing more than gore, violence, cheap CGI, and a terrible, terrible script. I don't even know if I should attend to this movie any longer, even if it is to give it a thorough berating. Let's first discuss the scenes. Holy marshmallows and attention deficit disorder. The writer must have intended for this movie to go on for five hours. Mercifully for us, it was chopped down to less than two, but all the scenes in part survive. As a result, we are on a non-stop journey through borrowed scene after borrowed scene. We go from Season of the Witch to Pirates of the Carbs to the Lord of the Rings to Indian Jones within three minutes! Chop, chop, Suey! We travel from kingdom to kingdom like we're changing scenes in Seinfeld. Like being thrown into a genealogy in Genesis, we're flooded with an undue mass of names, legends, and places. And the dialogue, my God, my ears were bleeding. "She must be pretty" - that's all that can be said of the lead lady, whose beauty is supposed to be great. I kid you not.

None of the characters matter. They are all caricatures: Conan: a child man set on revenge. The bad guy with the crown: a man driven by ambition. The witch: a woman who jealously wants to be her mother. Her outfits look like the design department raided the costume aisle at Walmart the day after Halloween. There was the possibility to make her character interesting, but the director, I think, was not intelligent enough to see it. Instead, we get characters that mean nothing. Even in the movie's one sex scene, there is not an iota of emotion. It's wham, bam, thank you sir. And yet the audience is expected to believe that these characters are so bound to each other that they will risk all to save the other! After an interesting opening scene where the character of a boy is building, I could not say a single scene in the rest of the movie mattered in character development. All was vain and empty.

Whoever made this movie, and let's pray he's not allowed to make another movie, must have a fetish for blood because in the end, all this movie is about is revenge and blood. And even the blood scenes are terribly dark and quickened so the viewer cannot see how poorly the scenes are acted and made. A formulaic film that tries to be monumental, it fails on every level. It's easily the worst remake since Russel Crowe's Robin Hood, and likely, a lot worse. Is it the worst action adventure movie ever made? If I said it is, would that mean it isn't? 1/10

Cowboys and Aliens: The first time I saw the trailer for this movie, it now seems like a year ago, I was almost sure this would be a comedy. A cowboy movie...about aliens? That's funny. A little dry humor from Harrison Ford, Wilde and Bond's blue eyes to appease the aesthetes, and some CGI for the kids. The trailer gave promise to an action-cowboy-comedy. But much to my surprise, and chagrin, this movie really is a cowboy movie about aliens.

It seems a recent trend to incorporate elements from two apparently disparate movie genres, what with Super 8 bringing together the 80's genre with sci-fi and all the comic book stories that weave histo-drama with sci-fi. It's anything but seamless. Sci-fi needs to remain in the realm of the nerds. Stop mixing sci-fi with bona fide movie genres. It's hurting my soul.

I discussed this movie with Ms. Wilde on Twitter for the past months. She assured me it would be good, but even with her reassurance, I remained skeptical. She promised me a refund if I didn't like it. Well, needless to say, I shall be contacting her for my $5 back. But I really won't, because I don't want to hurt her feelings. For her sake, please do not tell her what I'm about to tell you.

This movie fails on multiple levels. But the biggest and most irritating is ruining what would have been a good Western if they would have focused on a realistic, non-alien antagonist. Seeing cheaply made aliens running about in a landscape comparable to the heights of cinematography established in Open Range was nothing short of absurd. On the positive side, the movie was perfectly cast, even if Harrison Ford's recent grumpy old man routine is growing old. Olivia Wilde and Amy Adams are two of the finest actresses of this generation.

The introduction of Indians into the movie was a time filler and none of the Indians had a character that could make an audience care. The only relationship that has any transcendence is that between Ford and his Indian servant. Even Wilde and James Bond, despite their beautiful blue eyes, do not have much chemistry. I don't even know if I can say this was a good popcorn flick. Would I watch it again? Absolutely. Watching Olivie Wilde on the big screen is worth it and her beauty alone boosts this movie's score by two points, but the movie is still not very good. 4/10

Crazy, Stupid, Love: At first glance, one might conclude that this is a movie about divorce and the tremendous pain to individuals, family, and the community at large that it causes. A deeper inspection, however, reveals that the movie is about romantic love: how we lose it, how we find it, how we fight for it.

Romantic comedies are almost always told through the female perspective, but this movie flips the genre on its head, and we see romance from male eyes. It's quite refreshing, for in it, we see that the ways males approach romantic love are just as crazy, just as stupid, just as irrational as females. The journey to that romantic love brings males to the edges of insanity. What we find in the end, is that through our "wildly unhappy" times, we will find what we are looking for in our soulmate, who, one can only conclude, is a reflection of our own soul.

Men are melancholy beings, and in our melancholy, we become lonely, and in our loneliness, we find unsuitable pleasures that distract us from our loneliness, but do little from making us less lonely. The cure for our loneliness? The theme of the movie? Basically, that romantic love is life's ultimate telos and until we capture it, we will remain restless and yearning. Whether you agree with that philosophy is a matter of debate, but this movie, through a technique that borrows from Greek tragedy (the fall of a flawed character), 19th century Russian literature (emphasis on the character rather than the action and looking seriously at the human condition without being afraid to poke fun at it), and 1980's American sitcoms (a connective, universal conclusion), does a fine job of arguing its point.

My biggest criticisms of the movie are the casting of the males. I don't like Steve Carell as an actor. I cannot get his defining career scene: caught up in a bout of glossolalia in a television studio. He's a worthy slap-stick comedian, but it's hard to see him as anything but that, no matter how hard he tries to break that image. Ryan Gosling isn't very impressive either. I don't think he's handsome enough to pull off the playboy image. The women, on the other hand, even in their roles as support, are perfect. Julianne Moore is a fantastic actress who can play almost any character. Emma Stone, who isn't nearly as attractive as some say, gives another outstanding, if sarcastic, performance. I hope she will expand her repertoire because she has much more to offer. 8/10

Drive The Psalmist writes, "I was silent and still; I held my peace to no avail; my distress grew worse, my heart became hot within me. While I mused, the fire burned; then I spoke with my tongue: 'LORD, let me know my end, and what is the measure of my days; let me know how fleeting my life is'" (Psalm 39). The director of Drive uses what can best be described as monastic silence to draw viewers into the character played by Ryan Gosling. The impact is strong, for it is able somewhat to salvage a terrible movie. Although exciting, the first scene played out like a scene from Grand Theft Auto. Sure to please 20 and 30-something ribald males, to whom I'm sure this movie will become an unwarranted cult classic, there's very little to this film other than the silence of Gosling.

For Gosling's part, he is masterful. Through facial expressions, we see the most naive, innocent man who ever walked the terra firma. His adorable, childish smile makes us wonder. And in an instant the smile become a devastatingly violent kick to a head. And we wonder. What the hell created the person we see? The director uses a Hitchcockian technique: don't show and let the audience project. Let the audience come up with their own ideas of how this person came to be who he is. While it can stir the imagination, I came out wanting to know more about his childhood, and felt the movie's near complete avoidance of his past came across not so much as a religious mystery, which, by definition we can never know, but more the director and writer's inability to create a suitable and explicable history for a man so, well, mysterious. While the movie is adapted from a book, I think the audience deserved a hint to his past. We end up getting two hints. When Gosling is off-screen, we learn how long he has worked his job and how little he cares about money. The other hint comes from a scene with Gosling. And in that scene, we learn not to prod him regarding his past. If we do, we'll get our teeth kicked in. This character of internal burning can memorize thousands of streets on a map; he is a master at knowing how to get you where you need to go. But he is a mess who knows nothing about the streets of his life's map, primarily because he is afraid to remember his past. As a result, he will never get to where he needs to go.

Gosling's character is the only interesting one. And even though he is front and center, the director wasted too much time on the others. The cinematography has a feel of a foreign film and an 80s film. The lighting is well used as a character, reminiscent of Collateral. Keep an eye out for the symbols of wall paper and blood (cf. "My hands are a little dirty...So are mine"). I'm still trying to come up with a satisfying interpretation of the two. The music may be an important key to unlocking the mystery of Gosling's character, but I couldn't understand all the words. But the movie does end with a song about a hero who is an ordinary human being. Besides these strengths, and the intrigue associated with Gosling, the movie's plot is boring, the ending predictable, and the use of violence cloys. 5/10

The Green Hornet with the proliferation of comic book movies these days, you'd think the producers would have a standard pattern of success to follow. The Green Hornet moves away from any standard and tries to make a cutesy, Hangoverish comedy comic. It fails miserably. The lead of the show, Rogen, isn't remotely funny and his presence makes the movie fail from the very beginning. Why is this man a movie star? He's horrible. The co-star is low English speaker who is supposed to be made in the image of Bruce Lee. An hour into this goofy movie I was ready to leave, but I was tortured for another full hour. The only remotely interesting thing about this movie was the use of car weapons. Cameron Diaz is past her sell by date. 3/10.

The Green Lantern Is it possible to spend so much money to make something so ordinary? The makers of The Green Lantern have to get credit for spending prime filet prices on an Outback sirloin. The special animation was not very special; the characters were not interesting; the story was stale. Using a beautiful female in the role she had is like putting wasabi on the Eucharist wafer: totally unnecessary and self-defeating. 4/10

The Guard If you ever doubted that the people of the British Isles love their Westerns, do not look past The Guard. Listed as a comedy, it is better understood as a nod to the American Western. Yes, it is set on the west coast of Ireland. Yes, neither of its leads ever hop on a horse, though, there is a horse scene. Yes, there are no ropes, dust, tumbleweeds, or cowboy hats, save for the one worn by a former member of the IRA. Missing are the accidentals of the cowboy genre, but accidentals do not make something one thing or another.

So the question then becomes, what makes a cowboy movie? I would argue several essential characteristics: mysterious, morally ambivalent protagonist(s), a quest for something good, bad guys, reticent but concise language, a supporting cast ruled by suspicion of authority but by and large well intentioned, and ambuscades and a showdown. This movie has all of the above, so we can disregard the patina of comedy and look at it as an addition to the Western genre. That isn't to say the movie isn't funny; it's probably the funniest movie I've seen this year. But its humor is a smart humor, not like the trash that sophomoric Americans laugh at (thinking specifically of Hangover-Horrible Bosses poo-penis-drug humor). But humor doesn't drive the movie and its not a good lens through which to view it. The layering of humor through the movie is nearly perfect, like a steady wind that never offends. Its humor serves as a counter weight to the protagonist, a man who, out of uniform, loves hookers and blow, but a man of ideals and character in uniform. But no matter what he wears, melancholy is always close to his cuff. Heroic or stubborn, arrogant heroes often hide their melancholy with humor, and Sergeant Boyle is no exception.

I'm sure many viewers will see the question of this movie as "You're either really dumb or really smart," a once repeated description of Boyle by Cheadle's character. But that's not the question. The question we want to know is which mask does Boyle wear: the comic or the tragic? And we're left believing it's the tragic, and his comedy is only comedy because of his sadness. Like good Westerns, The Guard will leave you thinking about the flawed hero. So far, the best Western of the year. 7/10

Gulliver's Travels - it's official: Jack Black can only play one character and that character is not cool and not funny. This is a terrible movie, one of the worst of the years and there's zero redeeming about it. Acting, story, everything. Terrible. 0/10.

The Hangover II In continuation of the poo-poo-pee-pee-penis-vagina-drugs comedy of the late 90's and 2000's, the Hangover II has succeeded in making a movie of sheer debasement. The entire movie was uncreative, which at least you cannot say for the first one. The makers of this movie were content to do no writing and no significant directing because they knew the American public is stupid enough to pay to see this. I didn't laugh once. The only interesting thing was seeing Bangkok, but Jean Claude Van Damme movies do a better job with cinematography. 1/10

Harry Potter (2nd to last) Like Narnia I'd never seen any of its predecessors. Perhaps had I, I might have understood what was going on. I didn't. From start to finish I was confused and wondered who all these characters were. Fans of this movie obviously had an attachment to Harry before seeing this one because on its own, it is an utter failure. 4/10

Harry Potter (the last one) "'Father, if it is not possible for this cup to be taken away unless I drink it, may your will be done.'" So lives the entirety of the Harry Potter series, in my unread, unwatched opinion. All the books are one laywoman's descriptive sermon on Matthew 26. But the series' size and breadth is an elaborate misdirection. Only at the end do we realize what the series is about: the Garden of Gethsemane: coming to realize and face your fate, even if it means sacrificing everything.

In the one tear drops in the bowl scene, all is made known about Harry. I feel I needn't watch or read any of the books because all is peripheral to what is revealed in that bowl. All 20 hours of the film; all thousands of poorly written pages of words. All have been diverting our attention through cheeky wizardry and witchcraft from the heart of the story: Harry is his own foil. Jesus made a similar realization in the desert of temptation where sustenance, riches, and power are offered in exchange for disobedience of God and loyalty to himself (one might argue to Satan.) "It's the quality of one's convictions that determines success, not the number of followers" is how it's put elsewhere in the movie. This providential philosophy is how Jesus, the prophets, and all the great martyrs have lived. It's how the great posters on TD have lived and posted as well. For all the stupid spells, gadgets, brooms, and mutant creatures everywhere, Harry Potter is a morality tale about pursuing the good despite the cost.

I enjoyed this movie much more than the other two HP movies I saw. Despite its dark setting and CGI, the characters seemed to matter a little more and the story came together quite well. As the nerds in the theater next to me wept during much of the last thirty minutes of the film, I felt a surge of internal emotion. Not enough to elicit magical tears, but enough to give the movie a positive rating. 7/10

How Do You Know according to reports, this movie cost $120 million to make. Did the actors wipe their butts with gold toilet paper? This movie is awkward and heads in no discernible or interesting direction. Although it's labeled a romantic movie, there is no romance and I left the theater caring not for any of the characters, knowing it was just a paycheck for all of them. Worst romance in years. 2/10

Hugo The 19th century was perhaps the worst century for Christian theology in the Church's history. Where Kierkegaard was one of a few very bright lights, his light was not appreciated until Europe emerged from the ashes of a fallen civilization after the Great War. What led Europe to its own destruction? Natural theology. More precisely, the theology of both William Paley and Friedrich Schleiermacher. Paley believed that all we need to prove God's existence is order in the world. He therefore starts with his observation, his reason, and works his way backward, an Enlightenment's God of the gaps, if you will. In his monumentally poor Natural Theology he writes, "Suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place, I should hardly think of the answer which I had before given -- that, for anything I know, the watch might have always been there. Yet why should not this answer serve for the watch as well as for the stone?...For this reason, and for no other when we come to inspect the watch we perceive that its several parts are famed put together for a purpose...This mechanism being observed... the inference, we think, is inevitable, that the watch must have had a maker....who comprehended its construction, and designed its use."

Hugo is a delightful tale written by a person who likely does not realize he has adopted Paley's theology, but beneath the theological undertones of this movie is a distinctly Christian message. We are broken on the inside. Someone needs to fix us. This in itself is a good and natural realization. We do not need a revelation of any supernatural means to learn how broken we are. Just look at the world around us. If we were not broken, the structures of this world would not be so hopelessly broken and corrupt. Does anyone need to look further than the media, especially at ESPN, who campaign for Alabama's inclusion in the national championship game despite only playing four teams with a winning record and hanging its entire season on a loss at home? A just world would not allow such non-sense. A just world is filled with whole and healthy people. But the world is not just. It is broken, just as its inhabitants. The film does not have the courage to delve into the Watchmaker, but Scorsese has the sense, perhaps because he has the limited theological insight, to plant the story in the land of the temporal alone. While the movie is about the one who fixes others, even at the cost of his own safety, that character, so full of mystery is left as nothing more than a flat messiah. We learn so much about the dynamic character, the old man, and it is good. But the character I wanted to learn is left as little more than a tool. What makes his clock tick? Martin, tell me.

One thing slightly perturbing I see as I get older is the feeling among American directors that characters who are not American need to have British accents. The movie is set in Paris, but every single character has a British accent. Why? Apart from that annoyance that extends not just from this movie but nearly every Disney movie ever made to the council scenes in Star Wars, I liked the visuals of this movie. Set in the Gare Montparnasse, the famous Parisian train station, known in photographs for the train that could not stop and ended up shooting through the station's main window, the cinematography is beautifully done, making the viewer appreciate the cold. It's easy for your film to be beautiful when the setting is Paris, but even so, Hugo has something magical about it. One of its magic tricks is the use of cold. Cold can be a character of death and misery, but in this movie, the cold is used to show beauty and to bring us to a wonderland of mirth. It is, in that way, a quintessentially Christmasy movie.

The acting is rather ordinary, with no magical performances given. There is, however, one shockingly foreign performance. It took me a couple of scenes until I realized who played one of the characters. So unusual and divergent from his normal roles was this one. Hugo is one of those very warm family movies that will make a chummy memory in the minds of children. But for me, I felt like so much more was left on the table that could have been developed. 7/10

The Ides of March Maybe you know J Anouilh's play Becket. If you don't, it's the story between the Archbishop of Cantebury, Becket, and the King of England, Henry II. The two, who were at one time best friends, become arch enemies because Becket is unwilling to lay down the honor of God and the Church at the altar of the monarch's power. What the play so aptly does is show the conflict between doing what's honorable and doing what friends want. The Ides of March deal with the same issues, but its message is far different, far less idealistic and memorable. In any event, I believe the naming of this movie is wrong. Something more befitting its themes would be a title like Honor and Friendship. Instead, the writers incorrectly lead viewers with a ubiquitously known title about a secretive putsch that has little to do with the movie.

The movie's focus is on two men, two ideologues, one younger, the dude in Drive and Crazy, Stupid Love, and one older, the guy in Oceans 11. The movie is at its best building both of these characters into superhumans, people who care about the concerns of the world, but who are not dragged down by the filth of the world. Act I, Eden, is a walk through Clooney's own liberal policies, which sound ever so convincing and ever so compelling.

But Eden does not stay perfect forever. As the Catholic monk, Henri Nouwen wrote about the fall of spiritual leaders, Leaders with a good message "separate themselves from their own concrete community, try to deal with their needs by ignoring them or satisfying them in distant and anonymous places, and then experience an increasing split between their own most private inner world and the good news they announce." Often the leaders who have the best ideas and the most pure motives are the ones who succumb to the cheapest of sins. And once sin enters the pictures, the dominoes comes crashing down. Sin multiplies and reverberates through the land, destroying individuals, destroying relationships, and destroying dreams. Who was once a ideologue of justice to the people becomes the power he preached he came to stop.

The game of politics pretends to be above sin, and so its adherents use what they believe is more sophisticated language, but any new terminology is only a re-released Disney movie in 3D. It might look or sound a little different, but it's really the same thing. So we enter the second act, the act of guilt and of shame. But for as much honor as these men and their camarilla exuded in their public lives, in private, they seem to lack shame. Shame is replaced with a thirst for power and self-betterment.

The King's Speech A great triumph of cinematic docu-drama. It brings history and drama together like never before. You will leave this movie identifying with at least one character at least at some point in your life. The soundtrack is almost as marvelous as the performances. 9/10

Larry Crowne You know what, Hanks and Roberts have a real chemistry in this movie, but it's not romantic. It's more like the relationship Hanks has with that toy exec chick in Big. They try to force the romance angle, but it's acute and eventually it closes as a straight line. While I appreciate Hanks' positive, go-get-em attitude, it doesn't come off as very sincere and fails to plumb the depths of human disappointment. Are there people who are so look-on-the-bright-side in this world? Perhaps, but movies about them aren't good theater. 4/10

Little Fockers Meet the Parents should have stopped with the original. This movie does nothing new and repeats the same, tired jokes again and again. Do comic writers think audiences are so unfunny? I didn't chuckle once and found every character to be annoying. Alba is terrible. 3/10

Margin Call Several years ago, unbeknownst to me at the time, I had lunch with one of the foremost investors of the 20th century. When one of my friends had seen with whom I had lunch, he rushed to ask me questions, specifically about money. "Did he tell you how to invest?" and so forth. "No, no he didn't. Money did not enter our conversation once." One might say that the conversation had been on spirituality. Specifically, we talked about what we can know about God and what can be learned about God through many religions. Money for this man, in my brief encounter with him, was not why he lived. At least not at that point in his life.

In an important conversation near the end of Margin Call, the cormorant owner of this investment group has these words to a disillusioned, surly stock pusher, a man who felt, in the words of Hugo, "the perpetual plaint of a soul in agony": "It's just money; it's made up. Pieces of paper with pictures on it so we don't have to kill each other just to get something to eat. It's not wrong." His words ring as truth, a thought uttered by many of the saints of the world: money is nothing. And those who devote their lives to it become nothing. That much is consistent with all the world's major religions. But his words also ring as platitudinous, for that man had clambered all his life for money and there was no regret or turning from this idol. This man and the man with whom I shared lunch were not of the same ilk.

Margin Call, like Wall Street II and Company Men, is placed in the troublesome days of early Autumn, 2008 when the world's economic bubble was ready to burst. Each of these movies has tried to capture the greed that led up to the financial collapse, but none has been as successful as Margin Call. Why? Precisely because in the other two movies, we are given characters that the hoi polloi, the occupant 99%, are supposed to hate. The motivation with their main characters is personal greed. Margin Call is not so simplistic, and so, much more believable. The film is at its finest when developing the complex characters involved in this fictitious histo-drama. We get to know seven characters very well, a feat in itself for a movie of this length. And for each, our initial impressions are not our final impressions. The movie, in that sense, is shocking. A man we believe to be a terrible villain in the opening scenes, we will come to pity at the end. Because at the end, we see that the Jewish vision of labor has triumphed over the Roman view, which has since been adopted by the West, sadly, and to the detriment of culture and charity. This character brings us there, the place where button pushing is replaced by heart-breaking, back-breaking work. The entire cast is formidable and impressive except Demi Moore. She gives an encore performance to Disclosure, which is equally as bad. She doesn't deserve to be in another film.

Is this a movie about money? Only in form. In substance, it is a movie about our own motivations in life. By examining the motivation of others, their raison d'être, reason for being, it gives each of us a good opportunity to re-examine what motivates us. And I hope we will be able to move past money, obviously, but even past building bridges and digging holes. Our reason is far greater than our work of this sort. Only when our work is solely a work of love has our reason become exalted and pleasing. 8/10

Never Say Never Never would I think I'd say that spending $10 on my Never Say Never ticket was the best value for money of anything I bought this year, but here I am to say that. The movie itself is good. It's an interesting documentary on a kid who is trying to stay a kid in this big world. The music is great. The sequence and timing are superb. But what puts this movie over the top are the fans. That's right. By the end of the movie, 75% of the theater, consisting mostly of early and pre-teen girls were on the ground level with their hands up, screaming and touching the screen as if the movie were a concert. It was exhilarating to be in that number! I confess I too ran down to the floor and began dancing and screaming with the masses. What an awesome movie experience. Movie 6/10 Experience 10/10.

No Strings Attached Why does it seem like every movie set today has a flashback to either the late 80s or early 90s? NSA starts with a bad premise and the movie is intent to show how wrong that premise is. The problem is along the way, the movie doesn't completely reject the premise or other vices which make the premise possible. There is a moving scene at the end, as you might expect, but with the impurity scattered throughout the movie, it's hard to feel like the characters have really undergone catharsis and been redeemed. Nonetheless, there are humorous parts, but if you've seen the trailer, you've seen most of the movie. Portman is a good actress, but she's not that attractive. 6/10

One Day Life, which for humans is defined by relationships, has a sort of beautiful symmetry to it. Where we begin, we often end, or "In my beginning is my end," as T.S. Eliot so elegantly stated in "East Coker." And so it is in the strong writing of One Day, a sweeping, sometimes mawkish, story of the birth, regression, transgression, secession, and consummation of a friendship, friendship that is always evolving because its participants are always changing.

Through the relationship of Hathaway's fey character and the Cockaigne born and raised character played by Jim Sturgess, we see two of the most important aspects of humanity: the being of joy and the becoming of someone better. The two play off each other, all their lives long; the two need each other like the yin, bringing to mind that old passage from Proverbs: "As iron sharpens iron, so one person sharpens another." The journey of both lives is captivating. As one ascends, the other descends. But somehow, like in the Curious Case of Benjamin Button, there is a point of intersection where, despite the past and the future, the two are equals. Gone, then, are the nostrums of alcohol, drugs, manipulation and use of others for their company. All that remains is love, the love of best friends, the love of knowledge of the other, for what is romantic love, a lower form of love yes, but what is it but a knowledge of and acceptance of the other? Even despite their foibles. One day, we all hope to return home, to the one, or One, who knows us completely as we are.

As for the particulars, Anne Hathaway is terrible. She is not a good actress, and she should have quit with Princess Diaries. The saving grace of this movie, besides the terrific writing, is Sturgess, his mother, played by Jackie Clarkson's daughter, and his father. Those three actors hit the ball deep in the corner. It may not be a homerun, but considering what's out there, they make it worth leaving home to see. 7/10

Redemption Road What happens when you throw those holy of holies ingredients white Alba truffles, Almas Beluga caviar, Wagyu steak, Matsutake mushrooms and saffron into a gumbo pot and let it cook for on medium for a couple of hours? A nasty, smelly, yucky mess, that's what. And so it is with the overtly evangelical Redemption Road. Thrown haphazardly into this plot are the profound, holy themes of sin, forgiveness, love, freedom, and redemption.

In a not so novel approach to the modern journey genre, we hit the road, not the interstate, for what can be learned on an interstate other than which exit has the next Subway or Exxon?, but on a series of local, backwoods highways. The assumption being that we have to slow down and get lost before we can find where we're going. Along this journey we're spoon fed in excruciatingly boring and predictable detail the regrets of a life not so well lived. All the while, with preachy platitudes sprinkled here and there, the storyteller is giving away the end of the story.

This movie will likely appeal to hipster Christians who think they've discovered some great secrets and thoughts earlier Christians have not. It will also be applauded by those abecedarian Christians who make their testimony into a tale of grave sin, trying to outdo others on the depth of their sin. If one person says, "I smoked 10 pounds of crack and then Jesus saved me," the next guy in line will say, "I smoked twenty pounds of crack! and then Jesus saved me." It will appeal to them because that's what it's about: sinners who, at times, seem to be bragging about how bad they used to be.

This movie offers little new to the genre of the journey from sin to redemption. The producers were clearly thrilled when the black guy from Green Mile and Dillon from 90210 agreed to do the film. But seldom has typecasting had such little effect. The main character, whose name I'm not going to bother looking up, is flat and modern caricature of Johnny Cash. Even in the climatic scene of Pyrrhic victory, I didn't care. The harder he and the director tried to pull the chords of my emotions, the more I was put off and the less I cared because it was so very predictable, so very, very inauthentic.

Are there any positives? There is one good scene at sunset. It truly is a beautiful scene. For large stretches the cinematography is less than inspiring, but there are a few diamonds, if you look for them. Tom Skerritt does an admirable job with the limited potential given to him. And the main message of the movie, that the inability to forgive weighs us down and that only love can free us, is a good message, which is a lot more than can be said for many movies today. The takeaway from this movie is that just because you are dealing with great themes does not mean that you will come up with a great movie. 3/10

The Roommate Watching several cardboard actors following as predictable a script as they come gave me time to wonder how ratings have changed so much in the last decade. How was this movie given a PG-13 rating? The movie is little more than violence and a shallow, dangerous look at mental illnesses. It's a movie that demonizes people who have mental illness. I can't imagine the budget of this film was much more than $5 million. From FPOBA's use of The University of Los Angeles to props made out of paper to a script I could have written in two hours, this is about as cheap a movie as can be made. In fact, as the opening credits came on, I thought I was watching a bad Lifetime movie. My biggest complaint though was that all the characters didn't die in a giant conflagration within five minutes of the movie's start. Then I wouldn't have wasted so much time. 1/10