Even with Pixar securing their reign as the greatest CG animation studio in the world with the release of Toy Story 3, this hasn’t slowed down the competition. It seems every couple weeks a new animated blockbuster with a star studded cast and a hip soundtrack is thrown up on the multiplex screens, and is often met with millions of kids dragging their parents to see it, no matter how god-awful it looks (and they mostly do look god-awful. Have you seen the Alpha and Omega trailer?). So, when you start hearing about a movie like Despicable Me getting rave reviews from critics and audiences alike, you’ve got to wonder whether it is a legitimately great movie, or just far enough above the low bar set by other movies like it that it is simply great in comparison. It seems to be Despicable Me falls somewhere in between these two extremes.

Here we’ve got the fairly original idea of rival villains, each consumed with stealing, and subsequently ransoming, bigger and more important things than the other, while going to great lengths to sabotage the others attempts to follow through with their plans. Our protagonist is Gru, a hunchbacked foreigner with a heart of gold (naturally), and he’s played by Steve Carell as, in his words, a mix between Bela Lugosi and Ricardo Montelban. Carell is often funny, but it takes a while to get used to the voice, especially when he throws the odd dated phrase in at the end of sentences (ex. homie, dawg, etc.)

Despite some sweet moments, it’s things like this that bring Despicable Me down closer to Madagascar and Shark Tale, and away from far better movies like Meet the Robinsons and Over the Hedge. Pop culture references and attempts to be hip might work for any five year old watching, but it’ll make anyone over that age groan, and hurt its chances of being separated from any of the other dozens of CG animated movies that are released every year. It doesn’t matter how many relatively big names you get to play the smallest parts, or that Pharrell wrote your soundtrack, if you focus more on the easy jokes, the fart gags, the clichés, it won’t matter. Strong, consistent characters and an original and well told story are far more important to creating a successful movie than all of the scenes of random disco and cute minions in the world.

Now, that’s not to say that there weren’t some good things to be witnessed here. There is a lot of funny, from very well executed, Looney Tunes-esque action scenes, to much of the physical comedy from the little, yellow minions (who are, let’s face it, ultimately pointless), and almost everything said by Agnes, the smallest of three orphans Gru adopts as a stage of one of his plans. It’s an enjoyable enough movie, and a fine way to pass the time, but I didn’t find anything in Despicable Me to support the claims that there was anything special here. Although, like I said, there are some sweet moments, much of the movie is wasted on a predictable story and hollow characters. A fun time at the movies, but nothing spectacular.

6 out of 10.

Released: August 18th, 2010

Plot: A spoof of vampire-themed movies, where teenager Becca finds herself torn between two boys. As she and her friends wrestle with a number of different dramas, everything comes to a head at their prom.

Review: Now, you may be wondering why I’m watching a movie that was written and directed by the same guys who wrote and directed Disaster Movie, Date Movie and Epic Movie (all of which would end up in my “most hated movies” list) Well, the answer is, I’m a sadomasochist and I enjoy putting myself through vigorous amounts of agony. Oh and Ken Jeong.

It’s a well-known FACT that Disaster Movie and Epic Movie are two of the worst parody movies ever made. So one may wonder why director/writers Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer would even attempt to pen another parody. Well for one, these movies always make back what is put into them and then some. And for two, redemption. The latter may not be true but, I like to think it is. Friedberg and Seltzer’s past parodies have proven to be way over the top, boring, and completely non-sequitur to the movie’s title. In Vampires Suck, both directors have seemed to catch on to their past movies flaws, and refined the meat of their movie.

Vampires Suck is about vampires (duh) and parodies The Twilight Trilogy with focus on Twilight and New Moon. Scary Movie is a parody that focuses on one single concept (scary movies) and parodies it throwing in a pop culture jab here and there. Both writers had a hand in writing Scary Movie and, unfortunately, didn’t take that format with them. Instead, they are known for taking an abundance of pop culture references (such as Amy Winehouse and Juno in Disaster Movie) and squeezing them all in to one movie. It’s distracting and the movies are usually all over the place. But not in this movie.

Vampires Suck follows Becca and Edward who are obviously meant to parallel Bella and Edward.  This movie does a good job at following the Twilight story and picking at all the angst and annoying things we hate about Kristen Stewart and Bella. It shows just how funny and ridiculous Twilight truly is without the need for Miley Cyrus to pop in and out. This movie actually has a plot and one that won’t leave you wishing for the movie to be over. The jokes aren’t the funniest in the world, but I got a good chuckle or two out of them. Heck, I’ll admit, I even laughed out loud a few times. If you don’t know things like who the Black Eyes Peas are then these are moments you’ll be scratching your head thinking “I don’t get it.”

When it comes to spoofing anything, it’s best to have actors that do a good job at replicating the characters. Becca’s character is played by first time actress Jenn Proske and let me say this, if there is ever a biopic (and let’s pray there isn’t) done on Kristen Stewart, she will play Stewart. What made me like this movie even more was Proske ability to mimic all of Stewart’s mannerisms that we all hated in Twilight: the twitching, the biting of the lip, looking down and stammering, the pulling of her ear, and constant blinking. Her performance really made it that much more funny. And the same goes for Edward played by Matt Lanter and many of the other characters. When an actor can successfully mimic the one they are spoofing, it makes a movie so much funnier. Tina Fey comes to mind with her Sarah Palin on SNL. Thankfully, there is no Carmen Electra for once. I love her but she doesn’t need to be in anymore of their movies.

There are knocks to the head (LOTS of them), ball shots, and random jokes that leave you face palming. It doesn’t exactly make you want to come back for more, but it leaves you satisfied in the end.  Movies like Airplane and the Naked Gun series live on because they are made to be funny, not made to draw in a young audience for a quick buck. While this movie is obviously no Airplane, it’s still a HUGE step up from Disaster Movie and Epic Movie.  It’s even much more enjoyable than Twilight itself. This is the type of movie to see on a plane or while skimming through the channels in your underwear on a Sunday night.

5.5 out 10

After seeing Inception, I was inspired to watch Christopher Nolan’s directoral debut, and the only film of his I hadn’t seen, Following. Up until this point, I have loved everything that Nolan has had to offer. I sang his praises enough in my Inception review, so I will refrain from doing it again. After seeing this film, it is official. I love every Christopher Nolan movie.

Following is the story of a lonely writer with an interest in people. To better understand them, he decides to follow them around town. Every day he chooses a new mark with which he secretly spends the day. The marks are chosen at random, and everything goes well. That is until he decides to break his own rules and follow a man for a second time. This is the mistake that leads the naive protagonist into a life of love and crime. And of course, there is a twist.

For those of you who have seen Nolan’s movies, I will warn you that the complexities and high production value that he has become known for is non-existent in this movie. The film is very low-budget with no-name actors, and it is entirely in black-and-white. But just because it lacks explosions, a complicated story, big actors, and Batman, does not mean it is a bad movie. If I didn’t know this was a Nolan production going in, I would have been surprised. The movie shows a whole different side of Nolan’s directorial abilities. It shows that even with little to work with, he can produce a quality film. That is the mark of a true cinematic genius. Those of you expecting typical Nolan trademarks will be disappointed, so avoid doing so. Watch this movie as its own entity.

One thing to note is the development of Nolan as a director. It is always intriguing to see how great directors become who they are. While watching this movie, it is easy to see that Nolan was still trying to find his director style. Amazingly, by his next feature, Memento, he had mastered it.

It is difficult to evaluate Following as a movie. The film itself is very short, at only 70 minutes, so there isn’t a whole lot of content to dissect. Just know that it is an enjoyable drama-mystery. Nolan is very good at keeping the audience guessing, and if I can say one thing about Following, it is just that. It will keep you guessing. And in typical Chris Nolan fashion, you probably won’t see what’s coming next.

I’ve started and stopped writing this review a good half-dozen times by now, and I realize that there’s no way I can do this.

Life During Wartime is Todd Solondz’s follow-up to his movie Happiness, with the events taking place ten years after the events of the first film, but with all of the characters being played by different actors, who are all as great as their counterparts from Happiness.

Now, my conundrum is that Happiness is probably one of my favorite movies, and to describe why I so thoroughly loved Life During Wartime would include the same reasons why I so thoroughly enjoyed Happiness. I wasn’t sure if I should write a “My Favorite Movies” column for Happiness first, or a review for Life During Wartime. So, instead of separating them, I’m combining the two to let you know not only why Happiness is one of my favorite movies, but why, due to these reasons, Life During Wartime is not only a worthy sequel, but a very good movie in its own right.

Happiness follows a group of people whose lives revolve around three sisters: Joy, Helen and Trish. These include their husbands, children, parents, boyfriends, girlfriends, co-workers, patients, neighbors, and little-league teammates. These very same people also happen to be a variety of things including pedophiles, deviants, immigrants, thieves, divorcees, murderers, who all host a slew of their own problems, in addition to the obvious.

The basic idea of Happiness, as far as I can tell, surrounds the concept that we all do what we can to maintain this positive appearance, while keeping our true feelings hidden for fear of being exposed for our flaws, and possibly causing harm to the people we consider ourselves close to. Here, we are introduced to a slew of characters who exemplify this behavior, including, most notably, Dylan Baker as the pedophiliac psychiatrist, and Jane Adams as a free-spirited volunteer with low self esteem.

While all of the performances, from the more prominent actors to those who only appear in one or two scenes, are excellent, I feel these two performers and their characters exemplify what is so great about this movie. Dylan Baker does the near impossible, playing one of the most despised kinds of people that exist in this world, and creates him as a kindhearted man with a problem that he has no way of solving, almost as if he can’t be held accountable for his thoughts and actions, like they were more of a curse than something he could control. Using him as an extreme example of someone whose happiness suffers at the monstrousness of their desires, and the uselessness of their efforts to keep them hidden away, Solondz pulls off the unthinkable by making him a sympathetic character. We may not condone his actions, but we feel almost as if he has no control, making it all the more painful to see him succumb to his dark thoughts.

Now, if Dylan Baker’s Bill Maplewood exemplifies the seemingly average man with an inner darkness, Jane Adams’ Joy Jordan exemplifies the sweet but naïve girl who doesn’t know herself well enough to know what will make her happy, so she randomly grabs at relationships and situations with the potential to do the job for her. Adams plays Joy with this constant sadness, as a woman who strives for independence, but is stuck with such little confidence and such an overbearing family, she has no choice but to silently agree with their criticisms and insults. Even when she thinks she’s stumbled onto something that will finally turn out to be good for her, Joy always finds herself alone in the end, haunted by her decisions and the damage its done to her already horrible self esteem.

Despite how this may sound so far, Happiness is not a sad movie. In fact, I’d say one of my favorite things about it is how, even though it’s filled with such sad, horrible people with dark secrets and awful problems, there is not one moment in Happiness where I feel bogged down in the misery of its subjects. What could have easily turned into a melodramatic character study of the disturbed and depressed is instead a black comedy that never gets too heavy, despite its subject matter. Between the consistently subversive tone and Solondz’s trademark blunt dialogue and conversations, Happiness finds a surprising amount of humor and honesty in situations that would’ve just been used as sources of shock value by most other filmmakers.

It’s not really fair to assume how others would handle this material, however, as Todd Solondz has created somewhat of a niche for himself with his movies. Themes of judgment, hidden fears and problems, the horrors of adolescence, and the unending search for meaning and satisfaction in our lives are handled with such matter-of-factness and humor, there simply are no other movies being made quite like Todd Solondz’s. There are people who will look at Happiness and say that it promotes pedophilia and chooses to shock instead of tell a meaningful story, but I say these people aren’t paying attention. These are the people who choose to ignore how common all of the occurrences and people presented here are in the world, and may exist inside their own communities and families. Happiness promotes this idea as not only a way to make these characters relatable and sympathetic, but to also remind us that, to a certain degree, we’ve all got problems. We can pretend we’re better than the people in this movie, but until we solve our problems, we’re all the same underneath, just with different ways of coping.

And that is why Happiness is one of my favorite movies.

Knowing how I feel about Happiness and Todd Solondz’s other movies, my reaction to Life During Wartime should be no surprise. Picking up ten years after the events of Happiness, we find most of the prior movie’s characters still suffer from the same problems and perversions that they did ten years ago. As opposed to dissecting the impossible search for happiness, Life During Wartime looks at the nature of forgiveness and the unending search for normalcy when surrounded by dysfunction.

Unlike most sequels, the main difference between Happiness and Life During Wartime isn’t the themes or the story, but, as I mentioned above, all of the roles have been recast. Like in his previous film Palindromes, in which the main character is played by seven different actors, Solondz seems to draw no attention to this fact, making no reference to the changes of the characters ages, ethnicities or even race. People will ask what the purpose of this is, but that’s not important. The characters are so strong, you almost instantly know who’s who, and it’s almost as if nothing’s changed.

Life During Wartime does a great job as a sequel, reintroducing all of the great characters and their stories, but establishes enough of the backstory that anyone unfamiliar with Happiness can easily understand it. The uncomfortable, but honest character interactions stay true to those in the first film, but they never feel like they’re trying to shock simply for the sake of shocking. These interactions allow the characters to be honest with one another, which is a trademark of Solondz’s movies. There’s no time for his characters to be withholding or deceptive, that’s not what these movies are about. If there is a reason for subject matter to be as shocking as some people fear it to be, it is only to reveal a world to the audience that they were otherwise unfamiliar with. People are usually shocked by things they don’t understand, and I feel that movies like this attempt to introduce these subjects as a way to let people get over their preconceptions and, like Happiness, show them how we’re all in the same boat, no matter how different we may be.

Now, of course, aside from all of this, there are people who will say that the dialogue is unnatural and the performances aren’t as good as those in Happiness, or even that the movie is no good due to its failing to explore abstract concepts, such as forgiveness and guilt successfully. These people are entitled to their opinion, but I will disagree, and say that it is just as successful as Happiness is with its themes, and Todd Solondz has once again made a movie whose story and characters I not only felt very connected to, but who also reminded me of how much I liked them the first time I was introduced to them ten years ago.

9 out of 10.

Salt is a pretty mediocre movie.  It’s a mindless summer action movie that’s supposed to be fun and thrilling, but I guess that train passed me by as I watched it.  The movie’s plot and characters are very uninteresting and the action sequences are computerized blandness.  There’s not much going for this almost entirely uninteresting movie.

First off, CGI action scenes.  If I’m supposed to take stunts and action sequences as thrilling, then it’d benefit to actually have some stunt people doing some actually dangerous stuff.  I’m sure the stunt people on this movie did dangerous stuff, but when the main action sequences of a movie involve jumping from truck to truck on a freeway or jumping down an elevator shaft, it’s not nearly as thrilling if you shoot it with quick cuts and shaky cams to mask the CGI backdrops and character motion.  Get some real people to actually jump and hold the shot for a whole second so I can actually see it’s dangerous and thrilling.  Granted, Salt is not the first movie to do this, it just managed to push me over the edge to disgust.

Okay, so the action is computerized and unimpressive.  Maybe there’s some interesting dialogue or characters or plot.  Nope.  Not really.  And really, I was most disappointed in this regard.  The screenplay was written by Kurt Wimmer, whose most recent was the excellent Law Abiding Citizen.  With Salt, we get a main character who is a kick-ass spy girl who might not be who she seems, but she has no fucking motivation or mind of her own.  Every big decision she makes comes from other characters saying “Okay here’s the mission, and you’re going to do it tomorrow.”  It seems that Salt has no prior knowledge of these missions and when she’s given them, she’s says okay without question.  She tags along on missions and does as she’s told, which is utterly useless to the viewer.  Salt doesn’t really care?  Then neither do I.

She’s essentially a robot.  And maybe that’s okay because of her back-story, but nothing is ever focused on for too long in the plot.  Nothing is given any real weight or cohesive, thought-out explanation.  A lot of things are given a quick, glancing explanation, and it leaves you in the dark.  On top of this, the story itself is pretty boring.  There’s a whole Cold War background to the movie and it’s so very tired and boring.  Russia vs. USA?  Really?  I don’t care.

But, there are some okay parts.  The mind-numbing interrogation scene involving Salt and a Russian defector at the beginning ends on a pretty interesting note.  It essentially asserts that Salt is a Russian spy working within the CIA and she is going to assassinate the Russian President tomorrow.  For a moment the plot got interesting and a little Minority Report-ish.  But, turns out she actually was a Russian spy.  So long interesting plot.  And there’s actually two pieces of action that are sort of good.  The car chase scene where Salt tasers the cop driver and then uses his head to steer the car from the back seat is pretty funny.  Then there’s also a scene towards the end where Salt jumps over the railing of a staircase and strangles Liev Schreiber with her handcuffs.   Very intense and unexpected.  Finally, there’s some nice cinematography via Robert Elswit.

All in all, Salt suffers from weakly directed action sequences, lack of character motivation, and iffy writing.  It kind of reminded me of District 13:  Ultimatum (my review) for some reason.  The ending climax  and action sequences of both movies are somewhat similar.  The only thing is, District 13 has some fantastic, real action and interesting characters/writing.  Salt is essentially a less interesting and thrilling version of these movies.  So if I were you, I’d skip Salt and check out the District 13 movies instead.

Dozens of times every year, movies like Valhalla Rising are released. These slow, drawn out, unentertaining acts of cinematic “art” arrive in theaters, and it’s become common for those who have found some sort of meaning or motivation behind the movie’s existence to call out all those who don’t like it as “brain-washed, pandering sheep of the heartless, Hollywood system”. They will tell their disputers to go back to watching their explosions and special effects, and leave the thoughtful, symbolically packed films for them, the only people who can only truly appreciate them.

Well, fuck that.

As impossible as it may seem, someone can have an appreciation of Bergman and Lynch, understand what’s going on and recognize that there’s some sort of metaphorical meaning to otherwise meaningless events in a film, and still call it the shit that it is. Valhalla Rising is one of those movies.

Now, I must admit, having viewed the trailer for Valhalla Rising, and having liked director Nicolas Winding Refn’s previous movie, Bronson, a lot, I was looking forward to another story about violent men, hopefully with some memorable fights, and maybe come away with it feeling as if I’d seen something worth the ticket price. Unfortunately, all I was treated to was a mumbly, stretched out, boring, and just plain uninteresting movie that I just can’t get behind.

Here, we follow a group of Christian Vikings, who are joined by a mute, one eyed, maybe prophetic warrior played by Mads Mikkelsen, as they, I don’t know, walk around for a while until they find themselves in hell, or “the holy land”, or heaven or something. You see, I find it hard to relate the plot because at any given time during the movie, you’re probably going to see one or more characters looking off into the distance, silently, as they travel by foot and boat to a series of similar locations, and do nothing for the entirety of the movie. There is no story, no characters, and no real reason for anyone in the audience to invest in anything in the movie, as it presents nothing to connect to.

The problem I keep finding with supposed “art” films like this, the ones that don’t really have stories or dialogue, and that I’m told “have been made solely to be interpreted by different people as different things, and cannot be judged alongside “regular” movies”, is that they should be judged even more harshly than regular movies. Harmony Korine expects me to believe that there’s a meaning behind his nonsense, then he’s going to need to prove it to me; show me that there’s something to get aside from what’s on the surface. In the case of Valhalla Rising, I can understand that this movie found it easier to express its ideas through symbolism and metaphors, using characters to represent mythological beings, and retelling their stories with personifications of ideas, but give me something to work with here, would you? Give me a reason to want to interpret your movie, a reason to revisit it, and to think about it.

There was about ten minutes worth of interesting movie in Valhalla Rising that was padded out with another hour and a half of filler, and yet, it always felt like they were rushing to get to the next scene, never developing any of the characters or forming any kind of story. Somehow, this managed to be boring at the speed of light, or, as my friend Jake dubbed it, “The slowest rush-job ever.”

The difficult part here is that there obviously was some work put into this. There are parts of Valhalla Rising that are very involving and exciting, and much of this is due to some great cinematography and really cool fight choreography and effects work. At points, you feel like something’s going to pick up, and we’re about to learn something that will add depth to our character’s, their motivations and reasons for continuing on their journey, but it never comes. These moments do help to pass the time until the credits begin to roll, but they also highlight the moments that aren’t as exciting, making the audience wish the whole movie had followed these moment’s example, giving them a reason to be interested.

I can appreciate the reasons for Valhalla Rising existing, and the ideas that drove the filmmakers to make it, but there’s nothing here for someone looking for an interesting or original story, or a reason to care. Here is a perfect example of the kind of movie people striving to prove their depth will point to as being too “intelligent, subversive, and non-traditional” for the average movie-goer, but just because you choose to look for kernels of corn in a piece of shit, doesn’t make it any less a piece of shit.

3 out of 10.

The last night of this Danger After Dark mini-festival brings us a new movie from Johnny To, who seems to have at least one new movie every time the Philadelphia Film Festival rolls around each year. This year, it’s Vengeance.

Now, if you’re familiar with Johnny To, you know what to expect going into one of his movies: usually there are a lot of armed men, probably dressed in suits, who are usually a member or leader in the Triad, the Chinese mafia. And, unsurprisingly, this movie features all of these elements.

Unfortunately, not much about Vengeance is very surprising at all.

Ever since John Woo hit it big in the late 80s and early 90s with such movies as The Killer and Hard Target, a new type of gangster genre was created, full of well-dressed hit men shooting at each other from impossible angles in slow motion, usually wearing sunglasses and stoically repeating philosophy while coolly avoiding eye contact with whoever they’re talking to. Mix in a little Memento, and that’s Vengeance.

Here we’ve got two sets of well-dressed hit men, one set who kills a French ex-hit man’s family, and one set who he hires to kill the first set. The twist: they work for the same mob boss who hired the first set to kill the French guy’s family to begin with, starting an internal struggle not only within the organization, but also within the second set of hit men, who begin to question the meaning of vengeance. Now, this isn’t a bad plot, and it’s well executed, but nothing here feels new or original.

For example, one interesting, but poorly introduced and explored, plot and character point involves Johnny Hallyday’s Francis Costello (the French ex-hit man who oddly shares his name with Jack Nicholson’s character in The Departed) having been shot in the head some twenty years ago, which is now causing him to have memory-loss issues. Now, this point is necessary when exploring the philosophical nature of revenge later on in the film, but it’s handled almost identically to Leonard’s memory issues in Memento. He literally takes Polaroids of all of his friends and enemies and keeps them with him to remind him of who’s who. In a cheesier use of this gimmick, after stealing crime scene pictures of his family’s bloody corpses, Francis uses a sharpie to write “vengeance” on all of them. Just another example of the subtlety used in exploring this theme throughout the movie.

However, aside from all of the originality and heavy-handed theme problems, Vengeance is a pretty good movie. It’s incredibly shot, and most of the action is really well done. Aside from a confusing gun fight that takes place in the middle of the woods at night, there are some very exciting shoot-outs in an apartment building and a junk yard that make up for it. The final shoot-out between the mob boss and Costello is almost perfect, and uses the whole memory-loss gimmick better than it’s used through the rest of the movie.

Look, Vengeance doesn’t reinvent any wheels, and it won’t be held up to the standards set by the movies it constantly references, but it’s not a bad way to spend two hours, and there’s some pretty neat stuff here if you can look past all of the stuff you’ve seen before. That probably sounds a lot harsher than it’s meant to, but I don’t want to give you the wrong idea. Vengeance is good, it’s just not great.

6 out of 10.

After taking a few nights off, I had the opportunity to see Red White & Blue for free, as well as meet one of its stars, Amanda Fuller, who was in attendance.

Red White & Blue is a very specific kind of movie. It revels in the misery and destruction it brings to its characters lives. Almost every action made by the main characters is motivated by vengeance or hatred, and in the end, everybody is left worse than they started. Now, for the audience, this isn’t necessarily a bad thing.

In this version of the “ensemble downer film”, we follow an HIV infected woman with father issues, a mysterious stranger with a secret past, and a rock musician whose band seems to be on the verge of hitting it big. As you might expect (especially if you’re familiar with any of Alejandro Gonzales Iñárritu’s movies, which this seems to have been influenced by) all of their lives end up converging in mostly negative and destructive ways, often leaving the audience to wonder, “How could this get any worse?” Well, it often does, and continues to do so until the credits roll.

I feel like I’ve seen enough movies at the time of writing this review to know that not all movies are made to entertain. Red White & Blue is not an entertaining movie, but it doesn’t strive to be. This is dark stuff. In fact, I feel like the word “harrowing” was probably used a lot by the cast and crew when describing it to their family, friends and interviewers. However, there’s a “good” kind of harrowing and a “bad” kind of harrowing, and unfortunately, I think Red White & Blue leans more towards the bad.

Now, I feel like there is a good movie underneath Red White & Blue, but there are so many things keeping it from being anything from a mediocre attempt at trying too hard to be depressing. It borrows ideas from movies like Kids and Last House On the Left that only seem to serve as ways to make the characters and their situations more pathetic and miserable. Behind these events, there is no lesson to be learned or catharsis for the audience, just a deeper hole of maddening despair. But the thing is, if you’ve seen as many movies like this as I have, you’re probably already desensitized to this kind of misery anyway, thus making it even more meaningless.

In addition to this lack of a significant or originally told story, most of the dialogue is very poorly written. Natives of Austin, where the movie was shot, play a lot of the smaller roles in the film and it shows. Many of their lines are expository and don’t sound very natural when spoken in that very slow, Texan way that they’re delivered. Also, a weak performance by Marc Senter as the “rock musician” character kind of pulls the whole movie down, as a large part of the middle rests on his shoulders.

However, there are a few good ideas in this movie that will keep the audience at least interested, as well as very good performances by Noah Taylor (usually relegated to supporting roles in such movies as The Life Aquatic, Vanilla Sky and Almost Famous) and Amanda Fuller as the other two leads. It was actually surprising how effective Noah Taylor was as the “mysterious ex-military man” who is incredibly violent at times, as I’d only ever seen him as the thin, British man in every other movie he’s been in. You’d never expect “Tech Support” from Vanilla Sky to cut someone’s ear off, but he pulls it off really well, despite bearing an uncanny resemblance to Joe Dirt.

Red White & Blue isn’t all that bad of a movie, but it’s not nearly as “destructive” or “dangerous” as it wants to be. I can’t imagine there are people out there who look for movies like this, who strive to be shown acts of suffering and violence for the sole purpose of thinking it gives them a better understanding of the human condition, but if there are fans of this genre, they probably won’t be impressed.

I mean, I wasn’t, but then again, I prefer to be entertained.

5 out of 10.

Every time I walk out of the theater after seeing a Christopher Nolan movie, I become a little bit depressed. Not because the movies are particularly sad but because as a writer, I lose a whole lot of self-confidence. The ability and imagination it takes to create a film like Inception is far beyond that of a normal person. Nolan is able to bring the audience into multiple levels of reality through dreams in what is easily his most complex and complicated story yet. And-it makes sense! His true talent shines through in his ability to help the audience understand the complexities without treating them like idiots.

I can’t begin to explain the plot of this movie. And if I did, our readers would be very disappointed. I wouldn’t dare spoil one second of this fabulous film. So I will attempt to analyze it as generally as possible. We might as well start with the effects. To put it simply, this is one of the most flawless movies I have ever seen. The CGI was as realistic as technology will allow. But the truly impressive effects are those not computer-generated. Certain scenes left my friends and I puzzled with questions of “how did they do that?”. It is only July, but I can’t imagine this movie losing an Academy Award for Special Effects (along with a plethora of other awards).

I am so happy that there is a director in Hollywood who has yet to disappoint me. Insomnia is not the greatest movie ever made, but it is enjoyable. With that being said, I believe it is absolutely Nolan’s time to shine in 2010. His screenplay, written without his usual collaborators, is mind-blowing. To create a movie of this caliber without any noticeable errors is quite impressive. The film stays consistent within itself which explains why it took eight years to write. I have tried to iron out the flaws in much smaller and less complex projects, and that is always a difficult task. In this movie, Nolan accomplished the impossible.

In trying to find a criticism of this movie, I had to do a lot of searching. And ultimately I decided that I can’t find one. The acting was excellent, each actor portraying a unique and intense charcter to the best of his or her abilities. Every person I have spoken to seems to have a different favorite performance. Mine happened to be Joseph Gordon Levitt. But when engaged in an argument over who was the best actor in an ensemble, you know that there must be some quality performances.

This is one of the best movies I have seen in the past few years, and it makes me look forward to the future of filmmaking and anxious to see what Christopher Nolan will do to top himself next time (Batman 3?). To quote Josh, “Every once in a while I see a movie that restores my faith in movies, and Inception is one of them”.

Smash Mouth.  Speaking of Smash Mouth, we did another Fivegoo recently and it has to do with literally smashing mouths.  It’s “FAVORITE FIGHTS.”  Now not only were we unprepared for this incredibly difficult topic, but jat59072 cut out the funniest parts of the video again!  Just kidding, but he made us look 10 pounds thinner.  So join us in stunning youtube HD as we discuss our favorite fights from a movie.  Check it out, don’t comment, and then e-mail it to your friends on the facebook website.  We’ll be millionaires if you do.  THANKS.