Black Books: Series 1

***1/2 – While this 6-episode first series of a 2000 British sitcom starts out pretty slowly – in fact, the first episode is nearly unwatchably bereft of humor – the comedy really ramped up as the season progressed, turning it into a quality show overall. If the whole series was as funny as the final two or three episodes this set would have probably gotten a 4 ½-star rating. However, the first couple of episodes really hurt the overall score. It’s set in a bookshop and features three main characters with only a few smaller roles, so it isn’t exactly a broad, lively type of comedy. The dry humor works really well for the most part, but some unfunny sight gags and physical comedy keep it from being what I would consider a classic. I do have a significant amount of hope for the 2nd and 3rd series, though.

Let the Right One In

** - I think one of the main factors in my less-than-fond opinion of the horror genre is that my morose and stoic nature doesn’t allow me to frighten easily. Even if that was not the case, and the genre did give me that adrenaline rush that many get from it, I don’t think this Swedish film would have had any impact on me anyway. Leave it to the Swedes to create a horror/thriller that was not horrifying in the least and had no thrills whatsoever. It was, however, pretty nicely shot, well directed and had a couple of all-too-brief unsettling moments. On the other hand, it moved as slow as molasses and starred mainly kids; and in my opinion, you’ll never get the nuanced performances from a kid that you will from an adult.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

**1/2 – I usually like Sam Rockwell, but his portrayal of Zaphod Beeblebrox in this adaptation of the classic Douglas Adams book is borderline reprehensible. While the visuals and effects are good, the actors seem to struggle to bring the dry comedy of the novel across. The girl who played Trillian was very annoying, and Marvin the Paranoid Android looked ridiculous. A pretty disappointing film all-in-all.

Battle for Terra

*** - In this gorgeously animated but admittedly strange tale, humans have blown up the Earth, Venus and Mars, and decide to move out into the stars on a large ‘ark’ to the planet Terra, where they proceed to attempt to annihilate the nature loving cricket-tadpole-fish-bird creatures that already live there. One traitorous human decides to switch sides and help the hippie peacenik natives fend off the human invasion and thwart their plan. While this movie certainly looks nice and has quite a bit of entertainment value, the voice acting is poor, and the story has the same preachy, allegorical tone that many modern films (“Avatar” etc) seem so fond of espousing. Probably worth sitting through once - especially since it’s less than 90 minutes long – but I can’t give it too hearty of a recommendation.

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

** - Along with the Hulk and the Silver Surfer, Wolverine has always been one of my favorite comic book heroes. I have been somewhat dismayed, however, at the attention (and silly revisions) that his back story has received in various media. This movie epitomizes all of my above-mentioned dismay. Also, what’s the deal with Deadpool in this? He should have been able to kill everyone with the powers they gave him. Dumb. There’s lots of mindless action, though, if you like that sort of thing.

Solaris

***1/2 – Sometime in the future (exactly how far in the future is not made entirely clear), George Clooney is a psychologist/astronaut who is sent on a mission to investigate some unexplained goings-on aboard a ship orbiting the planet Solaris. While the movie is beautifully shot and designed, I found it somewhat disappointing that it turned out to be more of a psychological drama in a sci-fi setting rather than a flat-out science fiction film. Be that as it may, I still thought it was pretty entertaining to watch despite some slow parts and an overabundance of unclothed Clooney butt. This movie is a remake of a Russian film from the 1970s, and assuming the plot of the original (which I have not seen) was relatively unchanged for this version, I now see the movie “Star Trek Generations” in an even less flattering light than I did before.

The Final Cut

** - This is one heck of an aimless and meandering film. The premise (people having implants put in their heads at birth that record everything that they see in their lives) is kind of okay, but the pace is slow, the acting is shoddy and the storytelling is so convoluted that it can’t maintain any sort of interest. Robin Williams is marginally watchable as the lead, but everybody else was either awful or incoherent, especially Mira Sorvino and Jim Caviezel (fashioning an even less convincing beard than the one he had when he played Jesus). People popped in and out of the story at random and plot threads were introduced and dropped at will. This had the feeling of a film in which the writers thought they were making some grand statement that will be taken to heart by audience members and have life-changing ramifications. Unfortunately, it was just boring.

The Box

*** - Writer/director Richard “Donnie Darko” Kelly’s 3rd feature film is based on a short story that I am pretty sure was either made into a “Twilight Zone” episode some time ago, or is rather similar in plot to one, anyway. I’ve always disliked the way the “Twilight Zone” stories were overly truncated to fit into their rather short format, but this two-hour film goes to the opposite end of the spectrum by stretching out a somewhat tenuous premise to include lengthy silences and several irrelevant scenes. The basic idea here is pretty neat, and the movie has some pretty good parts, but I can’t really endorse going out of one’s way to see it… especially since the now hideously ugly Cameron Diaz – who I didn’t even really have any interest in watching ten years ago when she was marginally attractive and had semen in her hair – is heavily featured in it. She looks like her face has been run over by a truck. Cyclops from the “X-Men” films is also in this, for what it’s worth.

21

**1/2 – A solid but unspectacular entry in the gambling/poker/blackjack/cardshark genre of film, “21” is relatively entertaining to watch despite some obvious deficiencies. It looks decent and has mostly solid performances from the cast that includes Morpheus, Keyser Soze, Lois Lane and a bunch of nobodies, but doesn’t do anything to make itself stand out in what is becoming a rather crowded niche of film types. My biggest beef with this movie is not the plot or acting or anything like that, but the somewhat offensive premise that is implied; that everyone in the world really just wants to go to Vegas and have fun and that nothing else in life is worth bothering with. The portrayal of two tubby nerds (friends of the main character) as brilliant yet sex-obsessed losers who would trade all their knowledge and abilities for a chance to tag Kate Bosworth is more than a little infuriating.

Hollywoodland

**1/2 - “Hollywoodland” tells the story of the mysterious death – which is officially recognized as a suicide - of actor George Reeves, who is best remembered as Superman from the horrendous 1950’s live-action serials. Scenes of a private investigator (Adrien Brody) looking into details of the death and coming up with potential scenarios involving murder, accidents and intrigue are interspersed with flashback scenes from Reeves’ personal and professional lives prior to his passing. The acting is solid and the film is nicely shot, but ends up being fairly boring and slow moving. Many potential situations are explored with no one of them given more weight than any other, which is a refreshing attribute often absent from most of today’s heavily biased biopics. The movie seemed to focus on Brody’s character a little too much, and while it was acted well, the character at its core was a very unlikable Brooklyn-accented mook.

HALO Legends

** - A compilation of eight short animated films based on the mythos surrounding the “HALO” video game series, “HALO Legends” has a couple of decent parts, but is rather poor overall. The first and second shorts (which are narrated origin stories) as well as the last short (which is very nicely animated) are pretty good, but the rest are borderline unwatchable. One of the shorts has an animation style that is so bizarrely blocky and fuzzy that it is likely to give the viewer a severe headache. Another one – which is quite possibly the worst thing I have seen, ever - is done in traditional Japanimation style, complete with big-headed little kids, talking dinosaurs and reprehensible attempts at humor.

Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow

*** - With cityscapes right out of a 1930s Soviet propaganda poster and awesome-looking robots and ships that were gorgeously animated, one might think that “Sky Captain…” would be right up my alley. And when considering the visual aspects only, one would be very right. However, there were a number of things that kept this movie from being rated better than mediocre. Crappy dialogue and silly, forced-sounding banter between the two leads (Jude Law and Gwyneth Paltrow) is the main reason, along with a pretty predictable storyline. The extensive use of blue-screen and strange lighting techniques that made the human characters seem to have an odd orangey-yellow hue when prominently featured were also quite distracting. It was watchable, but not as good as I was hoping.

City of Ember

**1/2 – I need to start being a little more careful about the genre that movies are listed under when I’m adding stuff to my Netflix queue. This is about the 3rd or 4th time that I’ve gotten burned by adding something that sounded really good from the description, but ends up being a kids’ movie categorized as “Children & Family”. I don’t necessarily have a problem watching what is considered a ‘kid movie’, but in order for it to be really enjoyable it has to be less formulaic and dumbed-down than a movie like this one was. The only real saving graces for “City of Ember” were the presence of Bill Murray and the fact that it had some really nice backgrounds and design work. Other than that, it was just dull and predictable.