Film Review

Longtime readers know that I have a soft spot for animated movies. Sometimes when I go on a streak of bad reviews, people will ask me if I ever praise anything. I'll point to some delightful animated films and then those people will roll their eyes and say, "OK, besides them. " I keep hoping to see an animated Best Picture Oscar winner, and I consider it a grievous oversight that "Wreck-it Ralph" wasn't even nominated for the award for 2012. "The Croods" is the first major animated feature of 2013, and it is proof that animation can be just as boring as all manner of live-action junk.

Longtime readers know that I'm a huge fan of the Disney computer animation division known as Pixar. I love their whimsy, their attention to detail, and their ability to pull on my heartstrings. I'll put in a good word for all of their films, from the highly well-regarded "Toy Story" series to the unfairly underpraised "Cars" movies. Pixar has kept up the good work with their latest offering, "Brave". Set in medieval Scotland, "Brave" tells the story of Princess Merida (Kelly Macdonald, in an excellent voice performance)

"Our Idiot Brother" is a movie where you can figure out the ending halfway through the trailer.   Paul Rudd plays Ned, a dumb burnout who has to crash with his three sisters (Emily Mortimer, Elizabeth Banks and Zooey Deschanel). He inadvertently meddles in their lives and eventually leads them to feel ruined. You can probably guess that by the end of the movie Ned's sisters will see that he has a lot to offer and his meddling will have benefits that they are too narrow-minded to see initially.

Too many weeks ago, I proclaimed "Jack the Giant Slayer" to be the first half-decent movie of 2013. Now along comes "42," and I am proclaiming it to be the first really good movie of 2013. It should not have taken us more than three months to get the first really good movie of 2013 (even with my understanding that the post-holiday season is a dumping ground for the studios' garbage releases), but that shouldn't diminish the achievements of "42" as an admirable sports film. The film tells the story of pioneering black baseball player Jackie Robinson (Chadwick Boseman)

"Moneyball" is a pretty good movie about baseball, but a better movie about the baseball business. The main characters are not players or coaches - and there's barely any mention of fans.   It is a story of businessmen, men who are typically depicted as greedy tycoons in other baseball movies. Everybody knows that wins and losses are the bottom line in baseball, but these are the men who have to make the hard decisions based on that bottom line.   There is still supposed to be an element of judgment, of intuition, of heart to their jobs.

My mom used to make a home version of the game "Battleship" for me and my brother. She would draw the 10-by10 grids on paper, and we'd put down Xs for misses and Os for hits. She knew that she didn't need to spend 10 bucks on a plastic "Battleship" game.  Universal Pictures should have known better than to spend more than $200 million on a "Battleship" movie. The film was a joke before it opened because of the studio throwing so much money at a project based on a simple board game.

The ads for "Evil Dead" claim that the film is the scariest you will ever see. This is untrue unless you almost never see horror movies, in which case why would you want to see a movie called "Evil Dead"? The ads also claim that the film is the bloodiest you'll ever see. There is some truth to this. The film might not be scary or funny or interesting, but in terms of straight-up blood quantity I think we have a champion. The characters are a group of twentysomethings who are staying at an isolated cabin while one of them tries to kick a drug habit.

After its first act, "Identity Thief" becomes a predictable, mildly amusing road trip comedy. This is actually a really good creative decision because the film is effectively cutting its losses after realizing that it can't keep milking laughs from identity theft. I can accept that it's supposed to be funny to see Melissa McCarthy's con artist "Diana" paint the town red with ill-gotten funds. But I simply cannot buy into the humor involving Jason Bateman's hapless victim Sandy Patterson.

"Funny by accident. "  That's a phrase you'll see if you read enough reviews of bad comedies. As in, "With this much talent in the cast, you'd think that someone would be funny by accident. " You always hear it as a hypothetical, don't you? You don't read many reviews that actually say a comedy is "funny by accident. " Maybe somebody will say that a cheesy sci-fi or horror movie is "funny by accident," but not a comedy.  After all, if a comedy is funny, you assume it was meant to be funny.  "The Watch" is a comedy that I believe is "funny by accident.

“The Purge” is a moderately effective horror movie that covers the familiar ground of the home-invasion movie while embracing a unique setting. It's 10 years in the future and a new government program called The Purge allows for a 12-hour period every year where all crime is legal. The idea is that The Purge encourages people to get their violent tendencies out of their system so they'll be better behaved the rest of the year. Of course, the downside is that people are just as likely to be victimized as they are to be vindicated.    It's silly to think that such a program could ever work.

“The Purge” is a moderately effective horror movie that covers the familiar ground of the home-invasion movie while embracing a unique setting. It's 10 years in the future and a new government program called The Purge allows for a 12-hour period every year where all crime is legal. The idea is that The Purge encourages people to get their violent tendencies out of their system so they'll be better behaved the rest of the year. Of course, the downside is that people are just as likely to be victimized as they are to be vindicated.    It's silly to think that such a program could ever work.

The trouble with “Now You See Me”  - or any other movie about magic - is that you know there's going to be a huge twist at the end. These movies make you wait until the last minute to find out who was really in control, how they pulled off their ultimate trick, who was being tricked and indeed what the trick even was. Sometimes the big twist is impressive, usually it isn't. But it almost always negates a lot of the plot points that came before it. The action might be exciting, but don't bother to follow the story, because when the time is right, everything is going to turn topsy-turvy anyway.

"Iron Man" is probably the most lucrative superhero franchise in Hollywood. Nolan's "Batman" series is sadly done, the "Spider-Man" reboot was hardly Marvel-ous, and I'm not convinced that Zack "Sucker Punch" Snyder can sell this generation on Superman in the upcoming "Man of Steel. " The real powerhouse is of course "The Avengers," the unprecedented convergence of superhero franchises that managed to rule the box office in an extremely competitive 2012. But as much as that film emphasized teamwork, there was little doubt that the most popular member of the team, and the one most capable of carrying the first follow-up film, was Iron Man. The new film sees Iron Man aka Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.)

I was prejudiced against "Oblivion" because about a week before it opened. A friend of mine got to see a movie in advance and left after the first half hour. At around the 31-minute mark, I was jealous of my friend. It's not a terrible movie in that "clearly a bomb" sort of way, but it failed to hold my interest and it was depressing to know that it was nowhere close to ending. The film stars Tom Cruise as Jack Harper, a drone repairman on an abandoned Earth in a bleak future. Humanity had to evacuate the planet after an alien invasion rendered it uninhabitable.

Too many weeks ago, I proclaimed "Jack the Giant Slayer" to be the first half-decent movie of 2013. Now along comes "42," and I am proclaiming it to be the first really good movie of 2013. It should not have taken us more than three months to get the first really good movie of 2013 (even with my understanding that the post-holiday season is a dumping ground for the studios' garbage releases), but that shouldn't diminish the achievements of "42" as an admirable sports film. The film tells the story of pioneering black baseball player Jackie Robinson (Chadwick Boseman)

The ads for "Evil Dead" claim that the film is the scariest you will ever see. This is untrue unless you almost never see horror movies, in which case why would you want to see a movie called "Evil Dead"? The ads also claim that the film is the bloodiest you'll ever see. There is some truth to this. The film might not be scary or funny or interesting, but in terms of straight-up blood quantity I think we have a champion. The characters are a group of twentysomethings who are staying at an isolated cabin while one of them tries to kick a drug habit.

Here's a brief rundown of my thoughts from 2009's "G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra": I'm dreading this movie. I still haven't recovered from that awful second "Transformers" movie from a month back. Or that awful first "Transformers" movie from two years ago for that matter.  Wait, this isn't so bad. Sure it's a glorified toy commercial, but at least I like these characters and the gags are landing better than I thought they would. Marlon Wayans actually makes a pretty effective action hero, Dennis Quaid has a wise presence, gotta love Rachel Nichols as the hot nerd, Joseph Gordon-Levitt kills it as the villain, and this Channing Tatum kid seems to have a bright future.

Longtime readers know that I have a soft spot for animated movies. Sometimes when I go on a streak of bad reviews, people will ask me if I ever praise anything. I'll point to some delightful animated films and then those people will roll their eyes and say, "OK, besides them. " I keep hoping to see an animated Best Picture Oscar winner, and I consider it a grievous oversight that "Wreck-it Ralph" wasn't even nominated for the award for 2012. "The Croods" is the first major animated feature of 2013, and it is proof that animation can be just as boring as all manner of live-action junk.

This past weekend saw an upset at the box office as "The Call" became the weekend's most successful new release, beating out the star-studded but formulaic magic comedy "The Incredible Burt Wonderstone. "  Maybe it was just my relief at not having to review that bomb, or maybe it was the excitement of rushing out to a movie after midnight Saturday, but I found "The Call" to be surprisingly endearing.  The same thing happened with "Chronicle" last year, and while "The Call" isn't worthy of the near-rave review I gave "Chronicle," I was at least glad to have gone out of my way to see it. Halle Berry stars as Jordan, a 911 operator who is traumatized in film's opening moments when she mishandles a call about a home invasion that leads to a girl's death.

I was talking with my mom the other day and we agreed that 1939's "The Wizard of Oz" was my first favorite movie.  When I was a toddler I would make her impersonate the characters for hours on end, I owned toy models of all the characters, my first Halloween costume was the Tin Man, and, of course, I watched the movie enough times to make my poor parents sick of it. I knew there was basically no chance that the new prequel "Oz the Great and Powerful"...