Grey Skies

A very low-budget take on a trapped in a cabin, ufo abduction tale. The cast was apt and the money-saving techniques were clever. Should easily find a home on SyFy.

Centurion

I’m a little rusty on my ancient history, so I had a little trouble following which Roman was who and where the fuck they were. I wish I’d read up on the whole “Romans in Scotland circa 100 A.D.” thing on Wikipedia beforehand. Nevertheless, there's lots of heads flying and blood splattering and entrails protruding and swords impaling, so it’s really entertaining. All the performances are solid, and the technical stuff is all top notch. Sure, I would’ve had a better time if I knew who was who and why they were all trying to decapitate each other, but that’s a minor note.

Jonah Hex

It’s well-directed, but it’s a post-production train wreck. The music is terrible, there’s no color-correction, and the movie feels hacked-up for time. Blech! I normally wouldn’t notice things like that, so it’s obvious that some bean counters finished the movie in spite of the director. The performances that remain are decent, but one wonders how much better the movie would have been if the meddlers had given Josh Brolin enough time to stare-down bad guys before sawing them in half with a Gatling gun.

The People Vs. George Lucas

It’s therapy for Star Wars geeks. An interesting and well-made doc about people who love Star Wars but were irrationally devastated by George Lucas’ various departures of common sense and artistry. The gist, and it’s a good one, is that Lucas should release the old movies as they were as well as the new way.

Toy Story 3

Wow.

It starts out unextraordinarily, a Great Escape adventure populated by Pixar’s great familiar heroes. Fun and funny, but nothing Earth-shattering. But in the second half it gets heavy. It becomes about legacy, family, and death. And just when you’re through another impossibly dramatic plot revelation, filmmakers blindside you with another one, more complex, more surprising, and more emotional. Heart strings are not being tugged, they’re being yanked and woven and dyed and dirtied and dry-cleaned. It’s devastating, but beautifully made, and a must-see in 3-D.

Also, the short beforehand, Day and Night was amazing. One of their best. Volumes could be written about how good it is, too.

The Killers

We walked out of this after about an hour. Everything was so horribly FORCED. It was awful.

The A-Team

A movie that feels like it was blasted out of a cannon. Ridiculous, forgettable fun.

Get Him to the Greek

Likeable buddy road movie tries to be funny, raunchy, and character driven all at once. For the most part, it succeeds. Russell Brand’s rock star party beast was custom-built for him. No one else could play this part. He can even sing! Attempts at character development are clumsy, though. It’s best when the filmmakers go for the silly.

Splice

It’s not often, and it’s a rare treat, when a movie that appears to be a typical sci-fi cautionary tale gets... FREAKY. Like as in sexually freaky. Kinky. Cronenbergian. How are puritanical Americans going to react to this? Who knows. I LIKED it. I thought it was cool. Refreshingly, psychosexually bold. That’s all I’ll say.

MacGruber

Brief moments of mild amusement, but mostly pretty stale. I never really got the SNL sketch, and I didn’t really get this. But Val Kilmer makes a game villain. He seems to understand what he signed up for and schemes appropriately.