Tag Archives: Scott Speedman

Horror Film Review: Underworld (dir by Len Wiseman)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Underworld is one hell of a confusing movie.

I saw Underworld when it was first released in theaters, way back in 2003.  And I’ve rewatched more than a handful of times since then, mostly because of my huge girl crush on Kate Beckinsale.  And every time that I watch this movie, I find myself wondering what the Hell’s going on.

I mean, I get it.  There’s a centuries-old war between vampires and Lycans and the Lycans are basically werewolves but they’re called “Lycan” because Lycan sounds better than werewolf.  The Death Dealers are vampires who go around and shoot Lycans on dark rainy nights.  And apparently, the vampires think that the Lycan threat has been neutralized because the leader of the Lycans, Lucian, is dead but maybe he’s not because Lucian’s body was never found.  And meanwhile, there’s three vampire rulers and two of the rulers get to sleep while the other one reigns and they switch out every few centuries.

Oh!  And the vampires and the Lycans are not really supernatural creatures.  Instead, they’re people who have been infected by a virus that causes them to live a really long time and have a craving for blood or something like that.  So, that explains why none of the vampires turn into a bat or anything like that during the movie.  Instead, everyone just runs around and does parkour and shoots guns at one another.

Also, the vampires don’t have to prey on human beings because they’ve learned how to clone blood because cloning is the solution for everything.

And also, everything happens at night while it’s raining because the vampires and the Lycans are secretly living in the same world with humans, they’re just living underground.  They’re living in an underworld, if you will.

Also ….

Well, listen, there’s a lot of plot in this movie.  Underworld lasts for 121 minutes and there’s really not a slow spot in the entire film.  In fact, that’s probably one of the film’s greatest strengths.  The nonstop action keeps you from thinking about how the plot of the film just seems to be something that the filmmakers made up as they went along.  Instead of wondering how everything fits together, you’re too busy watching as the movie flies from violent set piece to another.

Underworld‘s other great strength is that it stars Kate Beckinsale.  Nowadays, the action girl who kicks ass and defeats evil while looking good has become such a cliche that it’s easy to forget just how exciting it was when we first saw Kate Beckinsale, clad in leather and effortlessly dodging bullets and ruthlessly killing Lycans.  Though its impact may have subsequently been diluted by too many sequels and imitations, watching Underworld for the first time was a very empowering experience.  Watching Underworld for the first time, I wanted to be Kate Beckinsale. If Kate could defeat both vampires and Lycans without breaking a sweat then I knew that I could defeat my own insecurities.   Of course, unlike Kate, I didn’t have the advantage of movie magic to help me down a backflip off of a wall and I ended up spraining my ankle but still, Kate Beckinsale in Underworld was the perfect antidote to years of previously watching women in horror and action films be treated like either disposable victims or damsels in need of rescue.

In Underworld, Kate Beckinsale played Selene, a Death Dealer who tries to figure out why the Lycans are all after a human named Michael (Scott Speedman).  Selene also falls in love with Michael, which leads to some complications after Michael gets bitten by Lucian (Michael Sheen), the Lycan leader who wasn’t really dead after all.  Meanwhile, Kraven (Shane Brolly) wants to take over the vampires and a vampire elder named Viktor (Bill Nighy) is woken up early and then ages backwards through the film, which is actually a pretty clever idea.

And, as I said before, it never really makes much sense.  But, as incoherent as Underworld may be, it’s still an undeniably addictive viewing experience.  The movie is pure style.  It takes place in a world where it’s always night and it’s always raining and where everyone is beautiful and deadly at the same time.  Whether they’re a vampire or a Lycan, People in Underworld movies don’t merely enter a room.  Instead, they throw the doors open and allows blue light to flood in as they make a grand entrance.  At times, the film’s style is so kinetic and overwhelming that it threatened to get a little bit silly but, again, that’s a part of the film’s appeal.  While Kate Beckinsale thrills you with her empowering performance, the visuals grab you and say, “We’re going on a trip and don’t worry about whether it makes any sense!”

That’s why I’ve watched Underworld several times.  It doesn’t have to make sense.  It just has to kick ass.

 

 

Horror Film Review: The Strangers (dir by Bryan Bertino)

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Ever since I made the mistake of watching Wolves at the Door a few weeks ago, I’ve been thinking about the 2008 home invasion film, The Strangers.

I’ve always struggled with my feelings towards The Strangers.  On the one hand, this is a horror film that actually scared me.  Considering the amount of horror films that I’ve watched (not to mention the number of home invasion films), that’s really saying something.  Since a horror film is meant to frighten, The Strangers has to be considered a success.  At the same time, The Strangers always leaves me so upset that, after watching, I inevitably swear to myself that I’ll never watch it again.  And yet, whenever I see it playing on cable, I can’t help but watch at least a little of it.  Even knowing what’s going to happen and how the film is going to end, The Strangers retains a hypnotic power.

The Strangers is a simple film.  There’s a house out in the middle of nowhere.  Having just left a wedding reception, James Hoyt (Scott Speedman) and his girlfriend, Kristen (Liv Tyler), arrive at the house.  James and Kristen are not having a good night.  James asked Kristen to marry him.  Kristen turned him down.  That’ll make any night awkward, regardless of how nice the house is.

James and Kristen settle into the house for the night, both of them eager to get away from each other in the morning.  Suddenly, there’s a knock on the door.  A young woman (Gemma Ward) is looking for someone named Tamara.  When told that there is no Tamara in the house, she replies, “See you later.”

The girl’s not lying.  Later, while James is out sulking, Kristen realizes that she’s not alone.  There are three strangers, all wearing masks.  They’re watching.  They’re waiting…

The rest of the film details, in excruciating detail, the rest of the night.  What makes the film particularly disturbing is that neither James nor Kristen are dumb but they’re still powerless against those three strangers.  Just as the strangers hide their faces, they also hide their motive.  The closest that Kristen and James get to an explanation for why they’re being targeted is that “You were home.”  To the strangers, it’s a game.  They’re like three cats, playing with a cricket.  They’re not going to back off until they’ve removed at least one leg.

(James and Kristen, I should add, are not the only potential victims in The Strangers.  There’s also Mike, who is James’s best friend and who is supposed to pick him up in the morning.  Of everyone in the movie, I always feel the worst for Mike.  For one thing, he was just trying to do his friend a favor.  For another, he’s played by Glenn Howerton.  Has It’s Sunny In Philadelphia done a The Gang Plans A Home Invasion episode?)

The Strangers is an absolutely terrifying film, specifically because it’s so easy to relate to Kristen and James.  They remind the viewers of their friends.  They remind the viewers of themselves.  Watching them, we’re reminded of every time that we’ve heard a strange sound in the night and tried to tell ourselves that it was nothing.  We live in an increasingly unstable world and The Strangers perfectly captures the feeling of living under the shadow of death.  It’s a bit like Michael Haneke’s Funny Games, without any “it’s just a movie” moments to provide us with any sense of security.  The film starts with a message telling us that we’re about to see a true story.  Even though we know that might just be hyperbole, we also know that what we’re seeing could very well have happened.  In fact, it could happen to us as soon as the movie ends.

That’s the hypnotic dread of The Strangers.

 

6 More Film Reviews From 2014: At Middleton, Barefoot, Divergent, Gimme Shelter, The Other Woman, and more!

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Let’s continue to get caught up with 6 more reviews of 6 more films that I saw in 2014!

At Middleton (dir by Adam Rodgers)

“Charming, but slight.”  I’ve always liked that term and I think it’s the perfect description for At Middleton, a dramedy that came out in January and did not really get that much attention.  Vera Farmiga is a businesswoman who is touring colleges with her daughter (Taissa Farmiga, who is actually Vera’s younger sister).  Andy Garcia is a surgeon who is doing the same thing with his son.  All four of them end up touring Middleton College at the same time.  While their respective children tour the school, Vera and Andy end up walking around the campus and talking.  And that’s pretty much the entire film!

But you know what?  Vera Farmiga and Andy Garcia are both such good performers and have such a strong chemistry that it doesn’t matter that not much happens.  Or, at the very least, it doesn’t matter was much as you might think it would.

Hence, charming but slight.

Barefoot (dir by Andrew Fleming)

Well, fuck it.

Sorry, I know that’s not the best way to start a review but Barefoot really bothered me.  In Barefoot, Scott Speedman plays a guy who invites Evan Rachel Wood to his brother’s wedding.  The twist is that Wood has spent most of her life in a mental institution.  Originally, Speedman only invites her so that he can trick his father (Treat Williams) into believing that Speedman has finally become a responsible adult.  But, of course, he ends up falling in love with her and Wood’s simple, mentally unbalanced charm brings delight to everyone who meets her.  I wanted to like this film because I love both Scott Speedman and Evan Rachel Wood but, ultimately, it’s all rather condescending and insulting.  Yes, the film may be saying, mental illness is difficult but at least it helped Scott Speedman find love…

On the plus side, the always great J.K. Simmons shows up, playing a psychiatrist.  At no point does he say, “Not my tempo” but he was probably thinking it.

Divergent (dir by Neil Burger)

There’s a lot of good things that can be said about Divergent.  Shailene Woodley is a likable heroine.  The film’s depiction of a dystopian future is well-done. Kate Winslet has fun playing a villain.  Miles Teller and Ansel Elgort are well-cast.  But, ultimately, Divergent suffers from the same problem as The Maze Runner and countless other YA adaptations.  The film never escapes from the shadow of the far superior Hunger Games franchise.  Perhaps, if Divergent had been released first, we’d be referring to the Hunger Games as being a Divergent rip-off.

However, I kind of doubt it.  The Hunger Games works on so many levels.  Divergent is an entertaining adventure film that features a good performance from Shailene Woodley but it’s never anything more than that.  Considering that director Neil Burger previously gave us Interview with the Assassin and Limitless, it’s hard not to be disappointed that there’s not more to Divergent.

Gimme Shelter (dir by Ron Krauss)

Gimme Shelter, which is apparently based on a true story, is about a teenage girl named Apple (Vanessa Hudgens) who flees her abusive, drug addicted mother (Rosario Dawson).  She eventually tracks down her wealthy father (Brendan Fraser), who at first takes Apple in.  However, when he discovers that she’s pregnant, he demands that she get an abortion.  When Apple refuses, he kicks her out of the house.  Apple eventually meets a kindly priest (James Earl Jones) and moves into a shelter that’s run by the tough Kathy (Ann Dowd).

Gimme Shelter came out in January and it was briefly controversial because a lot of critics felt that, by celebrating Apple’s decision not to abort her baby, the movie was pushing an overly pro-life message.  Interestingly enough, a lot of those outraged critics were men and, as I read their angry reviews, it was hard not to feel that they were more concerned with showing off their political bona fides than with reviewing the actual film.  Yes, the film does celebrate Apple’s decision to keep her baby but the film also emphasizes that it was Apple’s decision to make, just as surely as it would have been her decision to make if she had chosen to have an abortion.

To be honest, the worst thing about Gimme Shelter is that it doesn’t take advantage of the fact that it shares its name with a great song by the Rolling Stones.  Otherwise, it’s a well-done (if rather uneven) look at life on the margins.  Yes, the script and the direction are heavy-handed but the film is redeemed by a strong performance from Vanessa Hudgens, who deserves to be known for more than just being “that girl from High School Musical.”

Heaven is For Real (dir by Randall Wallace)

You can tell that Heaven is For Real is supposed to be based on a true story by the fact that the main character is named Todd Burpo.  Todd Burpo is one of those names that’s just so ripe for ridicule that you know he has to be a real person.

Anyway, Heaven Is For Real is based on a book of the same name.  Todd Burpo (Greg Kinnear) is the pastor of a small church in Nebraska.  After Todd’s son, Colton, has a near death experience, he claims to have visited Heaven where he not only met a sister who died before he was born but also had a conversation with Jesus.  As Colton’s story starts to get national attention, Todd struggles to determine whether Colton actually went to Heaven or if he was just having a hallucination.

You can probably guess which side the movie comes down on.

Usually, as a self-described heathen, I watch about zero faith-based movies a year.  For some reason, I ended up watching three over the course of 2014: Left Behind, Rumors of War, and this one.  Heaven is For Real is not as preachy (or terrible) as Left Behind but it’s also not as much fun as Rumors of War.  (Rumors of War, after all, featured Eric Roberts.)  Instead, Heaven Is For Real is probably as close to mainstream as a faith-based movie can get.  I doubt that the film changed anyone’s opinion regarding whether or not heaven is for real but it’s still well-done in a made-for-TV sort of way.

The Other Woman (dir by Nick Cassavetes)

According to my BFF Evelyn, we really liked The Other Woman when we saw it earlier this year.  And, despite how bored I was with the film when I recently tired to rewatch it, we probably did enjoy it that first time.  It’s a girlfriend film, the type of movie that’s enjoyable as long as you’re seeing it for the first time and you’re seeing it with your best girlfriends.  It’s a lot of fun the first time you see it but since the entire film is on the surface, there’s nothing left to discover on repeat viewings.  Instead, you just find yourself very aware of the fact that the film often substitutes easy shock for genuine comedy. (To be honest, I think that — even with the recent missteps of Labor Day and Men, Women, and Children — Jason Reitman could have done wonders with this material.  Nick Cassavetes however…)   Leslie Mann gives a good performance and the scenes where she bonds with Cameron Diaz are a lot of fun but otherwise, it’s the type of film that you enjoy when you see it and then you forget about it.

6 Late Reviews: Atlas Shrugged: Part II, Project X, This Means War, A Thousand Words, Trouble With The Curve, The Vow

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

2012 is quickly drawing to an end and seriously, where has the time gone?  I’m seriously running behind in reviewing all of the films that I’ve seen in 2012 so, in the interest of getting caught up, here are six quick (and late) reviews of some of the film that I saw earlier this year.

(Fortunately, seeing as how we live in a world of Netflix, DVD, Blu-ray, and On Demand service, it’s never too late to review any film.)

1) Atlas Shrugged: Part II (dir by John Putch)

Picking up where the first Atlas Shrugged ended, Atlas Shrugged: Part II continues to tell the story of how America was ruined by elitist do-gooders and how the smartest people in the world responded by uttering the phrase, “Who Is John Galt?” and then vanishing.

There’s a lot of bad stuff that I could say about Atlas, Shrugged Part II.  I could point out how close to nothing actually happens in the film.  I understand that this is the second part of a proposed film trilogy but, seriously, that’s all that Atlas Shrugged Part II has in common with The Two Towers.  With the exception of the great Patrick Fabian (who has a lot of fun playing a weasel), the cast isn’t memorable and the film is full of slow spots.

Part II was made by a different director and with a far more professional cast than Part I but that proves to be a mistake.  Part of the odd charm of Atlas Shrugged, Part I was that it was such a low-budget, pulpy affair.  Atlas Shrugged, Part II is a lot more slick and, as a result, it feels a lot less sincere.

That said, I couldn’t help but enjoy Atlas Shrugged, Part II because, much like For Greater Glory, the film flew so completely in the face of conventional cinematic political statements.  Atlas Shrugged Part II might not be a great (or even a good) film but it annoyed all of the professional film critics and it’s always amusing to watch the same critical establishment that embraced Avatar whine about how any other film is too heavy-handed.

Am I, therefore, recommending Atlas Shrugged, Part II?  Not really.  I tend to learn towards the Libertarian point of view when it comes to politics and even I found the film to be tedious.  That said, if you ever really want to annoy your wannabe hipster friend (the same one who leaves a hundred comments a day over at the A.V. Club), Atlas Shrugged, Part II might make the perfect holiday present.

2) Project X (dir by Nima Nourizadeh)

In California, two loathsome high school students — Costa (Oliver Cooper) and J.B.(Johnathan Daniel Brown) — throw a birthday party for their friend Thomas (Thomas Mann).  Thomas is a stereotypical nice guy but he’s also friends with Costa and J.B. and that makes him loathsome by association.  The party quickly gets out of control and eventually, houses are destroyed and a SWAT team is called in to restore order.

Oh!  And the entire film is presented as being a bunch of “found footage.”  What that means is that we have to sit through all the usual stuff of people acting awkward in an attempt to convince us that we’re not watching a movie, despite the fact that we clearly are.

Project X fails on so many levels that it’s hard to even know where to begin.

It’s impossible to sympathize with the film’s three main characters and let’s just say that Oliver Cooper is no Jonah Hill.

There’s no real build-up to the party getting out of control and hence, most of the film’s comedy falls flat.  This is the type of film where a midget happens to show up at the party just so he can then be tossed into an oven.  Uwe Boll would probably call that genius but, for the rest of us, it just feels like desperation on the part of the filmgoers.  (You can just here them going, “Midgets are always funny!”)

Finally, worst of all, Project X is the latest film to use the whole found footage gimmick as a way to try to explain away the fact that it’s just not a very good movie.  Seriously, mediocre filmmakers of America — it’s time to move on to a new gimmick!

3) This Means War (dir. by McG)

Two CIA Agents (Chris Pine and Tom Hardy) set aside their friendship and go to war when they realize that they’re both attempting to win the heart of the same woman (played by Reese Witherspoon).   Fortunately for them, they’ve both managed to fall in love with the one woman in the world too stupid to realize that there’s anything strange going on.  Chelsea Handler is also in this film.  She plays Witherspoon’s best friend and delivers all of her lines in this kind of depressed monotone that seems to suggest that she’d rather be co-starring with Whitney Cummings.  Eventually, a lot of things explode and well, anyway … bleh.

Seriously, This Means War has absolutely no right to be as boring as it is.  Outside of this film, Chris Pine and Tom Hardy are both hot, Reese Witherspoon is likable, and even Chelsea Handler still makes me laugh on occasion.  And yet, when all four of these people are put together in the same film, the end result is a mess that just gets more and more annoying with each passing second.

Most of the blame has to be put on the director.  McG never finds a consistent tone for his film and never seems to be sure whether he’s parodying or celebrating the conventions of both action films and romantic comedies.

Myself, I just find it funny that people actually address him as “McG.”

4) A Thousand Words (dir by Brian Robbins)

Jack (Eddie Murphy) is a literary agent who talks too much.  So, one night, a tree with a thousand leaves magically appears in his back yard.  Every time that Jack says a word, a leaf falls off of the tree.  Luckily, Jack happens to know a new age guru (Cliff Curtis) who explains that once every leaf has fallen, Jack will die.  As a result, the formerly glib Jack learns the importance of saying just the right thing and he becomes a better husband, father, and son as a result.

A Thousand Words is just as bad as the above plot synopsis suggests and that’s all that really needs to be said about it.  Wasting a thousand words talking about A Thousand Words would be a mistake indeed.

5)  Trouble With The Curve (dir by Robert Lorenz)

Widower Gus (Clint Eastwood) is an aging baseball scout who is slowly losing his eyesight.  Mickey (Amy Adams) is Gus’s daughter, a driven lawyer who has a strained relationship with her father.

And together … they solve crimes!

No, not really.  Instead, Gus is given one last assignment and Mickey, who is both concerned for her father’s well-being and wants to try to repair their fractured relationship, accompanies him.  At first, Gus doesn’t want Mickey around but she eventually proves her worth to him and gets to flirt with a young scout played by Justin Timberlake as well.  So, it’s a win-win.

 I don’t know much about baseball (beyond the fact that my sister Erin yells at the TV a lot whenever the Rangers are playing) but Trouble With The Curve is such a predictable movie that you really don’t have to know much about the game to be able to follow the plot.  That said, Trouble With The Curve might be predictable but it’s also a genuinely sweet and likable film.  Timberlake and Adams make for a really cute couple and it’s always fun to watch Eastwood growl at a world that never fails to disappoint him.

6) The Vow (dir by Michael Sucsy)

Paige (Rachel McAdams) and her husband Leo (Channing Tatum) are in a horrific car accident.  Paige is sent flying through the windshield and when she recovers consciousness, she no longer remembers being married or anything else about her life after she first met Leo.  While Leo attempts to get Paige to fall in love with him for a second time, Paige’s parents (Sam Neill and Jessica Lange) attempt to convince her to divorce him and return to her previous life as a pampered law student with a rich fiancée (played by Scott Speedman).

The Vow is a lot like Trouble With The Curve in that it’s totally predictable but, at the same time, it’s so sweet and likable that anyone who complains about the film being too predictable probably doesn’t have a heart.  Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum have a lot of chemistry and anyone who complains that this film is too much like a Lifetime movie has obviously never experienced a really great Lifetime movie.

6 Films That Are Not The Dark Knight Rises: The Girl From Naked Eye, Magic Mike, Rock of Ages, Ted, 21 Jump Street, and Underworld: Awakening

Posted on by Lisa Marie Bowman

Right now, everyone seems to be heading out to see The Dark Knight Rises for the first, second, or hundredth time.  By my own personal count, the  various writers here at The Shattered Lens have seen the film a combined total of 12 times since it opened on Friday.  (Myself, I’ll be seeing it on Tuesday.)

But what if you don’t want to see The Dark Knight Rises this week?  What if you just don’t want to deal with the big crowds?  Maybe you want to wait a few months so that you can see it for a dollar.  Or maybe,  you showed up at the theater and discovered that the showing was sold out or perhaps you’re just not into the whole Batman thing.  What then?  Well, believe it or not, there are other movies out there and below, you can find 6 reviews of films that came out this year but are not The Dark Knight Rises.  Some of them are worth seeing and some of them definitely are not.  But all six of them are alternatives for those of you who want to see a movie but, for whatever reason, don’t want to see The Dark Knight Rises.

(Even better, they’re six films that I saw earlier this year but, until now, still hadn’t gotten around to reviewing.)

1) The Girl From Naked Eye (dir by David Ren)

Jake (Jason Yee) is the driver for a sleazy escort service that’s headquartered out of a strip club called Naked Face.  Jake ends up falling in love with Sandy (Samantha Streets), an escort who writes poetry in her spare time.  (Yes, one of those…)  When Sandy is murdered, Jake goes on a violent search for her murderer.

The Girl From Naked Eye is a pretty uneven and rather predictable film but I actually enjoyed it.  It’s obvious that director David Ren is a fan of the same old film noirs that I love and, at its best, Girl From Naked Eye is a loving tribute to those films.  Streets is likable as the ill-fated Sandy and Gary Stretch brings some unexpected depth to his villainous role.  Perhaps best of all, Girl From Naked Eye is only 80 minutes long.  Sometimes, you just don’t need that extra 30 minutes to tell your story.

The Girl From Naked Eye is very much an independent film so it might be playing near you or it might not.

2) Magic Mike (dir. by Stephen Soderbergh)

After me and my BFF Evelyn saw Magic Mike, I hopped on twitter and I tweeted, “Memo to single guys.  Go hang out around the theater when Magic Mike gets out.  You will get laid!”  Yes, Magic Mike is that type of film…

“Magic” Mike (played by Channing Tatum) is the most popular attraction at Xquisite, a male strip club that’s run by Dallas (a wonderfully sleazy performance from Matthew McConaughey).  Mike ends up serving as a mentor for Adam (Alex Pettyfer) while pursuing Adam’s disapproving sister (Cody Horn) and saving up his money so that he can start his own business.  However, the life proves a lot more difficult for him to leave then he originally thought…

There’s actually a lot of plot in Magic Mike but, ultimately, it doesn’t matter.  The film knows that we’re all here to watch Tatum, Alex Pettyfer, and Joe Manganiello shake everything that they’ve got and the film does not disappoint.  Director Steven Soderbergh’s directs in such a way that the film’s dance numbers are both exciting and, at the same time, distancing.  By taking a rather documentary approach to otherwise salacious material, Soderbergh reminds us that, ultimately, Tatum is just doing a job and fulfilling the requirements of fantasy as opposed to reality.

When Christy Lemire of the Associates Press gave a less than positive review to The Dark Knight Rises, all of the fanboys on Rotten Tomatoes became obsessed with the fact that she had previously given a positive review to Magic Mike.  Many of them left comments complaining that the only reason Lemire enjoyed Magic Mike was because it featured naked men.  While all one has to do is read Lemire’s review to see that’s not the case, so what if it was?  Films have been objectifying women for over a century.  What’s wrong with a little fair play?

Magic Mike is still in theaters.

 3) Rock of Ages (dir. by Adam Shankman)

In this adaptation of the hit Broadway show, Sherrie Christian (Julianne Hough) is an innocent girl from Oklahoma who dreams of finding super stardom in Los Angeles.  She gets a job working as a waitress at an incredibly filthy-looking club run by Alec Baldwin and she also gets a boyfriend (played by Diego Boneta) who is an aspiring musician himself.  Everything’s great except for the fact that the mayor’s puritanical wife (Catherine Zeta-Jones) hates rock and roll and wants to close the club down.  Luckily, alcoholic rock star Stacee Jaxx (Tom Cruise) is willing to help out.  Did I mention that Russell Brand is in this film as well?  Because, he like totally is…

Rock of Ages gives you a chance to watch your favorite actors and actresses shake it to some of the least danceable music ever written and it’s just about as bad you might expect.  Between the vanilla performances of Hough and Boneta and the film’s rampant sexism (every female in the film is either a shrew or a whore and apparently, the only thing that can redeem them is allowing Tom Cruise to drunkenly cop a feel), Rock of Ages is a combination of the forgettable and stuff that you wish you could forget.  For a director who specializes in musicals, Shankman seems strangely lost here and the majority of the big numbers feel lifeless.  The one bright spot is Mary J. Blige who shows up in a minor role and quickly reminds everyone what singing is all about.

Rock of Ages opened with a lot of hype but that hype didn’t translate into box office success.  You can probably still catch it at the dollar theater but you might want your money back afterward.

4) Ted (directed by Seth MacFarlane)

Ted tells the story of a lonely 8 year-old boy who, one night, wishes that his beloved teddy bear Ted might come to life.  Well, Ted does come to life and ends up proving to the world that magic does exist.  Briefly, Ted and his owner are celebrities but soon, Ted’s fame fades and, 28 years later, Ted (voiced by director Seth MacFarlane) and his owner (now played by Mark Wahlberg) are slackers who spend their time smoking weed, watching TV, and obsessing over pop culture. (At times, it almost felt as if the film was a documentary about life here at the TSL Bunker.)  However, Wahlberg’s girlfriend (Mila Kunis) feels that Ted is holding him back and eventually, Wahlberg is forced to make a choice between childhood friendship and adult love.

I have to admit that I’m not a huge fan of Seth MacFarlane’s.  I hate the Family Guy and I’ve never gotten through more than 2 minutes of The Cleveland Show.  However, I also have to admit that I enjoyed Ted for what it was.  It’s a massively uneven film that pretty much tells the same joke over and over again but that joke (i.e. a cute toy saying or doing something incredibly crude) turns out to be surprisingly resilient.  For their part, Wahlberg and Kunis are a likable couple and Kunis does a good job generating some much-needed sympathy for her thinly drawn character.  Add to that, Joel McHale is in this film and how can I not enjoy a film that features Joel McHale?

Ted is still playing at a theater near you.

5) 21 Jump Street (dir. by Phil Lord and Chris Miller)

Morton (Jonah Hill) and Greg (Channing Tatum) have been unlikely friends since high school.  Greg was a jock and bully while Morton was a guy who looked and acted a lot like Jonah Hill.  When Greg and Morton graduate high school, they both enter the police academy together and, upon getting out of the academy, they find themselves assigned to hazardous duty like patrolling the local park.  However, it turns out that there’s a new designer drug out there and Hill and Tatum are both sent back to high school.  Only now, they’re working under cover…

21 Jump Street was a real surprise when it came out earlier this year, a laugh-out-loud comedy that managed to both satirize and celebrate the conventions of the American cop film.  Hill and Tatum had a lot of chemistry together and there was something oddly touching about watching Hill return to high school and discover that he was now considered the cool guy while Tatum was now the outsider.  21 Jump Street has kinda gotten forgotten in all the hype surrounding The Avengers and the Dark Knight Rises but ultimately, 21 Jump Street can stand with those two films as proof that occasionally a big-budget studio production can turn out to actually be a good film.

(Plus, James Franco’s look-alike brother, Dave Franco, is in it!)

21 Jump Street is available now on DVD and Blu-Ray but it’s also still playing at a few dollar theaters across the country.

6) Underworld: Awakening (dir by Mans Marlind and Bjorn Stein)

Selene (Kate Beckinsale) is back and this time, she’s searching for Michael, who has gone missing.  The plot doesn’t make much sense and the film has one of the most disappointing endings ever but it does provide the viewers with everything that they’ve come to expect from an Underworld film (with the exception of Scott Speedman, who does not return to the role of Michael in this film).

Underworld: Awakening opened at the beginning of the year, got terrible reviews, and made a decent enough amount of money that there will probably be yet another installment in the series come 2014.  That said, Underworld: Awakening is probably the most vapid of all of the Underworld films (and that’s saying something) and, following the releases of both The Avengers and the Dark Knight Rises, it looks like even more of an empty exercise in CGI and action than it did when it was originally released.  That said, this film does star my girl crush, Kate Beckinsale, and, after watching her in this film, I spent a few hours looking for monsters to fight.  I will always recommend any film that features a women kicking ass and that’s about the only reason I have to recommend Underworld: Awakening.

Underworld: Awakening is currently available on both DVD and Blu-Ray.