Law Abiding Citizen (2009)

I'm pretty sure no one sits down to watch this movie expecting cinematic excellence. It's one of those crime drama action thriller things...with Jamie Foxx! Foxx plays a lawyer who prosecutes these dudes who killed some guy's (Gerard Butler) family. A plea bargain is reached and while one of the killers gets the death sentence, the other gets 3 years in prison. You can imagine that this wouldn't sit well with Gerard (yes, I will refer to the actor's name, not the character). Mr. Butler decides that the justice system is faulty (IS IT REALLY!?!) and takes matters into his own hands.

Yeah, so, there's this whole mystery about how Gerard is manipulating the system and killing people while he's imprisoned. The answer is not only not that shocking, but completely implausible. Law Abiding Citizen is rife with cliche dialogue and plot devices. It, like, totally tries to be Shawshank Redemption or something. But it's not. There are very few surprises here, so if you're looking for an action crime thriller thing that will keep you on the edge of your seat, move along.

There is some blood and stuff, though, if you're into that kind of thing.

Writing: 2/10
Acting: 4/10
Plot: 1/10
Visuals: 4/10

Sherlock Holmes (2009)

Robert Downey Jr is probably my favorite actor working today and I generally enjoy all of his films, if not only for his performance. I also love older Guy Ritchie films (Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Snatch), and, though he has continually disappointed me since then, there's always that hope that he will live up to his former glory. I had high hopes for Sherlock Holmes, and for the most part, I was disappointed. There was a lot of potential for Ritchie to make a fantastic reconfiguring of a classic literary figure, but fell short due to a boring, mundane plot.

In this particular adventure, Holmes (Downey) and his faithful partner Dr. Watson (Jude Law) take on Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong), a man who is sentenced to hang for practicing black magic but somehow rises from the dead. He plans to murder key people in a plot to take over England with his dark magic. Yes, it's that ridiculous. Obviously, like an episode of Scooby Doo, his plot was foiled by those meddling detectives.

The great thing about mysteries like Sherlock Holmes, and why they're so appealing, is trying to figure out how the bad guy did it before the hero does. In Sherlock Holmes, I didn't really care how the bad guy did it. I didn't really care about the story at all. There is some witty dialogue and Downey does do a good job, so parts are entertaining. However, the fight scenes go on too long and Watson's silliness could have been a lot sillier. In short, it's boring.

Writing: 6/10
Acting: 8/10
Plot: 3/10
Visuals: 8/10

The Informant! (2009)

I love dark comedies and this movie makes me adore Matt Damon. I can not emphasize enough how incredible Damon's performance is in this movie. He plays Mark Whitacre, a scientist and VP at Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), a large agri-business, who becomes an FBI information. He confesses to FBI Agent Brian Shepard (Scott Bakula - yes, Scott Bakula a.k.a. Quantum Leap) that ADM is involved in an international price fixing scam. Whitacre works with the FBI for years, taping conversations, revealing documents and all the while trying to maintain his own innocence, which turns out to be very difficult. Whitacre gets caught up in a web of ridiculous lies and plagiarisms that he, or the audience, can't tell which way is up.

While Steven Soderbergh directs a masterful mystery thriller and Scott Burns' screenplay establishes some of the most brilliant and funny dialogue I've heard in a long time, this movie belongs to Matt Damon. Playing the best and most challenging role of his entire career, Damon is on point with every desperate explanation, with every innocent gaze, with that psychotic, confused smile. The Informant! is simply hilarious and fun and full of mystery. It's also based on a true story, which is entirely secondary to the awesomeness of the film within itself. I highly recommend it.



Writing: 9/10
Acting: 10/10
Plot: 9/10
Visuals: 9/10

The Descent: Part 2 (2009)

I didn't see the original The Descent, but from what I've gathered from The Descent: Part 2, the first one was about a group of hot, young, model-esque girls who decide to go cave spelunking in order to film their own extreme version of Girls Gone Wild. The whole thing goes terribly wrong when they discover that the whole cave is infested with naked, cannibal bat-men, who are not nearly as sexy as Batman. Six girls into the cave and only one comes out: Sarah (Shauna Macdonald in both movies).

The Descent: Part 2 starts with a group of men and women who have formed a search party in order to look for the 5 missing hot girls. The group forces Sarah to go back into the cave with them as they believe she is a liar and/or crazy. Sarah does, initially, have some sort of PTSD, then upon entering the cave, her memory comes back to her and she leaves behind the well-meaning nosy bitch bastards. The group gets split up, as is typical for any movie where it would be beneficial if the characters stay together. They soon realize that Sarah wasn't a crazy liar but, of course, several characters end up dead anyway.

Apparently, it looks shittier than the first movie. I'm not sure in what way, but The Descent: Part 2 definitely has a SyFy movie quality to it. It's also quite gory, though the blood is that unrealistic kind of fluorescent red that makes the gore more funny than grotesque. The acting is not even worth mentioning. This movie is bad.

Writing: 3/10
Acting: 1/10
Plot: 3/10
Visuals: 3/10

The Box (2009)

The summary of The Box on IMDB is "A small wooden box arrives on the doorstep of a married couple, who know that opening it will grant them a million dollars and kill someone they don't know." This is also a rather succinct summary of the short story that The Box is based on: Richard Matheson's "Button, Button". Doesn't seem like much material for a full length movie. Instead of becoming a glorified extended episode of The Twilight Zone, Richard Kelly (director and writer of Donnie Darko) slowly warps and manipulates "Button, Button" into something entirely dissimilar. And much more interesting.

The Box is incredibly suspenseful. I watched it in bed one night with my boyfriend laying next to me. I kept having to pause the movie and I'd turn to him, "This is really scary. I'm really freaked out right now. This is really scary, etc." over and over. Now, I should say that I don't regularly enjoy horror movies and that I may have over reacted. However, even though I felt terrified for about 40 minutes of the film, I still really liked it. It was a kind of suspense that I don't normally experience with film, especially modern horror. It's also very weird. If you've seen Donnie Darko, The Box is very much in the same vein, both visually and dramatically. My only complaint would be the casting of Cameron Diaz, although her natural naivete is surprisingly fitting for a 1970's housewife. Frank Lagella is super creepy as Arlington Steward, the bearer of the box, so the acting isn't all bad.

Overall, I was really surprised with The Box and would recommend it to those looking for a suspenseful thrill ride that isn't typical of modern horror films.

Writing: 8/10
Acting: 6/10
Plot: 9/10
Visuals: 9/10

Pandorum (2009)

A lot of dudes recommended this movie to me, and I emphasize dudes because this is a very dude-ish film. The movie takes place after the Earth has been wrecked and ravaged of its resources and left uninhabitable. Two flight crew members wake up from suspended animation with no recollection of who they are, what their mission is, or how long they've been asleep. They are on Elysium, a 60,000 passenger sleeper ship on it's way to the Earth-like planet, Tanis. Bower (Ben Foster) and Payton (Dennis Quaid) plan to save the ship from certain doom while slowly discovering who they are, encountering flesh-eating humanoid creatures, and battling the onset of the psychological disorder, Pandorum.

The story is rather complex and engrossing for a fairly standard action/sci-fi movie. They mystery of exactly what is going on builds throughout the whole movie and Bower meets some interesting characters, including a hot, ass-kicking female scientist. It's entertaining. Visually, I find it a bit mundane and boring. Most of the movie takes place in darkness and much of the internal scenery of Elysium looks the same. The humanoid creatures aren't exactly creative looking, but they serve their purpose as the constant threat. What really makes the movie worth watching at all is, like so many sci-fi movies based on mystery, the ending. There is a powerful catharsis upon the final realization and that's what is going to make people recommend this movie to others. In reality, it's pretty unremarkable for its genre, but probably will appeal to a lot of dudes.

Writing: 5/10
Acting: 5/10
Plot: 7/10
Visuals: 4/10