Starring: Steven Strait, Camilla Belle, Cliff Curtis
Director: Roland Emmerich
Release Date: March 7, 2008
Running Time: 109 min
MPAA Rating: R
Distributor: Warner Bros

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Review by Jeremy Welsch

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So I’m in the theatre seeing who knows what with my better half. We watch the previews and turn to each other after each one is over and give the one look critique in silence. You know, that head shake or whatever which determines if this is one she'll see with me or one I am on my own for. The first time I see the trailer for 10,000 B.C, I have to admit I was interested. It looked pretty decent. I turn to her shaking my head yes and am met with a blank stare and the following statement; “Are you kidding me? Aren’t you a movie critic?”

Touché.

I sign up to review the movie and the same night I saw the trailer again ahead of something else. Once again I thought it looked decent. Then I started thinking. Where is the dialogue? What is the story about? Wait, why did I think this was going to be good after hearing again who made it?

Dear God, what have I done...

Starring: Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Fiennes
Director: Martin McDonagh
Release Date: January 17, 2008
Running Time: 107 min
MPAA Rating: R
Distributor: Focus Features

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Review by David DiMichele

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Where or what exactly is Bruges (pronounced "broozh") you ask? Well, technically it’s a town in Belgium that occupies "fairytale" like surroundings. It presents the audience with a previously unseen world consisting of an array of medieval buildings, pubs and streets lined with outdoor bistros. Bruges is a town that’s not only an undiscovered tourist attraction but it’s close to perfect. But more importantly, Bruges plays host to an unforgettable movie, with characters that are more than unique and dialogue that’s sharp, remorseless and funny.

Don’t make the mistake of labelling this movie just another "hit-man" film or a poor man’s Tarantino. In Bruges towers over all recent gun-happy movies and has the most confidence and creativity of any movie in this genre since Pulp Fiction. The creative juice is abundant. It’s brought to In Bruges by writer/director Martin McDonagh (in his first feature-length film). It starts with him and slowly reverberates throughout the entire cast.

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Review by David DiMichele

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"Only but good intentions, only but good things," I kept trying to tell myself. But there I was watching a neighborhood that was increasingly fraught with an alarmingly amount of cheesiness and fakeness. Show me a town of people who all have the most sincere of hearts (even the thugs do) and a town that is still captivated by the dinosaur we call VHS, and I'll bow to your every command. That's the issue with "Be Kind Rewind." There really isn't a town like this in all of America. Surprisingly Michel Gondry, the gifted filmmaker of the classic "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," does his best to disguise this town as a bunch of Mother Theresa's, and at times it almost seems as if it is the kind of neighborhood we were accustomed to when we were young.

A hard job to do if you're Gondry but an even harder job is to watch Jack Black going over-the-top yet again as Jerry, the obnoxious friend of Mike (Mos Def). The two are on screen for almost the entire movie and Black wears out his welcome long before the movie begins to pick up. He tries with all his might to act while the ever-so-talented Mos Def plays every scene with an easy going and cool attitude. He has the pleasure of running Mr. Fletcher's (Danny Glover) "gold mine" VHS store called Be Kind Rewind, where for a dollar a day you can rent any VHS you want. Sounds so tempting! Fletcher, who doesn't want to make the jump to DVD movies, leaves due to a commemoration of the famous jazz musician Fats Waller, who died in 1943.

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Review by David DiMichele

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Nobody likes to be alone when entering Paranoid Park, a skateboarder's heaven underneath a Portland city bridge, because the kids that hang out here are rebels, loners and misfits. Most kids fear they may not be ready for  a park that demands the highest of talent. Even though our character Alex is aware that he's unready, he still trots over with his skateboard in hand, just out of curiosity. Eventually he'll find out why he's not ready for Paranoid Park because the events that come after shake up his already discombobulated life.

Legendary director Gus Van Sant uses Blake Nelson's book as a guide for this film. In the director's latest look at the troubled youth of one's life, he conveys a similar idea to Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment" (which I'm reading right now). Alex (Gabe Nevins), unlike Dostoyevsky's character, doesn't premeditate the crime to come.

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Review by David DiMichele

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4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days goes by in what seems like seconds. Cristian Mungiu, director, manages to film the movie in real time, capturing one day with such raw power that he has his audience on a string the entire time. This means we have to wait it out feverishly for crucial revelations in the plot, and when they do come, they hit hard. Another tactic he has mastered is the art of physical direction, which can be quite simple if used in the right way. Many times during the movie he simply lays the camera down and lets it focus on someone's expression almost passionately. Voyeuristically, in fact. Most of the shots have been done without any cuts at all. They just flow steadily where another movie might soup the scene up with fancy effects and camera angles. Not here, though. Mungiu keeps his camera on our characters the entire time.

Starring: Jason Statham, Saffron Burrows, Stephen Campbell Moore
Director: Roger Donaldson
Release Date: March 7, 2008
Running time: 110min
MPAA Rating: R
Distributors: Lions Gate

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Review by David DiMichele

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The Bank Job has a by-the-book title, but people will be surprised by how smart, inventive and gritty this film actually is. Just look at the poster. There aren’t any overwhelmingly long gun battles between the cops and robbers but rather a basket full of events overflowing the brim of this particular bank job. At the helm is veteran director, Roger Donaldson (Cocktails and The Recruit), and he knows thrills are at their best without any over-the-top action scenes. Amidst all the hoopla of recent heist films, most notably the Ocean franchise, there is something true about The Bank Job. It doesn’t veer off into a fantasy world like Ocean's 13 did. The bank robbery that occurs is so down-to-earth that we can imagine it happening at our local bank. (The film, by the way, is based on a true story - a story that was buried for 30 years due to a government gag order.) It's set in 1971 London and that’s exactly how The Bank Job plays out; almost as if it’s a close cousin to the great heist films of that decade such as The Getaway and Dillinger.

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Review by Jeremy Welsch

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Eight strangers with eight different points of view try to unlock the truth behind an assassination attempt on the United States of America.

The concept itself is intriguing. Any time there is a story newsworthy enough to be plastered all over every channel in the known world, we get the same details dredged out in front of us until a new perspective is offered. So to concentrate all those perspectives into a 90 minute movie is nothing if not efficient.

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Review by David DiMichele

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Here’s a zombie movie that not only kicks ass in the zombie genre (it's among the best I’ve seen), but also in the world that we’ve all come to be a part of - the mass media world. Legendary filmmaker George A. Romero created Diary of the Dead as if it were one of his old gritty independent films from back in 1968, but added a modern day touch to it by the way technology is used. This new touch he brings to his film penetrates deep into the human body and mind. Last time I checked, a zombie movie should only scare you. Here Romero scares and knocks us off our feet, leaving us pondering hard about what we just witnessed. You leave the theatre feeling stunned.

Starring: Will Ferrell, Woody Harrelson, Andre Benjamin
Director: Kent Alterman
Release Date: February 29, 2008
Running time: 85min
MPAA Rating: R
Distributors: New Line Cinema

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Review by Jeremy Welsch

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We have been conditioned to take some things in life for granted. For example, I know that every October I go on a camping trip into the middle of nowhere. Every weekend I see at least one new movie in the theatre. And  Will Ferrell is one of the most consistent comedic actors working today. That is why it pains me physically to type the following statement:

Will Ferrell’s act is growing stale.

It was bound to happen sooner or later and I should have seen it coming. I guess I just wasn’t ready to see it happen so soon.

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Review by Jeremy Welsch

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One of the cardinal rules of good filmmaking is to not underestimate the intelligence of your audience. There are different levels but it makes you wonder which is the bigger crime: not trusting your audience to figure out a movie on its own without being hit over the head with the answer, or thinking they aren’t smart enough to notice that they could have known the answer if given a way to do so. One of the first lines in Jumper told me all I needed to know about the intentions of the film:

“It didn’t used to be this way. I used to be a regular chump. Like you.”

Great…

Starring: Ryan Reynolds, Abigail Breslin, Isla Fisher, Rachel Weisz
Director: Adam Brooks
Release Date: February 14, 2008
Running time: 105 min
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Distributors: Focus Features

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Review by Jeremy Welsch

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We all make choices in life, every day. Some are small and have little or no impact on the grand scheme of things, and some shake us to our foundations, altering the very balance of power in our lives, and completely changing the game. For some reason or other, a few months back I embarked on a quest to find the first good romantic comedy of the season. I didn’t mean to, but after seeing so many bad ones, I imagined there just had to be one out there that didn’t make me want to reject my calling. Regrettably, my stubborn nature took over.

Well, it happened. Dear God, it finally happened. But my personal victory notwithstanding, the movie isn’t completely without flaw.

Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Kate Hudson, Donald Sutherland
Director: Andy Tennant
Release Date: February 8, 2008
Running time: 113 min
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Distributors: Warner Bros.

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Review by Jeremy Welsch

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A couple of weeks ago, a friend and I were arguing about the wide-spread appeal of NASCAR. He tried to convince me that it was a legitimate sport and I gave him the stock hillbilly-infused commentary and a battery of equally stereotypical responses to his argument. This went on for a good 20 minutes. When he finally thought he had me wobbly enough, he attempted to finish me off with a Fatality:

HIM: “Hey, it’s the fastest growing sport in America.”

ME: “Just because something is popular doesn’t mean it’s any good.”

Not believing my statement to be true, he asked me for an example. I told him to check the box office totals for any given week during the first half of the year and in an alarming number of examples, the top movies are garbage.

HIM: “It always goes back to movies with you, doesn’t it kid?”

Starring: Steve Zahn, Allen Covert, Jonah Hill, Justin Long
Director: Fred Wolf
Release Date: February 1, 2008
Running time: 87 min
MPAA Rating: R
Distributor: Happy Madison Production

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Review by Jeremy Welsch

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As I was walking out of seeing this movie, a group of people were in front of me talking amongst themselves as they walked out. One of them dropped a folded up piece of paper. I picked it up and tried to chase them down to hand it back to them, but I lost them in the lobby. After reading it (what, you wouldn’t?), I thought I’d share given the nature of the afternoon we just spent together.

Starring: Jessica Alba, Alessandro Nivola, Parker Posey, Chloe Grace Moretz
Director: David Moreau, Xavier Palud
Release Date: February 1, 2008
Running time: 97 min
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Distributors: Lionsgate

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Review by Jeremy Welsch

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I actually requested this review during a phase I like to refer to as the “sign up for movies I don’t want to see in an effort to challenge myself as a reviewer” phase. Or S.U.F.M.I.D.W.T.S.I.A.E.T.C.M.A.A.R for short. Right out of the gate, I had lowered expectations. Not bleak really, because I try to keep an open mind, but lowered to say the least.

I suppose I shoulda known better. I shoulda seen it coming. Then I found out the movie was produced by Tom Cruise. I shoulda left after the trailer for Prom Night.

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Review by David DiMichele

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Where is Lieutenant Horatio Caine from CSI: Miami when you need him? Well, he’s not coming to the aid of the Portland, Oregon authorities, that’s for sure. Untraceable could be a CSI episode. It’s no good as a movie since it's plot consists of, well, nothing. There isn’t any logical, reasonable, or enjoyable plot line except for the demise of one character. At least CSI: Miami dazzles us with its beautiful people and those one-liners that Horatio always says before a commercial break.