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.

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Review by David DiMichele

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Woody Allen only solidifies his place in the thriller genre with his newest London gripper Cassandra's Dream. After a couple of years dabbling in the "upper-class" society, he focuses on the "lower-class" and how desperate one can get for money. Match Point a few years back really gave him a new poison potion for filmmaking. After years of making quirky love tales and over-the-top comedies, he finds himself more at home with these dark and serious tales involving tightly-knit families. Although there were a few production delays, Allen's Cassandra's Dream is well worth the wait.

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Review by David DiMichele

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No other party could possibly be worse than the one depicted in the new fanboy-hyped YouTube generational movie Cloverfield.

We’re introduced to a bunch of measly twentysomething-year-olds and just like that, we’re supposed to be on board with them for the duration of the movie - but thank God it’s only 84 minutes in length. In the very first scene - the first fifteen minutes - we meet six separate characters. It felt just like watching one of my drunk friends videotaping a party he attended a week ago, a party full of cheesy jokes and plenty of drama which seemed really forced.

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Review by Jeremy Welsch

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I'm pretty sure if you were a former foster child growing up in a creepy old house the last thing you'd want to do is buy it later in life and reopen it. I can't speak from experience but it does seems a bit off-putting.

The Orphanage is presented by Guillermo del Toro and directed by first-timer Juan Antonio Bayona. Laura (Belén Rueda) returns to the orphanage where she grew up with her husband Carlos (Fernando Cayo) and their son Simón (Roger Príncep). She plans to reopen it as a home for sick and disabled children.

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Review by Jeremy Welsch

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I like pizza. I'd say its one of my favorite foods. It's easy, it's always good, and you can create variety just by changing a few toppings around (I'd say I'm a supreme guy, for anyone interested). I also like chilli and spaghetti. But if you tried to put chili and spaghetti on a pizza I don't know that the end would justify the means. (Actually, come to think of it, that doesn't sound half bad!). My point, however, is just because you like all the ingredients doesn't mean you'll like the finished product . You could say The Bucket List is kinda like a chilli-spaghetti-pizza.

Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Release Date: December 26, 2007
Running time: 158 min
MPAA Rating: R
Distributors: Paramount Vintage

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Review by Jeremy Welsch

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“Ladies and gentlemen... I've traveled over half our state to be here tonight. I couldn't get away sooner because my new well was coming in at Coyote Hills and I had to see about it. That well is now flowing at two thousand barrels and it's paying me an income of five thousand dollars a week. I have two others drilling and I have sixteen producing at Antelope. So, ladies and gentlemen... if I say I'm an oil man you will agree.

You have a great chance here, but bear in mind, you can lose it all if you're not careful. Out of all men that beg for a chance to drill your lots, maybe one in twenty will be oilmen; the rest will be speculators - men trying to get between you and the oilmen - to get some of the money that ought by rights come to you. Even if you find one that has money, and means to drill, he'll maybe known nothing about drilling and he'll have to hire out the job on contract, and then you're depending on a contractor that's trying to rush the job through so he can get another contract just as quick as he can. That is the way this works.”

This is the opening dialogue by oil man, Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis). It comes no less than 15 minutes into the picture and tells us all we really need to know about the man. But we don’t know this to be fact until the end of the film, more than two hours later.

Starring: Daniel Day-Lewis, Paul Dano
Director: Paul Thomas Anderson
Release Date: December 26, 2007
Running time: 158 min
MPAA Rating: R
Distributors: Paramount Vintage

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Review by David DiMichele

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The first fifteen minutes of Paul Thomas Anderson's widely controversial and thematically charged There Will Be Blood is silent, except for the haunting and harrowing score by Johnny Greenwood from Radiohead. The stark and dry landscapes of the west at the turn of the century (1898) show us a miner and a couple of his partners mining the dry grounds for silver. Anderson's choice in starting this sprawling epic in this odd manner testifies not only to his directing ability but also to his approach to a film which spans three decades. It reminded me of the first twenty minutes of 2001: A Space Odyssey. The apes are fussing around with what they have - bones and rocks. They amuse themselves while an eerie silence and some unnatural music emphasize the untouched territory of the stark and dry landscape that surrounds them. It's only when they wake up and find something they weren't looking for - a black rectangle - that the way the apes think and go about their everyday activities is altered. In There Will Be Blood we get the same exact set-up except with humans and a different kind of object. Here, Daniel Plainview (Daniel Day-Lewis) accidentally stumbles upon oil. Lots of it. This oil will not only change his life and bring him riches but will also bring him ambition, corruption, and extreme hatred. And let's not forget about the big one: greed.

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Review by David DiMichele

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Seldom does a movie come along that manages to engulf the audience in panic, uneasiness and claustrophobia. But the due to its absolute originality, the artsy The Diving Bell and The Butterfly does this with ease. Right off the bat we’re in this world of Elle fashion magazine editor Jean-Dominique Bauby (Mathieu Amalric), who is awakening from a coma. He’s told by his doctor that he can’t speak and that he is paralyzed from the head down. The only way he can communicate is by blinking his left eye. One blink for yes and two blinks for no. The doctor comes up with the most frequently used letters of the alphabet and she reads them to him and when he hears the letter he wants to use, he blinks. Amazingly, using this method, he wrote an entire book - a memoir - and had it published in 1997, just before he passed away.

Starring: Katherine Heigl, James Marsden, Malin Akerman
Director: Anne Fletcher
Release Date: January 11, 2008
Running time: 107 min
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Distributors: 20th Century Fox

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Review by Jeremy Welsch

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Romantic comedies tend to exist in their own little world, don’t they? A world where they make up their own rules without any real connection to the rest of the planet. A world where everything gets a tidy treatment and at the end of the day, everyone’s problems are solved in the span of about 100 minutes. They are the sitcoms of the movie world and they rarely make apologies for it.

Having sat through P.S. I Love You not 24 hours prior to watching this, I thought about the genre as a whole and did a little exercise. I sat down and made a quick list of all those plot devices I could think of that are overused in romantic comedies, just to see how many they would try in 27 Dresses. This list was based strictly on my best grasp of the subject matter and the fact that I had seen a similar movie less than a day before. This is not meant to be a complete list by any means - its just what I wrote down before the movie started: