Wanted

Hot diggitty, that’s the stuff! Just what I’m looking for after a week of selling my soul for a paycheque. A little bit Fight Club, a little bit The Matrix, with some Office Space thrown in much to my delight. It’s impossible and cathartic and improbable and funny (although one of the jokes is specifically on an unsuspecting rat, which I am just unable to condone). I warn you, however, that I have a high tolerance for violence, especially stylized violence like in this movie, so take that into account when you consider my recommendation. Even I found it brutal at times and couldn’t say the close-ups of bullets breaking through people’s foreheads were my favourite bits. But did I mention it was cathartic? It was my kind of fun. Verdict: First Run Theatre

(I just cannot stress enough, however, how wholly and vehemently I disapprove of how he chooses to gain entry to the bad guys’ lair at the end. Not cool, man. Just not cool.)

Sex and The City

Hey, I liked this more than I thought I would! And it was the last movie I can remember where I was surrounded by chicks in the theatre. I'm not a chick movie type of gal, I don't go to chick movies, chick movies hold no interest for me. But this chick movie was up my alley.

I liked the tv show quite a bit, but the finale was such a piece of unfunny downer crap that I assumed the movie would take up the reins of depression. Instead, it was quite enjoyable and laugh out loud funny in parts. At 2.5 hours, though, it could have used some more editing. It moved well up until about the middle, at which point Carrie just kind of sat down and watched the world go by for probably half an hour. Perhaps I wouldn't have minded as much if it wasn't for the fact that she was 12 feet tall with a head the size of a grapefruit and forearms like tree trunks. My friends and I got to the theatre after the previews had already started, and the place was packed (totally surprised me!). The only seats left were in the very front row, so we had to kind of lay back to look up and see the screen. If the action spanned the width of the screen, we were kind of s.o.l. So quite enjoying the movie even though it took my neck 30 minutes to "uncrick" afterwards really speaks well of its entertainment factor, don't you think? (FYI, if you're wondering do you have to have seen the tv show to appreciate the movie: I regularly watched the tv show, one of my friends had seen it occassionally, the third saw a few episdoes and my fourth friend had never seen the show ... and we all very much liked the movie.) Verdict: Discount Theatre

The Happening

The less you know about movies like this before seeing them the better, so I shall not get into too much detail and spoil what little entertainment this movie may afford. Let me just say this: M. Night Shyamalan is the king of let-downs. It's like he has these quite original and admittedly intriguing ideas and maybe even a message and a half that he could probably slip past us in between the screams and the scares, and he knows how he wants to see about two-thirds of the movie go ... then he just figures no one will notice if he has no plan for the last third.

Remember in Signs, when Mel and Joaquin are trapped in the basement with adorable Abigail and asthmatic Rory and the aliens are upstairs and trying to get in through the coal chute and Joaquin says they have to turn out the flashlights to save the batteries so the foursome are sitting there in the dark and you're thinking "Aw, man, this is awesome and scary and how in the world are they going to get out this predicament!" Remember that? And then remember how they got out of it? The aliens left. Just left. For some reason aliens who can't stand water saw a planet that was composed of about 75% of the stuff and they thought what the hey, let's just land here anyway. Up until the moment they decided they shouldn't have, and then they just left. And don't say "Hey! One stayed!" Because big frickin whoop one stayed. MNS put the whole damn planet in jeopardy and then hoarked up a big ol' spit ball of deus ex machina to get them out of the jeopardy like we wouldn't even notice that's what he did.

The Happening is kind of like that. Except with truly flagrant video and unnaturally beefed up audio of absolutely disgusting acts of suicide. Verdict: Movie Rental if You Must

The Strangers

Up until maybe halfway through, I was really into this movie. It was just the right amount of creepy and disconcerting, and it relied mainly on the scare quotient of the relatively mundane. A heavy knock on the door at 4 in the morning ... a seemingly innocent question in a small voice from a person whose face is hidden by shadow ... just being alone in a house unfamiliar to you. And when the horror part of the movie started in, the couple reacted quite rationally and as you would expect most anyone would act in that situation. But then it lost me. The couple started doing things that just made no sense. And not in a was-that-a-blood-curdling-scream-coming-from-the-basement?-I’ll-just-go-check-it-out-in-my-silky-negligee kind of way. More like an I-just-ran-into-the-bedroom-I-think-I’ll-go-back-out-to-the-front-room-to-see-why-the-killer-didn’t-follow-me nonsense. And the killers started making no sense. Like not following people into bedrooms. Sure, maybe you’ll say because it’s more torturous for the couple that way, always wondering why and what next. But then why do the killers sneak up behind the couple, then disappear before the couple knew anyone was behind them? So the audience could be freaked out? Sure, it freaks us out. But the killers aren’t supposed to know an audience is watching right? So I renew my “why?” Verdict: Movie Rental if You Must