The Adjustment Bureau - DVD Review

ll 1/2

Starring Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Anthony Mackie, John Slattery, Terence Stamp and Michael Kelly. Directed by George Nolfi.

Pretty sure I saw a Twilight Zone episode with the same plot. I'm guessing since it's based on a Philip K. Dick story I'm right. Not going to look it up. I'm assuming right here and now I am correct.

Matt Damon is David Norris, a Congressman from Brooklyn who may or may not run for the Senate. He runs into a beautiful girl named Alyse (Emily Blunt) and they have instant chemistry. But some guys in fedoras don't like them hooking up. Why? "It's not part of the plan."

By one guy in a fedora not intervening at the right moment, David by chance meets her again. This simply won't do. And when David accidentally sees the men at work, these "adjusters", they catch him and they realiz they have no choice but to tell him the truth about their existence. But it comes with a warning. If he tells anyone else the truth, they'll wipe his memory. And he's forbidden to see Alyse again.

So who are these guys? Angels? Aliens? Why is so critical to "the plan" that David and Alyse stay apart? By the end, all is explained, if not satisfactorily. (I get the explanation; I just found it anti-climactic).

I enjoyed most of it. I've noticed many of these PKD movies are "guys on the run who know too much" (Minority Report, Paycheck...). It's just that the farther into the movie, the less interesting it becomes.

Random Entertainment News 7/13/11

- Sylvester Stallone, Sung Kang, Christian Slater, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje and Holt McCallany will star in an action thriller for director Walter Hill. Based on the book "Bullet to the Head," it's about a hitman and cop teaming up for revenge after two gruesome murders throw them together.

- Matthew Fassbender (X-Men: First Class) is joining At Swim-Two-Birds, about a 19-year-old playwright who starts seeing his fictional creation interactioning with real people in his life. Brenda Gleeson will direct and co-star. It also stars Colin Farrell, Cillian Murphy and Gabriel Byrne.

- Johnny Depp might play Paul Revere in an upcoming movie. He also has plans to star in the big-screen adaptation of The Night Stalker. Depp also has The Lone Ranger and Dark Shadows on his plate, as well as, possibly, Pirates of the Caribbean 5.

- Tobey Maguire has dropped out of The Paperboy, and John Cusack has replaced him. He'd play a death-row inmate that a woman (Nicole Kidman) and two brothers (Zac Efron, Matthew McConaughey) are trying to save. Lee Daniels (Precious) writes and directs.

- Walton Goggins (Justified) will play Ohio congressman Wells A. Hutchins in Steven Spielberg's Lincoln biopic, starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Sally Field.

- Ted Danson has joined the cast of CBS's CSI, replacing the departing Laurence Fishburne.

Happythankyoumoreplease - DVD Review

ll

Starring Josh Radnour, Malin Akerman, Kata Mara, Zoe Kazan, Tony Hale, Richard Jenkins, Michael Algieri, Pablo Schreiber and Peter Scanavino. Directed by Josh Radnour.

See a group of New Yorkers in arrested development walk around with indie guitar licks on the soundtrack. Sounds like a deadly Sundance cliche. In many ways, this movie is, but there's some surprising enjoyable elements to it. Elements.

Story #1 revolves around an aspiring writer (How I Met Your Mother's Josh Radnour, in indie-Zack Braff mode) who finds a kid on the subway who apparently has no family and no place to go. So he brings him home with him, not really sure what to do. Why doesn't he just turn him over to the police so they can find his family/orphanage/wheever he belongs? I wasn't clear on that. Meanwhile he's falling for a bartender.

Story #2 follows a girl (Zoe Kazan) unlucky with guys who gets pregnant, and she isn't sure if her boyfriend will stay with her.

Story #3 is about a woman (Malin Akerman) with an auto-immune disorder who nevertheless is trying to tackle life with a good attitude. She gets used by one ex-flame while avoiding the nerdy guy (Tony Hale) at work. However there's more to the nerdy guy than she thinks.

The third story was the one that worked for me. The second one I never cared about, and the first one took me about an hour in before I cared what happened next. So on the positive side, it features the best acting yet from Malin Akerman (Watchmen), who's hairless the whole movie, and it gives Tony Hale (Arrested Development, Chuck) more to do than we've ever seen before. But it's buried in chatty relationship ensemble dramedy trappings we've seen many times before.

Weekend Box Office

1. Transformers 3 - $47.03 million ($261) - 2 wks (Par) -52%
. . . 4088 screens / $11,503
2. Horrible Bosses - $28.1 - 1 wk (NL)
. . . 3040 / $9247
3. Zookeeper - $21 - 1 wk (Sony)
. . . 3482 / $6031
4. Cars 2 - $15.21 ($148.83) - 3 wks (BV) -42.1%
. . . 3990 / $3812
5. Bad Teacher - $9 ($78.76) - 3 wks (Sony) -38%
. . . 2962 / $3038
6. Larry Crowne - $6.26 ($26.53) - 2 wks (U) -52.2%
. . . 2976 / $2105
7. Super 8 - $4.83 ($118.06) - 5 wks (Par) -39.1%
. . . 2292 / $2105
8. Monte Carlo - $3.8 ($16.13) - 2 wks (Fox) -49%
. . . 2473 / $1537
9. Green Lantern - $3.13 ($109.71) - 4 wks (WB) -52.3%
. . . 2015 / $1551
10. Mr. Popper's Penguins - $2.85 ($57.75) - 4 wks (Fox) -48.5%
. . . 1996 / $1428
11. Bridesmaids - $2.76 ($158.19) - 9 wks (U) -24.2%
. . . 1102 / $2506
12. Midnight in Paris - $2.71 ($38.65) - 8 wks (SPC) -24.4%
. . . 819 / $3304
13. X-Men: First Class - $1.48 ($142.09) - 6 wks (Fox) -50%
. . . 847 / $1741
14. The Hangover Part II - $1.19 ($250.8) - 7 wks (WB) -50.5%
. . . 835 / $1419
15. Pirates of Caribbean 4 - $1.09 ($236.28) - 8 wks (BV) -50.4%
. . . 622 / $1748

Transformers 3's continued rule is no surprise, but Horrible Bosses has to be happy with getting $28 million to open under its shadow. Sony, meanwhile, has to be wondering if they should tried a different weekend for Zookeeper. It's doing Popper's Penguins numbers, and that's barely going to break even. $200 million is starting to look doubtful for a domestic cumulative for Cars 2, but it's doing great overseas, as in Transformers 3. Cars 2, TF 3, and Green Lantern all had about the same production budget; which one would you rather sink your money into? I think WB talk of a sequel for GL will fizzle out.

This is the summer of the R-rated comedy. Bridesmaids, Hangover II, Bad Teacher, Horrible Bosses... all turning profits. Will Friends with Benefits, The Change-Up, and 30 Minutes or Less be able to keep it going? We'll see.

Meanwhile the finale of Harry Potter opens next week, as well as the much more modest Winnie the Pooh.

Horrible Bosses - Movie Review

lll

Starring Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, Jason Sudeikis, Kevin Spacey, Jennifer Aniston, Colin Farrell, Jamie Foxx, Donald Sutherland, Julie Bowen, Wendell Peirce and Iaon Gruffudd.
Directed by Seth Gordon.

If The Hangover was Zack Galifianakis's introduction to the mainstream, then this movie will serve as Charlie Day's. He's primarily known as the guy from FX's It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. I've never watched that show, but this makes me want to put Season 1 in my Netflix queue. I mainly know him as the guy from Going the Distance. He and Jason Sudeikis served as the two best friends to Justin Long, which was fine and dandy but to not much effect. Here the two have more to work with and make the most of it, but I focus on Day because he gets the biggest laughs in the movie.

He plays Dale, a dental assistant with a nympho boss (Jennifer Aniston) who likes to do all sorts of wrong things over the bodies of her drugged-unconscious patients. Dale's happily engaged and doesn't want to endanger that, but his boss doesn't care; she likes sexually harrassing him on a daily basis.

Then there's Nick (Jason Bateman), who's the first to arrive and the last to leave his job, under the thumb of the company's menacing president, but he takes it all because he's been led to believe he's up for a promotion. When the promotion doesn't happen and threatens to quit, his boss (Kevin Spacey, most horrible of the bosses, and I mean that in a good way) lets him know he'll trash his reputation to ensure he'll never work in this town again.

Lastly there's Kurt (Sudeikis) who loves his job at a chemical company until his boos dies. The boss's cokehead son (Colin Farrell) becomes the new president and starts using company funds as his own piggy-bank.

None of the three feel they can quit, but eventually they come up with a plan thanks to "murder consultant" Dean 'M.F.' Jones (Jamie Foxx, in an effectively funny supporting role) - they decide they will kill each other's bosses. Naturally they suck at it.

The chemistry between the three leads is great, and there are several chuckles throughout the movie. It never broke into that magical realm where comedies become classics. It's funny enough that it's worth seeing. ("How's that for a pull quote, Abbott?")

Cedar Rapids - DVD Review

lll

Starring Ed Helms, John C. Reilly, Anne Heche, Sigourney Weaver, Isiah Whitlock Jr., Stephen Root, Kurtwood Smith, Alia Shawkat, Rob Corddry, Mike O'Malley and Thomas Lennon. Directed by Miguel Arteta.

I'm surprised this didn't get a wider release when it came out. You'd think Ed Helms, of Hangover and Office fame, starring in a well-reviewed movie would've earned a wider rollout.

Helms has a genuine sweetness to him as an honest, naive insurance agent. He grew up in a small town, but for the first time he's venturing to the big city - Cedar Rapids - for an insurance convention. He's been warned to steer clear of Dean Ziegler (John C. Reilly), a bad influence from a rival agency. Naturally at the convention, they're made roommates at the hotel.

The ads made it look like Cedar Rapids might go to wild-and-crazy Hangover-esque debauchery levels, but it's a smaller film, and while Helms's life is turned upside-down on one trip, it's more about the country mouse trying to survive in the big city, with the tongue firmly in cheek that Cedar Rapids is a big city.

It's a good supporting cast too. I liked Sigourney Weaver as Helms's lover/former teacher, and Isiah Whitlock Jr. as the nerdy black agent who uses his knowledge of HBO's The Wire to intimidate white folks who rarely see black folks.

It's not a gut-busting movie; it's a smile-a-lot movie.

Random Entertainment News 7/8/11

- Ryan Kwanten (HBO's True Blood), Steve Zahn (HBO's Treme) and Peter Dinklage (HBO's Game of Thrones) will star in Knights of Badassdom, about a group of friends who participate in LARPing (Live Action Role Playing) when the guy playing a sorceror accidentally conjures a real succubus that starts killing everyone. Summer Glau (Firefly) and Danny Pudi (Community) co-star.

- Adam Sandler will voice Dracula in Hotel Transylvania, the next 3-D movie from Sony Pictures Animation (Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs). Kevin James, David Spade, Andy Samberg, Fran Drescher, Molly Shannon and Cee Lo Green will also provide voices.

- Speaking of Adam Sandler, what's the worst movie he's ever made? Grown Ups? Little Nicky? Well Jack & Jill opens in November and it may top them all.

- Spike Lee's in talks to direct the remake of Oldboy. The 2003 Korean film is a bout a man who's kidnapped and held for fifteen years without explanantion, then released with a gun and sent on a mission of revenge.

- Giovanni Ribisi has joined the cast of The Gangster Squad, based on true events of an "off the record" police squad that focussed on bringing down gangster Mickey Cohen in the 1940's. It stars Sean Penn, Ryan Gosling, Josh Brolin, Bryan Cranston, Anthony Mackie and Michael Pena.

- Gwendolyn Christie (The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus) will play Brienne and Natalie Dormer (The Tudors) will play Margaery Tyrell in the next season of HBO's Game of Thrones.

- The DC Comic universe is planning a reboot of all their titles, starting over with Issue #1 for each. Thus, there is a planned protest at this year's ComicCon.

I Am Number Four - DVD Review

ll

Starring Alex Pettyfer, Timothy Olyphant, Teresa Palmer, Dianna Argon, Callan McAuliffe, Kevin Durand and Jake Abel. Directed by D.J. Caruso.

My guess is that the series of books this is based on reads well as a series of books. But some of the young-adult books, when translated to film, only highlight the other stories from where they're deriving.

This movie centers on John Smith, an alien hiding out as a high-schooler. Smith is played by Alex Pettyfer, one of those British models where I don't get why he's suddenly landing these leading man roles. He's not much more than a model here, and his accent's all over the place.

This alien is being chased by other aliens, ones with gills next to their noses, tattoes on their heads, and sharp teeth. Smith's guardian (Timothy Olyphant) tries to keep him safe, but there's only so much he can do. Smith eventually learns he has special powers, like super-strength and flashlights in his palms.

Not really sure why Olyphant agreed to this, but he's the best thing in the movie, getting his Obi-Wan Kenobi on. Otherwise it's already leaving my memory banks at a rapid pace.

P.S. I get the need for product placement in movies, but when the movie starts to feel like a commercial for the iPhone, I check out. One close-up is fine, but every time his iPhone rings, do we have to get a close-up of it ringing in his hand, directly facing the camera so we can admire the product in all its glory?

Cars 2 - Movie Review

lll

Starring the voices of Owen Wilson, Larry the Cable Guy, Michael Caine, Emily Mortimer, John Turturro, Eddie Izzard, Tony Shalhoub, Bonnie Hunt, Jason Isaacs, Thomas Krestchmann, Cheech Marin, Vanessa Redgrave and John Ratzenberger. Directed by John Lasseter.

If the message of the first Cars movie was to slow down and appreciate the little things, that's been oblitherated here. Speed up! There are rocket-launching cars trying to kill you!

Cars has generally been considered the weakest title in the Pixar canon by critics, although it's more friendly for repeat viewing by little kids than, say, richer fare like Ratatouille or Wall-E. Now Cars 2 will have that dubious distinction, and while I liked it, it's not going to make my top ten, and Pixar movies usually do.

This movie has twin storylines. The first revolves around Lightning McQueen (Wilson), who agrees to enter a tri-country world-class race where the cars all run on Allinol, an all-natural fuel poised to replace gasoline. The second revolves around Mater (Cable Guy), who is mistaken for a spy and gets sucked into the world of automotive espionage. Turns out someone from Big Oil is trying to sabotage the race.

If this had been from DreamWorks or Blue Sky, it'd probably get higher marks than what it's getting. But it's Pixar and it's supposed to have more heart than this. Emphasis here is on action and humor, and this movie winds up being more about Mater than McQueen. When we get to the climax and McQueen finds out what's been going on, he stops short of yelling, "You mean there's this whole other movie that been going on?!"

It's cute. More on par with Rio than Rango in this year's Best Animated hunt. In fact, with what's coming, it may be the first Pixar movie to not get nominated for Best Animated Film since the category was created.

Sai my 5-year-old: "It was AWESOME! Except for the sad parts."

Kill the Irishman - DVD Review

ll 1/2

Starring Ray Stevenson, Vincent D'Onofrio, Val Kilmer, Christopher Walken, Linda Cardinelli, Tony Darrow, Fionnula Flannigan, Bob Gunton, Steven R. Schirripa, Vinnie Jones, Mike Starr, Paul Sorvino, Tony Lo Bianco, Laura Ramsey and Robert Davi.
Directed by Jonathan Hensleigh.

The first two minutes give off a Goodfellas vibe, which can be good or bad. It primed me for a history lesson, a mafia movie set in Cleveland. Cleveland? Yep. It's based on a true story, so I guess Cleveland really was rocked by this many car bombs in 1976.

Ray Stevenson (Punisher War Zone) isn't quite the charismatic lead I would hope for in something like this. He plays Danny Green, an Irish union leader who decided he wasn't going to put up with the Italian mobsters taking all the good union jobs.

There are several attempts on his life; the title comes from the urgency of the Italians to get this guy, and they get more desperate with each failed attempt.

It's fine. It's an okay mafia movie. I was surprised by how little it had for Christopher Walken to do, and Val Kilmer isn't much more than the cop who pops up every once in a while to let Danny know he's watching. We get appearances from Goodfellas' Paul Sorvino, Sopranos' Steven R. Schirripa, Miller's Crossing's Mike Starr, and so on.

Weekend Box Office

1. Transformers: Dark of the Moon - $97.4 million ($162.12) - 1 wk (Par)
. . . 4013 screens / $24,271 per screen
2. Cars 2 - $25.11 ($116.04) - 2 wks (BV) -62%
. . . 4115 / $6103
3. Bad Teacher - $14.1 ($59.55) - 2 wks (Sony) -55.4%
. . . 3049 / $4624
4. Larry Crowne - $13 - 1 wk (U)
. . . 2973 / $4375
5. Monte Carlo - $7.6 - 1 wk (Fox)
. . . 2473 / $3073
6. Super 8 - $7.5 ($108.04) - 4 wks (Par) -37.6%
. . . 3088 / $2429
7. Green Lantern - $6.27 ($101.96) - 3 wks (WB) -65.2%
. . . 3280 / $1912
8. Mr. Popper's Penguins - $5.1 ($50.13) - 3 wks (Fox) -49.7%
. . . 2861 / $1783
9. Bridesmaids - $3.52 ($152.9) - 8 wks (U) -33.1%
. . . 1389 / $2535
10. Midnight in Paris - $3.44 ($33.64) - 7 wks (SPC) -17.6%
. . . 858 / $4007
11. X-Men: First Class - $2.9 ($138.61) - 5 wks (Fox) -56.6%
. . . 1602 / $1810
12. The Hangover II - $2.27 ($248.12) - 6 wks (WB) -59.3%
. . . 1568 / $1448
13. Pirates of the Caribbean 4 - $2.16 ($233.7) - 7 wks (BV) -56.3%
. . . 1473 / $1463
14. Kung Fu Panda 2 - $1.53 ($156.7) - 6 wks (DW) -63.5%
. . . 1281 / $1190
15. The Tree of Life - $1 ($7.5) - 6 wks (FS) -24.7%
. . . 228 / $4386

Further down, Thor passed $177 million, and thus justifies the greenlighting of Thor 2 for Summer 2013. Warner Bros. has said they're moving forward with Green Lantern 2, which makes no sense to me.

Transformers 3 should cross the magical $300 million domestic line, something no movie has yet done this year. But Pirates 4 just passed $1 billion wordlwide, so I don't think DIsney's too concerned about it domestically topping out at $250 mil.

Bridesmaids is now the highest-grossing movie ever produced by Judd Apatow.

Cars 2's steep drop indicates it won't be seeing the $200 million domestic mark, but I expect it'll be huge overseas.

Bad Teacher's turning out to be a quiet hit for Cameron Diaz.

Larry Crowne is the nail in the coffin of the notion that Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts are still A-list movie stars. Or maybe no one wanted to spend their summer watching a midle-aged man get laid off, regardless of who embodied him.

Monte Carlo was cheap to make, but Fox must be disappointed Selena Gomez couldn't get more of her fans to come out. Should they have made more effort to point out that Glee's Cory Monteith is in it?

Midnight in Paris is on pace to become Woody Allen's highest-grosser of all time (if you don't adjust for inflation. His record is still the $40 million taken in by 1986's Hannah & Her Sisters.)

Transformers: Dark of the Moon - Movie Review

ll 3/4

Starring Shia LaBeouf, Josh Duhamel, John Turturro, Frances McDormand, John Malkovich, Tyrese Gibson, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, Patrick Dempsey, Kevin Dunn, Julie White, Alan Tudyk, Ken Jeong, and the voices of Bill Cullen, Hugo Weaving and Leonard Nimoy. Directed by Michael Bay.

This movie makes the best use of 3-D by any non-animated film since Avatar; by comparison, the other previews in 3-D before this movie looked dark and fuzzy. I appreciate that if they're going to price-gouge, Michael Bay at least makes sure it looks good, it looks worth it.

Having said that, I should say that the first one got the mildest of thumbs-up from me and I absolutely hated the second one. The third one is as good as the first one, however you want to define that, and maybe a little bit better.

I liked the opening sequence with the "real" reason for the space race in the 1960's. I giggled when they brought in the real Buzz Aldrin to confirm to Optimus Prime that, yes, the real reason we went to the moon was to explore the crashed spaceship just over the horizon from where Neil planted the flag. I was amused by the different levels of success they had at mixing real footage with CGI of three different presidents. (JFK looks like he walked out of The Polar Express).

There's also a sequence toward the end (you've seen pieces in the trailer) where a group of humans, including Sam (Shia LaBeouf), are trapped in a building that has been cut in half. Academy-Award nominations are in order for the visual effects teams.

Now I don't miss Megan Fox in the least, but they didn't do a better job in writing the character for her replacement, as embodied by Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. She was somehow an embassy worker turned special assistant at a high-end car dealership...? Maybe she had a rich dad that hooked her up; I don't know. Her character never really made sense to me, but there's not much asked of the actress other than to be pretty.

The two ghetto-jive autobots from TF2 are gone, and the semi-apology for them is spreading the outrageous accents around. They range from Cheech Marin-ish to befuddled British. There's great voice work from Bill Cullen as Optimus Prime and Leonard Nimoy as Optimus's thought-to-be-dead mentor Sentinel Prime. Maybe part of it is the writing. The machines get some of the best lines.

The humor is more miss than hit. It's goofy to where I think either writer Ehren Kruger and director Michael Bay are trying to create what they think will make 13-year-olds laugh, or they have genuinely immature senses of humor. But Bay knows how to do action, even if there are patches where the movie feels like a trailer of itself.

Loved Alan Tudyk. Hated Ken Jeong. The movie's about twenty minutes too long. The climactic battle, I was ready for it to wrap up, and then Patrick Dempsey does something to make it last longer, and my first thought was, "No! How much longer is this movie going to be?"

So I appreciated that it didn't stink up the joint the way TF2 did.

Water for Elephants - Movie Review

ll 1/2

Starring Reese Witherspoon, Robert Pattinson, Christoph Waltz and Hal Holbrook.
Directed by Francis Lawrence.

From casting alone, we know what we're going to get, and we're not disappointed, or dazzled.

We get a nice bookend from Hal Holbrook, an old man at the circus. He remembers back to a time in 1931, where a great tragedy ruined the Benzini Brothers circus. And we're back in '31, and Holbrook's character is now played by Robert Pattinson of Twilight fame. Some geeks find it mandatory to hate Pattinson; I thought he was fine here.

He falls in love with the horse trainer (Reese Witherspoon), who happens to be married to the ringmaster (Christoph Waltz). I was hoping the movie would give the ringmaster shades of humanity, but we learn fairly early he has a habit of throwing employees off the train at night. It beats paying them, and if they die, well, so what. Oh, and he's cruel to animals!

Seriously, if you're the cruel boss, and you've married a gorgeous woman at least ten years younger than you, would you keep inviting that hunk over for dinner who's even younger than she is?

There is a period sweetness to it, though. It's one of those where I'm glad I saw it at the $2 theater instead of first-run, and I imagine the book is better.

Black Death - DVD Review

lll

Starring Sean Bean, Eddie Redmayne, Carice van Houten, John Lynch, Tim McInnery, Kimberely Nixon, David Warner and Andy Nyman.
Directed by Christopher Smith.

This low-budget horror flick snuck up on me. I like Sean Bean, and I watched it because it had him, and there wound up being more to it than I originally thought.

During the time of the bubonic plague, word spreads of a village that is untouched by death. Naturally this must mean it's a town of witches, so Sean Bean leads a suspicious crew on a trk to this village, and we just know it isn't going to turn out too well for the villagers when they get there. Helping them on their way is a young monk (Eddie Redmayne) who's always wanted to see more of the world. Poor, pure-hearted boy.

The movie does wind up going to some places I didn't expect, a delightful surprise from a movie that seemed like it was going to paint by numbers. It's grim and gory, but worth it for fans of the genre.

Kaboom - DVD Review

l 1/2

Starring Thomas Dekker, Haley Bennett, Chris Zylka, Juno Temple and Kelly Lynch. Directed by Gregg Araki.

A hedonistic bisexual college student has a strange recurring dream. It may or may not have something to do with the end of the world, and he tries to talk about it while sleeping with one girl he doesn't necessarily like and day-dreaming of his straight roommate. Eventually, finally, we get that third-act twist that doesn't undermine the whole movie so much as confirms that, yes, you've been wasting your time. It looks like it was made for about $50,000. Reminded me a lot of those ultracheap Nick Stahl movies that used to hit VOD after a weekend in theaters. I usually admire economic filmmaking but this should quickly fade into obscurity.

Summer TV Reviews

TNT's FALLING SKIES - It learns from V's mistakes. We see the aliens true form in the first few minutes, and the shows centers on freedom-fighters, indigenous people just trying to make life hard enough for the aliens so they'll decide it's not worth it and leave. I wish it could take a couple cast members from V, but the recognizable ones (Noah Wyle, Moon Bloodgood, Will Patton) are all good here.

ABC's COMBAT HOSPITAL - It's better than Off the Map, and I liked seeing Elias Koteas as the mentor. Not good enough to crack my regular viewing rotation, but I'd be happy for the show if it survived.

ABC's 101 WAYS TO LEAVE A GAME SHOW - Imagine Fear Factor, but where if you answer trivia questions, you don't have to do the stunts; the ones who get the questions wrong must be punished for their ignorance. It's the perfect mean cousin to Wipeout, where the host can't help but laugh at the losers who realize they're about to plunge from a high place when they miss the answer. I laughed too.

Green Lantern - Movie Review

ll

Starring Ryan Reynolds, Blake Lively, Peter Saarsgaard, Tim Robbins, Mark Strong, Angela Bassett and Jay O. Sanders. Directed by Martin Campbell.

This is another one of those movies where I can say it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be, but it is by no means good. In fact it's quite silly.

We start off with the mythology. The universe has been divided into 3600 sectors. Each sector gets its own Green Lantern, a space cop, a being that can wear a green ring that manifests into reality anything the ring-bearer can imagine. They use these rings to fight evil and keep the intergalactic peace. Green is the power of Will.

But then a being uses the color yellow, the power of Fear, to fight against the universe. He escapes from his prison, frying three Green Lanterns in the process. He grows with each kill, until he's this tentacled space cloud, making his way through the galaxies toward Oa, the central planet of the universe, headquarters of the Green Lanterns.

Turns out the Green Lanterns answers to the Ancients, nine immortal Mr. Magoos sitting in a Jedi-council circle atop 100-foot-tall high-chairs. They just sit there and crankily dispense "wisdom" when the Lanterns need their help. The leader of the Lanterns is Sinestro (Mark Strong), whom I've only known as a bad guy, but he's a good guy here. Okay, well, if Spider-Man can do movie after movie without turning Dr. Connors into the Lizard, I guess Sinestro can be a good guy here.

Anyway, the Lantern in Earth's sector gets mortally wounded by the evil space cloud (named Parallax) and crash-lands off the US coast. The way a new Lantern is chosen is up to the ring, so the ring sends out a green ball of energy to find the next in line, and it's supposed to be someone without fear. Also for the first time in history, it's a human, so who will the ring pick?

A cocky pilot named Hal Jordan, played by Ryan Reynolds, who's always seemed like a slight upgrade from Jason Lee to me. Hal is one of those mavericky maverick pilots that other people like to be stern with. Shoehorned in there, in the most awkward groan-worthy way, we learn Hal has daddy issues, as his dad was a pilot who died in a plane crash. Seriously. Screenplay malpractice here.

Sooo the ring picks Hal, and before he knows it, it's flying him to Oa, where he meets the other Lanterns and goes through some training. But it's like really hard and stuff, so he quits and goes back to Earth. I do believe I am giving that section of the movie justice.

And you know, that's really the part of the movie where I started to check out. Granted, the daddy-issues scenes were painful, but at least they were brief. Now that we're getting deeper into what the Lanterns can really do, we find out that they don't have that much imagination. There's never a creation, from Hal or any other Lantern, where I thought that was clever.

In supporting roles, Peter Saarsgaard has a lot of fun as Dr. Hector Hammond, who gets morphed into a bloated servant of Parallax after he gets infested by a little piece of it. I wish Hammond had been the main villain instead of the sub-villain to the space cloud. Pay attention, future comic book movies. When your choice for Main Villain is between a good actor and a giant CGI smoky octopus, go with the good actor.

Blake Lively's the blandest female interest since Kate Bosworth's Lois Lane. Tim Robbins get in a little smarm as a senator, but he and especially Angela Bassett don't have much to do. Seriously, after seeing Bassett in this and Rene Russo as a glorified extra in Thor, I feel like I should take up a fund. "Please donate to the 'Actresses Over 50 Deserve Bigger Parts' fund. Not all of them have to go to Meryl Streep."

Is it open for a sequel? Of course. I'm sure there's an outline somewhere that has Sinestro betray the Lanterns after getting seduced by the color yellow. I'm more curious if DC's going to try to go the Justice League route the same way Marvel has the Avengers coming. I can't really see Christian Bale's Batman, Henry Cavill's Superman and Ryan Reynolds's Green Lantern hooking up. For one thing, Hal's personality is closer to the Flash than the incarnations of GL I'm familiar with.

It's not Catwoman-level bad. I would just hope if you're going to spend this much money on a movie, you'd try to have a little more imagination.

The Company Men - DVD Review

lll

Starring Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones, Kevin Costner, Chris Cooper, Maria Bello, Rosemary Dewitt, Craig T. Nelson and Eamonn Walker.
Directed by John Wells.

Most people have been laid off or fired in their life, and it can be painful, one of the most stressful things that can happen to a person. It's interesting that this movie decided to focus on wealthier, white-collar workers, but that's the story they're telling and they're sticking to it. So more power to them.

Ben Affleck plays a regional sales manager who's cocky about his golf score, secure in his job because of his friendship with his boss (Tommy Lee Jones), the #2 man at GTX, a transportation manufacturing company. While #2 is away on business, the #1 CEO decides to do a round of layoffs to spike his stock options, and Affleck is among those let go. Then he gets a rude awakening as to just how bad the economy is.

The scene that stuck out for me was one where Jones is meeting a handful of others who are getting ready to do more layoffs. They make sure they're covering legally, but Jones asks "What about ethically?" and the room looks at him like he's speaking a foreign language.

How much is enough? Well, the CEO may have enough money to swim in a la Scrooge McDuck, and he doesn't give a second thought to the thousands of workers whose lives he's destroying to get it. But this is really more about coping, about the turmoil of this new economy.

Chris Cooper is another worker, high up in the company, but he's getting near 60 and has many expenses. When he gets axed, he sees just how rough the business world is. Why hire a middle-aged family man when you can hire a single 25-year-old who'll work 80 hours a week for half the pay?

The acting in the end is what won me over. And since a co-worker of mine got laid off just last week, I'm kinda raw and a bit cynical about corporate America right now. For many, though, the ending won't be as neatly wrapped as it is here.