This mediocre computer-generated action flick is packed full of monsters and sword-fights, but the story-telling is about as deft as a turtle turned on its back, struggling to get up but going nowhere fast. It’s not a terrible movie, but it’s not terribly much fun either, even taken on the level of its own modest ambitions. Those seeking the real-deal would be better advised to watch THE INCREDIBLES again.

The big problem is that writer-director Munroe makes the fatal mistake of taking the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles too seriously: he really seems to believe he is making a whiz-bang superhero thriller; he forgets that the Turtles are basically a joke and no amount of CG pyrotechnics will ever turn them into the Dark Knight. So we get a ponderous story about a 3000-year old conqueror trying to round up his old comrades (turned to stone - don’t ask!) and some monsters he unleashed upon the world during his quest for global domination. This intersects with a rather tired tale of turtle sibling rivalry as Leonardo returns from a trip to South America where he was supposed to learn how to become a better leader for his brothers, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Raphael. Continue Reading »

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This feeble attempt at a mind-bending thriller has a vaguely interesting premise, but its potential is soon lost thanks to dreary execution that blunts the emotional impact, rendering the story as an academic exercise in convoluted plot structure, without offering any compelling reason for viewers to be engaged in the puzzle.

Linda Hanson (Bullock) is confused by a telephone message from her husband Jim (McMahon) who refers to a conversation she does not remember having; moments later, a sheriff knocks on the door to inform her that her husband died on the road to a business trip the day before. Linda’s shock and grief soon turns to confusion when she wakes up the next morning and finds Jim alive and well. Her relief is short-lived when she wakes up the next day and finds Jim’s funeral in progress. Her attempts to explain her situation to her mother (Nelligan) and her best friend (Nia Long) only convince them that she has lost her mind with grief, so they have her committed to the care of a psychiatrist (Stormare). The psychiatrist is surprised to learn that Linda’s husband died on Wednesday, because he says Linda previously showed up at his office on Tuesday, seeking help dealing with the emotional fallout from Jim’s death. The next time Linda wakes up to find Jim alive again, she realizes that her experience of his death is a promotion of things to come, and she soon finds herself living through events leading up to the fateful crash. Her attempts to understand the situation lead her to find that Jim was on the verge of launching an affair with Claire (Valletta), a woman at work, and Linda briefly considers giving up her quest to prevent Jim’s death. After consulting with her local priest, who recounts historical cases of people who foresaw the future, Linda gives Jim another chance. Unfortunately, he insists on attending the business trip even though he gives up the idea of sleeping with Claire. Linda pursues Jim in her car, calling him by phone and trying to get him to avoid his appointment with a big-rig truck… Continue Reading »

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Zack Snyder’s film version of the graphic novel by Frank Miller and Lynn Varley may look like the greatest music video ever made; whether or not it is a decent feature film is another question altogether. Snyder makes wonderful use of computer-generated imagery, combined with beautiful live-action photography, to create a unique sepia-toned looked that presumably stands in for the images from the source material. But as a director, Snyder is so enamored of the imagery that he lets it drag the film to a deadly standstill, time after time. For all its calls to glory and brutal bloodshed, 300 never works up a head of steam that comes close to matching GLADIATOR or BRAVEHEART. For a film so desperate to prove its manly muscle, it ends up feeling flaccid and weak, unable to sustain itself, erupting in small spurts here and there until it finally just sputters to a halt. Continue Reading »

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This monster movie from the Republic of Korea is one of the best films of its kind, thanks to director Bong Joon-ho’s insistence on touching all the bases: THE HOST seems equal parts horror story, domestic drama, paranoid thriller, and political satire. Perhaps the filmmaker’s greatest accomplishment is that his loftier ambitions never undermine the horror; he mixes the various ingredients perfectly, creating a wonderfully convincing story in which the monster’s existence is thoroughly believable, its predations intense and terrifying.

In 2000, an American doctor (Scott Wilson) on a military base in South Korea orders toxic chemicals poured down a drain that leads into the Han River. Six years later, a mutant monster emerges from the river in broad daylight, attacking helpless picnickers and snatching the young Park Hyun-seo (Ko A-sung) from her mentally slow father Gang-du (Song Kang-ho), who works at a food stand owned by his father Hee-bong (Byun Hee-bong). Gang-du, Hee-bong, and Gang-du’s brother and sister, Nam-il (Park Hae-il) and Nam-joo (Bae Doo-na), are quarantined by the government, who believe the creature is the host for a deadly virus. That night, Gang-du receives a brief call from Hyun-seo on her dying cell phone, telling her father that she is trapped in the creature’s lair, somewhere in a dark sewer. Gang-du tries to convince the government doctors and other officials that his daughter is alive, but they think the mentally challenged man was hallucinating or dreaming. Hee-bong pays some crooks to break them out of quarantine, and the family goes searching the sewers for Hyun-seo. Meanwhile, the monster deposits more victims in its lair, all of them dead except for a young boy that Hyun-seo protects, hiding him in a small hole where the monster cannot reach. Eventually, Gang-du’s brother Nam-il, a former student protestor, seeks help from an old college friend who now works at the phone company, tracing Hyun-se’s phone call and thus narrowing the search. Gang-du is captured, and an American scientist (Paul Lazar) insists on an operation to find evidence of the virus, which proves elusive. Gang-du escapes and rejoins his family, tracing the monster to its lair, but the creature swallows the two children it has captured and swims away, inadvertently coming ashore near a protest that has formed around an American attempt to eradicate the alleged virus with a substance called “Agent Yellow.” As the yellow gas disperses the protesters, the Park family attacks the creature, and Gang-du strives to pull his daughter from the monster’s maw. Continue Reading »

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