Based on a short story by Ian Mackenzie Jeffers, who co-wrote the screenplay with Carnahan, it has Neeson playing yet another tough guy, albeit one contemplating suicide who works in Alaska killing wolves that threaten a team of oil workers. When the plane they all take home crashes, Neeson and six other survivors struggle against not only the elements, but a pack of grey wolves stalking them.

Neeson, unsurprisingly, is the film’s bright spot. His size alone makes him a commanding presence, someone you’re convinced could survive such a brutal ordeal. But he has a touching soft side, too. You hear the defeat in his voice in the opening scenes as he narrates a letter, and feel his compassion as, in the film’s best scene, he helps a survivor face his impending death.

To his credit, Carnahan (The A-Team) manages to wring some decent tension out of the wolf attacks themselves, and for the most part eschews explicit gore, staging the attacks at night or showing them from a distance. As well he does a solid job with the soundtrack, effectively creating brief moments of terror as wolves howl into the night or growl threateningly at the weary men.

The main problem is that, when the wolves aren’t attacking, the film attempts weightiness, which Carnahan doesn’t know how to pace. Scenes of the survivors discussing religion while sitting around a fire, or of an injured character quietly claiming he can’t continue, drag on and on and practically ground the film to a halt. The weak writing in these scenes only compounds the issue.

What’s more, the survivors (including Dermot Mulroney and Dallas Roberts) are poorly defined, save, naturally, for Neeson, making it hard to care what befalls any of them. They’re basically just types. Roberts is the one with humanity, Joe Anderson the freaked-out chatterbox and Frank Grillo the aggressive challenger (and the only supporting survivor with any kind of depth).

Beyond that, the script creates too obvious a parallel to the wolf-pack mentality, there’s a little too much shaky cam for my taste, and, save for a couple shots, Carnahan fails to do much with the obviously breathtaking Alberta locale. What burned me the most, though, is how Carnahan ends the thing. I wanted to see Neeson punch a wolf in the throat. I had to imagine he did instead. – [DVD]

Action/Adventure/Drama

Rated R

DVD Release Date: 5/15/12

Dreamed up by Max Landis and director Josh Trank, it follows a trio of Seattle high school seniors—outcast Andrew (Dane DeHaan), his cousin Matt (Alex Russell) and popular kid Steve (Michael B. Jordan)—via Andrew’s camera (and, later, other camera vantage points) as they acquire telekinesis, and other abilities, after touching what we assume is an alien artifact.

The film is at its most fun as the boys use their powers for mischief—blowing up a girl’s skirt, scaring people in a toy store, shoving a BMW across a parking lot, skipping rocks. It turns downright exhilarating when they learn they can fly, soaring, and even playing football, among the clouds. Their teenage exuberance at this discovery is contagious.

But the dangers of having these abilities start to become apparent after Andrew playfully shoves a car off the road and into a river. Where Matt and Steve are well-adjusted teens, Andrew is angry, dealing with bullies, an alcoholic father (Michael Kelly) and a sick mother, and so his abilities cleverly reflect his bottled up hostility toward the world. Watch as he unleashes a roar of rage at one point close to the end, shattering windows and making the ground tremble.

So the film descends into ever darker territory, though remains completely compelling, as Andrew spins out of control, killing neighborhood thugs, ripping out a bully’s teeth, inadvertently blowing up a gas station and blowing a hospital room to pieces. It all culminates in a fantastic finale, a super duper showdown between Andrew and Matt that involves, among other things, the Space Needle, a city bus and an exploding helicopter.

Dialogue isn’t the film’s strong suit, to be sure, but it more than makes up for it in other ways, especially in how Landis and Trank are constantly able to have us see Andrew, who’s almost always with camera, via mirrors, the camera of a cute blonde girl (Anna Wood) Matt likes, hospital security footage and the like. Their most ingenious method, though, is having Andrew use his abilities to make his camera float above the action. (The bloody-nose-something-is-wrong conceit is also neat.)

Not to dilute the contributions of Russell and Jordan, who are solid, nor Trank’s skill at inserting convincing effects amid all the handheld mayhem, but none of this would have worked without DeHaan. Resembling nothing less than a young Leonardo DiCaprio, the 26-year-old perfectly and beautifully embodies bullied-teen misery. The only difference is that, when this teen becomes enraged, he can crush a car simply by closing his fist. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Drama/Sci-Fi/Thriller

Rated PG-13

DVD Release Date: 5/15/12

Soon after humans discover the existence of both species and try to eradicate them, Beckinsale’s vamp is captured and cryogenically preserved. Many years later, she thaws out and sets about trying to thwart the genetic machinations of a ruthless scientist (Stephen Rea), receiving help from a pretty-boy vampire (Theo James) and a helpful detective (Michael Ealy).

On a positive note, the plot is relatively straightforward and easier to follow compared to the convoluted mythology storylines of the first three films, and Swedish directors Mans Marlind and Bjorn Stein both give the film a pleasingly sleek and slick look and ensure you can actually make out what’s happening during the plentiful, relentless and extremely bloody action sequences.

Beckinsale herself remains a striking figure as Selene, breathtakingly cool and confident as she struts around in her sleek leather outfits, blasts away with machine pistols and evades danger by running up walls and flipping back over the bad guys. She even bodily broadsides a van at one point, sending it flipping and flying. And her character’s graceful landings after jumping from very high places are a thing of elegance amid all the mayhem.

But the action scenes, while blessedly coherent, generally lack energy and style. You first notice this as Beckinsale, James and Beckinsale’s genetically unusual tween daughter (India Eisley) flee in a van from a pack of Lycans, and then later in Beckinsale’s initial tussle with a colossal über-Lycan, a sequence that also serves to remind us what second-rate CGI creations the werewolves are here. Paul Haslinger’s pounding score attempts to make these scenes exciting, but to no avail.

The only sequence that’s even kind of visually interesting is when Beckinsale saunters in slo-mo out of an elevator she’s just blown open, silver nitrate particles drifting down around her like snow. Otherwise, the film has little personality, and gets no help from the too low-key Rea. Its biggest flaw is how it ends so abruptly at the 78-minute mark, leaving you unsatisfied and screaming for blood. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Action/Fantasy/Horror

Rated R

DVD Release Date: 5/8/12

Like in the first film, an ensemble cast of slumming stars earns paychecks acting out various contrived scenarios in and around New York City (the center of the universe in rom coms), all leading up this time to the dropping of the Times Square ball on New Year’s Eve.

Of the eight storylines concocted by Valentine’s Day screenwriter Katherine Fugate, I couldn’t have cared less about six, including Hilary Swank being in charge of the ball, Katherine Heigl feuding with ex Jon Bon Jovi, Ashton Kutcher and Glee star Lea Michele getting trapped in an elevator and Josh Duhamel rushing to get back to the city for an important romantic appointment.

Swank, simply put, does not belong in a comedy, and, what’s more, proved incredibly ineffective in making me not want to throw up during the excruciatingly “inspirational” televised speech her character gives at one point. Bon Jovi sings better than he acts, Michele sings more than she actually talks and Duhamel’s vignette is a blatant rip off of An Affair to Remember.

The segment I cared for least involved Sarah Jessica Parker refusing to let teen daughter Abigail Breslin go to the ball drop with cute boy Jake T. Austin. Rom-com vet Parker is fine, actually, but Breslin’s rebellious and disrespectful behavior towards her, at least as written, was barely tolerable. Granted, I’m not a parent, but I still wouldn’t let a kid act the way Breslin does.

In the why-is-he-in-this-thing category is Robert De Niro, who plays a dying man just wanting to live long enough to see the ball drop one last time. (Halle Berry is his improbably pretty nurse, Cary Elwes his doctor.) Whatever respect I had left for the man after all the junk he’s made over the last decade is nearly gone. Is he really this hard up for cash?

The better segments include Seth Meyers and Jessica Biel (a funny pair, those two) as a couple competing with Til Schweiger (?!) and Sarah Paulson for first-New-Year’s-baby prize money, which has a nicely touching resolution, and Zac Efron as an energetic, bro-calling bike messenger helping timid Michelle Pfeiffer fulfill her list of ambitious New Year’s resolutions in creative ways.

Every now and then a true laugh pops up—air bags, Marshall flick regulars Hector Elizondo and Larry Miller—but otherwise this is basically just sap in movie form. Even how the characters are connected isn’t quite as interesting as it is in the first film. If you really want to be entertained, skip to the end credits and watch the gag reel. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Comedy/Romance

Rated PG-13

DVD Release Date: 5/1/12

Black Hawk Down

As cities across the globe are besieged by extraterrestrials bent on eradicating us, we follow a Camp Pendleton-based squad of Marines, led by a green Lieutenant (Ramon Rodriguez) and Eckhart’s veteran Staff Sergeant, as they battle the indistinct-looking beings while evacuating civilians (including Bridget Moynahan and Michael Peña) from Santa Monica before the city is bombed to dust.

The film is comprised mostly of ground battles amidst rubble-strewn streets and freeways that look and sound fairly realistic, even if the soldiers are fighting aliens or trying to take out alien ships. Director Jonathan Liebesman effectively uses the popular shaky-cam technique to convey the life-threatening anxiety of it all, and the soldiers behave with enjoyably exaggerated military-movie bravado, risking their lives or selflessly sacrificing themselves on a moment’s notice.

Liebesman, whose resume includes horror films like Darkness Falls and the Texas Chainsaw prequel, proves very adept with the action stuff, blowing up vehicles and buildings and showing us spectacular shots of a devastated L.A. But he also makes the various firefights appropriately intense, and certain moments of destruction, like a helicopter exploding, sudden and shocking.

And he does this from beginning to end, from when the alien ships begin to rain down like meteorites and take out Navy destroyers, to the fantastic finale in which the surviving soldiers work feverishly to destroy a massive alien command ship. The effects are top-notch, too, and were created by a company run by the Brothers Strause, who coincidentally made their own alien-invasion movie in Skyline.

What helps make this film superior to that one is that we’re given characters to root for instead of irritants we’d rather see die. This doesn’t mean they’re particularly well-developed. There’s the scared newbie, the newly minted, yet unsure, squad leader, and the solider who resents the veteran (a story element that annoyed me). All one-dimensional, but certainly tolerable.

Michelle Rodriguez has made a career out of playing badass cops and soldiers and such, so her presence here as a tech officer is not surprising, but it is definitely welcome, as she’s one of the few actresses nowadays who looks both comfortable and convincing kicking butt or shooting a gun. One of her first lines has her joking, “I didn’t get this far on my good looks.”

The real surprise here is Eckhart. He takes his stock veteran-who-wants-to-retire role and gives it some decent depth. Sure, the writers give his character a little color by having him drive a classic Mustang. But it’s Eckhart who convinces us the guy is both a tough and intelligent soldier and a compassionate man who doesn’t mind telling a boy it’s okay to cry. His performance is the closest thing we get to nuance in this super-sized serving of somewhat silly sci-fi. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Action/Sci-Fi

Rated PG-13

DVD Release Date: 6/14/11

Wilson and Sudeikis play a couple of over-40 pals who are so unhappy with their sex lives that their wives (Jenna Fischer and Christina Applegate) grant them the title pass, basically a week off from marriage during which the guys are free to have sex with other women.

To appease the teen boys and college guys, the brothers throw in plenty of the kind of gross-out moments they’re known for–male and female nudity, a woman spraying diarrhea on a shower wall, Sudeikis getting caught by cops doing something he shouldn’t in a minivan–plus plenty of explicit talk about sex and such.

But they balance out the outrageous stuff with surprisingly meaningful writing and by having situations play out a little differently than you might expect. This goes mainly for the relationships that develop between Wilson and a hot Australian girl (Nicky Whelan) and Fischer and an older man (Bruce Thomas), as well as Applegate’s flirtation with a college-age baseball player (Tyler Hoechlin).

As well the brothers make sure all the characters are interesting, even the supporting ones, like Whelan’s coffeehouse co-worker (Derek Waters), Wilson and Fischer’s twenty-something babysitter (Alexandra Daddario), and the forty-something woman (Kristin Carey) who seduces Sudeikis. Richard Jenkins (The Visitor) plays what is easily the funniest character, a fifty-something playa who gives the guys advice on how to pick up women.

The main cast is what makes the movie really work, though. Wilson is unexpectedly affecting as the practical pal with middle-age worries, and his speech about the spot on his chest where his wife and kids have all fallen asleep is the film’s emotional highlight. Sudeikis deftly delivers laughs with his perpetual potty mouth and desperate attempts to get lucky, while Applegate is adequate and Fischer simply shines, especially during the nicely-handled scenes in which she’s charmed by said older guy.

If you just want laughs, there are plenty of them, including Wilson imagining the consequences of buying said babysitter some beer; a pompous guy boasting about his Prius, which is parked next to a Hummer; Wilson and Sudeikis being oblivious to the security cameras as they walk around said guy’s new house; the use of the “Law & Order” chime as each hall-pass day starts; Sudeikis wearing a strange mask to help him sleep; the guys going to Chili’s to find women; and pal Stephen Merchant’s hilarious envisioning of what would happen if he had a hall pass. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Comedy/Romance

Rated R

DVD Release Date: 6/14/11

It features Hayden Christensen, Thandie Newton and John Leguizamo as a trio of people who, along with a young boy (Jacob Latimore), struggle to survive a freaky end-of-the-world scenario in which shadows seemingly come alive and cause people to vanish into thin air, leaving behind their clothes. As long as the group is bathed in some kind of illumination, the shadows can’t get them.

As he did in Session 9 and The Machinist, Anderson eschews gore in favor of mood, effectively creating a surreal sense of dread, from Christensen discovering empty city streets and watching a passenger jet crash to the ground, to the way the shadows whisper as they slither about or close in on a survivor. Not to mention the anxiety you feel every time the lights flicker, which is a lot. The only instance of actual gore is when Newton happens upon a man who was in the middle of being operated on.

It helps that the characters aren’t as irritating as they usually are in apocalyptic thrillers, though they’re also not that well-defined. They each have their traits–Christensen’s selfish but has a heart; Leguizamo’s a shy conspiracy nut–and I suppose that’s enough to make us root for their survival. Newton makes the best impression, I think, as a woman who lost her baby to the writhing darkness.

I imagine it will irk some that we never get a real explanation as to what’s going on, just various theories (one emphasized a little more than the others) bandied about by the characters, as well as Christensen’s ominous observation that each day the sun rises a little later and sets a little earlier. I myself didn’t quite understand the part where Leguizamo walks down an underground tunnel. Nonetheless, if you’re not already afraid of the dark, you probably will be after watching this. – [DVD]

Horror/Mystery/Thriller

Rated R

DVD Release Date: 5/17/11

Kidman and Eckhart play a couple mourning the loss of their 4-year-old son, who only months earlier ran into the street and was hit by a car. During their struggle they lash out at each other, friends and family, and find new ways of coping, she by talking to the remorseful teen (Miles Teller) who was driving the car, he by befriending a pot-smoking member (Sandra Oh) of their support group.

The film was directed by John Cameron Mitchell, best known for Hedwig and the Angry Inch, and he proves very skilled with the technical details. He lights the film beautifully, his framing of shots is exquisitely precise and he utilizes a gentle score to provide the right note of sadness. As a result it feels more like a big-studio effort than an indie flick that took less than a month to make.

What it lacks is the necessary emotional intensity. Which is frustrating, because the script by David Lindsay-Abaire, who based it on his play, gets the words and situations right, like the awkward moments when people ask Eckhart if he has any kids or accuse Kidman of not being a mother. Or when Kidman sums up the bleak state of their lives by saying, “Things aren’t nice anymore.”

The problem, I think, is that Mitchell’s direction is a little too low-key, and so the scenes of Kidman and Eckhart letting go emotionally, be it arguing or crying, never feel as cathartic as they should. It doesn’t help that Kidman’s performance, which was touted as being this really raw thing, feels so controlled. She’s never less than good here, but I don’t think she dug down nearly deep enough in trying to convey her character’s pain.

Thankfully, the always-reliable Dianne Wiest is around to pick up the emotional slack. As Kidman’s mother, a woman still stung by the years-ago death of Kidman’s drug-addicted brother, she effortlessly communicates weary anguish, without sentimentalizing it. Her moments with Kidman are the film’s best, none more so than when she explains to Kidman that grief never really goes away, but it does change, and even becomes bearable, “like a brick in your pocket.” – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Drama

Rated PG-13

DVD Release Date: 4/19/11

Black plays the title character, here reimagined as a long-time worker in the mail room of a New York newspaper whose crush on one of the paper’s writers (an appealing Amanda Peet) leads to him traveling to Bermuda where, thanks to a fancy CGI whirlpool, he ends up in the land of Lilliput, home to said pocket-sized people.

I do realize the film is meant to appeal to kids, as sophomoric gags abound, including the aforementioned robot with which Black does battle, but none more so than the sight of Black dousing a fire in the Lilliputian castle by relieving himself on it. And if Black falling on a Lilliputian soldier rear-end-first doesn’t get the little ones laughing, nothing will.

Black does little more than his standard slacker shtick as Gulliver, using phrases like “condish” and “grade-A courtage” to try and make the material seem more hip. But what seemed like very funny behavior in School of Rock just doesn’t work here. Admittedly, the film does mine a decent sight gag out of his flabbiness that involves cannonballs.

I can’t really fault director Rob Letterman for trying to impart a grow-up-and-be-responsible message, either, I suppose, but it’s a half-hearted effort at best. Black learns his lesson in the broadest way possible, so I didn’t buy it when he admits to Peet that “These little people have grown very large in my heart.” I rolled my eyes, in fact.

None of this is to say the film lacks laughs. Indeed, Chris O’Dowd is hilarious as an arrogant Lilliputian general who sees right through Black’s where-I-came-from stories (“Vice President Yoda”), while Jason Segel (I Love You, Man) earns some chuckles as a Lilliputian commoner with a crush on the kingdom’s princess (Emily Blunt, also funny) and Billy Connolly makes for a perfect king.

The only sequence I truly enjoyed (which borrows from the second story in Swift’s novel) was the one in which Black ends up on an island whose inhabitants are giants and where he’s captured by a little girl who keeps him in her dollhouse. Nothing else here made me laugh more than seeing Black being forced to wear a doll’s dress while being force fed a baby bottle. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Adventure/Comedy/Fantasy

Rated PG

DVD Release Date: 4/19/11

Its long-awaited sequel, Tron: Legacy, also focuses on its looks to the detriment of just about everything else. The writing is weak, the direction, by one Joseph Kosinski, lacks style and the acting, save for Michael Sheen and the returning Bridges, is adequate at best. But, thanks to the huge advancement in visual effects since the original, it’s a far more impressive-looking creature, a grand visual creation utilizing some truly dazzling CGI, and so I was more willing to overlook such flaws.

The plot is thus: some two decades after Kevin Flynn, the genius software engineer played by Bridges, went missing, his rebellious, twenty-something son Sam (Garrett Hedlund, who at various times resembles either Hayden Christensen or Christian Bale) inadvertently finds his way into the dystopian-tinged computer world created by his dad, where he discovers not only the old man, but Clu, Bridges’ digital doppelganger who has plans to conquer the real world.

Kosinski wisely retains many elements from the original film, but understandably updates them. The suits still light up according to their wearers’ allegiance (blue for good, orange for bad, yellow for Clu), but are now sleek, black leather duds, the Light Cycles have the same shape, but are bigger and shinier and can curve around the track, and the identity discs (the glowing Frisbees) are razor-sharp weapons that can slice right through a digital denizen. I also appreciated the brief appearance of Bruce Boxleitner, who played both the title character and Bridges’ friend in the original.

As well the numerous action sequences possess a nice muscular energy, less the result of Kosinski’s directorial choices, I think, than of the superlative CGI work and superb sound design. It was especially cool to watch the way various vehicles materialized around characters, though I also liked how the Light Cycles exploded into big, brilliant gouts of blue or orange pixels when getting hit. And I do have to give Kosinski credit for creating the Outlands, the dark and ominous realm beyond the borders of the digital metropolis where digital thunder rumbles through digital clouds.

Bridges plays Flynn with a certain Zen-like weariness, wearing white robes and sounding a lot like The Dude from The Big Lebowski, only smarter. It works, though. He gives the film dramatic weight, and manages to make his solar-sailing bonding time with Sam a poignant pow-wow. But the big thing here with Bridges is that we also get to see a younger version of him as he plays Clu, a nifty, cutting edge digital trick that’s fairly convincing, save for the moments where his mouth doesn’t move quite right when he talks.

In his turn as a neon-cane-using club owner, Sheen (The Queen) briefly injects some outrageous, over-the-top energy into the film, prancing about like Liberace on steroids. Which leads me to mention Daft Punk, the electronic-music duo that cameos as the club’s digital DJs. They composed the film’s score, a most excellent fusion of electronica and orchestral elements that is perhaps the best thing about the film, turning what would otherwise have been just another slick and expensive sci-fi flick into an otherworldly epic. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Action/Adventure/Sci-Fi

Rated PG

DVD Release Date: 4/5/11