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

First question:
Who is Gina Carano?

Gina is a mixed martial arts fighter and, I’m totally serious, a former “American Gladiator.” While this is not her first movie, it is probably her first movie to play in a movie theater.

Second Question:
Can Soderbergh do action?

In short, yes, better than most. While he’s known for more artful fare, the action in Haywire is exceptionally well executed.  There isn’t the crutch of a shaky camera or fast cutting; clearly Soderbergh trusts his fight coordinators, and the stunt performers.

Third Question:
Okay, I’m kind of interested, is there anyone else in it?

Well I mean, sure. There’s Ewan McGregor as the shady security firm owner, Michael Douglas as the CIA guy, Antonio Banderas as the guy with the awesome beard, Bill Paxton as Carano’s father, Channing Tatum as a former partner, Michael Angarano as the helpful kid with the car, and Michael Fassbender as a freelance operative.

Fourth Question:
Wow, that sounds like a great cast, and with the awesome action, are there any drawbacks?

As much as Gina Carano is an amazing butt-kicker, she clearly never went to Stella Adler. She does fine, but sometimes her delivery can be oddly stilted, and the internet says that Soderbergh altered her voice in post. The rest of the cast is fine, but kind of forgettable. While critically well received, the film didn’t do gangbusters at the box-office, bringing in 18 million domestically.

Fifth Question:
Now I’m torn, what do you think, Noah?

I’d say go for it. It’s not a perfect film, I didn’t root for Carano like I did Matt Damon in the Bourne movies, but the action is phenomenal, the script is interesting, and it’s probably one of the best shot action movies I’ve seen. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Action/Thriller

Rated R

DVD Release Date: 5/2/12

Michael Bay

Based on the first book in a potential six-book series, it centers on an alien teen (Alex Pettyfer) who, along with eight others, was sent to Earth as a child to escape a hostile invading race. When said race discovers where the kids are and starts eliminating them, the boy and his warrior-guardian (Timothy Olyphant) move from town to town in an effort to evade them. As if that’s not bad enough, Pettyfer starts developing inherited alien abilities, including telekinesis and super strength.

Caruso, who’s fast become one of my favorite directors of thrillers, once again displays a refreshing knack for shooting and editing action clearly. This makes for genuinely thrilling set pieces, from the various third-act battles between good and bad aliens inside a high school, to the fantastic football-field finale, a special-effects spectacle full of alien gunfire, giant alien creatures and a rather spectacular explosion. Especially cool is the way Pettyfer runs while deflecting volleys of said gunfire.

As well the script, written by Smallville creators Alfred Gough and Miles Millar, does a decent job playing with our expectations as to who, or what, is good or bad. The Pettyfer-hunting aliens (led by Lost alum Kevin Durand) are obviously bad, what with their freakish heights and nasty sharp teeth. But we’re not so sure about the blonde hottie (Teresa Palmer) on the motorcycle, nor the shape-shifting creature who latches on to Pettyfer in the form of a Beagle.

And yet the film is more than just a load of eye candy. It has some actual emotional heft. The characters and relationships all feel believable, at least for a movie about teen aliens. Pettyfer’s romance with a cute-girl photographer (Glee’s Dianna Agron) is especially well-handled, and also allows us to see, via a scene with the girl’s family at dinner, his character’s longing for a normal life.

Pettyfer is mainly called upon to be photogenic, be it while brooding, smiling, fighting, crying or waterskiing. Better is Olyphant, who brings a nice mix of sternness and compassion to his protector part. Best, I think, is Callan McAuliffe (Flipped) as a bullied teen Pettyfer befriends. He does a beautiful job conveying his character’s loneliness and frustration. In perhaps the film’s best scene, he pleads with Pettyfer to confirm his suspicions about Pettyfer’s true nature.

My only quibble is the emo tunes on the soundtrack, an inevitable thing considering the demographic to whom the film is meant to appeal (though I did appreciate hearing Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” over the scene of Palmer strutting away from an exploding building). On a related note, I very much liked the score by Trevor Rabin. It enhances the action, brings the tears and, much like Caruso’s straightforward direction, never gets in the way. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Action/Sci-Fi/Thriller

Rated PG-13

DVD Release Date 5/24/11

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

Statham assumes Bronson’s role of a professional assassin who makes his killings look like accidents. After his employers assign him to take out his friend and mentor (Donald Sutherland, excellent in a brief part), Statham himself takes on Sutherland’s son (Ben Foster) as a protege.

The film starts out as something closer to The Day of the Jackal than a typical wham-bam Statham flick, with little to no dialogue or actual action as Statham stealthily strangles a Colombian drug lord, then returns home to New Orleans where he listens to classical music, employs a prostitute and visits with Sutherland. Normally I’d complain about such a bloodless beginning, but I actually appreciated the restraint.

Things get a little more interesting when Foster enters the picture. He excelled playing psychos in Hostage and the remake of 3:10 to Yuma, and brings a similar kind of off-kilter edginess to his role here as a guy who seems less than sad about his dad’s death. Just watch as he waits to be carjacked, and then beats a carjacker to within an inch of his life.

It’s when Statham starts training Foster that the film turns into a fantastic, full-throttle frenzy of action. After Foster endures a beautifully brutal and bloody brawl with a rival hit man, he and Statham do battle with numerous thugs while weathering withering amounts of gunfire and, at one point, rappelling down a thirty-story building. At another point, Statham throws a bad guy through a bus window and the guy gets smacked dead by an oncoming car.

But that’s nothing compared to what comes later as the pair goes after Statham’s boss (Tony Goldwyn). Things get positively explosive, with a garbage truck and yet another city bus getting involved. The film’s best stunt, in fact, sees a bad guy SUV crashing through the front end of said bus and causing said bus to blow up in spectacular fashion.

None of this is especially deep, of course, despite attempts to make Statham seem tortured about taking out Sutherland. Statham is really too much like Bronson to pull off such emoting. Where Bronson’s face was seemingly made of stone, Statham wears a perpetual scowl. As such, the movie works best when the man is beating up bad guys. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Action/Crime/Thriller

Rated R

DVD Release Date: 5/17/11

And, yeah, it’s about ballet. Ballet can be plenty creepy, as Aronofsky cheerfully reminds us. Ballet dancers punish and distort their bodies in their pursuit of grace and perfection, something which the film shows very potently, whether directly (just listen to the cracks in Nina’s feet as she gets out of bed) or via metaphor (we see dancers mercilessly scraping and picking at their shoes to give them just the right rigidity and friction on the floor). And don’t get me started on what this film squeezes out of fingernails. Add to all that the psychological pressures that Nina is undergoing–her desperation to please the director of her company (Vincent Cassel), to outshine her fellow dancers and her predecessor (Winona Ryder), and her uncomfortably sisterly relationship with her overbearing mother–and you have a tasty recipe for a psychotic fracture.

Aronofsky has always played with obsession as a dominant theme in his films, from Pi (with a central character obsessed with the title number) to The Wrestler (with Mickey Rourke obsessed with his past glory). But Black Swan makes the idea of an obsession visually and psychically manifest in unusually potent fashion. Granted, this plot would need only a bad re-write and a hack director to become late night Skinemax fodder. It’s already famous for some rather blue scenes betwixt Portman and costar Mila Kunis, which, seen in context, disturb as much as titillate. But this is no slasher skin flick–this is a swelling, operatic, visceral trip down a dark tunnel, a tunnel which, to Nina, promises to lead to a transcendent artistic achievement. A lesser film would revel merely in the collapse of this tunnel, but this one gives us a glimpse too at the light on the other side. It’s that last accomplishment, as far as I’m concerned, that makes Black Swan great. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Drama/Mystery/Thriller

Rated R

DVD Release Date: 3/29/11

Strike that, I’m not sure. He could spend his nights on a panda skin rug for all I know.

But, I was willing to set aside personal feelings, because I found the story interesting. It was a good call.

Fair Game is an account of Valerie Plame (Naomi Watts) who was outed as an agent of the CIA by administration officials, and the subsequent battle fought by her husband (Sean Penn) Ambassador Joe Wilson, to bring light to the dirty dealings of said administration. Directed by Doug Liman, the director of Swingers, Go, and a little picture called The Bourne Identity.

If you’ve seen the first Bourne, you’ll recognize the visual style Liman (who was also the director of photography) uses. It works well with this kind of “intrigue.” The performances are solid, Watts is good, and if you forget about the panda thing, Penn is also very good. It presented the story in a way that was interesting, even though I knew the outcome. Like 127 Hours, without the gore. Give it some thumbs up. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Biography/Drama/Thriller

Rated PG-13

DVD Release Date: 3/29/11

Like that movie, it’s set in L.A., but instead of focusing on a pack of soldiers, it follows a group of irritating regular people (including Eric Balfour and Donald Faison) in a highrise as they try to survive a sudden and harrowing invasion by some hostile ET’s.

When they’re not staring at or fighting with the aliens while shouting helpful things like “Run!” or “Help!” or “Oh my God!,” the one-dimensional characters are yelling at or fighting with each other or, in the case of Faison’s blonde girlfriend, being nonsensically concerned about whom may have slept with whom.

The effects don’t quite make up for the lack of character development, but they come close, even if they do rip off other sci-fi flicks. The main alien ships alone are grand CGI creations, spitting out smaller ships that resemble something out of The Matrix, while the colossal alien beasts that stomp cars and climb buildings will remind you of the creature in Cloverfield.

And while I would never mistake the brothers as great directors, the military-vs.-aliens action scenes here do have energy. In one of the better ones, a shot-down fighter jet smashes into the highrise’s roof, rolls over Balfour and his girlfriend, and rams an alien beast right off the side. Even better is the spectacular sequence in which one of the big ships is shot down and thunders into the ground.

It would have been nice know why the aliens are attacking us, I suppose, but they do have a somewhat original, if not icky, way of powering themselves. Icky also describes the interior of the big alien ships, where the movie ends with a ludicrous but fairly ingenious little twist that will no doubt be elaborated upon in an equally second-rate sequel. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Action/Sci-Fi/Thriller

Rated PG-13

DVD Release Date: 3/22/11

I hadn’t had much occasion to remember that time until Danny Boyle (Slumdog Millionaire) dramatized it in 127 Hours, the sixth of this year’s ten Best Picture nominees to arrive at the Video Station. James Franco (Pineapple Express) almost has a one-man show as Ralston, who we meet as he departs home in Aspen to engage in his exhilarating weekend routine. The opening scenes pulsate with adrenaline amid a montage of the crowded cookie-cutter civilization Aron is fleeing. Once on the trail he chances on a pair of young women (Kate Mara & Amber Tamblyn) and spends a few hours playing trail guide for them in spectacular fashion (spectacular enough to make it the only part of the film the real Ralston calls fake). By the time he’s alone again and gleefully scampering through Bluejohn, the adrenaline is wearing off, and in a single, mildly clumsy moment, he gets his arm pinned by a heavy boulder against solid rock. The remainder of the film chronicles his attempts to keep himself alive and get free, which he finally does in famously harrowing fashion.

If you’re afraid to watch this movie because you already know what’s going to happen and don’t want to see it–well, yes, it’s a pretty intense moment, but it’s handled about as well as any filmmaker could ever manage it. Boyle accents the viscera not with gory imagery but with sounds that any human nervous system will respond to with sympathy. It is harrowing, but never disgusting. And it’s only one moment in a film full of tension, grace, and surprising energy. Franco may not have redeemed himself as an Oscar host, but he certainly earned his keep as an Oscar nominee. You’ll root for him all the way. Boyle, who incorporates low-res video footage in his films frequently, has an excellent excuse to do so here, as Ralston did indeed record messages on his video camera while he was stuck. This not only makes for a convenient way to pass on exposition, but also serves as an opportunity for grim humor and poignant reflection. This isn’t 90 minutes of a guy stuck under a rock. It’s a step inside a mind confronted with a grim reality–a mind that wanders, waxes nostalgic and finds poetry in the mundane things it has left behind. It’s also one heck of an ironic admonition about hiking safety. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Adventure/Drama/Thriller

Rated R

DVD Release Date: 3/1/11

Inspired by an incident in Ohio in 2001, it’s set in Pennsylvania in 2009, where Washington’s veteran engineer and Pine’s wet-behind-the-ears conductor end up risking their lives to stop an unmanned 39-car freight train before it derails in a fictional, highly populated city.

While Scott certainly delivers the action goods in showing the train demolishing in spectacular fashion whatever gets in its way–a horse trailer, some train cars, an engine that gets in front and tries to slow it down–he succeeds, via flashy but sharp editing and a pounding score, in making the movie itself move like a bullet. He’s constantly moving the camera, too, even during dialogue scenes.

He also manages to turn the train into a character all its own. From the moment it’s powered up, to when it bulldozes through a set of derailers and keeps hurtling down the track, you truly get the sense that the half-mile-long behemoth is a living creature hell bent on mankind’s destruction. The movie’s excellent sound design (which was nominated for an Oscar) only helps further the feeling.

Unsurprisingly, however, the characters are less developed than the set pieces. Washington and Pine basically gripe about their crappy personal lives, while Rosario Dawson runs around a generic control room shouting things like “We’re talking about a missile, the size of the Chrysler Building!” and mouthing off to her irrational, money-minded superior (Kevin Dunn).

Washington and Pine’s various family members have even less to do, that is, aside from staring nervously at televisions or wondering why their loved ones–who are a little busy, thank you–aren’t answering their cell phones. We also get annoying scenes of characters either cheering or predicting out loud that our heroes aren’t going to make it.

But though Washington is obviously working for a paycheck here, he’s hardly a slouch, imbuing his engineer with just enough gravitas and humor to make him almost feel real, and the train terminology he and the other characters bandy about lends the film authenticity. Such things help keep the movie on track during the few shots that don’t feature helicopters. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]

Action/Drama/Thriller

Rated PG-13

DVD Release Date: 2/15/11