I know, I know…movie masochism.  I wish I could say it’s so bad, it’s good.  But as that great philosopher Huey Lewis once said, “Sometimes bad is bad.”

FF=3 (would have been higher but for the film’s occasional stun-ray effect)

Felt like I was in the Revenge of the Sith videogame.  Kept reaching for a controller.  (The FF would have been higher had I not been signing signature sheets at the same time.)

FF=2

An amazing horror film. (I have to call it “horror” because of the vampire theme, but although there’s blood and some violence, there’s no gore.) The plot has large holes, but when you come down to it, this is a relationship film between a bullied 12-year old named Oskar and Eli, the strange girl in the next apartment who’s not human. A Swedish production, filmed in the cold, white dead of winter, it’s visually striking and the most original thing I’ve seen in a long time.

FF=0

I didn’t think I’d like this too much but I wound up fully engaged. The light fantasy element with the aborigines was a lagniappe. It’s a gorgeous, old-fashioned epic like Hollywood used to make (think “How the West Was Won”) with brave, noble Good Guys and boo-hiss Bad Guys. I also learned some history. What more can you ask of a film? At nearly 3 hours, it could be trimmed (I fast-forwarded through some of the cattle drives and such) but I don’t feel it dragged.

FF=1

Harris and Mortenson play peacemakers – sort of like itinerant lawmen for hire – who are interesting characters but not believable.  (I suppose if they’d been true-to-life peacemakers they wouldn’t have been half as interesting.) I didn’t know this was from a Robert B. Parker novel until I saw the credits; looking back I shouldn’t have been surprised.  These are Parker’s branded real-men-who-get-each-other characters.  I was engaged.

FF=1

I liked this better than I thought I would.  I was never into the TV show, so I wasn’t disappointed by the lack of aliens.  It’s more of a serial killer mystery with a psychic twist.  Kind of thin for a feature film, with a lot of Mulder-Scully character issues.

FF=2

A documentary about Hunter S. Thompson.  I remember reading his Hell’s Angels book when it first came out in paperback and thinking how cool it was for a writer to embed himself in the subject matter and the story itself.  But it’s disturbing to watch him lose his center as years roll by and see him become the story.  I never got a feel for the man from this film.  Maybe there was nothing there to find.  He was caricaturized in “Doonsbury” as the Duke character and he comes across just about as flat in “Gonzo.”

FF=1

Awful.  Numbingly by the numbers.  If you didn’t guess the bad guy from his first appearance on screen, you need to get a rebate on your lobotomy.  I can’t remember one original moment in the whole film.

FF=4

Great spectacle. No kidding – a visual feast, but tainted with that sui-generic Roland Emmerich dumbness.  Leave your brain at the door but keep your eyes in your head.

FF=1