Jack Black plays R.L. Stine in this horror comedy geared for kids. The plot releases a horde of Stine’s monsters on the town [the lawn gnomes, the Blob that ate Everyone, the Mummy, Slappy (of course), and many more] and the kids and Stine have to return them to the printed page. After a slow opening it starts rolling and is a lot of fun. Watch for R.L. himself in a cameo near the end.

FF=2

I’m going to have to post a *spoiler* alert here, but really, when that first hallucination hits, you’ll see the whole film laid out like a Chinese buffet. Before you reach that point, however, you have to make so many leaps (let’s make them pole vaults) of faith and suspensions of your disbelief by the cajones, that you might not get that far. The first hurdle is transferring the consciousness of one person into the body of another; a hoary SF concept that I accept because of its seniority. But for the Kingsley character to accept that the handsome, fully-developed, well-muscled body destined to be his new home was somehow grown just for him exceeds the tensile strength of my credibility. After that, it becomes a decent action thriller. Not many films present their characters with a moral dilemma of this magnitude, but there’s never any real doubt that we’ll have a Hollywood ending. And I won’t even mention the deus-ex availability of a flamethrower for the climactic scene (oh, wait…I just did)
FF=0 (It had one nice twist and I kept waiting for more)

An excellent Bobby Fischer biopic that’s wrenching as we watch his descent into total paranoia. Somehow he pulls it all together to beat Boris Spassky in the 1972 World Chess Championship. Game 6 of the tournament is supposedly the greatest chess game ever played. At its finish Spassky stands and leads the audience in applause for his opponent’s skill. It’s a tragic story of a brilliant mind and blinding potential destroyed by delusions of persecution by godless communists and predatory Zionists (even though Fischer was Jewish and part Russian). He died an ex-pat in Iceland in his mid-sixties. It’s amazing how much suspense a skillful script and cast can build into a chess match.

FF=0

This could have been good. I loved the setup and the back story, but the execution is so over the top that it overcame my considerable powers for suspension of disbelief. (Yes, I know it’s a spoof of sorts, but even a spoof has to maintain an internal logic, whacked though it may be.) I didn’t use the FF button because the film kept getting crazier and crazier and I wanted to see how far wrong it could go. (It went very, very wrong.)

FF=0

Space geek that I am. I loved this movie. I had my doubts as it began — with an atmosphere of less than 1% of Earth’s, you can’t have an Arabia-style sandstorm on Mars. There just ain’t enough air to do any damage. But since it was a single incident necessary to set up the plot, I let it go and sat back and enjoyed the show. From there on it was a gripping tale of man against the elements. Sure, Watney has lots of grit and guts, but he also has a brain which he puts to use. This film is a testimony to critical thinking: Okay, we have a problem; lets step back, look it over, break it down into pieces, and start solving it bit by bit. Watney doesn’t emote toward solutions, he thinks toward them. So do the folks back home on Earth. So do his fellow crew members.

If you called this film vapid, sappy, cutesy, cliched, and totally devoid of dramatic tension, I wouldn’t ague with you. But the chemistry between DeNiro and Hathaway is so engaging, you sit there and drink it in. A total feel-good film.

FF=0

This is the original Argentinian version (recently remade with the same title sans the initial article). It shifts back and forth between the present and past as a Buenos Ares ex-investigator probes an old rape-murder that was solved but never fully resolved. (I won’t say more than that about the plot.) Because it’s a procedural, the pace is, shall we say, deliberate. But you don’t mind because the performances and direction are so on the mark. A good story, well told, with a wrenching denouement.

FF=0

I’m not saying I enjoyed this simply to be contrarian. I truly did. Perhaps all the bad reviews made me expect a bomb but Pan turned out to be spirited fun. I didn’t recognize Jackman as Blackbeard, nor Rooney Mara as Tiger Lily. One fly in the proverbial ointment was the portrayal of James Hook. I can buy him being a good guy and Peter’s ally in the past (an interesting twist, in fact) but trying to make him an Indiana Jones/Han Solo clone (even down to the nick-of-time return after a supposed desertion) did not work. Wrong actor, perhaps. Too dark for little kids, however.

FF=1

I saw this back to back with The Abominable Bride and they couldn’t be more different. Bride is wild and frenetic and plays games with the viewer, while Mr. (based on Mitch Cullin’s novel, A Slight Trick of the Mind which I read and enjoyed) is a meditation on memory and aging. Both offer something to the Holmes canon, however, and I enjoyed them equally.

FF=0.