Enjoyable but with no surprises.  Edward Norton usually owns his parts, but not this one.  He sleepwalked through it.  The script didn’t give Jessica Biel much to do but at least she’s nice to look at. Paul Giamatti saved the film.

FF=0

I don’t know much about the politics of oil, but if this is at all accurate, the world is screwed.  But couldn’t much of it be rendered moot by opening Alaska and the Keystone pipeline? (Mexico’s drilling away in the Gulf, why shouldn’t we?)  But that’s never addressed.

FF=0

Wow.  I looooved this.  I was captured.  Baby-faced Ellen Page was riveting.  I had ideas about where it was going but it made some nice unexpected turns.  It’s really a 2-actor character study and I can’t believe I wasn’t fast-forwarding through all the talk.  But it’s good talk.  Some speechifying, but not enough to get on my nerves.

FF=0

Despite its lapses in logic and incidences of idiocy (that’s where a character has to do something idiotic to keep things going), I had a good time with this. Great visuals. Along the way I felt I’d like to know more about the vampires, but in the end it wasn’t necessary. It engaged me from beginning to end.

FF=0

Watched this again after many years and enjoyed it even more the second time – perhaps because I was paying extra attention to the excellent dialog (screenplay by David Kelley of “Ally McBeal” and “The Practice”). Great cast but Oliver Platt manages to steal the film despite Betty White upstaging almost everyone else.
FF=0

Dumb.  Really, really, really dumb.  (Yeah, I know, what did I expect with a video game as the source of the story?)  A secret cult of assassins wandering the globe and hiring out to kill folks.  Okay so far.  But they all wear black suits and have a bar code tattooed onto the occipital scalp of their shaven heads.  Yes!  Shaved!  Leaving the bar code for all to see.  WTF?  Our hitman is being chased, there’s an APB out on him, but he walks through train stations and airports – everywhere – flashing his barcode for all to see.  Wouldn’t you think that someone, somewhere would notice?  But noooooo.  You know what, though?  It was well paced and the Russian settings were eye catching.  Once I suspended my disbelief in the bar code, and stopped trying to make sense of the plot, I was engaged.

FF=0

I loved this film.  It’s big-budget Hollywood film making at its best – script, cast, direction, production, all top notch.  Put Tom Hanks with Philip Seymour Hoffman and it’s hard to go wrong.  Amy Adams was a standout too, as was the dialogue.  (Well, of course.  Look who wrote it: Aaron Sorkin.) What I didn’t like was the knowledge (Monday-morning quarterbacking, I know) that these embattled mujahideen we were helping would later be part of al Qaeda.

FF=0

Philip Seymour Hoffman again.  Despite its cast and director (Lumet), the film is shot with a low-budget look, but that works to its advantage.  I didn’t have high hopes when I rented it, but I wound up entranced (and not just by Marisa Tomei’s nude scenes).  Excellent performances in a tragic story.

FF=0

Big disappointment.  I was expecting another “Lock, Stock…” or “Snatch” and got something else. Don’t ask me what I got; I’m still not sure.  Oh, there’s good watching – especially the Sorter character – but it all leads to nothing.  Or rather to something ham handed and unbearably pretentious.  A Message Film – yikes!  (The finale scene with Ray Liotta whispering, “Fear me…fear me…”  Just. Awful.)  And idiot plotting: The protagonist (played by Jason Statham with hair) doesn’t figure out what everyone watching the film, regardless of mental capacity, has figured out from the moment he relates his prison experience.  (NB: The low FF Rating™ is due to misplaced faith in Guy Richie and the assumption that the overblown dialogue and meandering monologues would turn out to be important. Wrong!)

FF=0

Now, you knew I’d have to see this.  Not simply because I derived such guiltless pleasure from the first three, but because David Morrell (the creator of the character) told me it’s well worth a look.  It takes place in Burma (I can’t call it Myanmar) and has gained a smattering of political correctness (imagine that) from the recent events – the way the real-life monsters in charge there handled the post-cyclone relief is in perfect tune with the atrocities of the government forces in the film.  (In fact, the film is banned there.)  Stallone co-wrote and directed.  It’s got its share of implausibilities and impossibilities, but it works perfectly as a coda to the Rambo canon.  Be warned: It’s bloody.

FF=0