Snitch

If you're looking to see Snitch because you can't get enough of Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson's blend of electric charisma and unbridled machismo, you're destined to be sorely disappointed. Helmed by stuntman turned director Ric Roman Waugh, this is decidedly more father-son drama than action film, wasting Johnson's best assets and demanding he bring his acting ability to a new level. It just sets him up to fail. Based on a true story, Snitch centers on John Matthews (Johnson), a successful business owner with a big house, loving family, bitter ex-wife...

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Dark Skies

There are times when I think that the horror genre is a club that?s slowly trying to exclude me because I?m not afraid of children. In the past six months I have reviewed three underwhelming horror movies that used creepy children to spook audiences, but with each one I was left pleading for studios to find another trope to run into the ground. Instead I get Dark Skies, or as I like to call it, ?Number Four.? Unlike The Posession, Sinister and Mama, at the very least writer/director Scott Stewart?s new film trades demons and spirits for aliens,...

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Escape From Planet Earth

It?s one thing for a movie to have weaknesses. Even the better films released every year have some flaws, or at least a few areas that could use improvement. The problem with Escape From Planet Earth is that it doesn?t have one single strength to counteract any of those weaknesses. Every single facet of the film is at best, slightly below average and at worst, downright terrible. The characters are poorly conceived stereotypes that lack depth. The animation is not bad but still below recent standards set by DreamWorks and Pixar. The jokes are...

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Side Effects

Side Effects is set in New York City, but it barely looks like it. Steven Soderbergh, acting as always as his own cinematographer, makes the city look colder and more modern than ever, putting his characters in front of anonymous glass buildings and generic streets, robbing the city of its character and warmth at every turn. It's a brutally effective choice for what he claims is his final theatrical release, a twisty and surprisingly sexy thriller that, despite its heat, is actually about how cold and disconnected the world can be. The film, written...

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Identity Thief

Shitting in a sink is a tough act to follow. Melissa McCarthy may have logged hours on Gilmore Girls and Mike & Molly, but her star broached the stratosphere the moment she soiled a posh, cream-white dressing room in Paul Feig?s irreverent Bridesmaids. That scene-stealing performance earned McCarthy two chances this year to convince audiences she?s capable of carrying oneleg of a harmless buddy comedy (the next being Feig's The Heat). So far, though, the gifted comedian?s only being asked to recycle the obnoxious, uncouth and inappropriate...

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