Orphan (2009)

Director: Jaume Collet-Serra

Writers: David Johnson, Alex Mace

Composer: John Ottman

Starring: Vera Farmiga, Peter Sarsgaard, Isabelle Fuhrman, CCH Pounder, Jimmy Bennett, Margo Martindale, Karel Roden, Aryana Engineer, Rosemary Dunsmore, Jamie Young

More info: IMDb

Tagline: There's something wrong with Esther.

Plot: A husband and wife who recently lost their baby adopt a 9-year-old girl who is not nearly as innocent as she claims to be.

My rating: 6/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

Cliches-ridden but not a bad horror/thriller.  Probably the best part of the picture is near the end when you see all of the black light paintings.  Those are deliciously grisly.  The gimmick is neat but that's about it.  It's well-made but it's just loaded with tropes you've seen dozens of times from other troubled child films from the past 60 years.  The wife discovers the truth, the husband thinks she's over-reacting, the more-than-obvious of who's going to die as soon as the characters are introduced, the baddie coming back from near death at the last moment to strike one more time, shit like that.  If the story weren't so by-the-numbers it'd be a much better film.   It's got a nice atmosphere but you need more substance in your stories to elevate pictures like this into a really good horror/thriller and this one doesn't do it.  I'm probably in the minority on this one as it seems the public at large praised it when it came out.  The Warner Bros. DVD has a nice anamorphic widescreen print but the only extra you get is in the way of deleted scenes and an alternate ending (4 minutes total).  The alternate ending is different but it's not a game-changer by any stretch. 

Leatherheads (2008)

Director: George Clooney

Writers: Duncan Brantley, Rick Reilly

Composer: Randy Newman

Starring: George Clooney, John Krasinski, Stephen Root, Renee Zellweger, Jonathan Pryce

More info: IMDb

Tagline: In the beginning, the rules were simple. There weren't any.

Plot:  In 1925, an enterprising pro football player convinces America's too-good-to-be-true college football hero to play for his team and keep the league from going under.

My rating: 7.5/10

Will I watch it again?  Yeah.

I really dig Clooney a lot when he does comedy and he's made for this kind of picture.  It's a really fun ride and I was really impressed by the look and feel the filmmakers achieved of time and place.  It's great.  It's the kind of great that I'd like to step into the screen and hang out with these cats back in the twenties.  Randy Newman's score goes a long way in cementing that vibe.  It's bouncy fun.  The cast is great.  They picked some great, interesting, period-looking mugs to be in this picture.  The laughs are fun and it was clear that Clooney was going for that 1930s screwball comedy feel. The only problem with that is that the best of those pictures were snappy, tight and flew by with lightning speed.  LEATHERHEADS doesn't share that quality.  It would be a bigger blast of a ride if it were tighter.  At almost two hours, though, they do pack a lot in so it'd be really tough to cut bits out as the atmosphere is super rich and welcoming.  It's still a fun picture.  The Universal DVD has a nice anamoprhic widescreen print and there are lots of fun extras, too.  You get 8 minutes of deleted scenes, a 6 minute making of featurette, a 9 minute featurette on recreating 1920s football games, 4 minutes on Clooney's pranks, 6 minutes on the visual effects and a commentary track with Clooney and producer Grant Heslov.

Of Unknown Origin (1983)

Director: George P. Cosmatos

Writers: Chauncy G. Parker III, Brian Taggert

Composer: Kenneth Wannberg

Starring: Peter Weller, Jennifer Dale, Lawrence Dane, Kenneth Welsh, Louis Del Grande, Shannon Tweed, Keith Knight, Maury Chaykin, Leif Anderson

More info: IMDb

Tagline: If it can't scare them to death, it will find another way.

Plot: A man who recently completed rebuilding a townhouse becomes obsessed with a rat infestation until it becomes an interspecies duel.

My rating: 5/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

This little piece of yawnfest has only a few funny and neat moments.  The title hits it on the head.  We never know much about the giant rat (and I mean GIANT) that terrorizes Robocop except that it's stupid huge and clever.  It's the kind of film that probably works better on paper because the imagination can go a long ways in filling in the visual details.  It's not that this is a poorly made film, it's not really.  The problem is that it takes a 45-60 minute idea and drags it out to an hour and a half and that spells out dullsville.  I was straddling the edge of sleep after the first half hour.  The Warner Bros. DVD has a good anamorphic widescreen print and the only extras you get are a commentary track with Peter Weller and George Cosmatos and an anamorpic widescreen trailer. 

Inside Man (2006)

Director: Spike Lee

Writer: Russell Gewirtz

Composer: Terence Blanchard

Starring: Denzel Washington, Clive Owen, Jodie Foster, Christopher Plummer, Willem Dafoe, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Carlos Andres Gomez, Kim Director, James Ransone, Bernie Rachelle, Peter Gerety

More info: IMDb

Tagline: It looked like the perfect bank robbery. But you can't judge a crime by its cover.

Plot:  A police detective, a bank robber, and a high-power broker enter high-stakes negotiations after the criminal's brilliant heist spirals into a hostage situation.

My rating: 8/10

Will I watch it again?  Yes.

Neat flick with a great cast.  I dig a good heist movie and this is a good 'un.  Solid performances, pacing, editing, and all around great storytelling make this one a really fun ride.  It's weird seeing Dafoe not in a (or almost) leading role but I really dig the guy so I'll take all the Dafoe I can.  I like how calm Dalton (Owen) was and how every detail had been planned.  I also really dug how Frazier (Washington) got incredibly pissed to the point of almost hitting innocent hostages.  That was a welcome touch.  He didn't trust anyone and rightfully so.  The only thing that felt out of place was Frazier back at his apartment after it was over.  It felt tacked on and mostly pointless.  Still, it's a fun ride.  Try not to think too hard and allow yourself to be taken in for a couple of hours. The Universal DVD has a bunch of deleted scenes, a 10 minute making of featurette, 10 minutes with Lee and Washington on their four collaborations and a commentary track with Lee.

Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison (1957)

Director: John Huston

Writers: John Lee Mahin, John Huston, Charles Shaw

Composer: Georges Auric

Starring: Deborah Kerr, Robert Mitchum

More info: IMDb

Tagline: They were alone on this Pacific Island... trapped behind enemy lines... the marine who had been thru Hell and Sister Angela with her supreme faith in God.

Plot: A marine and a nun form an unlikely friendship. The marine is shipwrecked on a Pacific island and the nun has been left behind there; they find comfort in one another as the two wait out the war.

My rating: 7/10

Will I watch it again?  No.

This one's been on my radar for decades.  Now that I've seen it, it played out almost exactly how I thought it would.  That's not a bad thing.  It's just that knowing this is a big title from Hollywood in the late 50s, you come to expect certain things.  Kerr and Mitchum do a fine job carrying the entire picture. The dialogue sometimes gets a little hokey but that's 50's Hollywood workin'.  The save the day moment near the end is way too convenient but up until then it's a nice little picture that's not aiming above its notions.  It's also not hard to see the similarities with THE AFRICAN QUEEN (1951) (same director) but it's more of a nod than a variation on a theme.  Maybe if the Italians made this twenty years later we could have had ourselves some tasty Nunsploitation action...hmmmmm...  This version (not my skeezy exploitation fever dream version) is currently on Netflix streaming with a nice widescreen print. 

Fantastic Four (2005)

Director: Tim Story

Writers: Mark Frost, Michael France

Composer: John Ottman

Starring: Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans, Michael Chiklis, Julian McMahon, Hamish Linklater, Kerry Washington, Laurie Holden, David Parker, Kevin McNulty

More info: IMDb

Tagline: 4 times the action. 4 times the adventure. 4 times the fantastic.

Plot: A group of astronauts gain superpowers after a cosmic radiation exposure and must use them to oppose the plans of their enemy, Doctor Victor Von Doom.

My rating: 6.5/10

Will I watch it again? No.

Here's yet another flick I put off watching for a decade because I'd heard nothing but shit about it and it's not that bad.  I didn't love it but I liked it.  For the most part it was pretty good.  While I didn't care for McMahon's performance as Doctor Doom, I really enjoyed Chris Evans and especially Michael Chiklis as Johnny Storm and Ben Grimm.  They were awesome. The rest of the team did a good job, too, but those guys elevated the picture.  The effects were good and I was completely OK with Grimm's body suit.  The story moves pretty quickly and it's not long into the film before the kids are hit with the radiation and their powers start to surface.  I enjoyed they time spent in each character discovering them but I would have liked more of a learning curve than what the film restricts them to.  And that leads to the rushed build-up and finale with the villain.  I dug how the team defeated Doctor Doom but the picture felt too short and they should have also spent more time with his character arc and destruction.  I was so surprised that I liked it that I feel even worse for childishly trashing the sequel, FANTASTIC 4: RISE OF THE SILVER SURFER (2007).  I feel like I should at least give it another chance someday.  I realize this isn't high art or anything spectacular but I wouldn't be opposed to seeing the sequel again.  The 20th Century Fox DVD has a nice anamorphic widescreen print and an awful lot of extras.  The funny thing is, from what I've seen of the new film coming out soon, I'm not all that jazzed to see it but I'm sure that'll change...maybe in ten years or so.

A Film Unfinished (2010)

Original title: Shtikat Haarchion

Director: Yael Hersonski

Writer: Yael Hersonski

Composer: Ishai Adar

Starring: Hanna Avrutzki, Luba Gewisser, Jurek Plonski, Aliza Vitis-Shomron, Shula Zeder, Janusz Hamerszmit, Eliezer Niborski, Alexander Senderovich, Mendy Cahan, Hava Alberstein, Gera Sandler, Axel Thielmann, Rona Kenan Rudiger Vogler, Alexander Beyer

More info: IMDB

Tagline: In 1942 The Nazi Propaganda Machine Was Hard at Work. 70 Years Later, The Deceit is Finally Unmasked

Plot:  A film about an unfinished film which portrays the people behind and before the camera in the Warsaw Ghetto, exposing the extent of the cinematic manipulation forever changing the way we look at historic images.

My rating: 8/10

Will I watch it again?  Yes.

Great film.  You get to see a good 45-60 minutes of the Warsaw Ghetto from 1942 that hasn't been publicly shown (mostly) and there's even some in color.  It's remarkable, devastating and horrible to see.  It's further punctuated by some commentary by survivors of that place and one of them is even in the footage which is extraordinary to witness as she sees it for the first time since.  The film is well put together in every aspect.  It seems like Holocaust documentaries are a dime a dozen but it's nice to see one that brings something more to the table and this one is quite specific in regards to the time and place.  It's essentially 30 days in May of '42, just a few months before a quarter of a million (nearly half the population of the ghetto) Jews were deported to Treblinka Concentration Camp and killed.  It's fascinating and horrific to see the Nazis staging scenes but even more so was just the random shots of the most poor and dying.  It's ghastly.  The Oscilloscope DVD is light on extras but it does offer an interview with Adrian Wood (14 minutes), an interview with Michael Berenbaum (3 minutes) (both of which are engaging and most informing), the 22 minute vintage film DEATH MILLS (directed by Billy Wilder) which can probably be seen for free on YouTube and trailers to 4 Oscilloscope pictures including this one.