Alex Cross (2012)

Oh snap. I'm about to cross Alex Cross. The trailer inferred ill effects should one attempt to do so, but what are my options? This is kind of what I do. Hopefully the towering manliness that is Tyler Perry isn't enough to cause my head to explode at the mere suggestion that I question his virility. I guess I'll take my chances and hope for the best.

"Alex Cross" was not a film that I was looking forward to by any stretch. I've never seen nor intended to see a single Tyler Perry movie despite him releasing roughly 47 of them every year, and my plans were happy and comfortable remaining exactly there. I don't think he's a good actor based on what I've seen of him, all his films looked asinine and boring, I hate the Eddie Murphy fat-suit schtick, he's kind of racist if you listen to him talk, and the fact that he is so transparently marketing a cut and paste product for his brainwashed fan-base consisting manly of white teenaged girls and has never been called on it is frankly irritating to me.

As you may know, this film is a reboot which follows the character of Alex Cross, who was played by Morgan Freeman in "Kiss The Girls" and "Along Came A Spider." Apparently those were such big hits that they felt a need to bring Cross back again. And they thought Tyler Perry was a good replacement for Morgen Freeman. I can't even make a joke about something that stupid. Anyway, Cross is a detective on the tail of a serial killer called "Picasso" (Matthew Fox) who seems to be targeting a business man, working his way up the chain to him, so to speak.

Cross will attempt to catch him using either the power of his massive intellect, or psychic ability. It's kind of hard to tell which one of those he possesses based on what I saw. I guess it's not that important, since by the end he doesn't really use his powers of deduction/magic to solve anything related to actually catching Picasso. He just kind of picks up a gun and goes Charles Bronson on him after the whole thing becomes overtly personal. So whatever. It doesn't really lead to anything anyone else couldn't have done with basic investigative competence.

Ah yes. "Perry's Untouchables," for sure.

"Alex Cross" is not going to break any new boundaries in terms of police dramas featuring psychos. It's all quite stock in a "Red Dragon" meets "In The Line of Fire" way. That's not to say it's bad, it's just recycled. And PG-13. It's a movie about a serial killer that's rated PG-13. That's always a good sign. But hey, it's got Edward Burns, Jean Reno and John C. McGinley. Those are some nice grabs for the supporting cast at least.

You know, I will give Tyler Perry the slightest bit of credit for trying to expand a bit and do something other than playing an old crazy lady, but right from the get go there's a problem with him being in this, which even from the trailer is clearly evident. The problem is that there is no way in this bizarre, messed up world that a guy like Tyler Perry is suited to be an action movie lead.

Maybe if he were cast as one of the IT guys, or the police chief, or a sidekick or something else where he didn't have to shoot a gun or look intimidating or anything involving punching someone else in the face I could have bought it. But as it is, we're supposed to not only believe that this doughy lump of smug is a competent police officer, but that he can run down and take out a guy like Picasso in hand to hand combat, which he does during the film's ludicrous climatic fight scene. I feel it necessary to inform you that earlier in the movie we saw Picasso utterly DESTROY an MMA fighter nearly twice his size. Like, nearly to the point of possibly killing him. With his bare hands. And this miniature, chocolate flavored version of the Stay Puft Marshmallow man is supposed to beat this guy? Please.

Oh honey no, put it down. You're going to hurt yourself.

There's actually something funny that happens every time we are meant to buy Tyler Perry being a badass. Every single time he's shown throwing a punch, or shooting a gun, or anything involving something other than talking, the camera goes into seizure mode like it's inside a dryer on spin cycle. One could easily chalk that up to it being yet another film trying to make the action "more intense" by making sure we can't see a thing, but I'm sure the real reason was so that we wouldn't notice Tyler Perry having a heart attack every time he was forced to raise his fist and swing.

And as you could probably guess, the end fight between Cross and Picasso is filmed so wildly shaky and cut so spastic that it's almost impossible to tell that Matthew Fox is basically standing still waiting to be hit. That's a good thing in the same way that if I had my face melted off, I wouldn't be able to see how hideous I was since my eyes would be gone. It is so pathetic watching the editing try to salvage the action scenes when it's clear the lead actor probably couldn't even put bread in a toaster without needing an oxygen tank. It's like I'm watching a Segal movie by accident.

Matthew Fox is the one shining light that breaks through the haze of cliched plot and Perry's paunch, however. Good gravy, this guy was awesome in "Alex Cross." I've never been huge on Matthew Fox, and I'm still convinced he's a C+ actor at best, since his only got two modes: dour and smirk. But he is in the wrong movie here. He and his character are far too awesome for the likes of "Alex Cross." He needed to be going up against Karl Urban in another "Dredd" movie or in the next "Mission: Impossible" or something. The shenanigans he's pulling off are nearly Bond Villain-esque in their over-the-top nature, and it's by far and away the most entertaining thing going on here.

I would have finished watching "Lost" if Jack had been this awesome as opposed to irritating.

Matthew Fox does provide the only shocking moments in "Alex Cross," one of which occurs in a scene that's all over the trailer but goes down in a much darker way than one would usually expect a scene like that to resolve. The film gets credit for that, but the PG-13 nature of the movie means that both scenes, particularly the one in the trailer, feel a bit neutered. The second scene, which could have been really gruesome, isn't even shown except for a blurry picture of the aftermath sent via text. Must have been a hell of a scene. Glad they didn't show it.

Oh yeah. This guy has no chance against the hulking powerhouse that is the guy who plays Medea.

And I don't mean that unless a movie is graphic that it's no good, but when a person gets a hole blasted through their chest with a large caliber bullet and there's literally not a single drop of blood to be seen or even a hole in their shirt, it tends to undermine what just happened because we can tell that "Alex Cross" is made for the kiddies, and we can't have them seeing scary blood in a movie about a serial killer.

There was another thing that really irked me as well. This was Tyler Perry's mother-in-law they call "Nana-Mama" (groan) who, when Cross goes commando and suits up to take out this crazy assassin, attempts to convey the "message" of the film. This "message" is basically that by taking revenge on this guy, he becomes just as bad as him, and that he won't be able to live with himself if he goes out and gets him. And sure enough the last shot of the movie conveys that he may not be able to move on, and that there's a big cloud hanging over him for what he's done. And you know, that may have been a valid point in another film, but there's one little problem that makes it kind of stupid: He's a goddamn cop. It's his job to stop people like Picasso.

I just wanted to punch Nana-Mama in the face. Her self-righteous judgement on Cross when he goes out to stop a guy MURDERING PEOPLE like his profession requires came across as extremely preachy and insulting. And while it was nice to see Cross basically tell her to piss off, it's clear that we as the audience should be siding with her. You know what? I don't want the people trying to stop serial killers to have second thoughts about turning the other cheek. I want them to stop the serial killers before I get tortured to death. How about that?

"Sorry, folks. I'd uphold the law and protect the innocent and everything but...well...Nana Mama loves her some Jesus so...you know. I'll be in car."

Of course, the end of this movie makes Alex Cross out to be a complete and utter scumbag who definitely and very illegally overreaches not only his professional jurisdiction but also his character's sense of morals, but it's not really having anything to do with Picasso. That happens at the end when Jean Reno's character turns out to be behind the whole Picasso thing (it was so obvious from the beginning), and Cross essentially sells him out to a drug cartel after setting him up. So the Cartel grabs Jean Reno to take him away and kill him. Most likely in a very horrible fashion. Nice, Cross. Very professional. And unnecessary.

I don't understand why that moral grey area was thrown in there at the last minute, like they needed to artificially create a dilemma. Cross didn't have to do that. He could have gone about getting Jean Reno's character in a more official capacity. He didn't have to go all thug-justice on him, and there wasn't really a good reason why he did it that way. In fact, it would have made far more sense for both the story and character to do it in an official capacity, because that's what Cross would probably have done based on the very trite characterization I was given with this film. He's mad, yes, but he's a good cop. At least he was for 95% of the film.

Did you know that Idris Elba was originally going to be Alex Cross? That I could have bought. And not that I need a reason to dislike Tyler Perry, but come on. I could have been watching a good actor here. That's not helping much. On top of that and the fact that he took out Matthew Fox, the only decent character in this whole debacle, it's a wonder I even watched it all the way through to the end after Fox buys it with 15 minutes left to go. Who cares after that point? Then it really is a Tyler Perry movie, and screw that.

If you want a good laugh, check out Tyler Perry trying to be hardcore. It's pretty funny.

THE BOTTOM LINE - "Alex Cross" is a movie whose biggest problem is bad casting for the lead. If the story had been R rated with someone other than Tyler Perry, the combination of that and Matthew Fox could have made for a halfway enjoyable thriller. But as it stands, it's just kind of there and gone with no real redeeming qualities. Tyler Perry should stick to his schtick so I don't feel any inclination to suffer through another one of his performances.

The Last Exorcism: Part II (2013)

When it comes to film, few things are more upsetting to me than when a sequel takes something that was great and takes a big, steaming crap on it. I suppose I could elaborate further, but seeing as the poster for the film I'm speaking of is right next to the phrase "big, steaming crap" I'm guessing that would be unnecessary. I'm just not feeling subtle today, I suppose.

I really, really, really liked "The Last Exorcism." I thought it was one of the best horror movies of 2010, and second only to "The Blair Witch" project when it comes to the found-footage genre. It was suspenseful, well written and genuinely scary, with an ending that was impossible to call and threw me for a total loop. And best of all it was open to interpretation, and the ending's implications could easily change depending on who you talked to, with equally valid points all around. It was a really clever movie.

Then we've got "The Last Exorcism: Part II." I was afraid there would be a sequel, although I wasn't surprised when I heard that there was. The fact that a sequel seems literally impossible given the end of "The Last Exorcism" has little to do with the fact that there is no stopping Hollywood from trying to squeeze a few more bucks from a successful film by attempting to start a franchise. I can't blame them, as movies are a business, but it's a real shame that a bit more care couldn't have been put into a followup to a great film. After all, if this movie tanks, nobody will see a third one. At that defeats the purpose of attempting a franchise.

Before I go any further I'm going to come out and say that if you haven't seen "The Last Exorcism," there are going to be some significant spoilers to that film in here. And I'd suggest that if you're going to watch that movie, read no further, because a lot of the fun of that film is not knowing what's really going on. And really, that's a movie you should see because it's freaking awesome.

"The Last Exorcism: Part II" finds Nell in a home for wayward girls after the events of the first movie. She has little memory of it all, but is pretty tweaked out, as is understandable. Of course the film fluctuates back and forth as to whether or not she remembers what happened, but that's just good script writing. She begins hearing and seeing things that make it clear that the demon that possessed her in the first film is still around, and isn't done with her yet, and is intending to use her as a mortal vessel to do whatever it is that demons intend to do when they do that stuff.

Like rubbing one's face on the wall.

Right there is the biggest problem with this movie, and the reason a sequel is just a bad idea. Any mystery as to whether or not Nell was actually possessed during the first film is completely dissolved.  She totally was and still is possessed. The open to interpretation ending twists of "The Last Exorcism" have now been replaced with a solid answer that goes with the less interesting explanation. And to top everything off it also makes no sense because it begs the question "If the demon wants to use Nell as a vessel, then what was the point of the first movie?" I was under the impression that the ceremony at the end of "The Last Exorcism" saw the release of the demon. So what gives here?

None of this is explained to us, and in fact we are never told what ended up happening after the camera stopped rolling in the first film. Cotton is never mentioned, the film crew following him is never mentioned, Nell's brother is never mentioned, and none of the cultists are mentioned. The only person who shows up is Nell's father, who is somehow still alive, implying that the cultists released him to go about his business after they impregnated his daughter with a demon spawn. Apparently they assumed he wouldn't be mad about that. The movie doesn't even explain how Nell got away from the cultists in the first place, which might have been nice to know as it seemed to me that based on her situation, there was little chance of her going any-damn-where.

Oh yeah. I'd say his chances are great.

Is that nitpicking? Yeah I guess but I've never found it overly harsh to ask questions which boil down to "What the hell is everyone doing" when watching a film. And the best horror is always character driven at its core, and if the characters are just faffing about while doing things and saying things that make no sense, then how in the world am I suppose to care let alone be frightened?

And really, that's all "The Last Exorcism: Part II" is - faffing about. Nell faffs about in the home, she and her friends faff about doing girly things, she then faffs about with her kind-of boyfriend, and he faffs about trying to get in her pants. All this while creepy cultists appear every once in a while to say something creepy to her like "He's coming for you" and then leave. Making their presence known to her seems catastrophically stupid since that means she will 100% for sure know something is up and potentially seek help which might threaten to disrupt their whole scheme, which hey presto ends up happening, but hey I'm not an evil mastermind. What do I know?

So the evil cult looks like if Abbath Doom Occulta joined Linkin Park while touring with Boy George? That's...not that intimidating, really.

But as dumb as the cult was, had they not been so there would be no movie, because once again, it's simply Nell faffing about. The cultists had to be there to slowly follow her around town and say stupid stuff to her in really pathetic attempts at eliciting just the slightest bit of atmosphere. Otherwise we might as well be watching any random episode of "Breaking Amish."

Oh sure, by the end the demon finally does stuff, and the cultists basically disappear from the film once (shock) she attempts to get professional help. And the demon ends up winning, as is the case for movies of this nature, but it was never for anything that the cult did that I could tell. It seems that the plan succeed despite the efforts of its constructors. Unless they knew that by exposing themselves like idiots, Nell would run to another exorcist who would fail and by extension unleash the demon, but I think I'm giving them too much credit. The demon would have probably come out had they done nothing.

Speaking of endings, in the annals of bad endings that exist solely for the purposes of sequel-baiting, this has to be one of the worst I've ever seen. It's not as bad as "The Devil Inside," since it actually has one, but for the love of criminey, the end of "The Last Exorcism: Part II" is just the final kick to the naughty bits for us poor souls who were hoping for something worthwhile. But it did lead to the best unintentionally funny moment of the movie (of which there were plenty) which played out like one of the guys from "Jackass" doing the "out the window down the steps" sequence from the end of "The Exorcist."

Oh, and Nell is a straight up demon now. Yeah, I miss the subtlety of the first film, too.

You know, I really hope nothing else comes from this. I don't want a third entry. I really don't. Ashley Bell deserves better than this. She's a talented actress who has one of the most naturalistic screen presences I've seen, and I want to see her do more stuff worthy of someone of talent. Like bend over backwards in impossible, horrifying contortions and breaking her own fingers one by one as she taunts a preacher with oral sex.

What? Don't look at me like that. That was awesome.

Here's the trailer for "The Last Exorcism: Part II." Like the actual film, the best part is the footage from the first one.

THE BOTTOM LINE - "The Last Exorcism: Part II" is garbage. It's boring, it's stupid, it's not scary, and it completely misses the point of the first film by merely existing. The first 3 minutes are decent. Everything after that is worthy of only your spit on its shoes. I'm so mad about this.

Sinister (2012)

Not quite sure where to start with "Sinister." For me this is kind of the definition of "mixed feelings." I thought it was creepy but I never got scared. The characters were likeable but also annoying. The story was stupid nonsense but it still was intriguing. It's well made but it keeps shooting itself in the foot. This is a confusing movie to work out my feelings on. On the plus side though, at least it's a horror movie that is rated R. Not for any good reason, mind you, but there it is.

The film starts off well enough, to be sure. The very first thing we see is an old 8 mm film of what appears to be a family of four being hanged from a tree. Aside from the obvious disturbing nature of what we're seeing, it's a very effectively creepy moment because it is quiet, underplayed and subtle (which is unfortunately the last time I'll be able to say that). We don't see who is killing them, because that's going to be the mystery that our main character is going to be trying to unravel. Not that it's hard for us to figure out, but it's best to get used to being smarter than the characters whenever you watch any horror movie, just as a general rule.

Our protagonist is Ellison (Ethan Hawke), a true-crime novelist who has hit a patch of hard times recently, and has started writing a new book which he hopes will be his return to success. The book will be about the hangings we saw in the opening scene. So he moves with his wife (who irritatingly doesn't know the difference between "hanged" and "hung") and two kids to the small town where the hangings happened, as I guess it's required that he actually take up residence in the town where the crime happened in order for him to write about it. I have no explanation for that. Even more perplexing is that not only does he evidently need to live in the same town, but he's gone and moved himself and his family into the murder house, while somehow keeping that gem of an idea a secret from them. Because THAT'S a great idea, right?

The movie hasn't even started and already you're a titanic douchebag.

When Ellison finds a box in the attic containing a projector and old 8 mm films, he does what any normal person would do and watches one of them - which turns out to be the video of the hanging we saw in the beginning of the film. He then proceeds to do what most people wouldn't do, and keeps watching them. There's also film of families getting drowned, getting burned alive, getting their throats cut, all that various good stuff. And he never tells anyone about it. Here is the first point when Ellison as a character becomes pretty unlikable.

I understand that he's intrigued by the mystery, and the investigator in him needs to solve it, but there does come a point where common sense should play a little bit of a role. He's got snuff films in his attic which clearly could only have been left by either the killer, someone directly involved in the killings, some evil supernatural force, or all the above. I think at that point the safety of your family should start to become a real concern.

You know, as silly as this was, I'm sure it looked even sillier on paper.

And I'm not saying that it's completely unreasonable that a person would ever do that. It's true that Ellison is stuck in an awkward situation where he's running the risk of losing his wife if his circumstances were to come to light, but not only did he put himself in that position, the underlying reason he's doing all this is because he doesn't want to write anything but true crime novels. It's made clear that he does have options of doing other things to support his family like writing textbooks or whatnot, but he feels it's beneath him and he refuses to do it. So our main character is a guy whose professional pride is the reason he refuses to GTFO when all the crazy spooky stuff starts going down around his wife and kids. Nice guy.

But even though he's a tool, Ellison isn't a bad character, and Ethan Hawke actually does a good job in portraying him. I enjoyed his performance, and it's a credit to Hawke's acting that he made me kind of like Ellison. Even though he was a total chump, he was a believable chump. And there was something intriguing about his blind obsession with needing to know the truth no matter the cost that was in itself something like another layer of whatever horror "Sinister" is trying to convey.

I'm not saying it was completely effective here, but some of the best horror movies know that one of the scariest things you can have is a character that knows they shouldn't do something, but they also know that they have no choice, either through circumstance or basic human need. It's that Lovecraftian angle that knows damn well that you're going to read that Forbidden Tome of Ultimate Knowledge even though it's a forgone conclusion that it will drive you insane, and that's the nature of man. You're going to read the Tome, you're going to open the head-sized box sent from the serial killer, and you're going to smell that milk that expired 2 weeks ago. Because dammit, you need to know.

Pictured - The Great Struggle of Man

And that leads into the best bit of Ellison's character arc, which is closer to the end when he plows forward into this darkness that he finds himself trapped in, even though he knows that it's really, really bad to do so. The image of Hawke, whiskey in hand, sitting beside the projector that has mysteriously reappeared after he had previously burned it, flipping the switch to play the last reel of film was one of the more chilling aspects of "Sinister." You know he's screwed, he knows he's screwed, but at that point he just doesn't care. He's got to know.

For the sake of spoilers I'm not going to give away what's going on, but that doesn't mean it's a twist of "Bruce Willis was dead" proportions. It's actually pretty obvious what's happening, which leads into the other problem with the character of Ellison, which is that for a guy who solves unsolved crimes for a living, he's sure slow to pick up on the obvious. True, there's a supernatural angle going on that he refuses to believe, which is understandable, but even from a forensics standpoint there are some things that are painfully obvious that anyone could have noticed.

I'm just saying that when you have film reels of families getting murdered with no motive or suspect to be found, and in each and every case the one child who was not seen on the tapes went missing afterwards, at some point I'd entertain the possibility that perhaps, JUST PERHAPS the child had something to do with it. I'm just saying.

This isn't the fault of "Sinister," to be fair. It's just that we've had so many movies like this that twists of this nature can be seen coming a mile away. That's a shame, but there it is. If you watch movies with regularity you know what's up. I can see how it would be shocking though if you didn't, because honestly it is pretty messed up what happens. And that is far more effective at being creepy than the overused jump scares that litter this film, which ends up being its biggest detriment.

The last shot of the film. Seriously. What are you doing? Why did you suddenly bend over at 150 mph and tilt your head to the side? What are you looking at? The camera? Is this a fourth wall break? You've never broken the fourth wall before. Why now? Do you know that the end credits are coming? Do you know you're in a movie? Can you hear the music? Does music always erupt from the aether whenever you bend over?

I could go on for days about how much I hate jump scares, but I won't. There's a big difference between being scared and being startled, but most horror films seem to think the two are interchangeable, oftentimes completely relying on the later since it requires far less work since building atmosphere is tougher than simply banging pots together and yelling "Boo." This film is no different, as things will jump out at the screen at us, proceeded by an orchestral sting loud enough to rupture spleens. To the film's credit I can't recall any time when something innocuous was used in an attempt to scare, as there were no kittens jumping out of closets, but at the same time it seems afraid that we won't think something is scary enough without the loud boom.

Honestly there are some really creepy parts in "Sinister," and all of the best ones involve (shock) no music. There's only about two of them, but those moments made me sad because had the rest of the film been as subtle and clever as that, then we're talking really scary stuff. I mean actually scary, not akin to playing with a jack-in-the-box.

Like this bit. Who'd have thought the best scare in the film would have no music sting?

And that's what I was mostly talking about with the whole "shoot yourself in the foot" thing I mentioned earlier. This could have been a really scary film. Instead it's just kind of creepy as long as you don't think about it too hard, and it's not confident enough in itself to believe that what it has to offer is actually frightening. Instead it throws the jumps scares at us to artificially make it scary for people who don't understand the difference. That's a shame.

If you want to watch the entire film in 2 minutes and 30 seconds...here's the trailer.

THE BOTTOM LINE - "Sinister" was an alright film. Definitely better than some of the other horror films released recently, but it's still kind of "meh" at best. It gets points for some good acting and a couple of well done segments, but like most horror movies it's too reliant on jumps scares for me to give it too much credit or recommendation.

Argo (2012)

It's that time again. Time to watch the movie that won Best Picture in this year's Oscar race with judgmental eyes and a crossed-armed "impress me" attitude that will surely be a healthy way to go about it. Not that my expectations were already set against "Argo" like they were for "The Artist." This one looked like a film I could conceivably enjoy. And I was just glad "Lincoln" didn't get top honors. So at the very least, that's something. But in the back of my mind I'm eternally gritting my teeth that "Django Unchained" didn't win. Quentin needs his Best Picture statue, dammit! He's earned it more than most of the rest of these chuckle-heads getting them like candy!

What I ended up getting from "Argo" was a movie that I didn't dislike. That's about the best I can say about it. I didn't dislike it. It was okay. It was acceptable. It was the textbook definition of something that sure didn't suck. And there is no way in Heaven, Hell, The Feywild, Valhalla, Middle-Earth, Cimmeria, or the Romulan Nebula that it was a better picture than "Django Unchained." I haven't seen "Zero Dark Thirty" yet but I'm guessing it was nowhere near as good as that one, either. As it was last year, and the year before that, and the year before that, and the year before that one too, the Best Picture award went to the safest choice. Boo to that mess.

On the other hand, I did like it better than "Lincoln."

"Argo" is about a not-until-recently declassified operation during the Iran hostage crisis of the early 80's. Apart from the hostages being held at the embassy, there were 6 Americans who had managed to flee during the storming of the building, and were taken in by the Canadian ambassador. There they hid for months until the CIA launched a plan so ludicrous that it had to work. The plan was to get them out by disguising them as a film crew scouting locations for a movie. Of course, to make the cover story stick, they had to do a good chunk of the work required to actually make a movie.

More airports need a scary looking bearded man leering over you in quiet judgement.

They went as far as having a script, a producer, a cast, and news events promoting it. And it is fun to watch all the attention to detail that goes on, and how all those pieces eventually come together. The most tense moments of the movie are completely reliant on those little details, as these characters who have no knowledge of the film industry are having to whip out the illustrated storyboards and posters at airport security as they're being grilled on the validity of their story, and having to describe the artistic vision of the movie that they're not making. It does make for some mild suspense.

There's also some surprisingly good humor to be found. Most of the comedy can be found in Alan Arkin and John Goodman's performances, which are admittedly top-notch. Arkin is a very typical "Jew-y" producer with the trademark dry wit and sarcasm that you'd imagine someone like that to have. One of the best bits of "Argo" has him pulling an "I don't like you and you don't like me but screw it let's do this because we're both jerks" speech on another producer to get his support for the project, and it makes for a pretty funny scene that also feels very natural. And John Goodman is again playing John Goodman, and that's awesome. He's like Jeff Bridges in that he's always the same guy, but you never get tired of him because he rocks so hard. Bryan Cranston also gets a few good ones in there too, which is also unsurprising as he's Bryan Cranston and also freaking awesome.

"Bryan, where are you going?"

"Aw ta hell with all this. I'm making meth."

It's no surprise that the most interesting bits of "Argo" are the Hollywood bits with Arkin and Goodman. I don't want to say that the Iran portions were necessarily boring, but like I'm going to bring up later, there's no suspense because you know the Americans made it out. The Hollywood stuff was classified. We don't really know how they did it or what went into it, so there's some genuine drama there. Plus when you've got Arkin and Goodman tearing it up, it's hard to care as much about Affleck and his beard on the other side of the world.

This leads into my biggest problem with "Argo," which was that there wasn't enough going on to warrant that tension the movie thinks it has. Upon reflection, not a whole lot really happened. Americans escape overrun embassy in Iran, Canadians hide them, the CIA concocts a fake movie production, Ben Affleck goes in, the plan works, they get on a plane, they leave Iran. Roll credits. Truly an epic tale that makes J.R.R Tolkien look like E.L. James.

All this is no doubt well made, and the attention to detail and time period is pretty outstanding, as the movie rather egotistically points out during a masturbatory end credit sequence comparing shots from the movie to actual photos. But when all a movie has to hang its hat on is getting little details right, there's not much to get all arrogant about. And all that tension people were saying it had basically boils down to two phone calls. That's the big climactic hurdle our heroes must overcome: Getting someone on the phone. It's not even a tense conversation. It's just that John Goodman had to pick it up in time and say "Hello, Studio 7." Aside from that his biggest challenge was getting past a nerd with a walkie talkie, which between that and dealing with an Iranian extremist proved the more challenging venture.

"No, look you guys, this movie's legit. It's about a kid and an old wizard with magical powers, but later we find out the magic is actually bacteria! They won't be able to print money fast enough."

Not helping was the fact that the ending was already known to us from the very beginning, as it's based on a true story. We know they got out. All those little details don't matter too much when you're building tension because you know they're going to be fine. Even when their cover gets blown at the last moment and there's an effort to stop them before their plane takes off, there was never a moment when I was worried for them. The minute John Goodman picked up the phone I knew they were going to be just fine, and the dash to stop them, which was the nail-biting climax of the film, was completely ineffective on me.

The problem with "Argo" is that the fluff is good, but there's no crunch, so to speak. I brought nothing away from it. It's not a movie that's going to warrant any kind of discussion afterwards. Now I don't mean that to imply that unless a film is "deep" it's without value. Plenty of my favorite films wouldn't warrant any discussion afterwards besides "Did you see that guy getting blown in half?!" That doesn't mean it's bad. That means it's entertaining for what it's trying to do. But with "Argo" I can't say that I went as far as to even think about it after it was over. It was done and out of my head. In fact it was sometimes difficult to think about it when it was happening.

At least the proposed movie featuring a guy getting blown in half would have elicited a reaction out of me. In that case it would have been excitement or a high five if someone else was in the room. But when I feel absolutely nothing about a film afterwards, I just feel like I've wasted my time. I'd honestly rather watch an epically bad movie than something bland like "Argo" or "The King's Speech" or "The Social Network" or "Lincoln" or any of the rest of the "made-to-win-Oscars" brand of film making.

Now I'm not saying Affleck is a bad director...but I'm sorry, Ben. Tommy Wiseau has you beat in the entertainment department.

And by the way, don't look up what really happened if you want to enjoy "Argo" as a factual film, because the reality of the situation was actually far less exciting. I'm not saying that a movie has to be 100% accurate to be good, after all that's why it's called "based on true events" so they can have dramatic license. It's a movie, that's fine. But when you're bored by a film and then find out later that they actually jazzed it up quite a bit for the sake of "excitement," and it's STILL dull, it's all you can do to shake your head and wonder if it was worth it.

So once again my reputation for being a complete snob and not caring much for any movie that wins Best Picture is intact. I can't call "Argo" a bad film. It's just so unmemorable. Ben Affleck may be the newest sacred cow of Hollywood, but I think we may have another George Clooney/Sean Penn on our hands with him - meaning that he's going to get way more credit than he probably deserves, simply because he is who he is. And that's a shame because I think he's pretty good. I'd hate to see it go to his head. But even if it doesn't I'm sure Tarantino will still get jipped.

Check out the trailer for "Argo." I like how they used the "Inception" BWAAAAAA to make it intense.

THE BOTTOM LINE - "Argo" is a solid example of basic competence. This is a vanilla milkshake. This a vodka and tonic. There is nothing overly special about it, tasty as it may be. I can't see a single reason this deserved Best Picture. And it's not just a matter of me holding it to a higher standard than others. I would have thought the same of it had it been by anybody else, or even if it hadn't been nominated for anything. It's worth a look, but not worth any gold statue.

A Good Day to Die Hard (2013)

Well good freaking job, movie industry. You succeeded. You made a worse movie than "Live Free or Die Hard." I'm so mad about this that I'm not even giving it the dignity or the brain power of my usual nonsensical lead-in. This is straight to the carotid artery, cut your throat and leave to you bleed out behind a Pump 'n Munch gas station to the point here. Nothing subtle or cheeky this time. "A Good Day to Die Hard" ate. And it ate the whole thing.

I love the "Die Hard" series. I really do. "Die Hard" is one of the best action movies of not only the 80's but ever, and you can replace that statement with "Die Hard With A Vengeance" and "90's" and say the same thing. "Die Hard 2" isn't that great, but that's only when compared to the other two. It's still a rock-solid action flick. The biggest problem with "Live Free or Die Hard" was that it was PG-13, although the fact that it was also painfully average didn't help matters. But I'd still rather watch PG-13 John McClane before most other action heroes.

For that reason it's so unfathomably irritating for me to have to sit and watch one of the greatest action heroes of all time (not only McClane but Bruce Willis) be subjected to this uninspired, confusing, boring, horrendously shot and brutally un-fun shlock. This isn't only by FAR the worst entry in the series, this is one of the most unwatchably bad action movies I've ever seen. "Live Free or Die Hard" is like "Aliens" next to this.

"Come out to the coast, we'll get together, make another "Die Hard," have a few laughs."

"AGTDH" is directed by John Moore, the guy whose films include "Max Payne" and the remakes of "Flight of The Phoenix" and "The Omen," so right off the bat you know what kind of quality we're looking at. And seeing his IMDB page I realize that apart from his short films I've seen his complete body of work. That makes me sad. This guy is a hack to rival Michael Bay, although I blame the films he chooses to direct more than his skills at film making. Thankfully he only makes a movie roughly once every 3 years.

What. The hell. Do you have. To SMILE about?

This is going to be a tough one to talk about. The reason for that has much to do with the fact that the story was a huge mess that was impossible to make any sense of, and despite running it over and over in my brain for days it's still kind of a jumbled haze of shaky-cam, explosions, bickering, stupid characters, bad acting, double crosses and odd incest subtext.

The beginning finds McClane's son, Jack (Jai Courtney) in a Russian jail after shooting a man in a nightclub, seemingly under the orders of Komarov, a Russian...business man I guess. It's a special film that has it so that you're not quite sure what the bad guys even do. Anyway, Komarov is already in jail for doing something. It's implied that his former partner, Chagarin, set him up. Komarov is set to go to trial for whatever he was supposed to have done, and Chagarin says he'll drop the case if he gets "the files." More on that magical MacGuffin later.

John McClane finds out about Jack and heads to Moscow to...do something about all this I guess. When Chagarin's men set off a bomb in the courthouse, springing Jack, who absconds with Komarov, we find out that Jack is actually working for the CIA, and shot the guy to get in the same courtroom as Komarov in order to nab him during the escape and get "the files." After McClane gets in the way of Jack's escape, a high-speed, high collateral damage pursuit with Chagarin's men ensues, and McClane, Jack and Komarov eventually get away. However, for some unexplained reason, the CIA cancels his extraction due to Jack taking too long. I never saw any kind of reason they couldn't wait another 3 minutes, as we never knew what the extraction plan was to begin with, but the movie doesn't feel it needs to explain itself to the likes of you. This is a trend.

Evidently, changing clothes in order to do some blow-up-some-government-installation terrorist work means that it's necessary to look and act like you're two seconds away from doing a porno. (facepalm)

That brings up the first big thing I don't understand. Why on earth did the CIA have to have Jack in the courtroom with Komarov? That would imply that the CIA knew beforehand that Chagarin was going to blow up the courthouse in down to the last minute detail, which leads to all kinds of questions regarding the ethics of information exchange between two allied countries. And why is he even there anyway? He was arrested for shooting someone. Why would he be at Komarov's trial? Those are two separate cases.

And here's the best part of the whole stupid story: We find out 50 minutes in that Komarov is the main bad guy of the movie, and he's been playing Chagarin the whole time. Not only is it generally a really bad idea to not unveil your villain until the film is more than half over, but that also makes the entire blow-up-the-courthouse segment completely absurd. If he was fully capable of rigging this elaborate ruse full of double-double crosses capable of duping the Russian government and the CIA, all orchestrated from behind bars mind you, and then just kills Chagarin anyway with a phone call and impossibly well-coordinated dramatic timing, why didn't he just spring himself from jail?

That also brings up the issue of "the files." Well, as we find out, those "files" that both the CIA and Chagarin are after don't exist. Turns out Komarov was making it up. I have no idea what they were supposed to be, and apparently nobody else including Jack, Chagarin, or the CIA knew either. They just knew they wanted them. So great. The CIA is like a little kid throwing a tantrum at a Toys 'R Us. Fantastic.

Of course this is all speculation on my part since I honestly had no idea what was going on while I was watching "AGDTDH." This is after days of trying to sort it out in my head. And I've still got nothing. It's such an overly complicated plot for what ends up being a completely brain dead fart of nonsense, shell casings and shattered glass thrown at the screen. The only two things I can be sure of is that a) It's stupid and b) They wind up in Chernobyl. Yes, that Chernobyl. Because the incident at Chernobyl was actually caused by Komarov and Chagarin's illegal uranium smuggling as opposed to a horrific accident which caused untold death and suffering. Are we dumber yet?

Okay, NOW we're dumber. Hanging off a truck that's hanging off a helicopter. That did it.

I don't even feel like continuing trying to explain the plot. You read that rambling mess. I guarantee you that was more cohesive than the movie itself. A helicopter blows up, the bad guy dies, McClane says "Yippee Ki-Yay" like we give a crap at this point, and blissfully the movie ends. I don't care anymore.

You know, this could have been anyone. It didn't have to be John McClane. In fact, McClane is really just along for the ride, and if anything he's just kind of there to get in the way most of the time. Every once in a while he'll have to save Jack since Jack is a failure of mythic proportions and can't do anything right yet continuously insults McClane over how big of a loser he is, even though McClane is always spot-on in his assessment despite literally having just shown up, immediately making him a better spy than Jack without having any training. So that says a lot about Jack right there, doesn't it? What a great character.

I couldn't stand Jai Courtney in this movie. I've heard he's really good in other things, but this is the first thing I've seen him in, and though it's probably unfair to judge him based on a hemorrhoid like this I'm perfectly okay with saying that he was absolutely terrible. He spends the entirety of the movie complaining and bickering with Bruce Willis like a snot-nosed little brat who has been forced to go to Little League when he doesn't want to. The ENTIRETY of the movie. And then Bruce Willis snarks back to him. This is what every single exchange of dialogue they have boils down to:

Jack: "I had an unpleasant upbringing because you're a bad father."
McClane: "I acknowledge this, but you're an asshole."

Sound like fun? Imagine that for an hour and a half straight, followed by an out of nowhere "I love you, dad" because THAT was certainly earned after nothing but hate for the whole affair leading up to it. Maybe all it took was McClane saving his stupid ass like 5 times. What a guy.

He'd say something snarky about his dad to that hose if he thought it would listen.

And let's not forget the villains. It's a pretty obvious fact at this point that the quality of a "Die Hard" movie is directly proportional to the villain it has. The first and third had Alan Rickman and Jeremy Irons respectively, and those movies were the best of the series by far. And here with Komarov, we have some vague Franco Nero looking guy who looks more like someone's dad or a guy working at a liquor store who would card you and then give you crap because he doesn't believe it's you on your license because you've shaved your beard since getting the picture taken and all you want is your freaking Budweiser and to go home. I'm not scared.

Then we've got his daughter, Irina (Yuliya Snigir) who I would call the worst villain in any "Die Hard" movie ever with one exception. She has that tired schtick were she acts all innocent at first and then turns into a complete psychopathic freak. I think I know where they were trying to go with her, in that they really wanted Katya from "Die Hard With A Vengeance," but obviously they couldn't bring that character back. So they probably just sat the actress down, had her watch that movie and said "Okay, just do that. Only make it so that you're not intimidating in the least, and that you really, really want to have sex with your dad. Make it obvious."

I mentioned the one exception. There was one guy in this movie who is, BY FAR, not only the absolute nadir of "Die Hard" villainy, but potentially the worst villain I have ever seen. I'm thinking really hard about this, and I'm drawing a blank on who was worse than this guy.

Seriously, are you supposed to be Clive Owen from "Shoot 'Em Up?" What's with the freaking carrot?

I have absolutely no idea what this guy's deal was. His name is Alik. He's played by Rasha Bukvic. He's this hammy, tap-dancing, cliche "Amereekan peeg dogs" speech spouting, carrot eating, Clive Owen looking, I'm-trying-so-hard-to-be-Christopher-Walken piece of insufferable garbage who was so bad at being a bad guy that the film which was already ground to a halt started going backwards every time he showed up. He's built up for a good chunk of the movie to be the big bad, only to do a stupid little dance routine to try and scare (?) McClane and Jack, although it's clear that even with guns to their heads, the McClane boys are taking this guy about as seriously as Yakov Smirnoff. And he doesn't care. And then later, blissfully, out of nowhere he gets shot in the head. That was the best part of the movie. Shame it took them over an hour into it to put one in his dome.

And how is Bruce Willis during all this? He looks tired. He looks like he doesn't want to be there. It looks like he's sad filming this. There is so little fun in what he's doing that it's really depressing. There is no John McClane in this movie. Even as the overpowered superhero that the series has made him into from being just an ordinary schmuck trapped in bad situations (which was the reason we loved him, by the way), it's still a joyless, irritated performance. So there you go. Why is he even there? And why is this called "Die Hard" again?

And why is ordinary every-man John McClane completely impervious to injury now? Remember back when he had to walk over broken glass without shoes and spent the rest of the movie limping? Now he literally swims in broken glass. And he's FINE. When did he become The freaking Wolverine?

And evidently, an 8 inch piece of rebar sticking out of you isn't a big deal and doesn't even require dressing the wound. Good to know.

I haven't even mentioned the action yet, what little of it I could actually make out. The shaky camera laden action scenes are about the only things more indecipherable than the plot. It doesn't matter how many cars you wreck in a chase scene, or how much totally unnecessary collateral damage you cause if there isn't a shot during it that lasts more than a third of a second, making it totally impossible to follow. So there you go. Where the hell is John McTiernan when you need him?

And since when does John McClane not give a crap about innocent bystanders? The amount of people that he probably killed in that car chase was a least in the dozens. And he doesn't care. Was it because they were Russian? He may be overseas, but he's still a police officer, for crying out loud. Can we at least get his character right? If I may break out a very nerdy but useful tool with the classic D&D Character Alignment, McClane is Chaotic Good. Not Chaotic Neutral, okay? There's a big freaking difference. Mostly in the fact that's he's NOT cool with killing random pedestrians who get in his way. Have the writers ever even SEEN a "Die Hard" movie before?

 Well, obviously they have. John McClane is wearing plaid. Clearly that's a callback to "Die Hard 2."

I'm so tired. So very tired. This movie makes me sad just thinking about it, and writing this entry has taken a lot out of me. I feel like I need to lay down or something. Just shut myself up in my room and stare at the wall for about 20 minutes in complete silence just to reset my brain. They killed "Die Hard." It's done. There's no coming back from this. I'd never suspect in a million years that one of the worst action movies I've ever seen was from one of my favorite movie franchises.

A fly in the ointment. A monkey in the wrench. And most certainly a pain in the ass.

The trailer had the audacity to make this movie look good. LIES.

THE BOTTOM LINE - Sadness. Utter, black, total sadness and shock. Watching "A Good Day to Die Hard" is akin to watching your dog burn to death in front of you. Something I love is now defiled, and I don't want to talk about it anymore.

Silent Hill: Revelation (2012)

You know, I guess this shouldn't be that shocking of a development. It's a pretty well established rule that there is no safety from a good movie getting a bad sequel. That's because the industry really doesn't give two polished sloth turds whether or not it's going to be a good film, or do any kind of justice to what came before it. All that's important is money.

Will it have a decent shot at making its budget back? Then it's green-lit. It's as simple as that. If there's a chance that might have some trouble doing so, they just make it in 3D so that they can charge $14.00 for a ticket and make their money back artificially by having each ticket sale essentially count as two. This is not difficult math to figure out. And with the overseas market which eats up American films like they were candy, they don't have to spend a lot of money to turn a profit. Which is why sequels rarely ever have bigger budgets.

I'm not mad at this, by the way. It's a business. I understand that businesses exist to make money. That's what they do. I'm just sad. I'm sad that so little care is given to quality. It's quantity that is the important thing. Quantity as quickly as possible once some modicum of success is found.

What I don't understand about "Silent Hill: Revelation" (Ugh. See "Lessons With Professor Pat #75" for my thoughts on that title. I'm so tired of complaining about it.) is why it took so long for it to get made. It's been 6 years since "Silent Hill." You would have thought that if they waited that long to make another one it would either be either a reboot or some kind of carefully crafted follow up. But this is a direct sequel, and it comes across has having been made in about 2 weeks after a drunken bet/cocaine party.

It's clear right from the very beginning that this movie was not made with the same artistic style and subtlety (yes, damn it, subtlety) that the original was. The sets look cheap, the effects are cartoonish as opposed to gritty and surreal, everything has that same crisp, glossy sheen that you see in music videos or the "Star Wars" prequels or the Platinum Dunes remakes of "Friday the 13th" and "A Nightmare On Elm Street." It is so far removed from the tone of the first film that it seems less like a sequel and more like a cut-scene from one of the games as directed by some no-name hack.

Hey look. Pyramid Head is in the latest Linkin Park video. How appropriate.

Not surprisingly, the best parts of "Silent Hill: Revelation" are whenever we're watching a flashback to the far superior "Silent Hill." And the flashbacks are all from the 8 mm sequence it had, which, even though it purposefully looked grainy and cheap, looks leagues better than anything else we see in this movie. Mostly because it looked somewhat real. This movie looks more like someone smeared Vaseline on an action-figure play-set.

After the events of "Silent Hill," we see that Harry (Sean Bean) and his daughter Heather (Adelaide Clemens) are living a somewhat nomadic lifestyle, going from town to town, always on the run from the cult of Silent Hill. They are constantly pursuing them in an effort to drag Heather back to the town, so that Alessa can be destroyed once and for all.

"But hold up," anyone who may have seen the first film might be saying. "Don't they mean 'Sharon' and not 'Heather?' And how in the world did she get back to Sean Bean? Didn't the end of the first movie imply that Silent Hill was like Hotel California in that you can check out but you can never leave? And where's Radha Mitchell? And aren't all the cultists dead? Wasn't that the entire point of the first film?"

I can explain some of that. The first is that Heather is indeed Sharon from the first movie, but she's changed her name so as to hide from the cultists. Why they continue to call her Heather after she's actually IN Silent Hill again I'm not so sure since at that point you're not really in Witness Protection anymore, are you? Just use your name at that point. It's confusing otherwise. This is especially so because since Radha Mitchell spent most of "Silent Hill" screaming "SHARON!!!" at the top of her lungs, I've kind of permanently associated that name with that character. Every time they call her Heather I have to mentally adjust the dialogue.

Well, on the plus side Adelaide Clemens looks so much like Radha Mitchell that she could be her daughter, so that's good casting. What? The character is adopted? Oh. Never mind.

It was also nice of them to completely obscure Jodelle Ferland's face from the numerous flashbacks they show to the first film, so that we never see her. That's fantastic. Thanks for that. I'm sure Jodelle also appreciated it since that meant you probably didn't have to pay her anything after recasting her character since she's older now. Even though there's no way that we would probably even be able to notice a difference between the new girl and Jodelle under that makeup, let alone mistake them for a different spooky little white faced girl in a purple dress who is ON FIRE. Heaven forbid this movie get confusing.

Sharon/Heather was indeed apparently able to escape from Silent Hill as explained by Rose (Radha Mitchell) via vision/hallucination to Sean Bean. From my understanding of it, somehow Rose found a way to send her back with no memories of the events of the first film, but she couldn't come back herself for some reason. That's about all the explanation you get, which is pretty much the screenwriter waving his hand like Obi-Wan Kenobi and saying "You don't need to concern yourself with that." I choose to believe Rose is a wizard, but only had enough magic for one last spell. It makes more sense that what "Silent Hill: Revelation" gave me.

As to the cultists of Silent Hill, out of all the inane, nonsensical ramblings of this film's story, that makes the least amount of sense. Even though at the end of the first film Alessa got her revenge and butchered the cultists like a Velociraptor in a room full of paraplegics, apparently now Alice Krige's character had a sister we've never heard of before, Claudia Wolf (Carrie-Anne Moss) and there's even more cultists now, despite Alessa running around free with impunity and nobody to stop her.

"Oh, we've been here the whole time. You didn't see us in the basement? We were all totally there."

So okay, fair question here: If Alessa got her revenge, who are these chuckle-heads living in Silent Hill now? How did they get there if Silent Hill was all about trapping the people who wronged her? Were they part of the original cultists, too? Why wouldn't Alessa just up and kill them since they have no sanctuary anymore? Why is this Claudia Wolf person able to operate out in the open if Alessa is unstoppable like they claim? And how is the undercover reluctant cultist Vincent (Kit Haringon) able to leave Silent Hill to go after Heather? If he can leave, why can't Rose?

And these are nitpicks, but how does the hell-scape of Silent Hill have a fully operational mental institution complete with people who must have to do paperwork and answer phones since we clearly see typed files on patients interned and answering boards lit up? Who would be calling? Do they pay people to work there? Do the demons have desk jobs sometimes? Do they have unions? Why is there even a need for a mental institution in what is essentially Hell? Everyone there is crazy. Are there people more crazy than crazy? Why is there a carnival? In fact, how does Silent Hill even have electricity?

AND WHY THE HELL IS MALCOM MCDOWELL IN THIS MOVIE!?

Seriously, Malcom? Is there anything you won't do for a paycheck? I know this is probably one of the bigger films you've been in recently, but for the love of Pazuzu you were in "A Clockwork Orange!" You are such a good actor, but you seem to only enjoy being in terrible, terrible tripe! Stop that, please! You can say "no," Malcom. You really can! I guess it doesn't really matter much. His part probably took a day to film at most. And he's unsurprisingly the best part of the whole affair despite his sole scene lasting all of 3 minutes, tops. I don't know what he got paid, but for a day's work it was probably pretty good.

So Heather and Vincent go to Silent Hill after Sean Bean gets kidnapped, Vincent turns out to be a cultist who lured her there but he is having second thoughts about it, they get captured, he gets thrown in the mental institution, she meets Malcom McDowell, there's something about this talisman that I never had the slightest clue as to the purpose of, she springs Vincent, there's a carnival, she joins with Alessa much like Rose did in the first movie, Pyramid Head comes and kills Claudia Wolf (which makes both Heather and Alessa's involvement utterly pointless since neither does anything to stop the villain), and then they leave but Sean Bean stays behind to find Rose. Foreshadow another sequel. That's the movie.

And no, I have no idea why they can freely leave Silent Hill, but Rose is somehow still trapped. That makes at least 5 people who have left the town without incident. What's Rose's hold up? Why are the rules as to when or if you can enter or leave Silent Hill apparently random? I wouldn't have as much of a problem if the rules were indeed totally nonsensical but it seems that the characters all understand what's going on like they have a pamphlet called "Silent Hill's Bullshit and You." Everyone gets it but the audience.

Some consistency is all I ask. Can I get some rules? Some order? Anything?

What's so frustrating about a movie like "Silent Hill: Revelation" is that it's clearly made with the expectation that the viewer has an encyclopedic knowledge of the games. I can't imagine it making the slightest bit of sense otherwise. But on the other hand, it's also clear based on my observations that this is most likely absolutely nothing like the games. And I can tell because I can't imagine a game having a story that made so little sense.

It's obvious that there are many, many references spread throughout, such as numbers on hotel doors given prominence and a red high-heeled shoe being in an obvious and very awkward place for no good reason other than it's clearly from the game. But all that doesn't make it an accurate adaptation. That just means there's a bunch of random stuff from the games thrown in there. There's a big difference between adapting something for the screen and just throwing nuggets of fan-service at us, and this is a movie whose narrative is completely fueled by that.

It would be akin to taking a box of "Star Wars" action figures, holding them up one by one and saying "Hey! Remember Luke Skywalker? Remember Han Solo? Remember Darth Vader? He has a red lightsaber that goes PSHFOOSHWOOOWOWOWOWOW! Nerf herder!!" and expecting that to make a cohesive narrative.

I'm guessing that pink bunny means something to someone, but all I get out of it is confusion and sadness.

I know there's probably answers to all of the questions I brought up. I know that if someone knew the games backwards and forwards they would probably be able to piece together the whys and hows. But that's no excuse for babbling incoherence. A film should be able to stand on its own merits apart from the source material. It's the same with novel adaptations. I shouldn't have to do research on what I'm watching while I'm watching it to make sense of anything. That's Screenplay 101.

And on top of everything else, it can't even make good use of its frankly outstanding cast. There are some heavy hitters in here with Bean and McDowell, and Carrie-Anne Moss is no slouch either. Plus I was really excited to see Kit Harington in something besides "Game of Thrones," as I think he's got a really promising career ahead of him after he's done being Jon Snow. But here he's just wasted talent along with the rest of them, though I did get a nerdy charge out of him saying "The dark is coming" since, you know, that and winter. Even our lead Adelaide Clemens, though she's still a relative unknown in American films, has potential I suppose. But she's certainly not given much to work with. And despite playing a grown up Jodelle Ferland, I assure you, she is no Jodelle Ferland.

I'm going to ask a very, very, VERY simple question here, by the way. In the movie, it's been 8 years since the events of the first film. In real life, it's been 6 years since "Silent Hill." Jodelle is 18 now. Same age as the character in "Silent Hill: Revelation." Why didn't they just, oh I don't know, CAST JODELLE FERLAND TO PLAY THE PART AGAIN? Does that just make too much damn sense? Plus it'd be the first film she's headlined since "Tideland" in 2005. Give the girl work!

Not that I'd want to see Jodelle in this crap, but DAMN IT, people! The person in this picture is the appropriate age to play her character again! This isn't hard!

Honestly, I don't know how I would have made this movie work. Having not played the games, I couldn't tell you if there's a good story to be made into a movie in there. There probably is, but at the very least, I can't see it involving any of these characters. Maybe if a new set of people got caught in Silent Hill there might be something to it. But then again, maybe it's best to just leave it alone for once and not make a sequel. How's that for a novel concept?

Check out the trailer and know that it's even worse than it looks.

THE BOTTOM LINE - "Silent Hill: Revelation" is a mess. The story is rubbish, it looks cheap, and it squanders a pretty solid cast. Die-hard fans of the games would probably understand it better, but I can't see them enjoying it. In fact they'd probably hate it more than me because I'm guessing they screwed the source material up pretty badly. I'm neutral on it when it comes to fandom, but I do hate it for being a lousy follow-up to a movie I really liked. Boo hiss.