Cinema Alliance Movie Reviews

If you

Coming in at an estimated budget of 93 million dollars, (nearly as much the Tea Party congressional delegates should have spent psychotherapy on last year), I should think that 20^th Century Fox could construct a story that would keep us in our seats, and they do. From the opening shots at the GeneSys lab, to the ending where history has taken a rather abrupt turn for the worse, I was riveted by this allegorical tale.

And let us be clear here, this is an allegory, just as the original movie, Planet of the Apes, was an allegory. It is a story told about a reality that does not exist in order to get us to speculate about the reality that is. Like Br

Where to begin? Well the production design was pretty good. The aliens were scary and the mysterious alien spaceships and weapons were interesting and effective. The men were manly and the women folks were purty. The robbers were crass and stupid. The Doc was gruff yet kind. The rancher was rich and his natural born son was reckless and rude. Adam Beach’s role as the adopted son of rancher Dollarhyde, an orphan Mexican-Indian boy adopted after a battle in the rancher’s checkered past, was the most noble of the lot. A plodding tale of old stereotypes dying hard….but without the punch of Gold of the Sierra Madre or Good the Bad and the Ugly.It was all pretty clich

With the people involved with this one, it seems like a no-brainer. Just look at the lineup – actors: Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia WIlde, Sam Rockwell, execs/producers: Stephen Spielberg, Ron Howard, Brian Grazer, along with the director of the Iron Man movies Jon Favreau.

And then there

If you’re a teenage boy, you’ll love this, if you’re not, you won’t.

This movie seems like it was written specifically as a Megan Fox vehicle. The dialog is so poorly written that Megan Fox is one of the few starlets that could spew the words out in a way that doesn’t make you want to smash the screen. Yes, the dialog is THAT cheesy. Especially Megan Fox’s. One of the key moments in the film she exclaims: “My tit!” to which Amanda Seyfried replies, “No! Your heart!”. Seyfried is a good actor but even she didn’t seem convinced those words just came out of their mouths.

Diablo Cody wrote this. Cody won an Oscar for Juno. It seems Cody tried to apply some of the same writing tricks here but they fall flat without delivery systems like Ellen Page and Michael Cera. Fox doesn’t have the range to pull off anything but stupid and kind of annoying, rarely charming and sometimes sexy.

Fox is weird in here anyway as they try to place her in a high school senior age, but I just wasn’t buying it despite the school girl uniforms. And yes, there are a ton of gratuitous Megan Fox visuals including her licking different things and the opening shot of her crotch.

It is a horror movie and her character is turned into a demon by a band that needs to sacrifice a virgin to satan and of course they choose the wrong girl because they’re morons, so a curse ensues, and the demon emerges in the form of the possessed Jennifer. Amanda Seyfried (the popular Jennifer’s nerdy best friend) kind of saves this movie in some ways as her lines are pretty well written mostly and she plays her role with a genuine intensity and passion. Fox and Seyfried both get a little edgy in here with some bloody moments as well as some sexual tension and violence. Fox is good at being intense when she puts the effort into it.

Speaking of edgy, there are some sex scenes in this film that I was kind of surprised by. Then again, the only time I was comfortable watching teenagers have sex on film was when I was a teenager. Now, as an adult, it’s just kind of uncomfortable and creepy but not in a good way.

JK Simmons (who’s a great actor that gets stuck wearing a bad hair piece, comic relief pehaps?), and the talented Amy Sedaris support.

If you’re a teenage boy, go for it, if not, go for something, anything else.

reviewed by Sean McKnight

Which, by the way is the US title; in Europe and other areas abroad, it’s called The First Avenger. Why, you ask? Because the movie studios understand just how much other countries don’t necessarily like us all the time and the marketing machine is always thinking…

But I digress…

This marks the last superhero installment of the summer courtesy of Disney/Marvel/Whoever. Which is good too because it is getting to be a bit much, so it