Alex Cross

Directed by Rob Cohen.

2012. Rated PG-13, 101 minutes.

Cast:

Tyler Perry

Edward Burns

Matthew Fox

Jean Reno

Carmen Ejogo

Rachel Nichols

Cicely Tyson

John C. McGinley

Werner Daehn

Bonnie Bentley

Giancarlo Esposito

Alex Cross is the lead character in a series of novels written by James Patterson. He was previously brought to the big screen in 1999's Kiss the Girls and 2001’s Along Came a Spider with Morgan Freeman playing the role. Here, the honors belong to Tyler Perry. Our reintroduction to the detective/psychologist starts with him finding out that his wife (Ejogo) is pregnant with their third child. Actually, it starts with a perp chase that’s totally irrelevant to the plot except for being an easy way to introduce us to Alex’s team, but that’s neither here nor there. By the way, the team consists of Alex, his partner and best friend since forever Thomas (Burns) and fairly new to the crew Monica (Nichols). After getting the news about his family’s expansion Alex and company gets called in on a case where a very wealthy young lady and all her bodyguards were found murdered at her home. Getting his Sherlock on, our hero intuits that it was only guy responsible, he tortured the rich chick just for fun, was drawing a picture of her as she was dying, despite not actually being able to see any real evidence of this, and that she was not the main target. The drawing leads his team to dub the bad guy Picasso (they do eventually find a drawing). Trying to catch the artist ensues while he kills more women.

By now, you should see my main problem with this movie. No, it’s not the star. More on him, later. I get that Alex is a genius with immense powers of deductive reasoning. However, to figure out a lot of things in this movie he’s more psychic than psychologist. Take the drawing, for example. Granted, I’m certainly not a crime scene investigator. However, from the information before him I’m not seeing how Alex just decides this guy was drawing a picture of his victim. A few moments later, voila! Thomas finds a picture. A short while later, he’s folding the drawing in precisely the right manner to uncover a clue left by Picasso.

This gift for precise premonition isn’t limited to our hero, either. The bad guy seems able to quickly know things he really shouldn’t. In particular, he magically knows where Alex is going to be in one scene and where another cop lives in the next. It feels lazy, as if the writers just relied on the fact that similar things happen in movies all the time so we probably won’t question it.

Things eventually cycle back in Alex’s favor. This is where we get our most egregious misuse of our hero’s ability. The movie’s entire runtime is spent on the cat and mouse between Alex and Picasso, which is fine, but never clearly establishes reason and motive for the events. Instead, after what we think is the finale, Alex just suddenly knows a lot more information and we have a bit more movie to watch.

In the lead role, Tyler Perry was just fine. He won’t make anyone forget anything Morgan Freeman ever did, but he performs admirably. In roles that require him to show his own face he’s usually bland, hardly engaging. Here, those qualities work for him because it gives the analytical Cross the proper distance from most of the atrocities being committed. It is my understanding that Idris Elba was originally signed to play this role. I think Elba is the better actor, but plays even his non-action roles with too much brawn for this character. Perry’s a better fit and did a good job.

The rest of the cast also does well. Matthew Fox as our bad guy is particularly good. He gives us a solid psychopath. Filling out the rest of the roster are a bunch of folks capable of great work, but given very little to do: Jean Reno, Rachel Nichols, Giancarlo Esposito, Carmen Ejogo, and possibly John C. McGinley. Director Rob Cohen has assembled a nice group but made little use of them with a paint-by-numbers screenplay filled with easy answers.

Safe

Directed by Boaz Yakin.

2012. Rated R, 95 minutes.

Cast:

Jason Statham

Catherine Chan

Chris Sarandon

Robert John Burke

James Hong

Reggie Lee

Danny Hoch

Anson Mount

Sándor Técsy

Joseph Sikora

Igor Jijikine

James Colby

There’s a tween-aged girl name Mei (Chan) who quite literally has a mind like a computer. Not only is she a math genius on a level beyond comprehension, she has the ability to look at large amounts of data and memorize it in seconds. What’s more, anything she commits to memory is never forgotten. It just so happens that she has an uncle in the gangster business that finds out about her skills and wants to put them to good use. He yanks the girl out of school in Hong Kong, threatens to kill her mother (!) if she doesn’t cooperate and ships her off to New York to help with his organization. Basically, she’s to keep the books in head, eliminating any paper trails. Eventually, she’s made to memorize a rather long number that the rival Russian mafia also wants to get their hands on. The Russians kidnap the girl and she somehow manages to escape. Now both gangs plus every dirty cop in the city is hunting for her.

This where Luke (Statham) comes in. He’s an MMA fighter who accidentally wins a fight he was supposed to have thrown. As punishment, those pesky Russian mobsters kill his wife and plan to make him spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder. While contemplating whether or not he should step in front of a speeding subway train, he notices Mei being chased by the same guys who killed his lady and decides to help out, suddenly turning into The Transporter.

Once again, Statham delivers the goods in the action department. He beats up and/or kills multiple bad guys in a string of fun, brutal action sequences. Though over the top, they’re still nowhere near the level of ridiculousness of those Transporter flicks I alluded to or his Crank movies. This gives things a grittier feel, removing the tongue-in-cheek aspect of both of those franchises. Still, our hero gives us just enough of his trademark humor to keep things from getting too serious.

The story surrounding the action also holds together pretty well. The girl’s predicament and the way law enforcement figures into this is all fairly intriguing. It’s not a perfect movie, by any means, but we get enough twists to keep us on our toes. We also wind up in some interesting places. On the downside there are a number of plot holes. Most troublesome of these is we’re never sure of the truth concerning Mei’s mother. Regardless, its drawbacks aren’t enough to make it a bad watch. If you’re into action flicks, this is a pretty good one with better plot than many.

MY SCORE: 6.5/10

The Amazing Spider-Man

The Adventures of Tintin

Directed by Steven Spielberg.

2011. Rated PG, 107 minutes.

Cast:

Jamie Bell

Andy Serkis

Daniel Craig

Nick Frost

Simon Pegg

Toby Jones

Daniel Mays

Gad Elmaleh

We kinda sorta meet Tintin (Bell) and his dog. He buys a model ship, and people immediately start trying to buy it from him. When he won’t sell, they try stealing it. Should he get killed in the process, the bad guys won’t think it such a big deal. That’s The Adventures of Tintin in a nutshell. Actually, that’s it, almost entirely. The only other thing you need to know is eventually he teams up with an alcoholic sea-captain whom the bad guys, one of whom looks suspiciously like the movie's director, want to keep around for some reason. Lots of swashbuckling ensues.

My main problem with Tintin is that’s all there is. We get no set up and are thrust into the adventure with no emotional attachment to anything on the screen. Director Steven Spielberg is certainly no stranger to telling his story through action. He did a masterful job of just that in Saving Private Ryan. The difference is through that action, including very real looking death all around the survivors, the weariness of those men and their determination through it all we form a bond with them that submerges us in the film. Here, especially since it’s aimed at children, that action doesn’t have nearly the same weight. It’s a blitzkrieg of dazzling sights and sounds. However, like a fireworks show, when the smoke clears there is nothing there.

This isn’t to say that Tintin is a bad movie. It is not. The animation is top notch and gives us some wonderful visuals throughout. Action is pretty much non-stop so you, most likely, won’t be bored. And if you like pratfalls and slapstick comedy, you’ll laugh a lot, too.

No one, myself included, is really qualified to tell Steven Spielberg how to make a movie. I just feel he went way too fast with this one. I would love to see Tintin, and even the villains, more firmly established before we really get into his adventure. Instead, it’s like a mashup of his own Indiana Jones flicks and Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes without the heart of either. We can see many of the director’s normal touches, but it feels like a dumbed down version of his normal work like he’s pandering to an even younger crowd than his popcorn flicks usually shoot for. Ironically, his pal J.J. Abrams made the best Spielberg flick in the last couple years with Super 8. There is no question that Spielberg is a magician when it comes to filmmaking. However, this particular trick falls flat. It wants to wow us by constantly showing us our card. Unfortunately, we never get to actually pick one.

MY SCORE: 6/10

The Expendables 2

Directed by Simon West.

2012. Rated R, 103 minutes.

Cast:

Sylvester Stallone

Jason Statham

Arnold Schwarzenegger

Bruce Willis

Jean-Claude Van Damme

Chuck Norris

Nan Yu

Dolph Lundgren

Jet Li

Terry Crews

Randy Couture

Charisma Carpenter

Everything goes boom. There’s really not much more description or explanation needed. This is a movie simply about everything going boom and the guys we love to watch make stuff go boom making stuff go boom. We have plenty of holdovers from the original. Since he’s the creator of both of these homages to the 1980s, Sylvester Stallone once again plays our fearless leader. Joining him again are current action king Jason Statham, former straight-to-video action king Dolph Lundgren, martial arts legend Jet Li, Terry Crews and Randy Couture. Expanding their cameos from the first flick are The Governator, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Mr. Die Hard himself, Bruce Willis. Also joining in on the fun are “the muscles from Brussels” Jean-Claude Van Damme and the man who doesn’t do push-ups but instead pushes the Earth down, Chuck Norris.

How the hell didn’t this movie not have a part for Steven Segal? Well, he possibly ate himself out of a role. And again, no Carl Weathers? Did Ivan Drago…ahem…Dolph Lundgren really kill him during that boxing match where James Brown performed “Living in America?” Woo. Good Gawd. Jump back. Kiss myself! Hey! May the Godfather of Soul rest in peace. Sorry. Got off track for a moment.

There is the basic construct of a story here. As you may recall from the original, Sly and the guys whose names I dropped in the first group are kinda, sorta like The A-Team. By the way, since another major draw is our familiarity with and nostalgia for the actual actors and their past work, we won’t be using any character names here. The youngest guy on the squad decides the life of a merc is not for him. . He’ll finish out the month then go home to settle down with his girl and raise a family. If you don’t know how that works out in action flicks, think of him this way: in another movie he’d be a cop with only a few weeks until retirement. In other words, he’ll need to be avenged. He meets his fate during a mission the boys get sent on by Bruce Willis. They don’t want to do it, but Sly owes Bruce a solid. Their job is to grab hold of a thingamajig from the wreckage of a downed plane and bring it back. Of course, that doesn’t go as planned since Van Damme and his evil cronies show up to get their grubby little paws on it. Yes, Van Damme is a villain. He’s a pretty good one, in fact. Anyhoo, that’s about as specific as I’m going to get. From there, our heroes trying to retrieve the thingamajig and avenge their fallen brethren ensues.

The Expendables 2 is a dumb, fun action flick sure to give your surround sound system a workout. It’s even better than its predecessor because there’s not nearly as much downtime so we can get to know the boys. They all pop in, shoot stuff and/or fight while either themselves or someone else makes a reference to one of their old movies, or their persona in general, as a joke. For instance, a large percentage of Arnie’s dialogue is made up of him telling whoever is within earshot “I’ll be back.” You should understand this to mean this flick takes itself even less seriously than its predecessor and is therefore closer to what I thought that movie would be. Without question, this is a “turn your brain off” experience starring a group of guys who made a pretty good living making stuff go boom. In other words, it's so bad it's awesome!

MY SCORE: -10/10

Another Earth

Directed by Mike Cahill.

2011. Rated PG-13, 92 minutes. 
Cast: 
Brit Marling 
William Mapother 
Jordan Baker 
Flint Beverage 
Robin Taylor 
Matthew-Lee Erlbach 
Rupert Reid 
DJ Flava

It’s just been discovered that our beloved planet Earth has a twin. What’s more is it’s suddenly close enough to be visible in our sky. Young MIT student Rhoda (Marling) is so fascinated by the news she gazes up into the heavens while driving. On this particular night, she’s been doing some drinking also. Neither move is very smart, especially for someone who was accepted to the prestigious school at the tender age of 17. Unsurprisingly, she has an accident. She doesn’t have just any accident. Her faux pas results in the death of a mother and child. The family’s patriarch is left in a coma. Rhoda goes to jail.

Still guilt-stricken and withdrawn when she gets out four years later, Rhoda agonizes over a way to apologize to John (Mapother), the man who recovered from his injuries only to find his family had been taken from him. Rhoda also enters a contest to win a trip to “Earth 2” as its gotten even closer during the time she was incarcerated.

Like Melancholia, Another Earth isn't much concerned with the science in its fiction. It is more interested in using its premise to explore the human condition. It does so without the pending doom of the former, but still treads in some pretty murky waters. Along with her guilt, Rhonda is confused and embarks on a misguided attempt at redemption. With each of her steps down that dark path, we cringe. We know what she doesn’t: no good can come of this. We yearn for her to figure a way out of the hole she not only digs but deepens for herself. Our instinctual reaction to everything she does is to ask “How’s that gonna work out?”

As simple as our line of questioning is, it doesn’t lead to any easy answers. The ones Rhonda seems to come up with hardly seem right, this includes the one she’s most happy with. It doesn’t work out quite the way she wants. In fact, it provides us with the type of abrupt ending that may take a moment or two to “get”. Be warned that if you don’t get it, you may dismiss the movie, entirely. The same goes if you came in expecting a laser and light show. Another Earth is sci-fi for people who aren’t into sci-fi. The entire film takes place here on this Earth. There are no invading intergalactic armies nor displays of futuristic technology. This is the character study of a troubled person and a darned good one.

Snow White and the Huntsman

Directed by Rupert Sanders.

2012. Rated PG-13, 127 minutes.

Cast:

Kristen Stewart

Charlize Theron

Chris Hemsworth

Sam Claflin

Ian McShane

Bob Hoskins

Toby Jones

Eddie Marsan

Ray Winstone

Nick Frost

Lily Cole

Christopher Obi

Sam Spruell

The gang’s all here. Of course, there’s Snow White (Stewart) and, eventually, seven dwarves. It should go without saying that we have a wicked stepmother/Queen (Theron) and her knowledgeable, talkative mirror (Obi). Like any fairytale worth its pixie dust, there is also a prince (Claflin). Finally, there’s the guy who takes the dwarves’ place in the title, the huntsman (Hemsworth). The general parameters of the story are familiar. Mama White dies and a short while later her widowed hubby, the king, re-marries and finds himself all killed by his new bride. She takes over the kingdom, locks Snow White in a foreboding tower and brings in her mirror as her top consultant. Years later, Snow White manages a daring escape into the Dark Forest, a bit different from the most famous versions of the story. Since the queen’s powers are useless in that particular part of the kingdom, she hires the huntsman to track her down and bring her back.

Why the queen needs our heroine alive is part of the twist that provides this reimagining a darkness missing from the tale we’re used to, but a few steps closer to how it was originally told with regard to tone. The queen’s main purpose in life is maintaining her beauty, some semblance of youth and remaining fairest of them all. No matter what. To do this, she has young maidens hauled into the castle whom she robs of the qualities she desires, leaving them old, wrinkled and near death. She soon finds out that if she does the same to Snow White, she’ll no longer have that craving to satisfy.

There are some other twists, none hindering our recognition of the story we all know. The magic lies in the tricks played on our eyes. The purposefully drab interiors and pristine white snow filled exteriors make wonderful canvasses for splashes of color and quick striking, well executed special fx. All along the way we’re treated to images that seem sparse, but are deceptively lush. Our pupils dart around the screen grasping at fleeting flourishes of cgi goodness. Though not as big or overwhelming as in something like The Avengers, they’re perhaps more believable in their presentation. This includes our dwarves, all played by, for lack of a better term, normal sized actors. Apologies due to any little people who feel slighted by the phrase or being excluded from the cast. Still, it’s very nicely done.

Of course, fx alone don’t make a movie. The meat we readily chew on is the performance of Charlize Theron. She dominates the film much the way Julia Roberts does in the same role in 2012’s other Snow White flick, Mirror Mirror, but in a different fashion. Where Roberts’ queen cackles maniacally in the self-aware manner that lets us know she’s playing as much for laughs as she is menace, Theron’s queen has no clue she’s a character in a fairytale. She seethes, hisses and vampirically gains strength by literally draining it from others. Like the bloodsucker, she earns both our dread and the pity we reserve for one whose seemingly boundless power is really fueled by a fatal flaw. Perhaps, this flaw is really a thinly veiled commentary on our mass obsession with defeating Father Time. A less talented actress might have unconsciously imbued the character with more of the Roberts qualities, but being in the wrong movie, would undermine the seriousness with which this fantasy is approached. It would be like Cesar Romero’s Joker in Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight as opposed to Heath Ledger’s. Perfectly suited for the 1960s TV show, he’d be sorely out of place in the more realistic Gotham City. Obviously, the kingdom is not meant to be realistic but it is meant to evoke the Middle Earth of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy (and upcoming movie The Hobbit), not Gilligan’s Island.

Since we brought up vampires and less talented actresses, let’s talk about the person whose character gets top billing, Kristen Stewart. Unsurprisingly, she’s a weak link but not as much as one would think. Thank goodness for low expectations, I guess. She “Bellas” her way through another role, albeit less depressingly, as her character actually wants to live as opposed to just yearning to be undead. Our rooting for her is due to our Pavlovian conditioning to do so for “the good guy,” not because she’s the least bit compelling. Trust me, she isn’t. If there is a movie where she is, I’d have to say it’s The Runaways, an underrated biopic about the 70s all-girl rock band of the same name. Even there, Dakota Fanning acts circles around her.

Our heroine’s shortcomings aside, I find Snow White and the Huntsman an enjoyable spin on the old tale. Admittedly, Theron is hamming it up, but she is so good at it we can’t help but be spellbound. Then there are those enticing visuals. They help drive the story rather than smother it beneath an avalanche of pixels. Liberties taken with the narrative are fun, if a tad predictable. In any event, they enhance the telling of this version, not desecrate our memory of others. It is by no means perfect, but it is fun without the corniness and boring stretches of the kiddie-fied Mirror Mirror.

MY SCORE: 7/10