Air Force One is, without a doubt, one of the most offensively stupid movies ever made. It spends the bulk of its two hours trying to insult its viewers’ intelligence in every way possible, be it by ridiculous storyline, horrible special effects or catastrophically bad acting. Worse, the bad acting comes from some truly talented actors one would think would know better, namely Harrison Ford, Glenn Close, Gary Oldman, and William H. Macy. My guess is there must have been a lot of money involved. A lot of money.

In retrospect, Childstar was exceedingly gracious in its spoof of this film. Air Force One deserved a much more brutal handling. Seriously, I can’t believe how fucking bad a movie it is. 1/10.

I’ve now seen three films by Wolfgang Petersen. One, Das Boot, was a fantastic work of art. The other two, Poseidon and the piece of shit referenced above, would have been better off aborted than forced upon an unsuspecting public. I have The Perfect Storm sitting in my Netflix queue, but now eye it with an unusual amount of suspicion. I don’t know how it could be any worse than Air Force One, but am not sure I want to risk it.

There are films where complexity adds to a storyline, and cases where complexity is there to cover up the fact the main story doesn’t have much meat. Primer, the exceedingly complex $7000 film about the accidental invention of a time machine, doesn’t really fit neatly into either category; instead, one could argue the complexity is story. It’s impressive that the film could be put together on such a budget, but as far as whether it’s any good or not, well, I don’t know. I’ve watched it twice, and the most I can say right now is that it was… interesting.

No rating on this one for now.

For some reason, this movie seemed best reviewed in list format:

1. Helen Mirren: Excellent as the Queen.
2. Michael Sheen: Good acting, but doesn’t look anything like Tony Blair.
3. Prince Charles: If this movie is true, he needs a good beating. Really.
4. The Royal Family: Annoying.

I’ll give this movie 7/10. I won’t remember it because of the film itself, but because it was the last movie Lisa and I saw at the dearly missed Har Mar Theater.

I have to admit to being a bit confused as to why A History of Violence was as well-received as it was. It’s not a bad film, but it’s not a particularly good one, either. The acting was kind of tepid, and it was chock full of cliches: Good natured, honest working folk in small town America–is there a dark underside? Of course there is! On top of that, the movie, set in Indiana, doesn’t make the slightest effort to hide the fact it was actually filmed in Canada. Hello, road stripes, people!

Final verdict: It’s good it’s out on video. That way you don’t have spend real money on it. 6/10.

While The Da Vinci Code is by no means the unmitigated disaster some have portrayed it to be, it’s by no means good, and in that sense it didn’t seem that odd that the guy sitting next to Lisa and I fell asleep about a third of the way through the movie.  All the actors seemed to be on sedatives–especially Audrey Tautou, who’s character had practically no response to learning she was related to Jesus–and in the end it kind of felt like we’d just watched an action movie that had forgotten to include the action.  Robert Langdon’s cop-out speech near the end of the movie was annoying, too, especially since it was worded broadly enough to basically endorse the behavior of the bad guys in the story, not to mention those taking part in religious practices ranging from ritualized paganistic sex to, oh, human sacrifice.

If the book is even half this bad, I don’t want anything to do with it.  5/10.

Shopgirl: Interesting story, good acting, great cinematography, and thankfully not as similar to Garden State or Lost in Translation as its trailer would suggest. It’s a fairly melancholy movie (especially when pondering Steve Martin’s character), but in a good way. 7/10.

First rule of action movies: Thou shall not be boring. By that rule alone, Poseidon is a massive failure. Sure, the special effects are nifty, but, with two very tenuous exceptions, the characters aren’t interesting, and despite it not being a carbon copy of the original, the storyline is exceedingly predictable. (I probably had a 95% prediction rate for what would happen next.) Short ride, zero thrill.

Josh Lucas’ and Richard Dreyfuss’ characters were almost worth watching, but for everyone else, it was like, please die so we can go home. I was prepared because of bad reviews, but it was still disappointing. 3/10.

Mission: Impossible III is a fantastically bad movie, but, unfortunately, not in the so-bad-it’s-actually-good way. No, it’s just really, really bad, the worst movie I’ve seen in a very long time. Bad plot, worse acting (except for Philip Seymour Hoffman, who’s on screen for, what, 10 minutes?), and the most EXCRUCIATINGLY PAINFUL use of the line “I love you” ever committed to film. Topping it all off, Tom Cruise comes across as batshit insane in his performance as he often does in real life.

Avoid this movie. Even if you’re curious, it’s simply not worth it. 2/10.

While I’ve pretty much managed to repress Always, and have never had the misfortune of seeing Hook or 1941, it would seem to me that The Terminal may very well be Steven Spielberg’s worst movie. While the film wants us to root for a number of its characters, most of them are so annoying that’s it’s very difficult to do so. That’s not even touching the situations they find themselves in and the decisions they make. The movie tries to play everything straight, but it comes off as contrived and ridiculous.

On the bright side, the set is pretty cool, but the fact one has to reach for something like that suggests the movie probably isn’t worth seeing. 4/10.

Inside Man probably could’ve been tightened up a bit, but overall was a pretty enjoyable twist on the bank robbery convention. The acting was very solid—Jodi Foster specifically put in an excellent performance—and the characters were generally interesting and believable. In typical Spike Lee fashion, there were plenty of bigoted white characters, although in this case they were pretty much restricted to those in the NYPD. The movie also had a very good look, and although this probably doesn’t matter to many, from a graphic design stantpoint the opening credits were downright sexy. 7/10.