#15 - Never Back Down (-1 of 10)

Never Back Down is essentially Fight Club minus every admirable point. In fact, with its thin characters and derivative plot, the finished product seems more like a marketing concept than an actual film.

Brooding teen Jake Tyler (played by Sean Faris, who resembles a young Ben Affleck) relocates with his mom and little brother to Orlando. Jake had gotten into a brawl on the high-school football field back home, and his rep as a fighter has followed him to the family's new digs. 
Apparently, Jake's fight was such a riveting event that everyone under 17 in the entire country viewed the video on the Internet. What did bad scriptwriters do before the Web?

Jake struggles to fit in at his new school. Things come to a head when he winds up in a brawl with a bully named Ryan (Cam Gigandet, looking more than a few years past graduation). After getting pummeled, Jake is drawn into the world of mixed martial arts.

Under the guidance of a wise mentor named Mr. Miyagi, er, Jean (Djimon Hounsou of Blood Diamond), Jake learns to fight by the rules and to grow up emotionally. Heck, he even attracts the attention of a pretty blonde at school.

Obviously, the movie is squarely aimed at pumped up youths with no sense of shame. That's fine, but the audience still deserves characters that are fleshed out and a plot that shows some flashes of originality.

Don't look for that here. All the characters are stock types, down to Jake's nerdy little sidekick (an unappealing Evan Peters). The worst off is Hounsou, who's stuck offering the kind of platitudes not heard since Kung Fu went off the air.

Director Jeff Wadlow shows little imagination with a bad script. This is the kind of film in which the fighting sequences are filmed in slow motion. Sometimes, that's exciting; here, it only makes them seem duller - and longer. 

#14 - Wall-E (4/10)

In a dystopian future world of about 700 years hence, the planet as we know it has become fouled by so much garbage and consumer refuse its inhabitants have gone. Except for one. Wall-E, a diminutive robot programmed

to collect trash, compact it and use the resulting cubes as bricks to erect strange, high structures;

But inside little Wall-E's circuitry there pulses a heart and mind, not unlike the little real-life kiddies targetted to bond with him by the hundreds of millions. His happy hours in a city he has virtually to himself are interrupted one day with the arrival of a massive spaceship which deposits a "probe" and then returns to wherever it came from. The white egg-shaped visitor turns out to be an Extra-terrrestrial Vegetation Evaluator "Eve"- that is quick to zap that which she doesn't understand or thinks poses a threat. Her mission is to electronically report any sign of organic life to the mother ship Axiom.

For the adult who doesn't watch all this through the eyes of a young offspring, the joy is in the expressiveness of the characters, art direction and seamless visual artistry. In that, this is a high achieving movie. But the story may be too artificial (no pun intended) and predictable for a demanding viewer. The story provides action and effects, all exceedingly charming, but doesn't bring to life or interest the "evil" forces so hell bent on avoiding a return to earth, the reason for which is less than adequately explored. Does it mean the loss of absolute control?

In fact, once Wall-E boards the Axiom the story takes a turn that sheds no light on what made him the brave mini-compactor that he is, which is where we want the story to take us. Without the understanding of villainous co-pilot and the source of its power, we're asked to just go along with it without too much questioning. The threat level is too lightweight to be felt (other than a feeling of detachment).

All in all, lacking as any sort of meaningful movie.

#13- Batman v. Ironman

In a grand death match, who would win between batman and Ironman? To me the answer is clear, Ironman. Which movie was better? Without a doubt and for that same reason it would be batman. No one wants to see a movie where a guy in a robot suit who can't be beat. Batman on the other hand had to fight using his wit and skill. Batman was smart, he was a kungfu master and he had to win his fights using more than just brute strength. Additionally Batman's morality was constantly in question, and the viewer was asked to examine the validity of Batman's motives. Iron man on the other hand is fighting in an imperialist war and we're asked to simply accept that his side is the right one for the simple reason that he's on it. All in all there is little question which movie was better, Batman, although he might not win in a fight he would and dose win this film critique.

#12- Iron Man (2 of 10)

If we had to make a scatter graph of films, the vertical axis would represent quality of substance with the top being the best and the horizontal axis representing the number of bad, mindless cliches with the least number being at the left we could easily put the 2008 Iron Man movie in the extreme bottom right corner, further even than such movies as The Evil Dead (not to speak poorly of The Evil Dead, it was a great film, just chock-full of cliche and bad filmmaking.) 

In Iron Man we have the super-genius super rich womanizing millionaire who is an American weapons manufacturer up against evil middle eastern 'terrorists' and power hungry villains within his own company(which, may I say, was sooo obvious from third minute of the film on.)

The first scene of the movie spoke volumes of what was to come. Let me just say this, a bunch of marines with big guns in a big vehicle playing AC/DC is not original. I suppose it might appeal to a certain brand rednecked ultra patriots but not to me and not to an intelligent audience.

Secondly, the idea of making the film into a iron man vs. iron man was terrible. It was like The Incredible Hulk, and so many Godzilla films before it, clearly the writers weren't smart enough to think of a villain that wasn't exactly like the protagonist. 

Don't even start on the dialog, it was clear that several of the characters where there for the sole reason of presenting dialog opportunities for Tony Sark to show off how impressive and "witty" he is. A little film making tip, if you have to create characters to supplement other characters you probably have a bad script on your hands.

All in all, one bad movie.

#11- The Dark Knight (7 of 10)

Batman: The Dark Knight summarized: Entertaining? Certianly. A good film? Yes. Over-hyped? No doubt.

I enjoyed the latest incarnation in the long line of batman movies, it was a well done film with two classic batman villains and decent writing but the drooling that critics did over it was ridiculous.

In The Dark Knight Bruce Wane fights crime along with his more legitimate co-conspirators Harvey Dent and James Gordon. Long time fans of the batman series will identify Harvey Dent as the real name of Two-Face one of batman's many nemeses.

As for acting, the movie stood up to expectations, in that it was well acted, but not the greatest piece of cinema ever to bless our screens. At first I was disoriented to see Patrick Bateman (The American Psycho) in a batman movie, because of his dress in the non-costumed parts Christian Bale looked uncomfortably like he did in American Psycho. However after a solid performance I was willing to forgive this and accept him as the batman.

As for the critics that are swooning over the movie, particularly the "attention to details" and excellent props, I have one thing to say. No. Yes there was some thought put into making everything look grimy or gritty, but sprinkling dust and under-lighting every scene doesn't give a film atmosphere, it just looks stupid.

Which brings me to my next gripe: Batman lives in Gotham City, not Chicago. With nearly every outdoor scene being filmed in a easily recognizable part of chicago the viewer has to wonder if they're watching Batman or a Chicago mob flick.

In the end, The Dark Knight was a good movie, just not the pinnacle of the film industry it has been made out to be

#10- The Borne Identity (7 of 10)

You enjoy it while you're there, but once you've seen it, you've seen it -- you don't feel as though there are secrets and meanings tucked away in dark corners, as you do with a more artful thriller like Memento, but Memento immersed the audience in the hero's disorientation, while The Bourne Identity is just another thrill ride, though a reasonably well-crafted one.

The CIA wants to find Bourne, or kill him, or both. Bourne isn't sure which, so he flees to Paris, along with a German drifter named Marie.

Marie whom he entices with $10,000 and the promise of more gives the movie a badly needed shot of what-the-hell attitude, need to keep the film at least halfway believable. Terrified in moments of danger, Marie nonetheless gets it together enough to yell at an assassin, demanding to know where he got her picture.

The Bourne Identity doesn't bother much with the reality of what it might be like to discover gradually that one is, at the very least, a highly skilled government agent of some sort, or maybe worse. Borne is seems somewhat unbothered by his lightning reflexes and ninja skills.

It would have been nice if the story had been complex instead of just obscured until the end. As it was the whole thing was pretty predictable, and there was no real twist after the first 20 minutes.

The Bourne Identity does the job, but it's a very basic job; I can't work up a lot of respect for a movie that is essentially one guy beating up on everyone else for hour and a half only to learn what's going on in the last five minutes.

#9- The Italian Job (7 of 10)

A team of thieves' last job is to steal millions of dollars in gold from the home of some guy in Venice. It is never really made clear who this person is and why he has that much gold inside of his house. After the job one of the thieves turns around and steals the gold for himself, killing the leader in the process. Some years later the leader's daughter comes back for revenge by stealing the gold back.

This was one movie I was not expecting to like at all. I was surprised that I was happy that I'd watched it. It wasn't the movie in its entirety that reeled me in. It was all the clever little things. Like realizing that Mos Def was playing a character mostly deaf. Or Lyle insisting that he was the originator of Napster (named as such because he was napping when his roommate stole it from him) and he is very bitter about the idea being stolen from him. Or even half the stuff that comes out of Handsome Rob's mouth. And who would have thought to use souped up Mini Coopers as a getaway cars?

I enjoyed the acting, though it much of the dialogue was stilted and it seemed every scene was just another way of telling you that the thieves where super talented. Good acting with a somewhat deficient script.

Not a bad film, definitely not the best. I enjoyed but I might be a little embarrassed to admit it. Well it'll make a good TV movie at least