Insidious

When I walked into this film I was expecting a cliché haunted house film with a few cheap scares. I was wrong. This was one of the scariest films I have seen in years. Though it obviously stole from other classic haunting films, it did in a fresh and new way. The lack of special effects also helped to create and eerie atmosphere that was not interrupted by obvious CGI. A fantastic frightfest!

Scream 4

When the first Scream came out it was a breath of fresh air and started a new era of self-aware horror films. The new slashers made way for the gore-porn of the Saw movies and then studios began to remake the classics like Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, and Friday the 13th. The latest Scream points at the clichés found in today's horror market with astute accuracy. It was great commentary on how every is now over done and over bloody. And the moral of this film: nothing is as good as the original. As far as horror sequels go, this one is pretty good and incredible entertaining.

Sucker Punch

Like most chicks, I got excited about the idea of girls kicking some ass in a comic book type action flick. However, an air of disappointment filled the theater about 20 minutes into the film and stayed there, slowly thickening, throughout the remainder of the film. I just think the film needed some tweaking and I’m curious to know what the director’s cut holds because the film was edited from an R rating down to a more audience friendly PG-13. I wanted shorter action scenes with better transitions. I wanted the evil men to truly get theirs. We can’t always get what we want. The one thing that truly made the film bearable was the amazing soundtrack which I promptly bought the following day.

Paul

Paul is funny. Truly a comedy for the sci-fi geek set. It knew its audience and was very successful in catering to them. I laughed from beginning to end and found myself delightfully entertained by all the references and reasons for why Paul is culturally relevant. If you’re even remotely a fan of science fiction you will love this movie.

Battle: Los Angeles

The trailers for this movie were quite impressive; promising an epic war between aliens and humans, but only showed what they knew would bring audiences into the theater. The truth is the film was more about a small group of marines and their struggles set in the back drop of an alien invasion in Santa Monica. This movie was basically the Hurt Locker, but with aliens instead of bombs. This film didn’t know what it wanted to be. It couldn’t decide whether or not it wanted the audience to care about the characters or not. They were developed enough to annoy me, but not developed enough to make me care. I wanted more explosions, more fights, and less drama.