Thor

Yes, another comic book movie, or is it? Though the trailer and talent attached to the film hinted to something good, it's hard to have high expectations for a teenage boy's fantasy. However, with this film, it is perfectly okay to have those high expectations because it meets them. This was a fun film which sets a high bar for all other comic book movies to come. You laugh, you cheer the good guy and boo the bad guy, you leave the theater smiling. It also adds new dimensions to the comic hero genre by having non-sexualized women. The women in the film are known for their skills and their personalities more than for their appearance and none of them wear skimpy/body-hugging outfits showing their bodies. Thor falls for Jane because of her brains and personality, it's wonderful! Filled with positive influences throughout the whole film, Thor is truly the perfect summer blockbuster.

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.

Red Riding Hood

This is the age of gothic love stories between confused young women and the beasts that love them and this film is no different. Though I don’t care for the Twilight series, I did enjoy this film. Maybe I liked it because of the better quality of acting from veterans like Gary Oldman and an ingénue like Amanda Seygfreid. But from the mist-covered, forest-filled mountain opening all the way to the rather weak ending, this just seems like a better Twilight.

The Roommate

A modern day revamp of the classic film Single White Female but without the thrills and replaced with cliches. Though Leighton Meester played an excellent artistic psycho, she didn’t have the right material to demonstrate her acting abilities. Every time something scary was supposed to happen I ended up having a giggle fit. If it were marketed as a comedy, it would’ve been successful. I didn’t care about the boring, one-dimensional main character. In fact, I wanted her crazy roommate to do her in. I wanted more from this, but it was nothing more than how the trailers portrayed it.

Love and Other Drugs

Do naked people make an otherwise dull and cliché romantic drama more interesting? Not so much. This movie could not decide what it wanted be, much like it's main character. It wavers between raunchy comedy and romantic drama in a completely disassociated way. I did very much enjoy the raunchy comedy and funny younger brother very much, but the Parkinson's drama was just trite and really got in the way of the sex; or for those of you who like the love story the sex distracts from it. I kept wanting the sex and drama to mix into a beautiful film, but I was left disappointed in a mist of unoriginality.

The Rite

There's one topic horror films can't get enough of lately, and it's possession. You've seen one person possessed by the devil, or demon, or whatever and you've seen them all. At the beginning of the film I found it's tongue and cheek sense of humor endearing. It gave the film a Scream-like sense of humor, yet still allowing it to belong in its own genre. I also enjoyed the fact that for the first three quarters of the film we were treated to an agnostic's point of view on the subject of exorcisms. Really, this film lost me at the end when the character has a change of heart in a completely cliché and uncharacteristic turn. But truly, regardless of everything I just said, the only reason to see this film is to see Anthony Hopkins possessed, which was a complete treat.