If you take Russell Crowe’s Gladiator and put it under the shadow of a volcano, you have Pompeii, and a not-as-good version at that. Basically if you take all of the characters, make them more one-dimensional, you have this new movie. It even lifts one character right off the original (an African mentor-turned-friend to our reluctant gladiator). Having said all that, it’s not a terrible movie, though parts of you certainly make you roll your eyes.

The main character is played by Kit Harington, otherwise known as Jon Snow from the Game of Thrones series. If you’ve seen that show, you know this guy’s acting chops consist mostly of pained, longing stares with that almost always far-away look in his eyes. The Joaquin Phoenix role in Gladiator is played here by Keifer Sutherland. As much as I liked 24, he’s no Joaquin, who I consider one of the finest actors today. What keeps this movie together though is the historic blowing of Mount Vesuvius. Though the CGI isn’t as good as some other high budget films, and doesn’t look quite as real as it should at times, it is very exciting, especially in the end when everything goes to hell.

Like a lot of action films, if you just take this film light heartedly, it is fun. Younger audiences that only care about explosions and death duels should really enjoy it (my 16 year old son loved it!).

Endless Love is exactly what you expect. It is sometimes corny, sometimes hokey, and overall a pretty cheesy romance most likely geared towards teenage and young adult women. Even so, it mixes this formula well and is a great date movie for any couple wanting to feel cheesy love in the air together.

The only thing I knew about this movie going in was the leading actor was in “I am Number Four” which was sort of a cool sci-fi film from a couple years ago. Apparently it is a remake of a film made in the early 80’s, which in turn is based from book written in the late 70’s. It’s a very typical story of a girl that falls for a boy from the other side of the tracks, but he has a good heart and brings everyone together. The movie is told fairly well, though it does seem to slow down and veer off course in the end. If it was 20 minutes shorter it would have been much better, but I can understand why they wrote it the way they did. If you and your significant other are up for a lovey-dovey flick, there are far worse things to see.

This is a bad movie. No other way to say it. Bad story, bad dialogue, full of clichés, full of holes. It’s one thing to ask the audience to suspend belief a time or two in the interest of an action film, it’s quite another to ask them to follow along when nothing at all makes sense.

This is (I think) supposed to be a spy film, though even after seeing it, I’m not really sure the writer and director knew that. There is very little spying going on. And unlike some of the movies I’ve seen lately, such as I Frankenstein and Robocop, when the story failed, the action scenes could not carry this film. The one bright spot for me was the lead played by Kevin Costner, who, say what you like, still has the cool, debonair part down, even after all these years. But rather than stabilizing the film, it almost made it worse, as you are left wondering why he would he would waste his time with this farce. Granted, it has been awhile since he had the leading role, maybe he was finally offered one and jumped at the chance. I think he should have waited for something better. Pretty much anything would have been better.

I should have listened to my gut on this one. I didn’t especially have any desire to see this movie, but it was getting good reviews (currently 62/100 Metacritic, 77% Rotten Tomatoes) so I thought, what the hell. It ended up being exactly what I expected, and that’s not a good thing.

If you are a fan of Kevin Hart’s comedic style, this one is for you. Vulgar and crass, it gets you to laugh on shock value alone, but even that gets old 20-30 minutes in. This movie is basically 100 minutes of Kevin Hart standup, with an extremely generic romantic-comedy story carrying you through to the end. Boy meets girl, they fall in love, they go through a rough patch, they work it out in the end. I don’t think I’m giving anything away by saying that. The plot is so full of stereotypes and clichés that honestly it is hard to watch at times.

Kevin Hart is the man of the hour right now, having been in a run of box office hits. Even in his misses, he is often reviewed as the one shining moment, and even though I’m not a fan, I can appreciate his current run. I feel like if he wasn’t on such a high right now, this movie would not be getting the attention it is. But to each his own.

Winter’s Tale is getting panned by critics, currently at 31 on Metacritic and 15% on Rotten Tomatoes. Honestly I didn’t think it was a bad movie. It was ok for me; not great, but certainly not terrible.

It is yet another based-on-a-novel movie, which there seems to be a rash of lately. I think the book may be pretty good, the backdrop of the movie had some merit. It was a little weird at times, a little too far out there for a traditional romantic flick, but a neat idea anyway. A man falls in love with a woman so much that their love keeps him alive for over a hundred years, until his purpose in life is fulfilled. Some of it was pretty sappy obviously. I do think the story could have been done better. It was written for the screen (and directed by) Akiva Goldsman. He is the writer behind such great movies as I Am Legend and A Beautiful Mind, as well as I, Robot (well, I liked that last one anyway…), and he brings along Russell Crowe and Will Smith from those earlier successes to star in this movie. But he also wrote some terrible ones, including Batman & Robin and the Da Vinci Code movies. Winter’s Tale falls somewhere in the middle.

When even Spiderman and Superman can be completely rebooted within a handful of years of the previous release, you knew it was only a matter of time before some of the older 80’s flicks saw new time on the big screen. Robocop is the newest remake, and if you can ignore some of the pretty rough acting at times, it is a great action-packed “man” movie.

The original came out when I was a kid, and I thought it was awesome. I was a classic 80’s boy, I loved robots and police good guy vs bad guy films, so it was the best of both worlds! I wanted to see this new one from the first trailer I saw, and it didn’t disappoint. Some of the plot points don’t flesh out well, but the action is superb throughout. It features some roll-your-eyes dialogue at times (Samuel L Jackson’s extremist news program, though this is on purpose) and what I thought some really over-acting by Michael Keaton, who plays the original Ronny Cox role as the diabolical head bad dude with the master plan. But you see a movie like this for the gun fights, and here this movie excels.

Not giving anything away when I say the ending sets up for a sequel, which will probably only be greenlit if this one brings in the money the studio is hoping for. I for one hope it does, and that it comes off better than the original movie’s sequels which were pretty hard to watch for the most part. Definitely worth seeing this one on the big screen if you can make it.

I was due for a true clunker of a movie. I’ve seen a lot of good ones lately, and even the so-so ones were still enjoyable. So I knew a letdown was eminent.

Based on a true story, The Monuments Men tells the story of a group of men trying to recapture art stolen by Hitler Germany. This becomes more dire as the movie progresses, when a notice is given by Hitler himself to destroy all stores if the event of his death or Germany’s fall. I have a soft spot for the fine arts, so I really wanted to like this movie. While it does showcase some fine actors, it never became a good movie.

This movie never seems to find its footing, or even decide what kind of film it wants to be. It is supposed to be a comedy-drama, and tries to do both to the max. There are quirky, almost unbelievable moments and dialogue (complete with slapstick-ish music), followed by extremely serious and (supposed to be) heartfelt scenes. Because of this, it fell flat for me and rang false overall. The ending was pretty anticlimactic as well, and I left with the impression that George Clooney just called a bunch of friends and said, “Hey, lets make a movie next weekend, anyone have any ideas?” and Matt Damon surfed Wikipedia until he saw an article on this historic group. The only thing this movie did was draw attention to perhaps a lessor known side war going on in the greater scope of World War II, so at least it led me home to open up my computer and research a little.

As a child, Legos were probably my favorite toy. Like many children, I had buckets, boxes, and wagons full of them. When the original instructions were lost, I’d use my imagination to build just about anything out of them. Maybe because of that, I’ve been excited to see this movie since I first saw a trailer for it half a year ago.

This is a solid movie overall. It is a kids movie through and through, yet there are plenty of jokes that adults can snicker at. I did appreciate that none of the jokes were true “adult jokes,” that is, too often I see a movie that kids will love, yet seems to be full of (in my eyes) inappropriate humor. Even if a child is too young to understand the dialogue, doesn’t make it ok. I think a balance can be struck to make a movie enjoyable to both child and adult, and The Lego Movie does this well.

This movie does have flaws. The first half, while clever and funny at times, moves a little slow. The creators rely a little too heavily of the characters’ banter, and once the newness of seeing everyone’s favorite building blocks moving around, there isn’t much else going on. However, the ending is very satisfying, so if you make sure to sit through the slow patches, you will be rewarded. In the end, I wished again for a big pile of blocks to rebuild the world.

Typically the early part of the year is the dumping ground for movie studios, at least it seems that way often. Movies that they feel weren’t quite good enough to rush to the theater in December in time for awards season get quietly released the first part of the next year. Labor Day is a movie that, though decent, doesn’t quite feature the sterling acting the studio probably envisioned when it was greenlit.

Don’t get me wrong, this is a good, if somewhat unsurprising, movie. Perhaps the trailer, which I saw numerous times (a bad side effect of seeing so many movies) gave away too much, as I knew the surprising “twist” before it was shown. Kate Winslet was good, but it seems her role has gotten stale. She always seems to play the hurt, vulnerable character. Granted, she has that part down pat, having won numerous awards including an Oscar (from 6 nominations). Josh Brolin was his usual detached macho male character, almost to a fault, as I didn’t feel any chemistry between him and Winslet. Even when they had supposedly fallen deep in love, I didn’t know if he truly cared for her or was just using her to his ends, though this wasn’t meant to be a subplot.

All in all, a good movie and worth a single viewing, though you can skip the theater and wait for Netflix on this one. It’s the kind of movie that will be in the $5 dvd bin before long too.

Gimme Shelter is holding just a 37 Metascore (based on critics’ reviews), but if you read them, you’ll see the biggest complaint is it is too “preachy”. If this is the only reason to not like a movie, then you are missing the purpose. User ratings however put it at 6.6/10 currently, and 80% on Rotten Tomatoes, which is about how I felt about it.

I thought this movie was good. I knew nothing of Vanessa Hudgens going in to the movie, I’m too old to have seen High School Musical, which I guess was her big break. But this movie also has Rosario Dawson & James Earl Jones, both fine actors in my opinion. The acting was so-so throughout (Hudgens I thought is superb, some of the supporting cast not so much), and the story felt very rote (it is based on a true story, and the movie seemed sort of paint-by-numbers). But it is overall an enjoyable 2 hours to spend, and you certainly root for Hudgens’ character, who was dealt a rough hand from birth and wants nothing more than a helping hand to get her on the road to redemption.

If like some of these critics, the mere mention of the Bible or a couple verses read here and there will turn you off, you can skip this one. If, however, you want to see a heart-warming story of a young person struggling to overcome, this is well worth seeing.