The Thing (1982)

Watched this with Gary and my younger son and all three of us had a great time. It was both fun and tense with lots of great images barely marred by the '80s effects.

A-

Paranormal Activity (2009)

One girl said that she had to keep the TV on all night for almost a week after seeing this. A guy told me he had to leave the theater to calm down and then had a hard time talking himself back into returning. Several people told me they screamed out loud. In short: this was built up so high in my mind that it just didn't stand a chance. It was definitely impressive work for $11,000, but it was supposed to frighten, not impress.

Also, it must be said, that the lead guy in this movie was a complete douche. If I were scared and pleading with Gary...well, I wouldn't even GET to the pleading stage. Sure, sometimes he can be an ass -- as can I -- but definitely not when I'm scared. Any person who doesn't respond with quickness to your genuine fear should be dumped without discussion (or tortured by something paranormal, whichever's handier), in my opinion.

C+

Orphan (2009)

OK, well...yeah, if you wanna get all technical, this is kind of trashy. But...but...trash can be ART!

Around Halloween, I start craving the kinds of movies that make me jump then giggle with embarrassment because I jumped. This was perfect for that purpose PLUS I was genuinely surprised by some of the goings-on.

Seriously, this is a great entry in the "that kid's not quite right" genre. Bringing an outsider into a family gets things off-balance in the best of circumstances, but when that outsider looks like she would've been more comfortable growing up a century ago and speaks in a heavy Russian accent, adjustments get just that much more difficult. This is like The Good Son turned up a few notches -- and I thought that movie worked pretty well.

I mean, this is definitely trash, but that doesn't mean you should throw it out!

B+

30 Days of Night (2007)

Creepy and original vampire story set in the month-long darkness of an isolated northern Alaskan town.

There were a few problems:

1) the vampires weren't very good meal planners. The way they initially tore through the place was sort of like having 150 pizzas in front of you and taking a bite from each pie while tossing the rest away. I mean, they were looking at 30 days of good eats...what was the big rush?

2) Melissa George. I'm carrying an "Alias"-based-but-compounded-by-"In Treatment"-grudge against her. This was a step in the right direction, but I still wrinkle my nose whenever I see her.

3) Ben Foster. Effective here, but I'm still crossing my fingers that he'll eventually get an "I'm not a psycho" role where he can brush his hair and teeth and maybe even kiss a pretty girl.

B+

The Italian (2007)

The story was unnecessarily confusing during the entire first half. I understood that that a kid was being adopted, but I didn't understand the pecking order of the place and who the older kids were and why they seemed to be outside of the jurisdiction of the orphanage while living there and running a business, including what appeared to be a prostitution ring. Also, despite the fact that the entire thing was subtitled, it was painfully obvious that almost no one could act.

The story was typical wish-fulfillment: Vanya, a little boy in a Russian orphanage, is being adopted by an Italian couple -- which means money for the institution's director. Vanya, however, is holding out hope that his mother will come back for him and is rather worried about the prospect of being in Italy when she inevitably comes knocking. So he starts scheming and the whole thing devolves into "scrappy innocent triumphs over the evil moneygrubbers," kind of like a live action 101 Dalmatians with a grubby little boy instead of a passel o' pups.

C-

Baby Mama (2008)

Funny in spots and Greg Kinnear is charming, as always.

The overall writing, however, was lazy. I felt as though I could've paused it at any point to say "and now this will happen" and probably have been absolutely correct at least 75 percent of the time.

C-

Objectified (2009)

Felt like it should have been interesting, but didn't really say anything new when it bothered to say anything at all. Most of the film seemed to be a parade of designers pointing at their stuff and tossing off duh comments like "you shouldn't notice good design." When the most interesting portion involves a man who designed a cell phone to invoke memories of a knife-peeled potato, you know there's not much going on.

I didn't learn anything useful and the last ten minutes were almost a flat-out plea for sustainable design and loving what you already have. I've read better, more thoughtful articles on the subject in magazines and on the web so there's not much reason for this to exist in film form. It's just not good enough.

D+

Carrington (1995)

Story of real-life English artist Dora Carrington and her relationship with author Lytton Strachey (wonderfully played by Emma Thompson and Jonathan Pryce).

The pair meet in 1915 and they feel an immediate kinship, despite the fact that he's a homosexual and she behaves and dresses enough like a male to be mistaken for one the first time Lytton sees her. They depend on each other fully, kind of carving out an odd marriage despite the fact that they get most of their sexual satisfaction from others.

Two complaints: it seemed to go on far too long -- a tighter 90 to 100 minutes would've helped -- and the extremely linear storytelling felt so dated that I guessed 1985 as its release year before I looked it up to add to the entry's title.

B-

The Invasion (2007)

Another "ornament" movie and, boy, can I pick 'em or what? This one is an unnecessary update of Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Basically, humans are being infected with alien juice which makes their emotions/reactions disappear. Casting the cold fish Kidman as one of the still-human -- and, therefore, still supposedly emotional -- was a mistake. She actually got MORE animated when she was "pretending" to be infected than she was before she caught on to what was happening.

It's bad but, unfortunately, not quite bad enough to be any fun.

D

P.S. I Love You (2007)

This was a feature for this year's "on while I'm watching ornaments" mini-marathon. Good thing, because if I'd actually had nothing to do other than look at the screen, I probably wouldn't have been able to stand it.

Hillary Swank should never ever try comedy again.

F

P.S. I hated it (see what I did there?)

Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont (2005)

Utterly charming movie about a widow relocating to a hotel for older residents to be nearer her only grandson, who doesn't care to be near her. No matter since she finds a friend in young Ludo (Rupert Friend -- simply lovely) who is happy to play the part of her grandson, both for the other residents and because he enjoys her company.

Made me hopeful about humanity in general -- I love a movie that can pull that off.

A

Drag Me to Hell (2009)

Some clever sight-gags, but relied far too heavily on grossing us out to be truly scary. This might have been fun in a theater full of 14-year-olds if I were also 14, but just couldn't cut it in the living room.

So incredibly stupid (and this is coming from a fan of the Evil Dead franchise).

D

Along Came a Spider (2001)

This felt like a movie from the late '80s: so dated and TVish, if that makes sense.

Very by-the-numbers thriller. It has a Morgan Freeman as a criminal profiler in self-imposed exile after a botched sting that killed his partner and Monica Potter (the poor-man's Julia Roberts) as a green Secret Service agent teaming up to find a schoolgirl kidnapped from under Potter's nose. You've seen it all before -- probably in the late '80s.

C

Mamma Mia! (2008)

I had the feeling, while watching, that I'd accidentally gotten the practice footage -- a first run-through. Everything seemed so sloppy and unprofessional and it just wasn't any good.

The music is, of course, wonderful and I could easily understand how this would be a hoot on the live stage, but on the flat screen with the earnest non-singing non-dancing cast it was a mess. Everyone seemed to be having a grand ol' time on screen, but I was just left asking myself how the heck this thing made so much money.

D+

The Informant! (2009)

This based-on-fact film had me saying "no way" throughout. I don't doubt the basic story: high-up corporate guy wants to expose the corruption hampering his work while keeping his own corporate hanky-panky on the down-low...but the story's told so bouncily that I had a hard time trusting that it wasn't a put-on.

Damon plays the title character (employing a completely entertaining voiceover) as a pathological liar, genius, innocent, and patsy. Can he possibly be all of these things? The film would have you believe that's the case. I mean, it got SO unbelievable that it veered back onto the path of "well...they've gone so far that it must be the truth."

But that's the thing. It went so far that I was ready for it to end far earlier than Whiteacre was ready to give it up. I was surprised, on exiting the theater, to find that it wasn't nearly as late as I'd been guessing -- the shenanigans seemed to drag on for hours.

B-