The Tournament (2009)

A decent idea: every 7 years the best-of-the-best assassins have a to-the-death competition with a huge cash prize (and premium betting for enthusiasts). This time, however, one of the contestants gets smart and removes the tracker that allows the bettors (and other competitors) to keep an eye on his movements and it’s ingested by a drunken priest.

There's lots of fun mayhem and action, but every time the reigning champion (Ving Rhames) is on-screen, everything slows to a drag.

C+

L.A. Without a Map (1999)

I love David Tennant, but this was just an embarrassment. He’s charming as ever, but the story and the leading lady really made this a slog. 

Tennant's a funeral director in the UK and his love interest is an L.A. actress-wannabe on vacation who has conversations with her dead father. They spend a whirlwind day of fun/falling-in-love and she leaves. He decides to track her down and surprise her in California. Boy, she's surprised alright. She’s also not worth chasing because she's kind of empty and boring. Nevertheless, he hangs in there and makes a weird friend in Vincent Gallo, gets a job as a poolboy, rents a sty of a house, and eventually gets her to marry him just days before she decides he’s too clingy. Ugh.

D

Ondine (2010)

Colin Farrell plays the kind of wounded figure that can stir a heart... and he nets a woman (literally) who matches him in beauty and moody romanticism.  The gorgeous Irish setting and equally gorgeous leads should make for a lovely fairy tale of a film.  Unfortunately, the delicate poem that this film should have been is wrecked by the sledgehammer that is the actress playing Farrell's young daughter.

Actually, although I'm quite sure the actress is a huge problem -- reciting her lines with almost no shading as she did -- the character herself might be at fault as well.  She's a kind of exists-nowhere caricature: a terminally ill, precocious to the point of irritation, wise-beyond-her-years pain in the ass.

I've got to grade the movie I saw, but that doesn't stop me from believing it should have been so much better.

C

Game Change (2012)

This movie did what I would’ve guessed as impossible before viewing: it made me sympathize with Palin and McCain.  Each of them come off as both decent and incredibly ignorant (though in different ways).

B+

The White Ribbon (2009)

Shit goes down in a pre-WWI German village: a doctor is injured when his horse is done in by a tripwire, a rich boy is humiliatingly beaten bare-bottomed, a retarded child is nearly blinded and tied to a tree, an infant nearly freezes to death, and a woman falls to her death in a sawmill. There's also this everyday undercurrent of horriblenesses like incest, emotional abuse, and unfair accusations.

The mood is successfully oppressive, but no real answers are provided and that makes for a unsatisfying whole.

C-

The Search (1948)

The last half is a heartwarming story about a Czech boy, separated from his mother during WWII, slowly being brought back to himself by a brash American soldier in Germany who takes the boy under his wing. Meanwhile, the mother is searching for him everywhere, but unable to find him as he neither seemed to recall his own name nor had even spoken when questioned by officials.

Unfortunately, the first portion of the movie (prior to Montgomery Clift’s appearance as the young soldier) has a kind of "film strip" narration by a woman whose voice is about as sincere as the lady who does the Desperate Housewives voice overs.

B-

Magic Mike (2012)

Channing Tatum brought the charm and the moves, but it could have been so much better than it was.  We were in a fairly full theater with only three (!) men in it -- one of whom was my game husband.  The women were in randy packs, shouting at the screen, but they had to quiet down because there was simply way too much time spent on the off-stage relationship crap and not enough on STRIPPING. I get that we’re supposed to see that there’s more to this guy than the stage...but dude. This should’ve let us have a bit more fun or, at the very least, given us a romance to really root for rather than one with little miss judgmental frowny-face.

C+

Hachi: A Dog's Tale (2010)

Commuting professor finds a puppy in the station on his way home one night and, when no owner can be found, adopts him as his own.  Every night the dog -- Hachi -- waits for his master at the train station, even after the professor dies.

Sentimental crap that seemed to go out of its way to keep me "outside" of the action, but then squeezed unearned tears out of me anyway (which pisses me off). Truly awful.

F

Citizen Ruth (1996)

Another "watch this, my sick son" movie.

Paint-huffer loser Ruth is arrested again and, while in jail, found to be pregnant again.  When the judge offers to reduce the charges if she gets rid of the pregnancy, she becomes the prize in a tug-of-war between right-to-lifers and the pro-choice contingent.  The oblivious Ruth, however, is only interested in cash and her next high.

Still good, but I guess it’s a bit dated now.

B+

Tucker & Dale vs. Evil (2011)

Truly funny and inventive twist on the “dumb teens in the woods” horror movie. Definitely something I hadn’t seen before.

B+

Election (1999)

Third viewing -- I thought it was time my sick-and-unable-to-protest-much older son saw it.

Still so strong and smart.  Seeing it again, though, I could admit that Reese Witherspoon might be overdoing it just a tad.

A-

National Treasure (2004)

Great dumb fun -- felt like an old-fashioned caper.  My biggest complaint is that the comic relief guy was not very comedic.

B

In a Day (2007)

A sandwich shop employee suddenly finds herself with nothing to do when the restaurant has to shut down for the day due to an owner emergency. After being harrassed by a jerk, her day turns around when a regular patron of her shop makes it his mission to give her a great day.

It’s got a really weird vibe going for quite some time while we (along with the girl) try to figure out the guy’s angle. Things kind of come together at the end, but it feels very, very small and kind of not worth the time.

B-