The Covenant 5. When I saw the previews for this (which took me by surprise, as I only saw the first one a mere 2 weeks before it came out) I thought, Holy cow... they're trying to make this generation's Lost Boys. The commercial is cut to give exactly that kind of impression. It's too bad the commercial's editor didn't handle the cutting of the movie itself; it might have been much better than it was. Lost Boys, this ain't. This isn't my way of saying the movie was bad ...far from it really... but that it could have been so much more than it was. There's a lot of interesting, likable characters here, and a lot of fertile ground, story-wise. But somewhere along the production trail some halfwit had the epifany: "This is a movie directed at a teen audience, if we make it standard movie length, they're going to lose interest." The final product suffered for it. I don't know if it called for a premium channel, a TV mini-series, or just biting the bullet and making the fucking film 2+ hours long, but a lot more needed to unfold, and at a much better pace, than we ended up with. It felt like they were so rushed to get this in under time that they chopped it to the point of unfollowability. (Yes, I made that word up, but you understood it, didn't you.) There's some good stuff here, but I have to admit the parts I enjoyed most were the ones my head filled in which the samurai editors hacked out.  ¶ 12:26 AM 0 comments

  Invincible 2. I was underwhelmed with this movie, so this is going to be short and sweet. Invincible isn't a bad movie by any means, it's...... "nice." It's got a fair amount of "feel good" going for it, and a lot of people will be extra jazzed that it's based on a real person. The acting is decent throughout. Elizabeth Banks is every man's dream girlfriend... an incredibly hot, sensative, and fun-loving girl who can drink and loves football. I was just unimpressed for my hard-earned 8 bucks. In the movie's defense, it must be hard to carefully craft a 2 hour snippet of a 3 year football career. How much of it do you show? What do you choose as your "climax"? Where do you start and end? They decided on a bit so small it's essentially anecdotal. Personally, I think they chose too little of a short but somewhat legendary career. It's worth your TV viewing time.  ¶ 12:11 AM 0 comments

  The Descent 4. The Descent isn't a bad little horror movie, good for an afternoon's, or a really late night's, enjoyment. A pretty much straightforward "what you see is what you get" kind of movie with no surpises (though they tried to work one pointlessly into the plot). Bunch of tough, modern girls decide to go cave climbing, get trapped, and stumble upon a bunch of humanoid monsters while they're trying to get out. The work with the monsters here is excellent... inhuman, but human enough to make your skin crawl, and they're shot perfectly, in rough, "eye witnessy" kind of perspective. Got some genuine screams from the girls in the audience. Strangely, I think what sold the film, though, was the claustrophobia that was forced upon you with every shot and scene. It's not so much that you've stumbled upon flesh-eating monsters, it's that you're fucking trapped hundreds of feet underground!!... with flesh-eating monsters. Cue the mad dash to survive and escape. That's about it. Can't say I'd recommend shelling out the dough to see it in the theater, but it's probably a good rental, if only to avoid the slaughtering the network TV editors will give it someday.  ¶ 11:45 PM 0 comments