Reviews

The Good:

Ryan Reynolds- he really did give it his all and sold it as best he could. His sincerity was undeniable and he deserves most of the credit for what works in the movie. He succeeded were plenty of others would've fallen flat on their faces.

Peter Sarsgaard- not a great performance, but he was chewing the hell out of the scenery and having a blast doing it. I love that piercing scream he does.

The creature and Corp design work- The suits look great. They don't look phony at all on Reynolds. I love the bright colors. I was surprised how much I liked the look and presence of Parallax. Especially good sound work on him. There were some neat looking aliens tucked away in the corners.

The Bad:

The script- lazy, lazy, lazy. It's boiling over with clunky exposition. Who these characters were was shoehorned in in a very shoddy manner. Hal's flashback at the beginning to his father's death was the height of plot convenience. Hal and Hector having a past is pretty much non existent. They don't share any scenes together until what seemed like an hour in and their interaction basically amounts to them bumping into each other and going "Oh, hey. What's up?" And speaking of Hector, I have no idea who this guy was. He's infected pretty much immediately after we meet. Am I supposed to like him? see his flaws? see how he could be susceptible to fear? I don't know! Near the end, Sinestro describes Hal as brash and opinionated "just like Abin-Sur." Would have been nice to have actually see that quality in Abin instead of just being told at the end.

Actors in nothing roles- Tim Robbins and Angela Bassett do nothing of note playing cardboard characters with nothing to do but further the plot and add some cred to the cast. I'm not overly familiar with Blake Lively and I left with basically no impression of her. I won't blame her as she had essentially nothing to work with.

The Corp- Speaking of doing nothing, the Corp and the Guardians do nothing either. This is all tell and no show. Tomar-Re is Basil Exposition, Kilowag trains Hal for what seemed like 2 minutes and then more or less vanished, the Guardians sit on their thrones making bizarre, head scratching decisions and they have a serious case of the CG rubber lips. I started to perk up when Sinestro led a small regiment of Lanterns to fight Parallax, but it's a 30 second non- fight with one projection, 5 seconds of zipping around, and then Sinestro looking shocked after characters we "met" in 2 second cut-aways are dispatched with ridiculous ease by Parallax.

Oa- one of the biggest let downs for me. If you've seen the trailers, you've pretty much seen all this movie has to offer with this world. Some rocks, a purple sky, and Lanterns standing around doing, you guessed it, nothing. Asgard was a far more visually interesting place and forget about it even coming near Pandora.

The rest of the people on Earth- After Green Lantern makes his first appearance, there's a shocking lack of attention. There's a news report in the background of one scene "going who was this hero who saved the day?" as if that's the big story, and not a mention of, gee, I don't know, all the crazy energy constructs he created!

The credit cookie- Not earned in the slightest. The reason Sinestro puts on that yellow ring had zero to do with what was established throughout the entire rest of the movie (and for what it's worth, Sinestro works well with his small amount of screen time and Mark Strong brings as much gravity as his humanely possible to the role). This was nothing but cheap fan service and teeth grating plot contrivance.

Thor was a much more entertaining ride, and I thought Thor was merely good. Forget about it even coming close to Iron Man, Superman, Watchmen, or Nolan's Batmans. But, is it terrible? No. I'll watch this again before I go near Wolverine, Fantastic Four, Ghost Rider, or Kick-Ass again. By a long shot. It didn't suck, but I just can't say I liked it either and I wanted to so bad. Big disappointment.

Oh, Eli. What happened? Cabin Fever was a fun horror flick and the first Hostel had its moments, but this? My excitement over a Roth helmed Cell has just dropped dramatically.

Opening where the first film left off, things get off to a bad start as we meet back up with Paxton, with Jay Hernandez phoning in a curiously wooden performance. The first "scares" are very poorly handled and obvious.

After the pointless prologue, we meet our new gender swapped protagonists. Bijou Phillips's is the obnoxious, one-dimensional slut who just wants to sleep with Viktor Krum. Heather Matarazzo's Lorna should have been a good character. Matarazzo is a talented actress, but here she hams it up too much and Roth piles on the "she's an introverted nerd!" touches far too heavily. She's sorta the Josh of Hostel II, only Lorna is a cartoon where as Josh actually seemed like a guy you could meet in a college algebra class. Lauren Graham turns in a pretty good performance and Beth is the only one of these females who actually feels somewhat like a real person.

The new twist on the formula lies in Roger Bart and Richard Burgi's prospective killers. Here's where Roth could have gotten really dark and interesting. Everyone who saw the first Hostetl remembers Rick Hoffman's whacked out, creepy performance as the American Client. Bart and Burgi's characters could have been used to expand on that creepiness as well as bring in some genuine interest in Bart's character's reluctance, amping up the suspense. But no! Instead these characters are shallow, barely explored personalities and Roth uses them for some cheap plot contrivances in the third act.

For a horror flick, the movie has surprisingly little scares. Scratch that, it has no scares. There was not a moment in this movie where I didn't see the jumps coming and there is little in the way of suspense. The first Hostel had some genuinely suspenseful moments and Cabin Fever even had a few "don't do that!" moments. This film has gruesome moments for sure (that this movie got an R rating is the final nail in the coffin for the MPAA's credibility. If Shakespeare in Love and Hostel II share the same rating, something is seriously wrong). The first kill is undeniably effective in being unnerving, but it lacks suspense, which is the secret when a film is toeing the line of bad taste. This was simply inescapable murder on display.

Interestingly, the rest of the gruesomeness that ensues is much different in tone. Much of the third act has an almost slapstick vibe, but Roth lacks the grace and timing of splatstick alumni like Sam Raimi and Peter Jackson to truly pull it off. There is also a completely superfluous scene involving a man with a gun and some children that literally served no purpose. Roth was trying so hard to be shocking in that scene that it had the opposite affect on me: I just stared blankly at the screen. I couldn't care less about this completely pointless detour featuring Roth going "look! Aren't I shocking!"

One last complaint and boy is it a big one: Nathan Barr's score. This movie had one of the worst scores I've heard in years. Barr's music sounds like something someone would write if they were making fun of all the clichés of the horror score. That worked for the campy tone of Cabin Fever, but it completely destroys any opportunity for suspense in this film.

I know Eli Roth has a really good film in him. After Hostel II, I fear the wait for that movie will be longer than I was expecting. I hope he's finally scratched that itch for paying homage to his favorite horror flicks and his shock for shock's sake fetish. If that makes its way into his adaption of Stephen King's Cell, we'll have lost a great story ripe for screen translation to a promising young filmmaker whose head got too big too fast.

I watched Titanic all the way through today for the first time in roughly 7 years today. I very vividly recall seeing this at the age of 14. I was a huge Cameron fan and it took a few weeks before I could even get tickets to it. I loved it. I was extremely pleased to see it win best picture. Then things started to get a little crazy. The backlash on that this film received was to be expected no doubt after such saturation. I was a slight victim of the over exposure myself. I never really had the urge to watch it when it would come on TV. I was overloaded on it and that Celine Dion song still annoys me to this day.

But the hoopla has long since died out, at least for the most part. I watched the film with a clear head today, and you know, this is a damn good movie. It's not perfect or great by any means but I'd be lying if I said I hadn't been moved by it. Now more than ever, I cherished the loved story. The class warfare bit and Billy Zane's character (despite showing bits of compassion later in the film) were a bit stock, but the story of Jack and Rose was just plain wonderful. The nude drawing scene was stunningly beautiful and not in a "she's naked!" kind of way. It was simply a moment so tender I was almost moved to tears and the love scene, if you want to call it that, was almost as moving. No doubt, the way the love story affected me probably has quite a bit to do with the way my life has been going recently. I'm at a point in my life were I can truly recognize the feelings those characters were experiencing, but is it a "bad" thing that my life experiences can color a movie? I'd say the answer is obvious.

The second half of the film is quite stunning as well. Despite knowing the ship was going to sink and having already seen the movie, I did not want to see the ship hit that iceberg. Watching the ship sink was exhilarating, but not in an action movie kind of way. It was heartbreaking to watch. From a technical standpoint, the special effects hold up remarkably well. I don't see how anyone couldn't at the very least give this movie the respect it deserves for it's technical achievements.

Which brings us back to that backlash and the legions of haters. I wouldn't dare say everyone should like this movie, but at the same there's no doubt in my mind that many, many of this film's detractors wanted to hate it. For some strange cynical reason they refused to even give it a chance. It boggles my mind that there are still people that refer to DiCaprio as "DiCrapio". Please. Grow up.

I really hope Cameron one day returns to character based movies, perhaps even a love story like in this film or like the one in The Abyss(easily Cameron's best). That's what always made his movies so remarkable and why they'll be remembered for years to come. No one's going to be talking about Aliens vs. Predator in 10 years but everyone will remember Aliens, and that wasn't because of any special effects, it was because of characters we cared about. Because of films made with heart. Films like, Titanic.