August in December

Funny People
Starring Adam Sandler, Seth Rogen, Leslie Mann, Eric Bana, Jonah Hill, and Jason Schwartzman

It's funny, it's sad, and it has excellent performances by Sandler, Rogen, and Mann, but this Apatow dramedy is just like every other Apatow film - too freaking long!

Grade: B


(500) Days of Summer
Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel

Some indie films feel indie, probably because they're more indie than others, but I don't really know. "(500) Days of Sumemr" creates a world where the audience knows the ending, knows the heartbreak's looming in the future, and still we hope for the lead man. It's an indie that can stand on its own feet and feel like a high-class film. The point of view is perfect, allowing us not to see the enitre picture at once, and the ending is hilariously perfect. Also, I knew he was going to start a song-and-dance routine!

Grade: A-


District 9
Starring Sharlto Copley

The thing about most sci-fi-alien-attacks-earth movies is that most of them never let you care. "District 9", on the other hand, presents us with a likeable, unknown actor named Sharlto Copley as the shit-on protagonist who undergoes changes that defy the usual character transformations (talking psychological/emotional here), and break into mutating characters physically without losing the character drama that is "District 9".

Grade: B+



Inglorious Basterds
Starring Brad Pitt, Melanie Laurent, Christoph Waltz, Eli Roth, and Diane Kruger

Tarantino at his best! When screenwriting books and blogs and guidelines tell you NOT to keep your characters in the same scene for too long, they should have a meeting with Quentin. It felt like a play but a kick-some-Nazi-ass one. The screenplay created a sense of entertainment, of old-fashioned Hollywood, like something in between "Casablanca" and "Taxi Driver". "Inglorious Basterds" glues you to your seat, makes you sweat, nervous, and jealous that Pitt and his Nazi-killing thugs are having so much fun. Watch out Oscar, here comes Christoph Waltz - the best villain since Anton Chigurh.

Grade: A

Star Trek

Star Trek
Starring Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Eric Bana, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldana, Anton Yelchin, Simon Pegg, Winona Ryder & Leonard Nimoy

From an outsider's perspecive, the renewal of the "Star Trek" establishment beams into gear with fun, excitement, thrills, and a excellently written script. Director J. J. Abrams installs some of his usual Felicitian/Lostian love triangles into the mix as well as proving that his ability to create a high-class summer hit is well beyond the living room tube.

Obviously, being a galaxy-questing story, "Star Trek" makes use of its weaponry and action; yet, unlike the "Star Wars" fleet of films (talking about the Episodes I through III), "Trek" becomes more than just cheap thrills and spills. The scene where Sulu (John Cho), Kirk (Chris Pine), and some other guy zoom down and parachute onto a platform of some drill that's breaching the atmosphere and earth of a planet is startlingly intense.

Although Zachary Quinto has been born to play Spock, Chris Pine as the roguish, angsty, and not to mention completely hilarious James T. Kirk steals the show. Pine's portrayal of a could've-been Luke/Anakin Skywalker doesn't mope and throw out cheeseball lines like Mark Hamill, and he doesn't whine like a little baby as Hayden Christensen so annoyingly did in Episodes II and III. Pine creates Holden Caulfield gone badass for himself - and it works.

With all this comparing and contrasting to "Star Wars," "Trek" can't live up to one thing: the dark side. Vader and all the other Darths make "Wars" a symbol of good and evil, God versus Satan, "Paradise Lost", "Romeo & Juliet". It's Shakespearean. "Trek's" badguy, played by Eric Bana, is a sideshow compared to the rest of the film, and in no respects comes close to the evil encompassing "Wars", but like I said, that's really the only part.

Oh, one more thing - I like Quinto better than Nimoy, and WTF Winona? Can't headline a movie anymore?

Grade: B+