What Maisie Knew Review: A very real insight on divorce as seen through the perspective of a six year old

Dir. Scott McGehee & David Siegel
93 Minutes
Rated R

What Maisie Knew has been making the rounds here and there in a limited release, a contemporary re-telling of a novel written in 1897 by Henry James told from the perspective of a young girl observing her dysfunctional family and the divorce of her parents.  The film stars Julianne Moore and Steve Coogan as Maisie's feuding parents, each flawed in their own right, and newcomer Onata Aprile as the titular Maisie.  The film is a brilliant portrayal of a broken family life as seen through the eyes of an innocent child, and at times can be hard to watch.  Although the whole custody battle/divorce plot line has been done to death, What Maisie Knew brings a fresh twist on the genre with a wonderful script and amazing actors.

After Earth Review: Will Smith wants to make his son proud, if only he felt the same about the audience

Dir. M. Night Shyamalan
100 Minutes
Rated PG-13

Oh how the mighty have fallen.  M. Night Shyamalan, a director once touted as "the next Spielberg," now has such a negative reputation that his name was hidden on all the promotional material for his latest strike-out, After Earth.  It's unclear if either Sony Pictures or M. Night himself was the reason for not letting the public know this was 'from the director of The Sixth Sense,' but really this felt more like Will Smith's latest attempt at making his child into a movie star than the standard twist-filled Shyamalan fare.  The plot pretty much just focuses on two characters: Cypher Raige (Will Smith), a legendary fearless warrior called a 'ghost,' who returns home to his family to father his son Kitai, who is following in his dad's footsteps, training to be a Ranger.  During a voyage together, Cypher and Kitai's ship crashes on Earth, now a Class-1 quarantined planet, evacuated 1000 years ago.  The only people alive are Will Smith and his son, and Will's legs are broken.  It's up to Jaden to travel across the dangerous forests of Earth to retrieve a signaling device for help, or else they both will DIE.  Sounds like a plateau for a solid survival/sci-fi father/son story, but pretty much every aspect of the film, from the writing to the pacing to the acting, was completely incompetent.

The Hangover Part III Review: Todd Phillips indulges on his worst instincts in this nearly joke-less sequel

Dir. Todd Phillips
100 Minutes
Rated R

The first Hangover film to me is sort of the definitive modern comedy.  It took an ingeniously simple premise - piecing together the previous night after a hangover - and ran with it using lots of  gross-out moments and a solid cast.  Based off of its crazy success, Todd Phillips signed on for two sequels to be made.  Part II, while a success at the box office, was considered a lazy, pandering follow-up.  Beat-for-beat, the entire story followed the exact same path as the first (to an extreme degree), only the gags were less fun and the overall tone was much more serious.  But Todd Phillips must've heard the fans' cries for something different for the third and "final" adventure with the wolf pack, because he did indeed go in a completely different direction for Part III.  The only problem is he pushed it further back into the wrong direction Part II was heading in; this film is the least funny and pointlessly "serious" of the three and shouldn't even be classified as a comedy.

The Iceman Review: Michael Shannon goes crazy...again

Dir. Ariel Vromen

103 Minutes

Rated R

Based on true events, The Iceman stars Michael Shannon as notorious contract killer Richard Kuklinski, who in his time killed over 100 unfortunate dudes.  The funny thing is that he considered himself a family man, even whilst slitting throats and gunning down guys, and his wife (Winona Ryder) and two daughters were completely oblivious to his mob activity before his ultimate arrest.  Shannon's performance is an amazing portrait of a killer, and the supporting cast is just as strong.  Winona Ryder is great in a sort of comeback role for her (originally meant for Maggie Gyllenhaal), and Chris Evans is nearly unrecognizable in what I consider to be the best role of his career so far, playing a guy who makes bodies disappear, fronting as an ice cream truck driver.  Plus there's Ray Liotta and one of the Fratelli Brothers (from The Goonies) playing mob guys.  You can't go wrong there.  The film retreads a lot of ground we've seen before with these types of crime dramas, but the performances were strong enough to make it an entertaining watch.

Fast & Furious 6 Review: Big, dumb, crazy action at its finest

Dir. Justin Lin
130 Minutes
Rated PG-13

The Fast and the Furious franchise is pretty odd in that its fifth film was the highest grossing, most critically "acclaimed" entry of the popular street racing saga (and yes, it is a saga).  The plots have never been good in any of the films, often just marking the time in between the racing scenes, and Fast and Furious 6 is no different.  The story continues where Fast Five left off, bringing back Dom Torreto (Vin Diesel) and his crew of pro-racers, this time to take down yet another vaguely "bad" organization, a mission sent  by Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson).  Much like Fast Five elements of past films are called back on so fans of the series should have an enriched experience when it comes to certain plot turns, but overall the script takes a backseat to the action, with which director Justin Lin has outdone himself.  Lin has directed the last four entries, starting with Tokyo Drift, and you can track his evolution through the movies, getting bigger and better with each sequel. Assuming you came to Fast and Furious 6 for the badass, insane, physically implausible car chase sequences, you get your money's worth.

Star Trek Into Darkness Review: Where no man has gone before, except in the previous film I suppose...

Dir. J.J. Abrams
133 Minutes
Rated PG-13

J.J. god damn Abrams.  He's probably made billions of dollars, has dozens of TV shows with his name slapped on the front of it, and now he's at the helm of the two biggest sci-fi properties of all time.  I don't know whose dick this guy's sucking to get these gigs, but it's certainly the right one.  I'm barely familiar with the Star Trek mythology and I personally wasn't a huge fan of Abram's Star Trek reboot in 2009 (I'm definitely in the minority there). It's not that I didn't think it was any good, it was just exactly what you would expect and nothing more.  Just a hero's journey wrapped up in a ton of space fights and explosions.  It was solid enough.  But the thing that got me excited for the sequel, and this may be controversial, was that Damon Lindelof was writing the screenplay.  It seems in the nerd world Lindelof inspires either a lot of love or a lot of ravenous hate, but I think he's an amazing writer.  Lost is one of my favorite TV shows of all time and I appreciated the finale, and I even thought Prometheus was one of the best movies last summer despite all the hate it received.  And it wasn't just a simple "eh, I didn't care for that film" - people legitimately got violent and angry over that film.  Lindelof writes challenging material filled with philosophy and humanity, and isn't afraid to trek into non-convention.  But Star Trek Into Darkness, as serviceable a Trek film as it is, still suffers from the "vanilla sci-fi" I experienced the first time around.

The Great Gatsby Review: This ain't your mother's Gatsby, old sport

Dir. Baz Luhrmann
143 Minutes
Rated PG-13

I have to admit: I used Sparknotes in high school.  I never really made it all the way through the original F. Scott Fitzgerald book, and I'm unsure if that's because it truly was boring, or if I just wasn't cultured enough to sit through it.  The Great Gatsby is one of those iconic stories that's never had a great film attached to it, though many have tried.  Now Baz Luhrmann is entering the ring, putting his over-the-top ADHD spin on it.  On a conceptual level this is pretty ambitious stuff: Jay Z produced the music, there are tons of weird anachronisms, the camera moves around so fast you'll get whiplash, and not to mention it's a romantic character drama shot in 3D.  I personally did not catch this one in 3D, and because I'm behind on my movie-watching, I have also never seen a previous film by Luhrmann.  Sorry, my fellow movie-goers, it's just one of my blindspots.  But from what I hear they are similarly bombastic.  Really I just wanted to watch this in the hope that maybe his revisionist take on the material would finally make The Great Gatsby relatable and/or bearable for me for the first time, and I also wanted to see Leo again because he is simply a dreamboat.