Wreck-It Ralph: Rated E for Everyone, but Mostly Children.

Animated video game nostalgia.  What's not to like?  Not much, but Wreck-It Ralph just doesn't have the flair to pull off the Pixar style it attempts to emulate.  It's a cute, mildly funny feature that just doesn't accomplish all it set outs to.

It's a fantastic idea really: Wreck-It Ralph, the destructive villain in the fictional video game Fix-It Felix, just wants the chance to be a hero for once.  Unhappy with his day job, he begins jumping between video games in an attempt to prove his worth.  Unfortunately, after the first thirty minutes, Ralph finds himself in a saccharine racing game called Sugar Rush, where he stays for the rest of the film.  There a few amusing references to Tapper, Q-Bert, and a few others, but almost all occur in the film's opening moments.  Once Ralph reaches Sugar Rush, the film evaporates into little more than a childish underdog/outcast story and one amazing Oreo joke.

There are plenty of recognizable voices, but the typecasting is so meticulous, they might as well have named one of the characters "Sarah Silverman".  Disney Animation is trying its best to blend the adult with the childish, but it hasn't quite graduated from elementary school.

6/10

Seven Psychopaths and Colin Farrell

Dear Martin McDonagh,

Good idea.  Colin Farrell, Sam Rockwell, Christopher Walken, Woody Harrelson, Tom Waits and a shih tzu?  I like where this is going.  It doesn't come off as well as I'd hoped; it's certainly no In Bruges (Good work, by the way).  However, the cast, and your talent for dialogue, is more than enough to turn out an entertaining couple of hours.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower: Sophomore Year Must Have Sucked.

Ten points for Gryffindor.

The Perks of Being a Wallflower will resonate with anyone who remembers feeling like an outsider in high school, which as one eventually discovers, is pretty much everyone.  It's a well-crafted, capsule of nostalgia focused around an incredibly dull, yet invariably scarred, loner named Charlie who finds himself befriended by an intriguing band of misfit youths.

The film manages to capture the mood of youthful insecurity and the transitory sense of entering and leaving high school, all the while reminding us, perhaps a little too often, of the ignorance inherent in children's ploys at maturity.  Charlie seems to be the only real wallflower of the bunch; he acts as narrator, and would be a completely vapid character if not for a tragic past and a crush on Hermione Granger.

It is the friends Charlie makes that drive the plot.  Sam (Emma Watson) and Patrick (Ezra Miller) are step-siblings whom, after the realization that Charlie has no real friends, adopt him as their own.  Charlie seems to contribute little to this friendship, apart from being a virginal target for corruption and a fresh face to talk to.  I suppose that's more than most friendships are based on, but I think I harbored a small grudge for Charlie's uninteresting personality.  I mean, sure he reads books, but he's not that cool.  And he has a stupid trapper keeper.

Looper, or Joseph Gordon Levitt is Bruce Willis.

Yippee Ki-yay?

Joseph Gordon Levitt plays Bruce Willis.  Do I need to continue?  You know what?  I'm not going to.  It's pretty good and it's filled with plot holes.  Enjoy.  This post is to prove that I'm still here.

7/10

The Dark Knight Rises: Needed More Yeast.

Batman vs. Predator.

You know, for all the talk of "a storm coming", I don't think it rained once in The Dark Knight Rises.  As I was anxiously awaiting excessive precipitation, I have to admit that I'm heartbroken.  Maybe I wouldn't be so down if the film had been up to par.  I know I have a history of downplaying mega hits just to piss people off–including The Dark Knight–but I've always felt that Batman Begins and The Dark Knight are really good films.  The Dark Knight Rises is not.

It's really unfortunate that so few trilogies actually have three good movies in them, and it's equally upsetting that I have to consider The Dark Knight Rises Christopher Nolan's only miss.  I assumed TDKR would follow the trend of third-in-the-trilogy films and be less than the previous two, but I did not expect what I got: a bloated, clunky exercise in mediocrity.

To Rome With Love, or Lingering Alec Baldwin.

Midnight In Paris ruined everything.  I went to see To Rome with Love today and, believe it or not, there were other people in the theater.  It was terrifying.  Can you imagine sitting alongside fifty or so elderly couples who are actually laughing at the trailer for Hope Springs?  May you never experience such horror.  Thankfully, To Rome with Love should scare off the masses.  It's getting destroyed by critics, and it certainly won't win any Academy Awards.

But it was still enjoyable.  Well, three fourths of it was.  Most of the dialogue misses its mark, and the characters have little to no merit, but To Rome with Love offers just enough absurdity to keep itself going.

Magic Mike, or What Matthew McConaughey Does in His Free Time.

Sorry for the absence.  I bought a computer today because I knew you all missed me.  Although I've been without the means to deliver my delightfully slanderous criticism, rest assured that I have been keeping tabs on all things cinematic.  If you haven't seen a theatrical release since my absence, you haven't missed much.  However, as with all things in life, just as you're getting comfortable with the bland emptiness of it all, Channing Tatum shows up and takes off his pants.