To me, Robert Downey Jr. is kind of like Jude Law. They both act so pompous and self-important that I always think actually talking to them would make me feel hopelessly un-famous. But sometimes, like Jude in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, or Robert here, that attitude really works. Tony Stark is supposed to be pompous and self-important -- heck, he is important, like any billionaire. He's smart and not entirely a bad sort, but spoiled (unsurprisingly) and with the attitude of the very early James Bond towards women.

In the comics (yes, I read them as a kid) he was originally wounded in Vietnam, but of course he can't be that old anymore, so here it's Afghanistan, where Tony has gone to demonstrate a really huge and scary missile called the Jericho for the military. The convoy he's riding in is attacked (but since it's PG-13, there's remarkably little blood), he scrambles for cover, and gets blown up by a Stark Industries bomb. Yes, they do kind of beat you over the head with the irony, but that's okay.

He wakes in a cave (or course) filled with terrorists (naturally), who want him to build their very own Jericho. But he's been all shrapneled up by the little bomb, and is in real danger of dying. A fellow prisoner (his story is a mystery -- all you find out about him is that he's a doctor from a place called Gulmira) named Yinsen has rigged up an electromagnet to keep the shrapnel from moving, so for a while, Tony's literally carrying a car battery around with him everywhere. I'm not sure that would really work, but like most things in the movie, it seems just plausible enough to make you believe it.

Pretending to build the missile, Tony actually puts together the first Iron Man suit, though of course he doesn't call it that, and makes a nifty escape, in true dramatic comic book style. Again, there's not much blood, and for a genius, it's really pretty stupid of him not to make sure the big bad guys are dead, but nearly every character has their truly stupid moments here (except Yinsen, who has appeared in nearly every Iron Man variation, in one form or another).

Where does he get such wonderful toys...?

Anyway, he escapes, and his first stop once he gets home to Malibu is Burger King. No, really. His next order of business is to announce that Stark Industries isn't going to make weapons anymore. The stock plummets fifty-some points, and that's when we know that Obadiah Stane (a bald Jeff Bridges), the anti-Stark, is going to cause problems. Not that anyone who's read the comic didn't know that already...

All the supporting cast is there, even the driver, Happy Hogan, though if you blink you'll miss him--he's played by the director, Jon Favreau. Besides Stane, there's Air Force pilot Jim Rhodes (Terrence Howard) and the perfect personal assistant, Pepper Potts (a redheaded Gwyneth Paltrow). Yep, they left her with that very unfortunate name, poor girl; and Gwyneth often seems to end up playing sidekick to the pompous heroes. There's hints of romance between her and Tony, and the cast is already signed on for two sequels, so expect the announcement of Iron Man 2: Return to Afghanistan to Make Sure the Big Bad Guys Are Dead This Time any day now. There's even S.H.I.E.L.D., though minus Nick Fury, sort of. These days it stands for Strategic Homeland Intervention, Engagement and Logistics Division, which sounds like something that might actually exist.

The effects are fantastic. In spite of his 1950's attitude towards women, which seriously embarrassed me once or twice, the whole look of the film is beyond cutting-edge. Tony shows exactly what you can do with enough billions, like manipulating holograms with his hands, building voice-controlled robots with personalities, and breaking things indiscriminantly without worrying about who's going to replace them. And of course, building self-contained, red and gold suits of power armor with repulsor rays and near-space capability.

So three and three-quarter idols. I had to dock a quarter idol for the bit where they turn Tony's private plane into a 1960's go-go club. But otherwise, it's fun, tongue-in-cheek entertainment, with a dash of moral dilemma thrown in, and the effects alone make it worth the price of admission. The fact that Robert is so good at making us root for his character in spite of ourselves is just an added bonus. Now let's all prepare for the coming of Nick Fury (aka Samuel L. Jackson) and hope that he's scarier than he was in that Jumper thing.

It sounded pretty cool to start with. I like Ewan McGregor, and while I'm not a huge Wolverine fan, I certainly have nothing against Hugh Jackman. Michelle Williams (Brokeback Mountain, and no, I still haven't seen it) was a mystery to me going in, but that's okay. And I like thriller movies, when they're well done and nice and convoluted, without getting too unbelieveable. So it all looked good in the previews. I'm not quite sure what happened. I wasn't bored during the movie, wondering constantly when it would end, so that's a good thing. But very little of it actually stuck in my brain. As soon as I left the theatre, it almost felt like I hadn't seen a movie at all.

But I do remember something of it, when I work at it and have imdb to jog my memory, so let me see what I can do for a summary. Ewan is Jonathan McQuarry, mild-mannered accountant, who does outside audits of big companies, so no one likes him, even though he's Ewan McGregor and is therefore adorable. Hugh is Wyatt Bose, who is extremely tall and makes Ewan look very short and Michelle like a tiny little doll. Oh, and he's also rich and popular and a ladies' man, who takes Jonathan under his wing. Strangely, this doesn't make Jonathan suspicious, even though the first thing Wyatt does is share a joint with him, which is supposed to make you paranoid.

Somewhere along the way, they accidentally (maybe) switch cell phones. See how much bother those things can be? Anyway, Jonathan suddenly discovers that Wyatt is part of a weird sex club, where nameless strangers meet in random hotels. The lonely, repressed Jonathan dives into the club with a vengeance, which is not too surprising.

The thrills never stop!

But just when you think this is going to be a borderline X-rated film (or NC-17, or whatever they call them these days) about sex and how weird interpersonal relationships can be, it turns a corner and then it just... isn't. It morphs into a crime thriller. It isn't a jarring transition, by any means, but after a few minutes of the new film with the old characters, I started wondering what the heck had happened. They sort of tie back into the club later, so it isn't totally forgotten, but it was still odd. It was kind of like a committee had written the script, which I guess does happen sometimes.

So now I suppose you're expecting a rating. Um. Let's go with two and a quarter. One for Ewan, one for Hugh, and a quarter just because I'm feeling generous. If it's free and the only thing on, go ahead and watch it, but just remember, it's kind of like Chinese food, and I'm not saying that just because part of the film is set in Chinatown (New York's, I think, but I can't be sure anymore). I'm saying that because in an hour, you'll want to watch another movie.

I'm still deciding if this one annoyed me or not. Dennis Quaid is Lawrence Wetherhold, an English professor at Carnegie Mellon University in beautiful Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was widowed some years ago, leaving him with two kids to raise, and apparently making him into even more of a self-centered jerk than he was when his wife was alive. He talks down to his students, habitually parks his wreck of a car across two parking spaces, and can't remember the names of even those students he has in multiple classes because he just doesn't care. Basically, he's like the professor I got stuck with for my Shakespeare class, who came frighteningly close to making me hate Shakespeare just because of those terrible associations.

His kids, James (Ashton Holmes) and Vanessa (Ellen Page, the newest hot actress thanks to Juno), haven't turned out so great. James (from what I could tell; his character wasn't really on screen much) carries around a huge pile of resentment against his dad, pouting and rebelling against his staid ways. He describes his sister as "the perfect little homemaker -- I mean, daughter," which sums her up nicely. She's the ultimate overachiever, and I kept expecting the film to mention her addiction to diet pills or something, because she can't possibly ever have slept. Besides cleaning and cooking (nice meals, like Beef Stroganoff with mashed potatoes), she is active in the Young Republicans, the Honor Society, and the Model U.N., when she isn't busy striving for the perfect SAT score. She also gets called an android, and she is a lot like a Stepford Wife.

The perfect dysfunctional family dinner. You know the type.

When Lawrence has a seizure because of his parking habits (really), he's prohibited from driving for at least six months, by Janet Hartigan, the ER doctor who treats him (Sarah Jessica Parker, who reminds me of Julia Roberts in that I'm never sure why people think she's so gorgeous). She was also a student of his, though of course he doesn't remember, and he was responsible for making her change majors from English to biology. If that isn't a sign of deep trauma, I don't know what is.

In spite of how disgusted she is with him all the time, they start dating. Meanwhile, to help out with driving, Lawrence's adopted brother (and no, they never miss the chance to throw in that word 'adopted'), moves in. He's Lawrence's opposite -- can't hold down a job, drinks, smokes pot, and can't even remember when he's supposed to pick his brother up. But since he's played by the Sandman (Thomas Haden Church) I wouldn't have expected him to be much help. Basically, he's just there to help Lawrence realize how screwed up his life is.

So I did laugh now and then, but it really isn't a comedy, romantic or otherwise. The acting is all very good, and Dennis Quaid looks better with the beard, because that keeps him from looking so much like he's sucking on a lemon between takes. And yet I'm still not quite sure what to rate this thing. I feel like I should have liked it, but I kind of didn't. Maybe it just tries to do too much, and overextends itself, because I didn't really connect with any of the characters. On the purely technical side, it isn't very well edited, which was distracting. Of course, what do I know -- I whiled away the seventy-three hours I was stuck watching The Aviator by counting the number of bad edits, and that flick won an Oscar for editing.

So, I don't know -- three idols, I guess. A safe, middle of the road sort of rating. I'm thinking it just wasn't quite my kind of movie, but that doesn't mean it won't be hugely popular -- in fact, it almost guarantees it. So if you like those indefineable movies, or like 'family dramas', I guess is the term, give this one a try. And let me know if it annoys you or not.

So this year, I saw a collection of short films as usual -- I also remember when there was only one of those, and they showed it three times, instead of these days, when there are six collections only shown once each. Deciding is just too much pressure! But anyway, they were short films made by students, running the gamut as usual, from tiny comedies to animation to a mini-drama that can best be described as psychedelic. And two of those short films featured music from the host of this lovely site, available from the music section on top of the navigation bar to your right, so go listen if you haven't already. It was most prominently featured in Drip, a Rube Golberg-esque short that begins with a dripping faucet and takes you some really wild places -- that was the audience favorite this year. So good job, Kevin!

The main course, so to speak, was a feature-length film from China called The Case. It occurred to me much too late that maybe I should have boycotted the Chinese films, but I don't really like the idea of mixing art and politics anyway. And it was a good film. The main character is the hapless Dasham -- at least that's how the subtitles had it, but on imdb he's listed as Dashang. His health is delicate, somehow, but they never quite explain that. I'm thinking psychological problems myself, because he often seemed not quite there. Too fragile to keep a real job, he instead helps his wife run a small guest house near a small town. She's insanely jealous and overprotective, hardly leaving him a moment to himself.

So when he fishes a locked suitcase out of the nearby river, he can barely find the time to open it in private -- and when he does, he's sorry he did, because it's full of frozen body parts. Now he has to hide them, and fast. But now it's not just his wife -- his brother-in-law shows up, unexpected guests appear, and he even has to suffer through a snap inspection by health officials. So you can imagine what all that does for his state of mind. Then his wife is finally presented with an excellent reason to be suspicious, and everything goes crazy. Overall, very strange, but a fun movie, darkly humorous. I remarked as we were leaving the theatre that I wasn't sure I'd ever heard such a big laugh for a death scene, and got another big laugh from two passersby, but that does somehow kind of sum up the whole film.

Now let me go see if I can actually get organized enough to post that review of 21 from last week. *grumble*

Okay. Now onto the big score. In 1971, a group of thieves broke into a branch of the famous Lloyd's Bank of London and robbed not the vault, as one might expect, but the safety deposit boxes. This turned out to be a much better move than robbing the vault, as it turned out -- though many were reluctant to report what they'd lost, some estimates put the losses at more than 4 million pounds. That works out today to over $8 milliion US, and that's not even adjusted for inflation, because I have no idea how to do that. The crime was all over the news for a few days, then disappeared completely. The British government had issued something called a D-order, commanding the media to stop their reporting, and they did. I'm not entirely sure those still work today, but back then they had some clout. But to this day, it isn't generally known who was behind it or why the government stepped in.

Enter this film, to offer up one very fun theory. According to the script, Princess Margaret, who was apparently quite a wild woman in the 1960's and 70's, was the subject of some very racy blackmail photos. The blackmailer (supposedly) was a real-life Black Power leader and wanna-be Malcolm X who called himself Michael X, and used the photos to get immunity for all his varied criminal enterprises. MI-5 wants these photos desperately, of course, but they have to be sneaky about it so as to avoid any scandal or direct ties between them and whatever underhanded methods they have to use to get the pictures.

So they recruit a minor drug dealer named Martine (Saffron Burrows, Troy), to lure in a group of criminals to pull off the robbery. She goes back to some old friends: Terry Leather (Jason Statham, The Transporter), since married and trying to be respectable; and his mates Kevin (Stephen Campbell Moore, Amazing Grace) and Dave (Daniel Mays, Atonement) -- not quite so respectable, perhaps. But they're certainly not bank robbers or any kind of big-league crooks, and you can tell.

Sometimes it's hard to tell the difference between miners and bank robbers these days.

They have a decent plan -- they take over the lease of a nearby empty store, and use its basement as a tunnelling point to get them into the bank from below. But they have this thing called a thermic lance (think a sparkler, only a thousand times bigger and hotter) to help them get through all the concrete and steel, and they nearly burn the whole building down while they're playing with it. They're noisy, attracting attention from nearby stores, they order food to be delivered while they work, and don't even bother to wear gloves. Worst of all, they use walkie-talkies to keep in touch with their lookout, forgetting how easy it can be to overhear things on those.

But they succeed, and have a party in the basement, rummaging through all the myriad treasures from the deposit boxes. Their fortunes are made, they think -- until they find not only the offending royal photos, but a whole stack of other, equally appalling pictures that a local madam kept there, not to mention a ledger of payoffs to corrupt cops, recorded by pimp and strip-club owner Lew Vogel (David Suchet, of Poirot fame, and I'm officially exhausted with listing past credits).

Here's where you might need to start taking notes. This is a British film, and they expect people to pay attention, so there's a lot going on. Aside from MI-5, both the madam and the sinister Vogel want their things back -- especially Vogel, who isn't afraid to use something that I think was some sort of mechanical paint-stripper to get his way, and has half the London police on his payroll besides. Other politicians slowly get pulled in as well, for their various, scandalous reasons, until our intrepid gang of hero-thieves no longer knows which way to turn.

And there's so much more that happens, I couldn't even begin to explain it all. But it's well-done, fast-paced and interesting, though as I said, you do have to pay attention. The characters are great, the sort of odd and off-beat people you might know yourself, and the humor is nice and dry, just the way I like it. So four idols here, and it's well worth any note-taking you might have to do.

The main character, David Rice, is played by Hayden Christensen, so right there you know you're in trouble. He still can't act, but at least he's finally figured out that he needs roles where all he has to do is look good and not react or emote much. He's pretty good at that sort of brooding look, and that's all that's required in a lot of the scenes here, so the casting isn't quite as disastrous as it seems. I did occasionally feel sorry for Rachel Bilson as girlfriend Millie, who spends most of her scenes looking at him a little pleadingly, hoping for some sort of feedback on what she's saying, just so she knows he's listening.

At 15, David nearly drowns, and in his panic to get out of the water, lands himself in the Ann Arbor Public Library. Strangely, he doesn't seem to get in any trouble for drenching half the fiction section, and after a bit more experimenting, he decides to go on the run. His mother (Diane Lane, of Untraceable fame, though fortunately for her she has only a tiny little part here) ran off ten years ago, and his father has been stern and distant ever since. So in his teenage angst, he packs up some clothes and some money and heads for New York. The big city being so expensive, though, his cash doesn't last long, and he has to find other resources. But when all you need to do is once to have seen a particular place to be able to go back there in the blink of an eye, robbing a bank is pretty simple. The next thing you know, he's literally wallowing in money, in his closet-sized room in a fleabag motel.

Soon he has a fancy apartment, filled with gadgets and toys. It's sort of like in Big, where the suddenly grown-up Tom Hanks jams his house with all the latest stuff. David hasn't needed to grow up, so he hasn't -- the toys have just gotten bigger and more expensive. He surfs in Fiji, picks up girls in London, and has a drink on the top of the Sphinx's head, and never gets jet lag. Then Samuel L. Jackson shows up, and with him the beginning of the end of David's sweet life.

Maybe it's the hair, but somehow Samuel just isn't his usual scary self...

For some reason Samuel has perfectly snow-white hair, which is pretty distracting, but does make him conveniently easy to recognize and describe. He's apparently the leader of the Paladins, and moonlights on the side for the NSA, CIA, and even the IRS. Whoever these Paladins are supposed to be, they apparently have unlimited funds, endless supplies of fake IDs, and can smack around anyone whose looks they don't like.

This brings us to the only explanation I could come up with for why the Paladins want to kill the Jumpers -- they're jealous because the Jumpers get to have unlimited funds and push people around, too. One Jumper, Griffin, has started his own one-man crusade to try and stop them, but if he knows why the Paladins started all this, he isn't telling. All he says on the matter is that they're fanatics -- or maybe phonetics; his English accent sounds a little strained at times. But they are fanatical; at least Samuel as Roland is. We don't really get to see any other Paladins in action, but he keeps insisting that the Jumpers are abominations.

And so, unfortunately, is the film. Two and a quarter idols is the best I can do, and half an idol is just for the cinematography. It's a huge, chaotic mess of exotic places and strange sights -- fun, dizzying, and almost completely plotless. Don't get me wrong, it's fascinating to see an apartment in Michigan catch on fire because of some kid wielding a flamethrower in the middle of the Sahara; and the scenery is gorgeous. The music is good, too, but as a friend of mine once said, if you're noticing that much, then you would have been better off to stay at home and just buy the soundtrack. So that's my best suggestion here. It's about time someone organized a boycott of Hayden Christensen movies anyway... or at least to organize some money for acting lessons.

As the opening credits inform us, in 1714, a Spanish treasure fleet, on its way east from the New World laden with gold and gems, was sunk in a terrible hurricane somewhere in the Caribbean. That far, the movie's got it right, but you can find out more about the real shipwreck here, if you're curious. The film, because it wants to be a romantic comedy, adds the romantic angle of the treasure being the Queen's Dowry, sent for by Philip V of Spain at absolutely the worst time of year to sail, because he was so anxious to consummate his marriage with his intended bride. In fact, though some of it was probably rich gifts for his second wife, who he married that year, most of the gold was meant for the depleted Spanish treasury. Kings so rarely seem to know how to budget.

The film also claims that the treasure has been lost ever since, in spite of the best efforts of many fortune hunters. That isn't quite true, either, but hey, Matthew McConaughey is the hero here, so he gets to be the one to find it after nearly three centuries. He plays the roguish Ben Finnegan, who's been obsessed with one particular ship from the fleet, the Aurelia, for years. He shares this obsession with his soon-to-be ex-wife Tess (Kate Hudson), who is obviously the brains of their partnership, even if she did let her libido get the best of her when she married Finn in the first place. But he's the hero, even if he does seem to be some sort of lightning rod for trouble. I lost track of how many times he was smacked in the face, by everything from fists to canes to cricket bats, though at least he didn't have the misfortune to be whacked in a particularly sensitive spot with a shovel. Yikes.

Tess conveniently reads faded, scribbled 18th century Spanish just as easily as if it was English, and she has a theory about where the ship might be. But she just wants to divorce Finn and go back to school, except you know she won't get her way. Still, at least she isn't a hapless female -- she still ends up needing rescuing, but she also gets in some pretty good shots of her own. For funding to chase this theory, the perennially broke Finn has turned to a slightly shady rap star called Bigg Bunny. Nope, I'm not making that up; the film's writers did. He owns a small island and apparently his own brand of rum as well. He also, appropriately, owns an extremely large rabbit. And he has a touch of gold fever, and is determined to beat Finn to the treasure, especially once he catches Finn misappropriating funds.

Tess, meanwhile, has turned to her new boss, the multimillionaire Nigel Honeycutt (Donald Sutherland), as a safer source of funding. So once he and his daugher Gemma (spoiled, ditzy, and kind of like Paris Hilton, but much more wholesome looking) turn treasure hunter, basically half the people in that part of the Caribbean are all butting heads, trying to find that gold. In such a small space as they make it seem, you'd think someone would have tripped over it long ago.

If you can't have a plot, at least have plenty of eye candy for everyone...

And all sorts of people trip over all sorts of things in this movie. It's sort of cartoony that way, right down to the (limited) violence. There's gunplay, but few bullets hit anything except innocent rocks and engines. Finn not only gets beaten up, but falls in the water a lot (intentionally or otherwise), leaps onto taxiing planes, jumps off cliffs, and even water-skis without benefit of skis. But don't let it fool you: it's still not an action flick.

What it really is, is a romantic comedy with two and a half idols to its name. Somewhere along the way, I guess someone tried too hard to be all things to all viewers, and it didn't quite work as planned. Actually, it was a lot like watching a TV movie -- inoffensive to nearly everyone, fast-paced, and fluffy. It's a fun roller coaster ride, but that's about it, in the end. Hey, maybe Disney could work backwards this time and base its next huge theme park ride on a movie...

So the basis here is simple, even if the tech is so complicated as to go completely over my head: Someone with more computer skills than sanity (a lot more) is kidnapping and torturing people to death, while broadcasting the whole show on the internet, free for anyone to watch, download, and comment upon. The website is called www.killwithme.com, and yes, there is a replica of the site from the film at that address. Go check if you want; I'll wait. I didn't quite have the nerve to hit enter myself, though...

The gimmick in the film, you see, is that the more people view the site, the faster the victim on camera dies. Thanks to all the blogs, chat rooms, iPhones, Blackberries, and people who spend even more time online than I do, the victims die faster than the mainstream media can rush to the moral high ground by refusing to give out the web address. This is where our heroine come in: Diane Lane as FBI Special Agent Jennifer Marsh, part of the internet crimes unit. She usually tracks identity thieves and other such scammers, but this time she hits the law enforcement jackpot, so to speak -- a real live serial killer.

She doesn't much want the case at first -- she has a young daughter, Annie, and usually works nights (which probably is the best time to catch computer crooks anyway), but she can't duck the job, and she and her partner, Griffin (Colin Hanks) quickly discover they've got a real problem. The murderer has some sneaky way of using other domains to keep anyone from tracking and shutting down the site, so the usual methods don't work. They have to find other ways to hunt him, but of course the body count is rising all this time.

Welcome to beautiful, rainy Portland, Oregon, creating a new breed of serial killer for the 21st century.

This brings me to something that I've always wondered about. This guy is stalking, kidnapping and tormenting people, not to mention all the time he has to spend designing and building the weird gadgets that help do the killing, so he can't possibly be holding down any kind of decent job. And yet he has huge piles of computers, electronics and camera gear, probably worth more than my entire house. So where do these serial killers get their funding? Maybe that's something the government should be looking into to help the economy.

Anyway, he finds the time and the money to stalk the agents and police chasing him, and you can probably make a very good guess as to what happens from there. That's the big problem with the film... the chase is interesting and quite realistic, as far as I can tell; the dialogue keeps the technobabble to a minimum, thankfully; but you always know where things are going... so it's kind of the opposite of untraceable, really.

So I can't go any higher than three idols, and even that feels like a bit of a stretch. It's a shame, because the actors all do well, and they have one of the creepiest-looking movie killers ever, but there's just not enough suspense to keep things moving the way they should move. It's disturbing to see the victims dying, but there's also a sense of futility along with it that sort of made me give up. Unfortunately, the film is probably totally accurate in its prediction -- a site like that would get millions of hits very, very quickly, and very few people would ever imagine they were really doing anything wrong with their clicks and comments. Basically no one shocks easily enough anymore. But if the thought of hurting someone the next time you click your way to the next big internet fad doesn't stop you, just imagine all the weird spam that might flood your screen.

We start in Manhattan in April, except it jumps to May right away, but you'll understand that when you see it. A group of twenty-somethings are throwing a surprise party for their friend Rob Hawkins (Michael Stahl-David), who's leaving to take a job in Japan. This is apparently a tip of the hat to the old Godzilla movies, none of which I've seen personally, but without which, I'm sure this movie would never have been made.

Rob's brother Jason (Mike Vogel), and Jason's girlfriend Lily (Jessica Lucas), are the driving forces behind the party, but when Lily insists that Jason be the head cameraman and record the party as a souvenir for Rob, he doesn't want to do it and hands off the camera (actually Rob's camera, apparently borrowed for the occasion in true brotherly fashion) to best friend and helpful nerd Hud (T.J. Miller). Hud would prefer to video Marlena (Lizzy Caplan), on whom he has a crush, but quickly learns to take his duty way, way too seriously. And don't worry if none of these actors sound familiar to you, because I didn't know any of them, either, but I think a cast of unknowns was what they were after, to make it seem more real.

And it does seem real, for the most part, which is both good and bad. It's good because you end up feeling involved in the story and the characters' lives; but it's bad in that you can also easily end up sick to your stomach. Not because it's gory -- it is in places, but not nearly so bloody as it might have been -- but because the camera stops moving about three times in the course of the film. The remaining 87 minutes, it's in at least slight motion, and sometimes fails around like -- well, like the person holding it is running for his life, so we're back to the realism again, but it still didn't do my stomach any good. And don't even get me started on what it's like when the auto-focus goes out of control. Just be warned.

Now sit very close to your monitor and shake it around a lot, and you'll feel exactly like you're in the theatre!

The party is just getting good, with lots of booze, loud music, and even gossip about the soap opera that is bascially any twentysomething's life, when the gang feels something like an earthquake. They decide, for some reason, that it would be a good idea to go up onto the roof to see what's happening, but I suppose that's no sillier than many of the decisions made in the movies over the decades. When buildings start exploding, though, they regain some sense and take cover, just in time for the party to turn into a full-blown scramble for survival. There's a monster in town, and Godzilla doesn't seem so tough in comparison.

It's a very creepy monster. Very creepy. Its legs bend in wrong directions, it looks kind of reptillian in a slimy sort of way, and it has a very large, fang-filled mouth like a Predator's. Plus it has the audacity to knock the Statue of Liberty's head clean off and bowl it down the street, which you may have seen in those mysterious teaser previews from before they had a real name picked out. Sometimes it thuds around making more noise than a herd of elephants stampeding through an echo chamber, and other times it seems able to sneak up on people with remarkable ease, so maybe it's just playing with us. But it plays rough.

I'm going with three and a half idols. When it isn't generating more nausea than an out-of-control Tilt-a-Whirl, it's not a bad movie. The unknowns do a good job, managing not to get overpowered by the special effects, and though there are a few places where highly improbable things happen because they have to for the sake of the script, I'm inclined to forgive them for those because the rest of it seems so real. As far as the technical side of it goes, it feels like a grand experiment, and it doesn't always work, which is to be expected, I guess, but I'm just glad people do still experiment a little, even in major Hollywood motion pictures. And now, saving the most important for last, just one more word: Dramamine.

Morgan Freeman plays Carter Chambers, a sixty-something mechanic and grandfather who gets the news one day that he has cancer -- I think lung cancer, but they don't come right out and say that. Jack Nicholson plays Edward Cole, an incredibly wealthy businessman who, on about the same day, also gets the news that he has cancer. They find themselves sharing a room at the hospital, much to Edward's displeasure, and bond over the agonies of chemotherapy and boredom, and so a quest is born.

I like Morgan Freeman -- he's sort of like the caring uncle everyone would like to have, and he seems like a smart and nice guy. Jack Nicholson, on the other hand, is really starting to frighten me. His head looks too big, and his face seems to be contorted into a permanent expression of something between thoughtless mischief and downright evil. At one point, he asks Morgan Freeman if he's the devil, and I had the urge to yell, "Look who's talking!" but quite frankly, that's kind of the way the role was written, so he's just about perfect for the part.

He has all the trappings of wealth -- a private jet, a put-upon personal assistant (Sean Hayes, of "Will & Grace") to handle all the business of living, and a little copper thing that apparently follows him everywhere to keep him generously supplied with Kopi Luwak, the most expensive beverage in the world. (But do NOT click that link before you see the film, or you'll spoil one of the better jokes.) Carter is solidly middle-class, blessed with three kids and grandchildren, and a wife who adores him. He's a voracious reader, and such a whiz at Jeopardy, they really should have made that part of their quest. He could've won a bundle.

I'm telling you, Jack Nicholson is totally up to something.

But the point is, they make a list of all the things they meant to do with their lives, and now find themselves with very little time in which to do them. They travel the world, quite literally, stopping in France, Africa, Tibet and Hong Kong that we see, and they must have had some kind of layover in England, because they had "Visit Stonehenge" crossed off. They see the Taj Mahal and (sort of) Mt. Everest. And they skydive. I don't know why, but for some reason skydiving always shows up on every such list. Personally, dying or not, the only way I'm jumping out of a plane is if both wings have just fallen off, and maybe not even then. Give me Stonehenge or Macchu Picchu any day.

So it's part travelogue, part comedy, and part drama, which is normally a pretty strange and unsettling sort of hybrid, but which works here, in the capable hands of two such veteran actors. And personal assistant Tommy (or Matthew, depending on who you ask, since Edward doesn't like real names, apparently) does a great job too, holding his own beautifully in a very low-key way even with such esteemed competition. And yes, I'll admit it -- it made me sniffle. But I wasn't the only person in the theatre doing that, at least. Thankfully, it never quite goes as far as smacking the audience over the head with its message, which I was really worried about, though the voiceovers come close. On the whole, though, it was very well done, and I feel a little bad now that I wasn't really looking forward to seeing it.

We'll go with three and three-quarter idols. The sarcasm and witty exchanges (which I know I always like) keep it from getting too soppy and sentimental, and they manage not to go too far the other direction also and turn it into a really dark comedy. Nothing at all against dark comedies, but that wouldn't have been right here, I think. So don't let Jack scare you away; you can go ahead and see this one without worrying about having nightmares. Well, not too many, at least...

The Sweeney Todd story has a long history, actually, dating back to at least 1846. He was originally just a crazed serial killer, a London urban legend who nibbled on his victims -- sort of an early Jack the Ripper. But that's not the kind of role they could get Johnny Depp to play, I suppose, so the film goes with the Stephen Sondheim musical version, based on a 1973 update by Christopher Bond. This adds in the vengeance angle -- in a totally Count of Monte Cristo way, young barber Benjamin Barker is convicted of false charges by a judge who lusts after Mrs. Barker. With Mr. Barker transported to Australia, the judge swoops in, claiming both wife and baby daughter for his own. But Barker returns, reborn as Sweeney Todd, and determines to get even. He doesn't find any huge stash of treasure like the Count did, though.

The judge is Alan Rickman, and he actually does sing a little, and he's pretty good. Johnny Depp sings a lot, and he does all right, too. And Helena Bonham Carter, as Mrs. Lovett, sings too, in between squishing roaches with her rolling pin and making what she herself calls the worst pies in London. The point is, there's lots and lots of singing, so be warned. Even minor characters frequently break into song at the drop of a hat, and I know that can be kind of jarring.

The other jarring thing, of course, is the blood. There's more blood than there is singing, I think, and though none of it looks terribly real, it still means this movie isn't for the faint of heart or weak of stomach. I mean, it is about a man murdering people with a straight razor, so youve got to expect that, but Tim Burton doesn't pull the punches, either --not that I would have expected him to. All the blood's right out there for everyone to see. I kept wondering how in the world Sweeney could clean it all up so fast and so completely, because if his barbershop was as covered with blood as it really should have been given what he was up to, everyone would have run screaming at the sight. Instead they all just kept wandering in obediently to get their throats cut. I lost count.

Mr. Todd sings a love song to his razors, and Mrs. Lovett sings a love song to him.

Mrs. Lovett was landlady and friend to the Barkers in happier days, and always had a fondness for Mr. Barker, so she has no problem helping Mr. Todd with his murderous revenge now. But the judge still has daughter Johanna Barker, now a beautiful young lady, in his clutches, and he keeps her basically locked up in his house, sewing and singing. This was pretty much the fate of all well-to-do young ladies in Victorian London, but everyone wants to rescue her just the same, especially after the judge proposes marriage. In true musical tradition, you see, Johanna has fallen in love with the young sailor lurking outside her house, staring up at her admiringly. I would call that stalking myself, but she throws him the key to the house, and he immediately begins planning how best to spirit her away.

Knowing few people in London, young Anthony turns to a man he met on the voyage from Australia -- none other than Mr. Todd -- and that's when things really get messy, in more ways than one. Sweeney agrees to help, but things only get worse and worse, and the body count only gets higher and higher. Just because everyone sings doesn't mean it's a happy film.

In fact, except for some flashback scenes and the almost painful Technicolor of Mrs. Lovett's fever dreams of a quiet life by the seaside for her and Mr. Todd, the whole film looks like Sleepy Hollow, with that sort of washed-out, greyish color, like an old photograph that was tinted long ago. Everything looks faded and depressed, even the lush surroundings of the judge's house, smoke hangs everywhere, and it generally looks like a terribly unhealthy place to live -- so it's Victorian London to a T.

Anyway, four idols here. It is thoroughly gruesome, and just may have turned me into a vegetarian, but it's so well-acted and put together I can forgive it all the blood. Everyone goes completely over the top (especially Sacha Baron Cohen as competing barber and extremely flashy dresser Signor Pirelli) but they're all having such fun it works perfectly, and I was a little uneasy even when I was laughing. Even while Mr. Todd and the judge are singing what seems like a sweet duet about the charms of pretty women, there's still that blade lurking and creeping you out. I'm just glad someone invented the safety razor.

You can't go wrong with Will Smith, anyway. He reminds me in a way of Joaquin Phoenix, in that they both seem so real and down-to-earth even on the screen, and when it's over, you kind of wish you could sit down with them over drinks and discuss the movie. He even makes his acting a family affair -- just like his son Jaden played his son in The Pursuit of Happyness, his daughter Willow now plays his daughter here.

She's Marley, named after Bob Marley, whose music is a large part of the soundtrack. Will is Robert Neville, former military scientist, now the last man on earth, or at least the last man on earth who isn't constantly screaming and snapping and foaming at the mouth. In 2009, a scientist named Dr. Krippin (the actress playing this part is uncredited, but you'll recognize her, and I won't spoil the surprise) introduced a genetically engineered virus that was supposedly a miraculous cure for cancer. And maybe it was a miraculous cure for cancer, but it was also deadly in its own right, kind of like rabies, and Robert was one of the people hunting for a cure.

With a 90% kill rate, 9% of the survivors were turned into zombie/vampire creatures, who can sniff out blood miles away and sizzle when exposed to sunlight. The remaining 1%, naturally immune to the virus, are unfortunately not immune to the ravenous attacks of these night-seekers, as they're called, and suddenly being afraid of the dark is just a rational thing to be.

Three years later, Will is apparently the only (nonrabid) man in all of New York City, and his German shepherd, Sam, is the only noninfected dog. With Sam as his only friend and companion, he searches for other survivors, harvests corn in the middle of Brooklyn, has conversations with shop window dummies, and hunts deer with a rifle and scope from a Mustang Shelby GT500. Lions hunt them, too, and do better than Robert does. He's downright crazed in some scenes, of course -- after three years (1001 days is mentioned at one point), I'd be sounding crazed, too, and I don't even like people all that much.

Good news: No more leash laws. Bad news: Things trying to eat you and your dog.

In his basement, he's set up his own lab, using rats and the occasional trapped human subject to test various anti-viral drugs, recording his findings in obsessive detail, six times over. They're pretty much all negative findings, but he records them just the same, using this work and Sam's company to keep his tenuous hold on his sanity. Before they were separated, he promised his wife and daughter that he would stop this, and even though he knows it's too late for that, some part of him still fights to keep that promise.

There's a great showdown with the creatures at one point, and then the story takes a bit of a turn, which worried me a little, but turned out to be a pretty good turn, well-handled, and I won't give that away either. But those creatures are seriously spooky. They're basically your standard zombies, computer-generated in a lot of places and reminiscient of the undead troops from The Mummy and The Mummy Returns, but the scenes with them are well-done and many times downright claustrophobic. Like The Mist, they're spookiest when you only hear them, just eerie sounds somewhere in the dark that you can't quite track down.

So we'll go with four idols. It's still a zombie movie, but like 28 Days Later it isn't just a zombie movie. I wish I'd had the chance to read the book before seeing this, but I suspect it stuck pretty closely to the original plot. It isn't an upbeat movie, obviously, so be prepared to sniffle a little, which I admit I did at one point, and I'm not given to crying at movies. The point is, even if you're not usually a fan of the post-apocalyptic zombie kind of thing, give this one a try. I'm pretty sure you really can't go wrong with Will Smith...

Anyway, this movie uses tentacles, but it's still about impossible things grabbing unsuspecting victims and trying to eat them. Now, I don't freak out at just tentacles, and I don't mind spiders -- anything up to eight legs is okay. But several of these tentacled thingies also have about a zillion legs, and that's just too much like millipedes for me. Gah.

I don't know how much like the story the film is, but I imagine the basics are the same: After a terrible storm hits a small New England town, leaving a thick, mysterious mist in its wake, the residents go to the local Food Shop to stock up. Of course, the time to stock up is before the storm, but better late than never. Our hero, David Drayton (Thomas Jane, who played the Punisher in the 2004 movie of the same name, but don't hold that against him) is in the store with his son Billy when a bit player runs in screaming that there's something terrible in the mist and no one should leave.

The obligatory extra disbelieves everything and runs out to his car, and the last we hear of him is his dying scream. Then things just get worse. As one character points out, as soon as you get more than two people in a room, they start choosing sides. When you have several dozen people stuck in one store, add in a freakish mist and a couple of strange deaths, you know you're going to have serious problems, even aside from the Bible-thumping maniac Mrs. Carmody (Marcia Gay Harden) running around winding everyone up.

Now she does a good job with the part, because she's a good actress, but in the end, many of the characters end up being stereotypes. Aside from Mother Carmody and her "Sinner Repent" routine, there's the dryly sarcastic but good-hearted motorcycle guy; David's neighbor and champion of Logical Thinking (Andre Braugher, General Hager from Rise of the Silver Surfer); and of course the redneck mechanic who hates anyone he didn't grow up with.

The cast gaping at a giant praying mantis thing.

But on the other hand, some stereotypes get shaken up in neat ways. The little old lady schoolteacher Irene, played by Frances Sternhagen, gets to save the day (or at least one scene) with a lighter and a can of bug spray. The meek, bespectacled assistant manager at the Food Shop (Toby Jones, in a far cry from his role as the dissolute Duke of Clarence in Amazing Grace) turns out to be a crack shot. So it isn't all bad news there.

Still, it wasn't actually a good movie, either. The tension is good -- the scariest moments aren't the times when you jump, it's the quieter times, when the mist is all you see and you can only hear the strange, distant sounds of the monsters. But overall, you have to ignore way too many plot holes. We don't know, for instance, why the tentacled beasts are apparently too polite at first to do anything but knock at the door, basically, but of course that's only because it's more dramatic that way. The actors do a good job of pulling you in to the story, but everyone is either Good or Evil, basically, and people just aren't like that.

So two and a half idols, because it wasn't terrible, either. The ending, though... again, I don't know how true it is to the book, but it's bad, in a couple of senses of the word. Imagine the most horrible, gut-wrenching ending you can think of, short of the entire human race being killed. Now make it just a touch worse, and there you have it. It's bad in another way, though, in that you see it coming a mile away and it ends up losing its impact because of that. But fans can look for a lot of cutsey little references to King's other work -- personally, I thought it was all a bit much, even though I probably missed a lot of them, but it's good material for an impromptu trivia game with friends, I guess. Sadly, you might want the distraction.

He'd have to be good to compare with Denzel, of course, though on the other hand, they don't have many scenes together. For most of the film, you're watching two movies. Denzel is Frank Lucas, a North Carolina boy who ended up in New York as driver and bodyguard to a Harlem crime boss. When the boss dies, every hood around tries to step into his shoes -- but it's Frank who succeeds. He learns a lesson from the big discount chain stores (which I think were probably pretty new in 1968, when the movie starts), and cuts out the middleman.

He travels to Bangkok, finds the guy who runs the poppy fields where the heroin comes from, and cuts a deal with him directly. Now Frank can afford to sell nearly pure heroin, and undercut all the other dealers. The other dealers don't like this, of course, but after Frank shoots one of them in the head in broad daylight on a busy sidewalk, they don't complain very much. That's the really weird thing about this movie -- Denzel's kind of... evil. I mean, the first scene shows him setting a man on fire. He smacks his own brother's head into a car window repeatedly. He's a hateful, bad-tempered man. But somehow you don't mind as much as you should.

One of the few times Denzel and Russell actually share the screen, so look closely.

In the other movie, Russell Crowe is cop-turning-lawyer Richie Roberts. It seems he's one of about eight non-crooked cops in New Jersey. While following a bookie, he and his partner discover a huge pile of cash -- $987,000, to be exact. But his partner doesn't want to turn it in, because then all the other cops, who apparently routinely keep whatever money they find on the job, won't trust them anymore. Richie turns it in anyway, and sure enough, the next time he calls in for backup in the Projects, there are mysteriously no units in the vicinity. I mean, really -- if there aren't cops there, what in the world are they all doing? I hope police forces have changed a lot since the sixties. Even the state district attorney uses some nasty racial slurs.

Anyway, because there are only eight honest cops, they all get put into the same unit -- a new federally organized anti-drug task force. They don't bother with street pushers or small amounts of drugs; they only want the suppliers and big bosses. So from that point, you know Russell and Denzel are fated to collide, but it's still a lot of fun to watch it happening.

The rest of the cast is great. There's Ruby Dee ("The Stand") as Mamma Lucas; Josh Brolin doing a frighteningly good job as the King of the Crooked Cops; and my old friend Idris Elba (28 Weeks Later, The Reaping) in an unfortunately small part. I suspect some of his lines hit the cutting room floor, and probably the same is true of poor Cuba Gooding, Jr., who gets one substantial scene where he whines and complains, and spends the rest of the film appearing in the background now and then. It's a fun scene, though -- Frank compares his brand of heroin, Blue Magic, to Pepsi and General Mills in terms of brand recognition. I wonder if companies actually pay for that kind of product placement...?

The point is, it's a good film. Four and a quarter idols of good, in fact. I'm still thinking about the last scene, which manages to make a huge impact without even any dialogue. It does that in a few places, actually, and I think those are the scenes that are going to stick the most, for better or worse. Most of those scenes aren't for the squeamish, unsurprisingly, but they're really powerful. And in spite of his almost offhand cruelty, you never quite give up on Frank, which might easily have happened with any other actor. At least he's nice to his mother... though personally, I'd be afraid not to be nice to Ruby Dee.

But let me back up for a minute. Casey Affleck can act reasonably well, and he's the star of the piece, playing private detective Patrick Kenzie. He's lived in the same Boston neighborhood all his life, and now he and his girlfriend Angie (Michelle Monaghan, still trying desperately to live down The Heartbreak Kid) run a detective agency specializing in missing persons. I'm not sure why they gave him a partner, really... Angie's there for many of the actual detecting scenes, but she says and does so little they could have taken her out entirely without ruining anything. So practically speaking, she's just his girlfriend, and there she does a pretty good job with what really isn't much of a part.

Anyway, the brother and sister-in-law of an old school friend of Patrick's show up early one morning to hire him. Amanda, their four-year-old niece, has been kidnapped, and after three days the police have no solid leads. Angie's against taking the case, but Patrick wants to, and you know he'll win because he gets higher billing. And Patrick is aparently the person to hire for this sort of thing, because he knows everyone in the entire neighborhood. As more of Amanda's mother's sordid past is revealed, a local drug dealer becomes a prime suspect in the disappearance, and Patrick knows him. Patrick also knows his right hand man, a couple of other more "upscale" drug dealers, half the locals at the greasy tavern down the street, and a good portion of the police force as well.

Patrick detects, and Angie wonders where all her lines have gone.

The drug dealer (a man of Haitian origin who, for some unexplained and possibly inexplicable reason, goes by the nickname Cheese) initially denies knowing anything about the missing girl, but later changes his tune, and it's about then that all hell breaks loose.

It's also about then that the plot turns from something straightforward into a tangled mess. I sorted it out all right, but you really can't let your mind wander here. Some cops begin to take center stage -- there are a couple of places where it's easy to forget about Patrick because other actors have taken over the screen. Of course, when the actors are Morgan Freeman (as police captain Jack Doyle) and Ed Harris (as police detective Remy Bressant), it's easy to get pushed out of the way. Heck, I don't think I'd even mind being pushed out of the way by them.

I'm going with three and a half idols. I'm kind of astonished that I'm ranking it that high, because quite frankly, I went into the theatre not expecting much. Maybe I'm just being too hard on poor Ben Affleck. I'm sure he's a nice guy, but I'm still just reeling slightly from Daredevil. And Pearl Harbor. But he did all right here. The film's got a good feel to it -- good as in realistic, because in the end there isn't much good left in anyone or anything -- and is pretty edgy in a very effective way. Like We Own the Night, it's a shock when shots ring out, and just about everyone seems like someone you could meet at the local grocery store -- though that's not really a very comforting thought. And it asks awkward questions -- Patrick's still basically a good guy at the end, but neither he nor the audience knows if he's done the right thing. Or even if there was a right thing. So yeah, definitely very realistic, for better or for worse...