I don't expect too much of Hollywood thrillers these days. They're too formulaic, too predictable, too tame, too Ashley Juddy and Morgan Freemany. Every time I watch one, it feels like I've already seen it. They have the same plots, the same twists, the same cops and bad guys. But I love the genre, so I keep going back.

I'd read a couple of good things about Mr. Brooks, but really didn't expect much from Mr. America 1988 aka Kevin Costner, the botoxed Demi Moore and pseudo-comedian turned hack-actor Dane Cook. Maybe it was my low expectations, but I thoroughly enjoyed this film. For a modern Hollywood thriller to keep me engaged, not ask me to switch my brain off every 3 minutes, and actually still make sense by the last twist; it's a minor miracle.

What worked best for me about this film was William Hurt playing Mr. Brooks evil-conscience. He sits in the back seat of the car, suggesting nasty things for them to do. Costner's Brooks wants to be a good upstanding man, and when we first meet him, he's receiving Man of the Year honors from the Portland Chamber of Commerce. He's a good husband and father, a successful business, and has been able to curb his murderous tendencies for the past few years. But apparently Hurt's Brooks has had his eye on a particular victim, the old urges win out, and the serial-murder known as the Finger Print Killer goes back to work. He's a little rusty though, and kills a young couple in front of a wide open window.

His sloppiness soon comes to haunt him in the form of Dane Cook's Mr. Smith, who blackmails Brooks with some photographs of the murder scene. But Smith doesn't want money, he wants a taste of murder and forces Brooks to take him out with him on his next kill. This is really the meat of the film, I love how Brooks takes Smith under his twisted wing and shows him how a professional serial killer works, all the while playing a sadistic cat and mouse game. Writer/Director Bruce Evans even manages to get a decent performance out of Cook. He has an important role, and if his Mr. Smith doesn't work, the film fails. There's also a decent subplot about Brooks' daughter possibly being a serial killer herself. The weakest link is Demi Moore's on-the-edge detective. (Is there any other kind?) She's not that bad, just cliche'd, and there's a fairly useless storyline about her bastard ex-husband, that slows down the film.

Overall the film really works; it's well made, nicely shot and edited, and competently directed and acted. Most importantly the screenplay works, it doesn't dumb things down, or have twists that come out of nowhere to ruin the film. William Hurt and Kevin Costner are great together as the two sides of Brooks' ego. Mr. Brooks is the rare, modern Hollywood thriller that doesn't make you feel stupider for watching. - Grade: B (Seen on 7/3/08)

We watched two family pet movies fairly close together, one being about an amazing dog, the other being the Lock Ness monster itself. Neither film blew me away, but neither was too painful of a way to spend 90 minutes with your family.

I figured Firehouse Dog was going to be pretty unbearable, and only took a chance on it because there was a free movie channel weekend on DirecTV. It isn't necessarily good, but it turned out to be better than expected. Josh Hutcherson, who plays the lead character Shane, is the main reason the movie didn’t sink into completely worthlessness. He’s a good young actor, that’s been in a bunch of family movies in the past few years, including Zathura and Bridge to Terabithia. He kind of reminds me of a young Christian Bale, and I can see him easily transitioning into an adult actor with adult roles. Of course, only time will tell.

The rest of Firehouse Dog was pretty cliché, extremely predictable from beginning to end; although I did like a few of the bits at the beginning of the film, where we’re shown the dog’s back-story. He’s a Hollywood hotshot, basically the Arnold or Sly (80’s versions), of dog movies and has the movie-star personality to go with it. When a movie stunt goes wrong, he’s lost in the middle-of-nowhere, with no way of communicating who he is. He befriends Shane, whose father is a fire-chief, and his mother is dead. Who decided that nearly every family film had to have a dead or missing parent? It’s extremely rare to see one with a family fully intact.

The dad is played by Bruce Greenwood, an always dependable character actor, he brings a bit of realism to this fairly ridiculous story. His fire station, where apparently only five firemen work 24/7, is on the verge of being closed down by the city. There is also a subplot about an serial-arsonist who killed the chief’s brother. But once wonder-dog shows up, he manages to bring the family together, save the station, and capture the arsonist. All fairly typical movie-dog traits, Lassie pulls off these tricks while getting a flea bath. But Firehouse Dog is a fairly well put-together film, at least for a movie of it’s kind. It’s not too condescending towards its intended audience, although the dog does let a few farts rip. The film isn't good enough to recommended for anyone without a kid younger than 7 or 8, but they should enjoy it. – Grade: C (Seen on 6/7/08)

The second film was a lot more ambitious, being a period piece and including a lot of special effects. Water Horse: The Legend of the Deep, takes place in Scotland during WWII; where a family is taking care of a large mansion near Lock Ness. Again a parent is missing, this time it's Dad, who’s been killed in the war, but the youngest son refuses to acknowledge the fact, leading to a couple of dramatic moments. The boy finds a strange egg in the Lock, takes it home to Dad’s shop, where it hatches a small aquatic monster during the night. When the boy first finds the beast, it’s a fairly creepy scene, at least as far as kids movies go. I was surprised it didn’t scare my son to death, with the dramatic music, dark lighting, weird noises and flashing lightning. But he got through it just fine, although I’m not sure most 4-year-olds could handle it.

Afterwards little Nessie is pretty cute, and the boy, his sister and the new maintenance-man make a pact to keep the beast hidden from mom, who obviously wouldn’t approve. This leads to a couple of ridiculous scenes, where the group is force to hide this quickly growing beast in toilets and so forth. Meanwhile, the Scottish army has also set up base on the house’s grounds, believing that a German submarine may find it’s way into the Lock. Soon Nessie is far too large to be kept around the house, leading to a tearful goodbye as they release her into the Lock. But she remains a good friend with the boy Angus, taking him on an exciting underwater ride, hypothermia free and all. Of course there’s a convoluted mix-up with the army, and soon they’re bombing the Lock, leading to all kinds of dramatics surrounding Nessie’s new home.

While nowhere near a great film, I thought that Water Horse was a much more interesting film than the previous one. Some of the effects are pretty laughable, especially when the boy takes a ride on Nessie’s back, but for the most part they sell this fantastical idea. They handle the friendship between the boy and Nessie pretty well, it definitely has an E.T. vibe to it. The Scottish, WWII setting also makes it interesting to watch. Plus the filmmaking is just plain better, there’s some attention to details, with nice photography, good set and costume design, and some good English actors lending their talents; including Brian Cox as the narrator, Emily Watson as the mother, Ben Chaplin as the new maintenance-man and young Alex Etel as Angus is very strong. (Also see him in one of the best family films from the last few years, Millions.) I’d say that the film is well enough made, that it’s actually a worthwhile film if you don’t have kids, although you certainly have to suspend your disbelief for certain scenes. – Grade: B (Seen on 6/7/08)

This film is an incredibly ridiculous supernatural thriller, that falls apart the minute it’s over, as you start to fill in the badly done pieces. It works okay for a while, good enough to keep you watching and wanting to know how it ends. But once some of the film’s mysteries start to unravel, you feel dumber for continuing to watch it. The film only works because of some blatant plot-holes and leaps in logic, that don’t make sense even in a world where Sandra Bullock’s life jumps back and forth between days of the week.

At the beginning of the film Sandra’s told that her husband has died, obviously it’s a horrendous day for her family and she goes to bed much worse for the wear. However the following day, she wakes up to her husband being alive again, and thinks her memories are nothing but a bad dream. But again she wakes up to a dead husband, and suddenly she’s going off the deep end, winding up the day by being committed to a mental hospital. Again she wakes up to her husband being alive. She starts to unravel the mystery of what’s going on, hoping that she can save her husband from dying.

She learns that she has a couple more days to figure out how to stop it all from happening. There’s one unintentionally funny scene where she ponders if he’s worth keeping alive, after she learns about his affair. Which pales in unintentional hilarity, to when she first confronts the fact of her husband being dead, sending his beheaded noggin rolling into the street; my favorite scene in the film. I’ll admit I was a bit interested in how it would come to an end, if it was in fact a self-fulfilling prophecy, something that’s always intrigued me. But once the groaner of an ending played out, and the credits started to roll, the film destroyed any sense of logic.

Premonition is a thriller for those who’ve never unraveled a mystery, and don’t want to spend a second past the end of a film, thinking about what they’ve just seen. Sandra Bullock dramatically over-acts her way through the whole film, ranging from hysterical tears to hysterical terror; her husband played by Julian McMahon, never sells himself as a real guy, I kept thinking he was going to jump into maniacal villain role. The filmmaking is typical Hollywood slickness, but with no real artistic or intelligent touches. But it’s the script that truly fails, with ridiculous scenes full of unrealistic dialog and actions, ending with a huge cheat. (Which I’ll discuss below) – Grade: D (Seen on 6/19/08)

(Full spoiler mode.) So the film ends with Sandra crazily driving after her husband, trying to get him to stop his car before the spot where he’s hit by a truck. She ends up stopping him at the exact place where he was killed and as he tries to pull a u-turn, his brand new car breaks down in the middle of the road, leading to a truck driving straight through him and then nonsensically exploding. Those ridiculous events aren’t even the problems I had with it, because at the beginning of the film, she’s told by a cop that her husband has died. Yet she’s on scene when it happens. Why doesn’t the cop know that or even recognize her? Time is only mixed up for her. They also blatantly cheat another thing in the time-line. There’s a “shocking” shot where her daughter’s face is suddenly mangled. They show later that she accidentally ran through a sliding-glass-door, but in the time-line which they set for the movie, it happens before they learn that daddy is dead, in fact daddy shows up at the hospital. But at the very beginning of the film, when they find out he’s dead, her face is perfectly normal. They should have found another way around this, by shooting her only from the back or something, instead they simply cheat. Not that it would have made this crappy movie any better.

(Seen on 5/31/08) It's nice when a movie surprises you by being something more than it originally appeared to be. Timber Falls, although I'd read some good reviews, seemed to be nothing more than your typical slasher in the woods horror flick. And for about the first half of the film it seemed just that way, but then a twist changed it all, and it became far more interesting. Now I won't say that this film worked on all levels, but if you're a fan of horror films, especially original ones, this film would be worth giving a try.

(Seen on 5/2/08) I'm going to try an experiment here. Since I've gotten so far behind on my reviews, why not kill two birds with one stone and write my review while watching. Most likely this review will end up being about twice as long as my normal, already longish reviews. I'm going to start with Rambo. Why? Because it's brainless enough to watch and type at the same time.(And I only thought of this idea yesterday.) I'm not a huge fan of the Rambo series, though my favorite Stallone flick is probably First Blood; I've honestly never sat down and watched part 2 or 3 all the way through. I've seen so much of each, in so many sections that I feel like I've seen them, although I couldn't tell you what exactly happened in either one. When I first heard about them making Rambo 4, I thought what a lame idea. But after the fairly successful Balboa film written and directed by Stallone, and the very bloody online teaser for Rambo (see it below) I started to get excited.

So what happened so far is that, we've seen some news footage and some senseless torture of the natives of Burma to get our ire up. Now we're getting some sensitive shots of Rambo working with the land and the people. Hell, he just shot a fish with an arrow, then gave it to a cute little boy. So he's a much kinder, gentler Rambo now... but obviously that ain't gonna last.

Directed by: Sylvester Stallone - I never thought those words would give me confidence. The first laugh; "Fuck the world." That was Rambo's response to a guy trying to ask for help to get their church group up the river to bring supplies to the poor citizens of Burma. Now the good looking chick is trying to sway him, but he's still refusing, telling her to go home. Cut to: him taking them up the river, I guess she persuade him after all. Ah hell, Burmese pirates are pulling up aside them, threatening to take the woman. Damn. Rambo shot eight of them in three seconds flat. Amazingly the woman, Sarah, wants to keep going. Probably not a wise decision.

The group is now taking their medical supplies into the jungle and Rambo's heading home. Now he's burning the pirate's boat and bodies, I guess cause one of the guys threatened to report him when they got back. Boom! Village getting the crap blown out of it, and just guess what idiots are caught in the middle of it. Pretty brutal scene, kids getting shot, legs getting blown off, another kid just got thrown into a fire, blood everywhere. Soft sensitive music, and more people dying. Sarah's down, but amazingly not hurt among all the bullets and explosions. These guys better hope that Rambo doesn't catch wind.

Rambo's having war flashbacks, conveniently they have clips from the previous movies to fill us in. That didn't take long, there's a guy waking him up to tell him that the group's missing. Obviously his little crush has come into play. Manly stuff. Pounding out metal to make a machete. "Killing's as easy as breathing." Now he's taking some mercenaries up the river to save the group, they're talking a bunch of shit, but obviously Rambo could kick any of their asses, he's keeping his mouth closed for now. Somebody better not step on his toes.

"The Boatman stays with the boat." Rambo just offered to come along to fight and the mercenaries turned him down. Obviously they haven't seen First Blood. These guys ain't exactly the group from Predator, one head on a stick and they're ready to head home. Some Burmese army assholes are playing a sick game with their prisoners, betting on who'll step on an underwater mine. Splat... arrow through the head. Rambo's arrived, ready to kick ass, and show these pussies how to fight. "Live for nothing or die for something, your call."

They're sneaking around the prison-camp, freeing the hostages, getting ready for the attack. Sarah's about to get raped, Rambo doesn't like that, and out comes the machete, but instead he rips out the guy's throat with his bare hands, nice bloody choice. Slooowwww motion jump to save Sarah from gunfire, but a sniper takes out the gunmen before Rambo takes the bullet. Morning. The army has discovered the prisoners are missing, and is chasing them all into the jungle.