Chris Nolan's Inception (2.5/4 stars)

Director Christopher Nolan's career was built on his mind-bending thriller Memento, a film that was a near-perfect blend of atmosphere, pacing, character evolution and time-twisting. His latest film, Inception hearkens back to many of the same elements. In this reality, dreams are a place that can be controlled by the dreamer, and others can come into the dream and interact with it as if it was the real world.

Nolan's cast includes Academy Award winners Leo diCaprio (as the lead character Cobb) and Ken Watanabe, and Academy Award nominee Ellen Page. Sadly, the film's structure and the ensemble nature of the roles end up diluting any character work that the three heavyweights attempt. (You can tell they were trying tho.) The film's focus is on keeping the audience aboard the barreling freight train that is the second half of the film.

The second half of the film involves layering four different timeframes/realities on top of each other, trying to give all the characters some gravitas while advancing the increasingly complex plot events. The weak link in the storytelling is a key subplot involving Cobb and his wife. The subplot is the cog that explains the whole Inception mechanism that's driving the film, but it's also the squeaky gear that's throwing the pacing off-tangent. The lulls that allow for Cobb's explanatory dialogue with Page's disingenuously-named character Ariadne downshift the movie at inopportune times. Ironically, Ariadne's role in Cobb's team is that of an "architect" which is the namesake of the character that brought The Matrix Reloaded to a screeching, soul-crushingly laughable halt.

This approach is far more audience-friendly than Memento's figure-it-out-yourself philosophy. That's not necessarily bad since your average filmgoer will probably be hard-pressed to explain exactly what's going on despite the decision to maintain a mostly-linear progression to the movie's events. People might be more likely to appreciate the effects, which are mostly comparable to the old Matrix mainstays (shattering cities and slow-mo low-gravity melee combat). I suppose that Nolan wanted it to be more Dark Knight than Memento, but I would argue that this did the film a disservice from an artistic standpoint while trying to give it more commercial oomph.

To those who are raving about the ending: get a grip. It's not really relevant whether the bronze top focus stopped spinning or not.

Bottom Line: Inception isn't Nolan's best work, and it wastes DiCaprio, Watanabe and Page. However it's still an intelligent film that is diminished by decisions to make it more commercial appeal. That doesn't make it bad, and it's still well worth the time to go see.

Iiiiiiii'mmmmm baaaaaack

Wow. Four years. That was a long time ago.

More Super Heroes: Iron Man

Today's moviemaking magic makes it a snap to bring Tony Stark and Iron Man to the big screen. Nice teaser poster, but 2008 is a long ways away.

The Rewind Reel

The past couple of weeks have been all about seeing films again. It's a mood that strikes me once in a while. This is when a film library of 1,000+ titles comes in handy.

No big reviews here, just the title, a rating and a few lines.

Die Hard - 3.5/4 stars - Holds up

John McClane is timeless, as are the explosions, but it's Alan Rickman's Hans Gruber that makes Die Hard memorable. It's still one of the iconic action/suspense films ever made.

GlenGarry GlenRoss - 3.5/4 stars - Holds up

Nothing flashy here, unless you would classify "acting your socks off" as flashy. A powerful cast tears through the David Mamet signature screenplay with gusto. Outside of his mafia films, this is Pacino's best work. The rest of the cast, including Kevin Spacey, Ed Harris, Jack Lemmon and the scene-stealing Alec Baldwin keep pace with Al.

Full Metal Jacket - 3/4 stars - Mostly holds up

I've been less enamored of FMJ than many other people, but I think that's simply a testament to the quality of films about war and the men whose lives are changed because of it. FMJ remains a very strong film, but alongside others (such as The Thin Red Line, All Quiet on the Western Front, Patton, Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down, and even the Band of Brothers miniseries) it's one very good film among many. In the Kubrick pantheon, it's a clear follower to many others.

The Princess Bride - 3.5/4 stars - Holds up

I'll cop to being a fan. There are just so many quotes and scenes in TPB that it's a favorite. It's not the best film, admittedly. The acting isn't outstanding, and the film's momentum keeps getting killed by the fast-forward device of storytelling. However, TPB is FUN, and good fantasy yarns are very hard to come by. Mandy Patinkin's Inigo Montoya is worth half a star all by himself.

Sky High - 3/4 stars - Holds up

The most recent "rewatchee" of this crop, it's amusing that this lightly-regarded Disney film is better constructed than the massively-hyped X3 and Superman Returns. The story is simple and familiar, but the treatment applied is energetic and reasonable. The ensemble cast gives a spirited performance and it's easy to lose yourself in the fast pace of the film. Sky High is a criminally overlooked film in the superhero genre.

Tetsuya Nomura's Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children (1/4 stars)

Two words: fans only.

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children is not so much a feature film as it is an extended series of FMV cutscenes that would be more at home tacked onto the end of the eponymous popular videogame.

The main reason for this is the story. Someone who hasn't played the FF7 game would have no hope of understanding what the hell is going on. Heck, I finished FF7 back in the day, and I had trouble picking up the story without the help of the subtitles and some real hard thinking.

Essentially, you have FF7's main character, Cloud Strife, meeting some elements of the game's main source of evil (the alien Jenova) which eventually turn into the game's iconic villan, Sepiroth.

Yeah, it's all a big excuse for one more (anticlimactic) battle between a videogame's hero and villan. Spice up with a few head-scratching cameos of other characters, add in a lot of impressive CGI flash, and that's Advent Children.

Bottom Line: Unless you're a FF7 fan, you can pass. Even if you are, don't expect any deep storylines here. It's just eye candy.

Not so Super: Bryan Singer's Superman Returns (2.5/4 stars)

I first need to state that Superman is a bitch of a character to write for. Depending on which incarnation of Supes is under discussion, his powers range from demigod-like to limitless. He has three known weaknesses - kryptonite (well-known), magic (less known) and aliens just as, if not more, powerful than himself (the three Kryptonianas from Supes II count I guess).

I haven't really followed Supes in the funnies over time, but I do know that his highlights revolve around the above three challenges (including his "death") and the loss of the less-than-super people he loves (hi Lois and Lana).

So, knowing that the overexposed and completely non-super Lex Luthor was going to be the main villain in Bryan Singer's much-awaited effort, I kept my expectations down.

Good thing I did. Otherwise, I might have experienced a bigger letdown.

The New Super 'R'

Routh does a credible job as Supes, his digitally-reduced 'package' notwithstanding. Not a lot of lines. His Clark is sufficiently dorky. He has enough presence to command the screen and create sparks with his Lois, Kate Bosworth. Kate also turns in a decent if unspectacular job in her limited role.

Spacey attempts to tear up some scenery as Luthor, but the tone of the film seems to have derailed his performance a bit. I enjoyed some Spacey moments, but in the inevitable comparison with Hackman, Kevin falls just short. The film itself was just a bit campy, and his performance was a bit campier than the film's tone. The mix didn't feel right. And honestly, his lines were pretty much unmemorable.



Not-so-super story

Superman Returns is, at its heart, a love story. Kal's love for Lois is the only human thing about him, and it's the only way you can connect with Supes. While it's not much of a hook considering the larger-than-life scope of the film, this aspect of the story was solid. One of the best scenes was Supes taking Lois on a walk... errr... fly... to apologize for disappearing on her.

Much of the story was slow and rather unexciting. The Luthor conflict was a throwaway. C'mon, stealing Kryptonian crystals to raise a new (really ugly) continent and expecting people to PAY to live there? Singer's a pretty good director, but that story arc is just awful. It makes no sense. A lot of little things don't either, like no one noticing that Supes and Clark return from five-year absences at the same time. Lois left her cell phone in the car, and took her kid into a situation of unknown peril? Luthor not going apeshit over Kitty for dumping the crystals, despite being quite happy at the prospect of killing billions of people?

Does not compute. This is the greatest failing of Superman Returns.

You always have the effects

yes. Luckily, you can toss a few disasters in Superman's way and get some decent cinematic flash out of the digital effects folks. The shuttle scene was fun. The quake, not so much. The Superman flying effects were nice (hear the cape crackle) but it's no more impressive than watching Your Friendly Neighborhood Spiderman swing through New York City. We already expect the effects to be the best that 2006 has to offer, so no extra points are gained.

Bottom Line: It could have been so much more, but Superman Returns risks very little in terms of story and it drops the ball in many aspects of it. The effects are good but not great, the characters are competent but not compelling, and the film overall is decent but in no way essential.

Bear on a Motherfracking Bus!

Jeremy Slater did it.

The Trouble with Firefly

I know why Joss Whedon's Firefly didn't take off.

Whedon's got the rep of writing good TV stuff. He's known for dialogue and character building. He did that darn well with Buffy, which I saw three seasons of. His weakness? Story arcs. Buffy was new and novel enough to struggle through the times when Whedon's lack of an overarching plot covering a season or more threatened to sink it. (It might have even lost a bunch of viewers through the shaky fourth and fifth seasons.)

Firefly's got stuff going for it. The characters are meaty and tangible. Mal Reynolds is a great character, the spiritual successor to the original, non-neutered Han Solo. Jaybe Cobb is another great character, fatally flawed but still serviceable. The other characters are less textured but are still much more than cardboard.

The episodic stories are also decent. The Firefly crew gets into a situation, then they get out of it.

The problem is what keeps the viewers coming back? There is only one overarching story hook - what happened to River Tam. The problem is River doesn't get enough screen time. Halfway through the 14 episodes, she's got less screen time than Shepherd Book, who is the other sotry hook (the venerable "man with a secret past").

Compare this to Battlestar Galactice, which tends to have three or four overarching storylines going at the same time. It's always good to have loose ends all the time, so that people tune in to see them advanced or resolved. Hook them into the characters (good) or into the world (even better). BSG is all about the Cylon war and the search for Earth. But it's also about Adama struggling with his son and his command, and Roslin strugling with politics, and Tigh struggling with alcoholism, and Starbuck+Apollo struggling with themselves. Major plot hooks are dropped in, including the Caprica survivors and the Pegasus. And of course, there are the flesh Cylons.

Firefly has nothing going for it. The universe is Alliance controlled, but no one is actively chasing after Mal and his crew. They're nobodies. The people after Simon and River are afterthoughts, and appear as an episodic hook and not steadily as a theme. They crew is constantly broke, but that's hardly a come-on to tune in. "See how the Firefly crew earn money to keep flying!" Yeah, that'll reel 'em in.

So, no surprise that it got cancelled. No surprise that Serenity, which didn't help the fatal flaw at all but rather tied up the major story arc in a minor way, didn't make huge waves. In the end, the writing wasn't strong enough, and Whedon was unable to invest enough story into the series to keep it flying.

John Lasseter's Cars (3.5/4 stars)

Yes, it was good. Very, very good. Part of this reaction may be due to the cinematic sewage that I have been subjected to lately. However, my faith in John Lasseter and his team at Pixar continues to be affirmed. They can tell a good story, the can write good characters, and Lasseter can compose a film with the best of them.

Pixar's strength has always been its ability to merge a good story with strong characters and keep the whole thing rolling along. Cars is no exception. The story may not be all that original, but it feels fresh when placed in the context of the animated world.

Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson, who dials his performance up or down really well) is a brash rookie racecar, the LeBron James of his racing era (sorry, I'm not well-versed in NASCAR). He's on his way to the biggest race of his life when a mishap lands him in a forgotten town off the interstate.

The story then shift modes into the push-pull of "he wants to go but he wants to stay". This segment of the film is its heart, and Lasseter's team paints the town of Radiator Springs and its quirky inhabitants deftly. The three main characters are the redneck towtruck Tow Mater (Dan Whitney), the diffident oldtimer Doc Hudson (Paul Newman), and the misplaced lawyer Porsche Sally (Bonnie Hunt). All three voice actors turn in excellent performances, especially Newman, who is a NASCAR racing team owner.

It's easy to get lost in the sights and sounds and inhabitants of Radiator Springs. There are the in-jokes of course, but the little town does feel alive. One memorable sequence involves bringing the town back to its heyday when interstate traffic flowed through it. The nighttime scene with the buildings alight in animated neon is one of the prettiest things I've ever seen in an animated film.

The animation in Cars is breathtaking. Bonnie and Lightning go on a drive, and one s hard-pressed to tell the difference between real scenery on celluloid and rendered pixels.

While all of the characters in Cars are, well, cars, they exude a lot more human character than many of the characters in recent films I've seen. This includes most of the casts of The Da Vinci Code, X3 and MI3, and ALL of the cast of The Omen remake. When Owen Wilson can act circles around you and he isn't even on screen, you know you just sucked.

Bottom Line: So far, the best film of 2006. You HAVE to see it on the big screen. And yes, the double-disc DVD is going to be a must as well.

Summer Batting Average: 0-for-4

It's been an awful theater run forme this summer. The four films that we saw at the cinema all come in for me below 2 stars on my 4-star scale. MI3, Da Vinci Code, X3, and the god-awful Omen remake sucked time and cash with very little entertainment returned.

There are very few guarantees left in moviedom, but I still believe that Pixar cannot go wrong. I'm banking on Cars to take the bitter edge from my cinematic taste buds.

John Moore's The Omen (2006) (0.5/4 stars)

This is a remake?

I did not watch the original. I understand there wasn't much changed, other than to bring the film into a contemporary setting (you now see a Motorola RAZR, an Apple notebook and digital photography).

That aside, this film was AWFUL.

The story is tremendously dated. The storytelling is extremely bad - the screenwriter and director make no effort to tighten the story and eliminate a huge swath of exposition mid-film. The characters are paper-thin. The two people who are supposed to be sympathetic, Liev Schreiber's Robert Thorn and Julia Stiles as his wife Catherine, come across as granite caricatures. They're cartoon characters. The boy who plays Damien, rookie child actor Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick, does nothing for me. He failed to convey any sort of malice, menace or heat. Dakota Fanning was scarier in Uptown Girls.

Director John Moore falls back to the old reliable "Boo!" movie tricks to try to get a scare out of the audience. He fails. People were laughing during the film. If he was going for the over-the-top camp, it isn't obvious, and he sadly falls very, very short.

Bottom Line: I want my money and time back! Awful film. Avoid at all costs.

Tony Scott's Man on Fire (2.5/4 stars)

This was the film that I saw part of on the way into the US, and part of on the way out.

Dakota Fanning and Denzel Washington turn in decent performances in the Tony Scott suspense/thriller.

Denzel plays ex-military man Creasy, who takes on a bodyguard job in Mexico to escape his haunted past. (Chris Walken plays the friend who gets him the job. There's always room for Chris Walken.) He becomes the guardian angel of Peta (Dakota) who is the daughter of a wealthy family's scion (singer Marc Anthony) and his American wife. Yes, it's cool watching Dakky speak Spanish.

Peta of course gets kidnapped, and Creasy is on the case.

This was a well-paced film. Tony Scott lets the story build, and takes time to paint full pictures of Peta and Creasy and the Mexican environment around them. Man on Fire has that now-popular "dirty look" but thankfully with little of the shaky handheld camera crap that I hate so much.

Denzel and Dakky are competent, as always. The cast around them doesn't get enough time to develop, with perhaps the exception of Radha Mitchell (who plays Peta's mom).

Bottom Line: Not bad. Worth putting on your Netflix queue, or catching when it hits the HBO rotation.

David Dobkin's Wedding Crashers (1.5/4 stars)

This Owen Wilson and Vince Vaughn comedy vehicle is built on an intersting premise - two guys who should be well past their "irresponsible years" subscribe to the strange and unique hobby of crashing wedding. It's like their version of Never-never Land. Each year during "wedding season" they go out and attend the weddings (and especially the wedding parties) of people they don't know, with the express end of sleeping with women who they meet at these parties. This covers the first half-hour of the film, and viewers are kept chuckling with ludicrous backstories that the boys present, as well as several shots of topless women.

The film goes downhill after that.

John (Owen) meets Claire (an unusually radiant Rachel McAdams) at one wedding, decides that she's the girl he will sleep with, then inexplicably falls for her in one swift stroke of the screenwriter's pen. Jeremy (Vince) is aghast, and is suddenly reduced to the slapstick punchline of Three Stooges-class physical comedy for the rest of the movie. What began as a rollicking buddy heist film flops into a run-of-the-mill romantic comedy that isn't all that romantic.

To make things worse, Wedding Crashers clocks in at a bloated two hours. If the screenwriter and editor had any feel for pacing, they could have had a much better movie with some judicious rewriting and editing. There's too much of the family (although I will never begrudge Christopher Walken screentime) and Jeremy's very strange relationship with Claire's baby sister could easily have been trimmed down. Finally, Dobkin doesn't get any heat from the pairing of Wilson and McAdams, which is a shame as Rach has never looked this fetching in any film I've previously seen her in.

Bottom Line: Fun first 30 minutes, but feel free to skip the rest of the film unless you just feel like watching Rachel.

Coraline comes to the Silver Screen

Coraline is a young adult (children's?) novella by Neil Gaiman. It's being made into an animated film by Harry Selick (James and the Giant Peach, The Nightmare Before Christmas).

Teaser poster from Neil Gaiman's journal...

Brett Ratner's X-Men: The Last Stand (2/4 stars)

As I mentioned in a previous post my hopes for X-Men: The Last Stand weren't high. My caution was pretty much justified.

The previous X-Men films worked on the level of a comic book film because director Bryan Singer kept things moving at a fast clip. He didn't dwell too much on the details of the weak story, and even less on the paper-thin characters. This resulted in a pair of fast-moving, mindless effects-fests that one could appreciate in a summer action film state of mind.

This time around, Singer and two of his screenplay-writing cohorts are off to film Superman Returns, leaving Ratner and his Elektra and xXx-credited screenwriters to cope.

An aside: if you know anything about the source material, you just have to leave it at the theater door. This admonition is stronger now than with the two previous films. The Last Stand takes three well-known X-Men storylines from the past and mashes them into an unrecognizable mess.

Ratner wastes a stupendous amount of time attempting to establish a storyline which if better served with less of a set-up. In order to present a semblance of plot depth, he sacrifices all momentum for the first 60 minutes of the film's running time. The story threads that he attempts to weave into the story of The Phoenix are particularly troublesome, given that we end up with a half-baked explanation of Jean Grey's personality issues despite the arduous buildup.

Another weakness is the decision of the creative team to ditch many of the key characters from the two previous films. Some are written out early, and others don't even make an appearance. Where the hell did Nightcrawler disappear to after a substantial amount of screen time in X2? The power play by Catwoman herself, Halle Berry, for a more prominent role backfires on the whole project. Her Ororo Munro is completely passionless, and she gets upstaged continuously by Hugh Jackman's marginally more charismatic Logan. Storm is a powerful, charismatic and passionate character second only to Scott Summers on Charles Xavier's leadership team.
In Berry's hands, she shows less emotion than the unpolished Ellen Page in the role of Shadowcat.

While they ditch many X2 characters, they add a few that are entirely unnecessary. Warren "Angel" Worthington III is featured prominently on posters, even more so than Kelsey Grammer's amazing Hank McCoy. Angel doesn't do anything important in X3.

Overall, only Grammer and, surprise surprise, Ian McKellen turn in performances worthy of note. Everyone else ranges from forgettable to pathetic to simply annoying. (Oh, fine, I was entertained for a couple of minutes by Juggernaut chasing Kitty.)

Finally, one might call the last two scenes of the film (one before the credits, and one after) to be a cop-out. I'd call it leaving the door open for more X-Men films if The Last Stand is profitable. After the poor effort of the preceding 140 or so minutes, this kind of thing can't make it much worse. It's cheesy, but so was a lot of this film. Whatever happens, I hope they don't invite Ratner or the screenwriters back for any potential X-Men 4: What Comes After the "Last" Stand?

Bottom Line: This is easily the weakest of the X-Men films, and is one of the weaker heroes-in-tights films in recent memory. The special effects remain a key attraction, but overall the film fails as a comic-book film and an action film due to glaring missteps and questionable decisions by the creative team. The Last Stand isn't bad for a rainy evening Netflix rental, but there's no reason to go out of your way to see it in a theater.

2006 Key Art Awards - Movie Posters Category!

Posterwire has an entry on the 2006 Key Art Awards here. The Key Art Awards recognize excellence in movie marketing.

If you read this weblog you can tell I have a soft spot for movie posters. I've always enjoyed how one graphic attempts to represent a motion picture. Some of the posters are fantastic. Unsurprisingly, Sin City has a lot of nominations, but that's probably more due to the graphic novel roots of the project rather than anything the graphic artists did. More interesting are the posters for projects that are stand-alone films and not derived from other properties.

Posterwire likes this one:



This Saw II teaser poster was banned. Apparently two severed fingers is too much for a society that shows routine killings on the boob tube.

Anyway, I still like this one:

My Contribution to Viral Marketing: Snakes on a Plane!

The funny folks over at Michael and Evo's Wingin' It have been pimping the Sam Jackson film Snakes on a Plane forever. The concept is so simple that the title is perfect for it. Put snakes on a plane with Sam Jackson. That's it.

There's more background info here on screenwriter Josh Friedman's weblog. Bottom line is that this is a film that has all the potential of being special. Maybe not in the common sense, but "special." Yeah, that doesn't make sense. It doesn't have to, it's snakes on a motherfucking plane!!! Yeah!!!



Notice the similarity to the X3 and Supes Returns poster layouts. Man, are they lazy or what?

Snakes on a plane man!!!

Super X Poster Fun

Compare this one with the X3 one in the previous post.

Someone's been lazy with their poster designs.



It's even more amusing since this is the film that Bryan Singer ditched X3 to do, taking a couple of the guys who co-wrote the X2 screenplay with him. (Who are we kidding, X2 was all Singer so there isn't going to be a lot in common between X2 and X3 in terms of vision and composition.)

It's Another Third Installment, This Time a "Last Stand"

Slick Wolvie-oriented poster aside, am I the only one who's apprehensive about it despite having seen the trailer? So it's going to be Xavier vs. Magneto, one of the staples of early X-Men storylines. Whoopee. They're packing more muties into the film than ever before, including Angel, The Beast, Jugs and the appearance of Dark Phoenix. Whoopee. Despite the gaudy visuals, I have huge reservations about the screenplay which is being written by a guy who's got Mr. & Mrs. Smith and xXx: State of the Union as his major credits. His co-writer? He wrote Elektra and X2. (X2 wasn't bad because Bryan Singer helmed it.)

Director Brett Ratner's main credits are the cop comedy Rush Hour (and its sequel), plus the tepid After the Sunset.

Can the novelty of seeing and hearing Kelsey Grammer as Hank McCoy sustain interest in this potential train wreck? I'm probably going to find out in the theater. Fingers, crossed.

PS: If this makes money, no way is this going to be a "Last Stand" even if the Wolverine solo film materializes.

JJ Abrams's Mission: Impossible III (2/4 stars)

Sequelitis is a long-running affliction of the movie industry. Third installments are usually one installment too many. MI3 is no different.

The main draw for MI3 for me was Oscar (tm) Award Winner Philip Seymour Hoffman (never thought I'd get to write that) as the film's antagonist. He gets far too little screen time though, and Tom Cruise Crazy hogs the screen. That's bad, because PSH can disappear into the skin of his characters, in this case creating one of the coldest and most effective screen villains I've come across. Tom Cruise Crazy is still Tom Cruise Crazy, even if he's supposed to be Federal Agent Ethan Hunt. There just isn't enough PSH to wipe the memory of Mr. Katie Holmes jumping on Oprah's couch.

JJ Abrams is a curious choice. Best known for his small screen successes with LOST, Alias and Felicity (ok, maybe not Felicity), he reverts to some really annoying TV habits. One of them that I loathe is the shaky handheld camera schtick. What, are you scrimping on the SteadiCam rentals JJ? This isn't a hyper-realistic war film, it's Mission: Impossible.

Abrams also wrote the screenplay for MI3, and it looks like he's been taking notes from another boob tube hit that he isn't affiliated with, Federal Agent Jack Bauer's 24. MI3 moves along somewhat like a higher-tech double-length episode of 24 with more explosions but with less tension. Several plot points are truly implausible, and at least two of them had me wanting to shout "bullshit" at the screen. Worst of all, you know that because this is a film featuring Tom Cruise Crazy nothing bad could happen to him. That makes the film completely impotent, unlike 24 where you know that no one outside of Federal Agent Jack Bauer safe.

The rest of the cast is forgettable. Abrams favorite Kerri Russel makes an appearance as a tougher-than-Felicity Federal Agent, Ving Rhames is the sterotypical big black guy on the MI team, Morpheus himself plays one of the weaker-than-24 plot points, and Jonathan Rhys Myers works for a paycheck in a role light years easier than Elvis. Meiqi Li (Maggie Q to you) and random blonde Michelle Monaghan are the strong female cast members. Overall, no one creates much of a blip on the radar.

Bottom Line: Yeah, yeah, I'm critiquing a summer action film. It's got explosions and guns and Philip Seymour Hoffman, so I can tolerate it. However, you could do much better if you want a good action movie. Die Hard's throne is safer than ever.