There’s only so much to say about Stardust, and that’s mainly that it is a charming film that succeeds in parts but ultimately fails where it really counts.

Sound familiar? I used the same words in my review of Indy 4, though I assure you that Stardust is in many ways the better movie. Why do I say this? Because, again, it’s got a lot of charm. The majority of the time characters come across really well and there are more than a few fantastic scenes.

However, to go into any detail concerning the first act and a half of the film would be to destroy it for the reader. The fact is that Stardust sets up the story almost perfectly and then fails to deliver.

It’s hard to say exactly what doomed the latter half of the film. I have a few hunches, one being the casting choice of Claire Danes as the ethereal and immortal Yvaine. Claire Danes just doesn’t do ethereal and immortal, if you know what I mean. She and the main character were a terrible pairing, and the least charming aspect of the movie. As a result it was really hard to be engaged by the events between them.

I had initially thought that Danes had been a weird casting choice, but also that there must be something I missed and that the director would make it work. Not the case. In fact, every time I saw Danes I was ripped right out of the experience because she just didn’t belong.

This was not a good moment for an actress of her caliber, partly because it may be that she was carefully cast but just didn’t do a very good job. It’s terribly sad, because Stardust is a very unique and ingenuity-infused film, and with a few tweaks it could have been truly great.

6/10

What is The Proposal? I’ll tell you: probably the very worst romantic comedy I’ve ever seen. That’s what it is. Why? Because the entirety of the narrative is composed of just about every rom-com cliche you can think of, though about half of them come from one source: a surprisingly funny romance from 1995 called, “While You Were Sleeping”.

No, seriously. It’s absolutely outrageous. Both films revolve around the main character faking an engagement, both employ a subplot driven by a character’s father pressing him to take over the family business, and both star the renowned comedian actress Sandra Bullock. There are about a dozen other similarities too, especially when it comes to plot points and character arcs, but I’ll stop there because I think you get the idea.

“How is this relevant?” you ask? “Who cares if it’s a massive ripoff? Can’t it still be a genuinely entertaining viewing experience?” Unfortunately, no. You see, While You Were Sleeping’s plot was constructed in a very specific fashion. You can’t just surgically remove a few of it’s vital organs, bunch them all up together, and expect the result to be a fully functioning human being. Especially when you fail to replace those missing elements at all, not to mention with something else that actually works.

The worst part is that, even all the cliches and ripoffs aside, The Proposal is just one big bad idea. Sure, many people want to see a cute comedy with Ryan Reynolds and Sandra Bullock starring, but nobody wants to watch a movie about two people who hate each other slowly falling in love for absolutely no logical reason. Again. For the hundredth time. Especially the way this film does it. It’s a bland formulaic framework with no direction or refreshing twist.

Anyone who tells you that The Proposal is a fun, exciting ride is just plain delusional. Once the luster of the lead acting wears off like the glow of a pretty sparkler (and it will), people will see that the world of romantic comedies doesn’t get much more utterly boring than this.

3/10

Degeneration is a film I would not advise seeing. Not just because of the lacking animation. Not just because of the (at-times) awful lipsync. And truthfully, not even because of the stereotypical characters. It’s really because Degeneration attempts to take a fantastic horror film premise and turn it into something it’s really not. One second you’ve got a group of slightly intriguing characters trapped in an airport filled with zombies and trying to get out and to freedom, next second…well, they’re out. And trying to figure out who set them up.

Sound like an intriguing direction for a horror flick? It’s totally not. In fact, this mystery/detective element dominates the plot, and as a result there’s a lot less zombie-slaying and a heck of a lot more standing around and talking about who’s betraying who and what’s happening without actually showing us. Not cool.

As a huge fan of the Resident Evil game franchise, I was really, really looking forward to seeing Claire Redfield and Leon Kennedy blow stuff up together. But I waited the whole movie and it never happened. And unfortunately, Claire and Leon look nothing like in the games anyway. They don’t behave like in the games, either, both in terms of character decisions and action sequences.

Actually, truth be told, there’s very little action in Degeneration, and whenever there is any action it never fails to be surprisingly short-lived, and often uninteresting. There’s one exception to this rule, but it’s still a badly paced fight scene, and functions terribly in relation to the rest of the plot. It just falls really flat.

Not to say it’s a specifically bad movie, but it is an all-around mediocre let-down.

4.5/10

First of all, I’d like to say that this film is admittedly very well produced. It’s well-animated, somewhat  well-written, and there’s definitely a lot of good voice-acting. I usually despise it when studios throw a ton of big names at a project, but in this case professionals like Seth Rogan and Hugh Laurie really bring a lot to the story. One of the few exceptions was probably Reese Witherspoon. What an annoying performance. Or maybe it was just an annoying character. Probably both.

You see, there’s really not much depth to MVA. It’s a funny movie, but the plot is essentially just one big cliche after another, culminating in yet another story about a pathetic lead female character who learns to be strong and break off the bonds of the men around her; in this case, her possessive husband whose philosophy is that married couples are supposed to be a team. I have little patience for paint-by-number plotlines, but more than that I hate direct attacks on marriage and romance. Men and woman were meant to rely on one another. They were meant to be “a team”. MVA is yelling at the top of it’s lungs that that’s a bad thing. And at young and innocent kids who may or may not know better. That’s hardly honorable.

Anyway, those issues aside, I still think that Monsters VS Aliens is a great big dose of well-structured stupidity. By that, I mean that while the order in which the story’s events take place is organized enough, the substance of the plot itself is very, very lacking. Seriously, there’s very few plot twists or emotional dilemmas you haven’t seen a thousand times before. As a result, the story feels very contrived.

I didn’t care for this movie that much the first time I watched it. But now that I went over it again and figured out what it was really about, I hate it. But I’ll be fair, because this is a more-or-less entertaining movie. It’s surprisingly well done in some senses, just not so well in others. Ultimately, it’s just not satisfying.

6/10

I greatly enjoy a good Pixar flick. Almost every single time a new Pixar movie is announced it’s incredibly hyped, and yet rarely does it not deliver. For me at least, Up is an exception.

Look at it from my perspective. When Up came out, people were calling it the greatest Pixar movie ever made. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone was just one of dozens of critics that gave this movie top 10/10 marks. It also maintains a universal rating of 98% at RottenTomatoes.

Does this film really deserve this much acclaim? It’s true that the first act of the story is without flaw, but then it begins to delve into action/adventure territory, something the overall plot really just doesn’t have the capacity for.

In fact, the latter two acts of Up are some of the most cliched storytelling I’ve witnessed in years. There are some really enjoyable scenes, but for the most part it’s all so simple and familiar it hurts.

That said, not to say that Up isn’t a great film, if just barely. For the most part, it’s actually very touching, funny, and real. It’s just not very ultimately satisfying.

8/10