The trick to crafting a good children’s movie is to create a film that captures the imagination of young viewers while simultaneously transporting parents back to that time in their lives when anything seemed possible. When filmmakers strike that perfect balance, it’s like they’re bridging the gap between childhood and adulthood by eliminating the skepticism and cynicism of grown-ups, and gently teaching young ones a little bit about how the world really works. It’s obvious that the filmmakers behind Planet 51 worked diligently to create a film that speaks to audiences of all ages, but while the concept of a human space explorer landing on an extraterrestrial world resembling our own 1950s society is ripe with possibilities, their choice to go the conventional route results in a film that’s technically accomplished, yet aggressively generic.

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A hulking spectacle of surreal destruction, Roland Emmerich’s 2012 is a theme-park ride masquerading as a motion picture — the only things missing are an exclamation mark in the title and multiplex seat-jostlers to give us a good jolt when the action gets especially intense. Were Irwin Allen still alive today, he’d no doubt marvel at Emmerich’s impressive ability to dispatch more people in ten seconds of screen time than Jason Voorhees did in the entire original Friday the 13th film series (albeit much less creatively, of course). You can almost imagine a bulky old clamshell VHS case for 2012 on the shelf of your local video store, its title rendered in a cold, bold giant font over images of a globe cracking in half, and small, sweaty action headshots of all the stars lining the bottom of the box. Like his predecessor in mayhem, Emmerich knows what buttons to push in order to get a rise out of us. Yet despite — or perhaps because of — the fact that 2012 presents the ne plus ultra of bummer scenarios, this trip to the end of the world can’t quite help but feel like an amalgamation of every disaster script ever written.

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For a film that touches on so many challenging and controversial topics — including sexual and mental/emotional abuse, teen pregnancy, HIV, and illiteracy — Precious is told with such energy, style, and conviction that it’s impossible not to be awed by the artistry of the film even when we’re shrinking away from the devastation taking place on the screen. Even when things get so grim that all hope seems lost, director Lee Daniels keeps us emotionally involved by merging documentary-style filmmaking with urban surrealism in a way that’s genuinely captivating and original. While some may argue that Daniels’ stylistic flourishes have no place in a story like Precious, it’s precisely his bold artistic choices that set the film apart from any number of inner-city underdog stories, and take us into the mind of a young woman whose devastating circumstances are preventing her from reaching her true potential.

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A Fire in the Sky for the post-Blair Witch generation, The Fourth Kind purports to present dramatized accounts of actual unexplained events. If only moviegoers were as gullible as they were back when that group of college filmmakers vanished in the Maryland woods without a trace, perhaps screenwriter/director Olatunde Osunsanmi’s sham shocker would have actually had us going there for a minute.

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A stylish and darkly playful franchise starter that successfully balances supernatural thrills with tongue-in-cheek humor, Cirque Du
Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant manages to avoid coming off as just another Harry Potter clone thanks to a smartly written and fast-moving screenplay, some inspired set pieces, and colorful characters portrayed by a talented cast. It’s an interesting feat for a director known primarily for comedy dramas rooted firmly in reality, and while only time will tell whether the film’s box office will warrant the sequel that’s almost certainly revving its engine in anticipation of the green light, this one is worth a look for fantasy fans with a taste for the unusual.

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October 11, 2009: While thousands of physically capable athletic types limbered up in preparation for the 32nd Annual Chicago Marathon, a slightly more pallid but no less courageous crowd was easing into their Snuggies and fluffing their pillows inside the Music Box Theater for an altogether different kind of endurance test. The Music Box Massacre V was getting underway, and a gorgeous historical theater was packed to the rafters with excited horror fans eager to binge on genre classics and meet a few very special guests.

Whatever it was those health nuts outside were running from, we horror fans were more than willing to take it on in a darkened theater, with a flat of Monster energy drinks and a hearty supply of pizza and breakfast burritos to fuel our fanaticism.

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A highly implausible and surprisingly lurid revenge flick where lawyers and judges stand in for street-dwelling scumbags, Law Abiding Citizen blasts out of the barrel with an unsettlingly intimate act of violence and doesn’t pull any punches in detailing one man’s war against a corrupt justice system. And while director F. Gary Gray and screenwriter Kurt Wimmer’s tense tale of vengeance and grief delivers some nasty surprises that send it careening dangerously close to Saw territory (especially early on), it does manage to raise some thought-provoking questions regarding the ethics of the swaggering legal eagles whose actions sometimes prove more self-serving than benevolent.

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Criminals simply don’t come much more colorful than British baddie Charles Bronson; unfortunately, Nicolas Winding Refn’s deliciously garish, expertly acted biopic doesn’t really seem to do its attention-starved subject much justice (no pun intended). Compulsively watchable thanks to lead actor Tom Hardy’s inspired performance and cinematographer Larry Smith’s hyper-saturated color scheme, Refn’s sixth feature as a director falls slightly flat in terms of pacing, and becomes a bit too repetitive to be genuinely compelling. And while the surreal narration scenes that find a costumed Bronson addressing a rapt theater audience are admittedly inspired (and certainly offer some insight into his character), they ultimately come off as more of a distraction than an asset, since watching our protagonist interact with his environment is more than entertaining enough to constitute a feature-length film.

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