This is actually like two movies in one.

The first is fairly typical Adam Sandler fare: It’s what you’re used to seeing if you’ve ever seen, well, any of his movies. It’s also what you’re likely to think of if you actually saw the trailer for the movie.

Dad’s too busy for the family, he heads out for a universal remote, gets a truly universal remote, and can control anything. Hilarity ensues. He uses it to walk the dog faster, watch the girl in the short shorts run slower, make the jerk next door look stupid, that sort of thing. There is absolutely nothing surprising about any of this.

What is surprising is that somewhere in all of that, they completely forgot to mention that it’s (maybe) half the movie.

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If you’re a teenager in 1978 in search of your identity, what do you do? After you’ve formed your band, I mean? You make plans to see KISS, of course!

The only potential problem is that if one of you has a mother who doesn’t like KISS, and thinks that the band is nothing more than an acronym for “Knights in Satans Service”, then sets fire to your tickets before sending you off to boarding school the very day of the concert, you may have a tough time getting to the show.

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Kate (Famke Janssen) has a problem. She has a column due and the one that she’s written isn’t appropriate. What’s worse is that her boss is about to fire her. So she starts talking into one of those little tape records about what has gone wrong with her life to get her where she is now and why she has no experience to write about relationships. It turns out that the problems started on the playground when she was 9.

This is probably the best bit of the movie and it goes downhill from there. We jump forward from there (but not all the way forward to the absolute present) to where she met her big love – Adam (Jon Favreau). Adam was different and swept her off her feet, right out of the arms of someone else who she didn’t like at all and things just took off. But that doesn’t mean that they went well.

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Charlize Theron plays Josey Aimes, a down-on-her-luck woman who has decided to go to work in the mine, which is not exactly a woman-friendly environment in the late eighties. Though there are a handful of women there, they are roundly dismissed as real workers and regularly harassed in just about every imaginable way.

This is the story of how Josey Aimes fought back against the great machine that she was up against, and how nearly everyone was against her – not just the men in the mine and the courts, but even the other women who were at times her friends and the people in her own family.

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This seemingly low-budget film with a mostly no-name cast surprises with quite a decent ending. The only problem is that the beginning is rather jumbled and makes it difficult to get into it at first. If you can get past that, then this movie is most definitely worth watching, as it is full of twists and turns and there are very few like it these days.

The real surprise is that director (Jeff Wadlow) turned out a movie that is really quite good without utilizing the standard horror formula of lots of gore, tons of language or even nudity. There are certainly moments that you won’t want your younger kids to watch, but it’s enjoyable because of the suspense, not because of the content. I was really surprised.

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I wrote an entry comparing this movie to Animal House nearly ten months ago, but I never really reviewed the movie itself, so I figured that it was time to rectify that situation.

Overall, the movie is certainly enjoyable. It’s nothing like Animal House, true, but very few movies are. Frankly, I don’t think it’s even as good as Old School, but it’s definitely a closer comparison. The problem is that it simply doesn’t flow. Both Animal House and Old School stayed true to their vision throughout, while Wedding Crashers starts and stops, which detracts from the overall enjoyment.

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Years before The Exorcist takes place, Father Merrin (played here by Stellan Skarsgård travels to East Africa in search of an idol, rumored to be in a church.

The really interesting thing is that the church isn’t supposed to exist. We find out later that the church was built and then excised from the official Vatican records because of the atrocities that happened there, and that’s pretty much everything exciting that happens.

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This follow-up to 2001’s Legally Blonde starts off with a scrapbook that walks you through the first movie in an effort to bring back the magic. It almost completely fails, but it is sadly about as close as it gets.

What made the first movie work was that it was completely unexpected and it was just a fun ride. The second time through is never as much fun, though admittedly the original is nearly as good on subsequent viewings.

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I have to admit to not being a huge fan of The Fantastic Four growing up. Heck, I wasn’t a fan of any of the traditional superheroes, though I did like comics in general well enough. I just didn’t want to be reading the same ones as everyone else. So while I was acquainted with the basic premise, I didn’t have too much attachment to it. I completely understand that someone who was in love with the story may have ideas that are completely shattered if the movie wasn’t faithful to the original story.

When the four primary characters travel to the space station to research cosmic rays, they find that their calculations were off, and the rays are both more powerful than expected and closer. So they are bombarded by radiation that is unknown in origin and in power. This in turn gives them new powers, and they return to Earth with these powers, which transforms them into the superhero team that is known as The Fantastic Four.

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This movie, based on the Firefly series, surrounds a psychic named River, who was imprisoned as the alliance tried to suppress her knowledge of certain events. Unfortunately her brother walked into the facility and broke her out. Along the way, they meet up with the crew of Serenity, who are naturally not friendly with the authorities, and thus begins the adventure.

The band of brigands aboard Serenity have no idea what secret River is holding, nor do they know what secret she herself is hiding – mostly because she doesn’t seem to know. What they do know is that they don’t really like the people she’s hiding from, so they don’t have a problem keeping River away from the people who want her, and that’s about all that matters.

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