Short Cuts

Some more quick reviews of movies I either didn't have time to write about before, or just couldn't be bothered to review because they were lame.

The Watchmen: A bunch of has-been super heroes comes out of retirement to save the Earth. Good effects, stupid ending.

Horsemen: Dennis Quaid plays a cop. Guess what? His wife's dead. Guess what? He's estranged from his kids. Guess what? There's a serial killer about town. Guess what? Quaid is morose and will catch the killer at any cost. Guess what?

Push: A guy has the power to 'push' people through the air, through walls, through plate glass windows, through anything. It's an X-Men rip-off in the sense that there's more 'mutants' like him around, and there's another group of mutants that want to kill the good mutants and take over the world. Now that I've written that, I see that it is exactly an X-Men rip-off.

The Haunting in Connecticut: Lame horror flick about a haunted house. You've seen it a million times before.

Knowing: Nicholas Cage plays a guy whose son finds a piece of paper that prophesies disasters like plane crashes and train wrecks. Nic Cage has been in some real flops over the past decade, but this one is surprisingly good. I was totally prepared for it to stink, but it didn't.

International: Clive Owen is an Interpol agent investigating a dirty bank that has ties to arms dealing. Pretty good movie, and it feels relevant for the times, too. The shootout scene in the Guggenheim is the best shootout scene in a while.

Killshot: Mickey Rourke and Diane Lane in a movie based on an Elmore Leonard novel. This was shot before Rourke did The Wrestler, and it was scheduled and rescheduled for release a ton of times. Not a great sign, as that means it was hacked to death in post-production. It got a limited release, then got dumped into the video store. It deserved it. It's not terrible, but not good. Just run of the mill shoot-'em-up.