Year One - D+ (Don’t Bother)
Year One starts off with 2 or 3 semi-funny scenes in the first 10 minutes. After that, it’s another hour and a half of one of the dumbest comedies in recent years. Whereas movies like Love Guru, You Don’t Mess With the Zohan, and all of the Epic, Dance and Superhero movies are expected to be terrible and provide few to no laughs, I fully expected Year One to be hilarious. With a fairly original plot, and a great cast featuring Jack Black, Michael Cera, David Cross and Paul Rudd this should have been an instant classic. Instead, the plot turned out to be horrible, the dialogue was terrible, the jokes were either not funny or just plain gross, and the actors were given virtually no freedom to ad-lib. This is a complete failure of a comedy and should be skipped altogether.
Assassination of a High School President - B+ (Gotta Rent)
Assassination is not your typical high school movie, and it’s for that reason as to why it’s good. Whereas most high school movies are your typical comedies that’s light-hearted, provides a lesson to be learned, and has all your normal high school problems; this one is much more of a dark atmosphere similar to that of Brick. Set in a catholic high school, a student reporter who is ignored by everyone tries to write the story of his life about who stole the SATs from the principal’s safe. The whole film has a film noir feeling as the main character narrates through the whole thing. The supporting roles consists Mischa Barton reprising her stereotypical role from The O.C. as the stuck-up beauty of the school and Bruce Willis does a great job as an ex-military man who is the principal of the school. The acting, story, and feeling of the movie makes it well worth the time to watch.
Trick R Treat - A (Gotta Own for Horror Lovers)
As far as horror movies go this is an A all the way as it is one of the best horror movies in a very long time. It goes away from the typical hack and slash teenage horror flick and pays homage to the classics of Tales from the Crypt and Twilight Zone. It essentially takes 4 separate stories, and focuses about 20 minutes or so on each one. The first one focuses on a man being particularly disgruntled with a trick or treater and intends to teach him a lesson. The second revolves around 4 kids visiting the spot of a terrible disaster. The third stars Anna Paquin from True Blood desiring to lose her innocence, while the last features Brian Cox playing a grumpy old man who hates Halloween. With each story there is some aspect that connects it to each of the other stories. Each individual segment is done perfectly and all of them are interwoven seamlessly. This will easily go down as one of the greatest Halloween themed movies ever made.
The Merry Gentleman - B+ (Gotta Rent)
In Michael Keaton’s directorial debut, Keaton also stars as an assassin in this dramatic thriller during Christmas time. During one of Keaton’s kills, Kelly Macdonald happens to mistake him for a potential suicide jumper instead of a killer. When Keaton goes to take care of her he becomes deathly ill and must be saved by Macdonald’s mistaken character. The story does a great job not taking the route of your normal hitman movie and instead becomes more of about the friendly relationship between the two while the cops close in on Keaton’s true identity. Although it’s quite hard to picture the same man who starred in Mr. Mom and Multiplicity to be a hardcore killer, the writing enables you to forget all about this fact during the film and channels you towards his more human side. A surprising success for a directorial debut, The Merry Gentleman is definitely worth a rent as it’s not likely to come onto paid television.
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