Friday's Top 5... Great Shots From Mirror Mirror...

... That nevertheless fail to make me want to see it.

#5

Although Tarsem Singh's films would appear to be getting progressively shallower on a thematic level, you can still expect something visually great, with...

Review: The Muppets (2011)

* * *
Director: James Bobin
Starring: Jason Segel, Amy Adams

At times it's difficult to say who The Muppets is really geared to, a new generation of young viewers, or older viewers looking for a hit of nostalgia. I'd give the edge to the nostalgia crowd, but ultimately The Muppets is a film that can appeal to viewers of all ages. Although it is not without a few weaknesses, it's one of the more entertaining musical comedies to come out in quite a while.

Review: Carnage (2011)

* * * 1/2
Director: Roman Polanski
Starring: Jodie Foster, Kate Winslet, Christoph Waltz, John C. Reilly

In Luis Bunuel's The Exterminating Angel, guests arrive at a home for a dinner party, enter a room, and then find that they cannot leave. Nothing impedes them from leaving the room; they simply find that they cannot step out. Carnage, based on the play God of Carnage is a lot like that, focusing on four characters who, despite their growing need to be away from each other, find that they just can't leave the Brooklyn apartment which belongs to two of them. As politeness gives way to long simmering resentments, the apartment becomes a battleground of upper middleclass problems.

Friday's Top 5... Scariest Movie Dystopias

#5: Idiocracy

"Scary" because sometimes it seems like it could easily happen. It depicts a world in which idiots have out-bred the intelligent, resulting in an anti-intellectual society that can barely function and is covered in garbage and where a sports drink has replaced water both as a beverage and as a means of irrigating crops. Oh, and Luke Wilson is the smartest guy in the world. I mean, c'mon.

Review: Jack and Jill (2011)

*
Director: Dennis Dugan
Starring: Adam Sandler

Yes, this happened. Don't ask me how. I'm not proud. Please... look away...