DAWN OF THE DEAD – zack snyder – 4.8 / 10

There are some really inventive, really interesting things going on in this film.  And there are also some incredibly stupid, incredibly annoying things in it as well.  In the latter category, there’s the fact that the people in this film appear to have never heard of zombies nor seen any zombie films.  If they had then they would've known that the bite of a zombie is contagious.  I find it very hard to believe that ten average people in modern America have no idea how to deal with zombies (a problem cleverly circumvented in the far superior Zombieland).

THE LAST AIRBENDER – m. night shyamalan – 1.9 / 10

As easy as it is to hate on every Shyamalan film since Unbreakable (Signs, The Village, The Lady in the Water, The Happening) there’s always at least one moment in every movie that makes you sit up and take notice, one moment that makes it clear that despite his inability to string together two coherent lines of dialogue, Shyamalan nonetheless has visual style to burn. In The Last Airbender that sequence is a fight scene, shot in a single take, that depicts an occupied village rising up as one and throwing off the chains of oppression. It’s a powerful shot both because of what it represents (the single unbroken take has the effect of uniting the villagers in their struggle, bringing them all together to reveal their true potential) and because it’s just really cool looking. Unfortunately that shot only lasts one minute; the other hundred and nine are a complete mess.

LOST: SEASON ONE – 6.9 / 10

When Lost first began airing in the fall of 2004, I thought it was sure to be critical hit but a commercial failure that would end in a year (or less) but find some sort of cult status as a misunderstood classic (a la My So-Called Life).  But for some reason (owing much, I think, to our collective post-9/11 mindset), it became a runaway success.  As far as I was concerned, that was great.  I was enjoying the show so I was glad its success guaranteed it’d be around for a few more years.  But towards the end of the first season I started to realize that the creators of the show had the same initial opinion about its prospects as I did.  They clearly didn’t know where the hell they were going with all this craziness (polar bears, magic numbers, smoke monsters, etc.) but figured they’d never have to explain it.  They figured the show would be cancelled quickly and they’d never have to come up with reasons for the stuff they were doing.  So when the show became a hit, they were left grasping at straws.

INCEPTION – christopher nolan – 9.1 / 10

Every once in a while a director makes a couple of movies that earn so much damned money that the studio will do whatever the director wants in order ensure that he continues to work for them.  Usually this entails the studio agreeing to finance an inordinately expensive pet project that would never see the light of day under any other circumstances.  That’s why, for instance, after the Lord of the Rings trilogy earned a few billion dollars, Peter Jackson got Universal to give him $250 million to remake King Kong.  That’s why, after making billions with Titanic, Fox agreed to fund James Cameron’s Avatar despite clearly having no idea what the hell they were spending their $300 million on.  And that’s why, because he made two Batman movies and they want desperately for him to make a third, Warner Bros. agreed to fund Christopher Nolan’s Inception.

THE TWILIGHT SAGA: ECLIPSE – david slade – 2.1 / 10

The word on the street is that the third installment of The Twilight Saga is the best yet. And that’s true as far as it goes, but calling Eclipse the best of the Twilight films is like saying you’re the skinniest kid at fat camp. While it might be technically true, it’s still nothing to get excited about. Because even though there are a couple moments of actual humor in the film and a couple action sequences that aren’t patently absurd, there are still five or six other action scenes that are laughably ridiculous and the short moments of levity are far overshadowed by the hours of ponderous dialogue and wooden acting.