Me, though, I didn’t hear about any of that. Because I was eyeballs deep in another festival: The Fright Night Film Festival in Louisville, Kentucky.

Why, you may ask, wasn’t I covering one of the biggest events in the geek world?  Why did I opt for the smaller (but still super fun) Louisville alternative?

The answer is simple.  It’s the same reason this site has, unfortunately, been somewhat neglected over the past few months.  I was premiering a movie I’ve been working on nonstop for the past year.

Just like every other fanboy out there, I have a huge passion for movies. Not just watching them, but making them.

This weekend I premiered “Overtime” to a sold out crowd in my hometown.  We walked away with eight awards including Best of Fest.  This movie has been a blast to make, and I’m extremely proud of it (hence the shameless plug).

I’m a little biased about the film, so I’ll try and keep myself from writing about it.  Instead, I want to post a small article that one of the Fright Night attendees wrote up about the movie.

Still, I would be a hypocrite if I didn’t let the people on this site know about the movie. Because I’m more proud of it than anything I’ve ever done, and my passion is writing about movies.  Why wouldn’t I write about something so personal and so important to me?  I hope you understand.

So check it out on facebook and IMDB.  Look at the trailer, and give me your thoughts.

And without further ado, here’s Christy’s take on the festival experience we had this weekend.  All your filmmakers out there probably know exactly what she’s talking about:

And Suddenly – Everything Changes
by Christy Newland

It was hot, hot, hot at the Fright Night Film Festival.  People swarmed into the vendor area – not just to pore over the masks and makeup and posters and fright masks – but savor the sweet air conditioning that was so absent outside in the lobby.

But there was something hotter than the weather going on at the Con.

In waves, people kept converging on the “Overtime” booth at the Festival.  They would start to walk by – but the trailer would stop them dead in their tracks.  Wide-eyed kids would watch the zombie aliens with their dripping green goo and screeching howls.  Guys would watch the gunplay and laugh at the one-liners.

There was always a crowd watching the big screen.

And then there were the fans.  Kids, girls, guys – they all wanted to meet Al Snow, the TNA wrestling star.  They wanted their pictures taken with him.  And he was sweet and patient – and talked to everyone.  And posed for pictures.  And signed autograph after autograph.  One kid was so proud to shake his hand, that it looked like the smile would break his face in half.

And the fans kept saying, “We’re coming to see this one.  This “Overtime” is the movie we want to see.”

All the folks in the booth wanted to believe it.  The stars, the musicians, the photographers, the producing team.  It was like they kept reassuring themselves that they were going to be a hit.  They believed in the movie, but they still weren’t sure they could relax and really get into being a success.

And suddenly – everything changed.

Two hours before the screening, the line started to grow.  And grow.  People surged toward the doors of the screening room.  People were really worried about getting a seat.  The room filled up.  The air was buzzing with excitement.  There were actually people who couldn’t get in.  Almost two hundred people were turned away.

Brian Cunningham and Matt Niehoff got up to introduce the movie – and, as the saying goes, the crowd went wild.  People watched and laughed and cheered.  “Overtime” was a big, loud, brassy, funny hit.

And finally, the cast, the crew and all the people who made “Overtime” a reality could kick back with a beer and believe it.

My experience watching the movie was informed by a three different perspectives, and I’m unsure as to which of the voices inside my head I should be listening. I feel like the last one balances the first two out, but since they all ultimately feel the same way, I’ve decided to take this opportunity to give each of them a voice and write MovieChopShop.com’s very first schizophrenic movie review. Enjoy!

The Shep who loves Green Lantern:

This section contains minor spoilers.

The new movie adaptation of Green Lantern is a classic case of knowing the words but not the music. I had a feeling that director Martin Campbell was not a good choice for this material and I was right. The spirit of the comics and all that makes them so unique and enjoyable, weird and whacky, and thematically interesting are gone, and what we’re left with makes me feel kind of embarrassed to be such an avid Green Lantern fan. It’s like giving someone a tour of your house on the one day that the dog shit in the living room. It doesn’t always stink like this, I swear!

A few completely wrong details (both big and small) aside, the movie is technically one of the more faithful superhero adaptations I’ve seen, in terms of loading up on familiar characters and accurately establishing the look and the basic mythology. However, it’s fair to say that Green Lantern doesn’t lend itself to the whims of those “open to interpretation” as well as something like, say, Batman. So, more or less, it’s all here.

But something is missing. There’s a reason that I love reading Green Lantern comics and that reason didn’t make it into this movie.

I’m not going to quibble about the fact that the ring selection process is different (and less cool). I’m not going to cry about how characters that I thought were supposed to be in the movie, like John Stewart, Alan Scott, and the sentient planet Mogo, were nowhere to be found. I’m not even going to piss and moan that—unless they’ve got something else up their sleeve in the future (which could be cool)—Parallax’s backstory is completely false.

Whatever. Really, it’s small stuff and it doesn’t bother me. The basic idea is there. What does bother me is how little it all would have mattered even if those details had been there. You see, the presence of Oa and the Corps and any non-Hal Jordan characters in this movie is surprisingly and disappointingly minor. It’s all pretty Earth-centric, and characters like Tomar-Re and Kilowog both have about one and a half scenes each, while Sinestro is not properly developed at all. When he brandishes what will (in the inevitable sequel) be a Sinestro Corps ring, it feels unearned.

It’s true that the production design is pretty impressive, and Oa and the Guardians and all the creatures look great. But if you’ve seen the trailer as many times as Warner Bros. hopes you have, then you’ve seen pretty much all there is to see. The rest of the movie spends all its time on Earth, hitting all the marks to make sure Hal is likable, relatable, and heroic. If you understand my meaning, then let me put it this way: the finished product of Green Lantern is a lot more like the first trailer than it is the second. And that’s a bummer.

I love Green Lantern comics—especially the current run by Geoff Johns (who is credited as co-producer on this film; I wish he’d written it)—because they’re so different from traditional superhero comics. It’s more like grand-scale operatic science fiction, and Hal Jordan is our guide. Instead, the movie tries so hard to fit into a recognizable superhero mold that it’s afraid to show us what sets Green Lantern apart from all the others. This is what happens when the idea to make a movie starts with someone saying “Superhero movie are big right now—let’s do Green Lantern!” instead of “I’ve got a great idea for a Green Lantern movie.” At the end of the day, it’s pretty stock.

The Shep who loves movies:

Green Lantern is the third superhero movie of the 2011 summer movie season and it’s big and pretty and something of a mess. It has a lot it wants to do but it struggles with the “how” and the “why.”

Director Martin Campbell seems a little out of his element and a lot uninspired, and he fails to create and populate a unique environment, despite having a wealth of source material that should pretty easily set him down the right path.  Campbell seems to have had no discernible interest in making this movie–both he and the writing team were all just guns for hire, and the whole endeavor winds up as an experience devoid of passion or excitement, made to sell toys, video games, and Reese Pieces.

I was frequently reminded of the opening scene of Frank Darabont’s underrated The Majestic, where Jim Carrey, playing a Blacklist-era Hollywood screenwriter, sits in a room full of movie studio execs who are trying to conjure up all the tricks to making their movie the most agreeable portrait of red, white, and blue Americana they can think of. Green Lantern seems to be put together from a lot of those types of decisions, working from a checklist designed to please both fanboys and general audiences alike. As a result, nobody goes home happy.

“Give the hero a dog,” one of the execs says in The Majestic. Well, they gave Hal Jordan a dog. Several, actually. Not literally, of course, but between the young nephew who shows up and disappears for the rest of the movie, the superfluous and annoying comic-relief friend, and the obligatory love interest, Carol Ferris, he’s got enough loyal companions to start a healthy Facebook account. And to think they didn’t use that as a viral marketing opportunity.

Amid all this, the more interesting intergalactic scruples take a backseat. Not that it isn’t important for Hal to overcome his fears and get his life in order, but Campbell chooses to juggle these balls instead of making them work together and complement one another, and they all sort of fall to the ground.

Now, I don’t want to say that this movie has Spider-Man 3 syndrome—because, my God, nothing’s that bad (so bad)—but between Oa and the Guardians, Sinestro, Parallax, Hector Hammond, and all of Hal’s Earth relationships, the movie is so busy and stretched so thin, that it’s impossible to get your money’s worth out of any one particular plot thread.

And if you’re in it for the action, you’ll probably still be leaving disappointed, as there’s surprisingly not much of it, and it’s rarely very inventive or exciting. The most fun is had when Hal trains with Kilowog and Sinestro, but the overall effect of most of the key action sequences is pretty cheap and shoddy; especially disconcerting when you consider how much the whole production must have cost.

There might have been a way to make the script work (although it’s not without its own myriad of problems), but Campbell did not find it. Lazily, he just sort of lets the movie make itself, and there’s nothing much about it that’s terribly memorable. He has no vision for the movie, save for the dollar signs in his eyes, and it’s all just plain and simple hack-work. At the end of the day, it’s pretty stock.

The Shep who saw X-Men: First Class the day before:

Green Lantern is a dull, voiceless, and sometimes boring movie and I say that with much, much regret and disappointment. When we got out of the theater and my wife asked what I thought about it, I half-heartedly replied, “It was fine.” And that’s true. It was fine. It wasn’t incompetent or obnoxious, the performances were acceptable–Ryan Reynolds was a perfectly serviceable Hal Jordan. It was fine. And I love Green Lantern; I love the characters and mythology, I love the sci-fi landscape and the whacky mechanics of the power rings. If you make me a Green Lantern movie, some part of me will inevitably enjoy it. That’s just how it goes. It was…fine.

But it wasn’t what I hoped it would be nor what it could have and should have been. It was the product of a group of people coming together to make a super-safe kinda bland superhero movie to make a few bucks. The only person who seemed like they were trying to go the extra mile and do something really interesting was Peter Sarsgaard, whose take on Hector Hammond belongs in a better movie.

I came into this movie with a strange, conflicting bias. The day before I saw Green Lantern, I saw Matthew Vaughn’s X-Men: First Class. That was a film which, for me, exhibited the stylistic confidence and originality of vision not seen by any comic book movie since The Dark Knight. It set a bar. Like Green Lantern, it had many characters and ideas, but it knew how to create its own world where all these elements would thrive to their full potential.

I’m a DC guy, and my personal ties to the X-Men are minimal. I saw all the previous films (and liked most of them) and watched the cartoon when I was a kid, but I’ve only ever read some of Grant Morrison’s New X-Men series. I think I might have gotten a Cyclops mask for Christmas one year.

I’m biased towards Green Lantern and I can tell you that X-Men: First Class is a far better film. It showed me what I want out of not just a comic book movie, but any movie. Originality. Excitement. Tension. Emotion. Why couldn’t my guy have gotten that treatment?

Green Lantern follows the paint-by-numbers instructions, shines a light in your face, makes a few things go boom, and sends you home. It’s a Green Lantern movie, to be sure; but it wasn’t the one I wanted. And by most non-fans’ standards, it certainly won’t add up to a good movie, and you’ll never catch me defending it as one. At the end of the day, it was just really stock.

Oh, and fuck 3-D. If I wanted to get a headache and look at a dim picture, I could just stare into the sun for ten minutes before the movie started. One more fucking reason to hate James Cameron.

—the Shep who hates 3-D

That’s not a bad thing.  Not in the slightest.  Because 1970′s Spielberg was magic, and so is this.

To be totally honest, I didn’t flip for the movie in quite the way I expected.  Every fanboy has the movies he or she has ridiculously high expectations for, and Super 8 was that movie for me this summer. After all, Abrams’ Star Trek is, in my opinion, one of the most fun action films ever.  It’s well written, well crafted and superbly directed to create the right mix of smart dialogue and brainless action.  It was a fantastic film.

Then when I saw the first full trailer for Super 8, I swore off any other advertising for the movie.  Which is rare for me. Usually I don’t care about spoilers.  A movie is best enjoyed when approached as a journey, in my opinion.  It doesn’t matter if you know where you’re going…most of the time you know, through intuition, anyway…but what matters is how the filmmakers get you to give a crap about what’s going on.

But with this one, I didn’t want to know what was inside that train.  I wanted to be surprised.  I wanted to experience the movie with the characters, not as an outside observer who knows what’s going on.

Unfortunately, that’s the one place where the movie misses a bit.  The “what’s going on” answer isn’t terribly original.  In fact, it’s one of the more obvious plots that could have been inserted in this kind of movie. What’s more, after all the “what is it?!?” build-up, our characters conveniently stumble on something that succinctly (and rather ham-handedly) explains the entire situation in under two minutes.  It kills the sense of discovery and mystery.  There’s no big third act revelations (that you didn’t see coming right after that explanation scene, at least), and the movie just kinda plays out like you’d expect.

In other words, the “what’s on the train” story plays out based on convention, cliche, and viewer expectation, and it was a bit of a disappointment.  It’s what kept me from loving the movie.

Luckily, though, that isn’t what the movie is about. Instead, this film is about the kids.  And the kids are downright brilliant.

I’m not going to go into plot detail.  If you’ve been reading my reviews for any length of time, you know how much I loathe giving you a synopsis and character breakdown.  If you’re on this site, chances are you already know that stuff.

I will say, though, that my favorite part of this film was the “movie within the movie.”  Seeing these kids running around with their movie camera, trying to make a film and actually doing an admirable job, I fell in love.  The childhood relationships, the way these kids interact, and their passion for making movies is all 100% endearing and believable.  For once, the “kids making the movie” plotline isn’t some side plot that’s discarded.  It follows through all the way into the end credits.  And for once, these kids aren’t being made fun of.  They’re not out acting like idiots.  They’re work is crude, but they actually have talent.  And passion.  And they really care about what they’re doing, and they care about each other.

That’s why this movie works.  You care as much about whether the kids will finish their movie as you do about what’s going to happen with the train wreck.  And, through that, you care about the kids, themselves, and their familial situation.

It’s classic Spielberg…E.T. Spielberg.  As told through the lens of J.J. Abrams.

That being said, I have a feeling modern audiences, or at least the audiences this movie is being marketed to, might not respond well to this film. If they go in expecting action, scares, and a visceral thrill, that isn’t what it’s about.  Sure, there are action scenes and tense moments, but this is a character movie with a supernatural/preternatural (NOT gonna spoil it!) sub-plot, not the other way around. I can see a lot of audience members walking out saying,” Why the hell did I just watch two hours of kids making movies, falling in love and having fights with their parents.  I wanted some flippin’ monsters!”

But you know what, J.J?  Screw those people.  I’m so happy someone made a character story…a family story…that is believable, affecting, and not afraid to dip into tasteful cheese.  Because I won’t lie…there were a couple of moments in the movie that I knew, in my brain, were cheesy. But because I cared about the characters, I was tearing up.  I was in.  J.J. earned the cheese.

So here’s my box-office prediction.  This movie will open okay, but not stellar.  But it will grow. This is the kind of movie your parents and grandparents hear about a month into release and decide to go see.

At least, I hope it grows.  I hope it does well, because I want to see more movies made like it. Otherwise the summer blockbuster season will be filled with nothing but talking animals and dumb, transforming robots.

In the interest of full disclosure, some of the people at MCS are intimately involved with the movie in question.  So yeah, there’s a conflict of interest.  But I figured…pretty girls, a fun concept, and pretty girls…you guys can’t be too mad about me sharing this, right?

Warning: The following may be considered NOT safe for work. Well, that is if your boss has a problem with the term “bukkake.”

You’ve been warned.

Head over to the Y-Box website for more information on the newest fake gaming platform to never hit the streets.

I haven’t seen The Tree of Life yet, but I’m dying to. It opened in New York and Los Angeles on Friday, but doesn’t come to my city until June 17. And I have to see Green Lantern that weekend! Busy, busy busy!!

But anyway…you may have heard or you may not have heard that Mr. Terry Malick wasn’t there at the festival to gloat and smile for the camera and scrub under his pits with the praises of his admirers. Well…he was there, but he wasn’t “there” if you know what I mean and of course you do.

I’ve spoken about this before when I listed him as one of my five directors who don’t do commentary tracks, but would be more than welcome to in my opinion. Not only does he not do commentary tracks, he doesn’t do much of anything in terms of…you know…speaking. To anyone. And in between 1978 and 1998 he pretty much disappeared completely from the face of the earth.

He’s a reclusive, private kind of guy. (Obviously another sign of his genius.) He doesn’t even allow for photographs to be taken of him. The picture you’ll most often find of him is the one you see above—and that could be anyone! Everyone reading this has an uncle that looks exactly like that.

And while I’m sure his real reasons are something perfectly acceptable like “he’s not an obnoxious press whore” or “he’s really insecure about his acne and his braces” or something like that, I can’t help but wonder if there’s something more going on here. If you’ll humor me, here are my five most likely ideas.

1. He’s in the Witness Protection Program

This seems the most obvious, so I’m knocking it out first. It makes sense, really. After all, his BIG disappearance didn’t occur until after Days of Heaven in 1978. Before that, he went so far as to even use himself as in extra in Days and even had a minor speaking part in Badlands. And then shit went down. He spent twenty years on the lamb, “living in France,” and then after twenty years he said to himself “fuck this, I’m making a war movie!” I’ve always thought that The Thin Red Line was a big existential film on a grand scale…but maybe it was about the smaller struggles—Malick’s internal war, as he coped with what he’d seen.

Or perhaps this all happened way earlier in his life, and Badlands was the movie he made to cope. It seems fitting—I mean it is about a young couple on a murderous crime spree. Maybe Malick was a guy locked in the trunk, and chose to omit himself from the movie so as to purge himself from his agonizing memories.

Of course, we’ll never know BECAUSE HE WON’T FUCKING TELL US! But, maybe this one is less likely. Like I said, it’s a bit obvious. This next one, however, I like to think is a bit outside-the-box.

2. He’s a Na’vi.

Now, I’ve made no secret of the fact that I absolutely hated Jame’s Cameron’s blown-load heard ’round the world, Avatar. And one of my points of contention on the matter is that the Na’vi are really poorly designed and stupid-looking. They’re gangly extra-tall blue sparkly people with long-ass tails. They seriously look like something I probably drew in first grade.

But maybe—just maybe—that part isn’t James Cameron’s fault. Maybe he knows something we don’t know: that the Na’vi really exist! And Terrence Malick is one of them (the LAST one?). Think about it: is there any filmmaker more droolingly in love with nature than Malick? (Okay, maybe Werner Herzog, but I’m reasonably certain he’s not a Na’vi). And the Na’vi, as we all know, are…like…one with nature or some asinine hippy shit like that. Maybe during that 20-year absence of his, he was plugging his hair into all sorts of new and interesting things to come back and tell the world about.

And you know what the first 20 or 30 minutes of Malick’s 2005 film The New World bear a lot of similarity to? You guessed it: Avatar!

(But really, what movie doesn’t Avatar seem completely derivative of? People say all the time that Avatar is one color of the wind shy of Disney’s animated Pocahontas. Malick’s film was also about Pocahontas, but Cameron thought ripping off Disney’s take on the legend would probably put more asses in seats. It did.)

And although I always thought that The New World presented things in a more introspective, dreamlike, and perhaps even surreal context, from a certain perspective, it could be seen as the true-to-life version of the Pocahontas-John Smith story. Of course, in reality, there was never actually any love affair between the two. Maybe Na’vi Malick, not being of this planet, simply didn’t know that it wasn’t a true story?

3. He’s billions of years old.

First there was nothing. Then there was Malick. Terrence Malick’s films, especially as his career has progressed, are just bursting with spiritual meditation. And The Tree of Life even goes so far as to contemplate the creation of the universe and man’s place in the grand scheme of things.

Why so interested, Mr. Malick? Is it because YOU’RE AS OLD AS TIME?? Malick’s been around and he’s seen everything, and now he’s made a movie about exactly that: everything. He’s more than qualified to make a movie about the “tree of life” because it’s from there that he’s been picking his breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the better part of forever.

Throughout his career he’s made nothing but period pieces, and the same observation strikes me every time I watch any of his movies: that they have such an impeccable sense of time and place, with a deliberately paced immediacy in tone that is unlike anything that I’ve ever seen any other filmmaker produce.

I’ve never put it together until now, but clearly this means that he’s an immortal superhuman. And it makes absolute sense that he would shy away from the public eye due to this—we’d surely catch on. Either a) because he never ages, or b) because he looks like this:

4. He’s dead/never existed.

Of course, the complete opposite of the last theory has to be considered, too. Maybe he’s dead. Remember he wasn’t that reclusive in the seventies. He had those cameos in both Badlands and Days of Heaven (supposedly those are him), and I’ve even read some interview quotes regarding Badlands. Maybe shortly after Days of Heaven he just died. And the world was told he “went to France.” Mmm-hmm. Heard that one before. When I was a kid, I had a couple hamsters that “went to France” too. Maybe Terry Malick knows them.

Perhaps when The Thin Red Line came around, it was cobbled together from former notes of his, and another filmmaker made it in his memory? And then just kept going with it for two (and soon to be three) more films.

Or maybe he never existed in the first place and the name “Terrence Malick” is like a reverse-”Allan Smithee”—the name that bad filmmakers use when they accidentally make a good movie. For instance…

5. He’s Michael Bay

Honestly, this was my first and only thought but I decided I couldn’t justify an entire article alleging that Terrence Malick is the alter ego of Transformers and Armageddon filmmaker (and Hollywood’s go-to douchebag) Michael Bay. But I still think it’s an intriguing premise.

Does anyone remember two years ago, shortly before the second Transformers movie opened, when news came out that Bay’s next movie would be a “small, personal project?” Instead, this July, he’s playing it safe with Transformers: Dark of the Moon. What happened to that small movie?

My theory is this: there’s a sad, sensitive, spiritual man inside of Michael Bay that is too scared to come out. Scared of rejection, scared of being seen as vulnerable, scared of other filmmakers calling him a pussy. (Rumor has it that the Date Movie guys called David Gordon Green a “fag,” which caused him to make Pineapple Express and Your Highness.)

He makes his personal films under the assumed name “Terrence Malick” (which, if you drop the word “Terrence” and take the word “Malick” and replace the “i” and the “k” with an “e” and an “h,” and then rearrange the letters and then add “Bay” at the end, totally spells “Michael Bay.” He’s telling us something…we just have to listen). He tried to come out to the world two years ago, but he got laughed at—and to boot, no one liked Transformers 2! To right his wrongs, he immediately got started on TF3, and promised “OMG!it’sgonnalikebeSOOOOOmuchbetterthistimeipromiseOMFG!OMFG!OMFG!” And then quietly made his personal film, The Tree of Life, on the weekends. Poor guy.

Of course, how this explains Badlands and Days of Heaven…I don’t know. I’m probably wrong. Bay was 8 years old when Badlands came out, and prodigy though he may have been, I don’t know that any 8-year-old’s got that in them.

And before anyone goes into a tiff (because some people will; there’s always one), I fully realize that the probability of any of these is pretty much zero. There are no N’avis, there are no immortals, there’s no soul inside of Michael Bay. The Witness Protection Program is plausible, though…

I mainly just wrote this to entertain myself, I guess. Is there even an audience for this? Terrence Malick is a serious dude—there are no smiles in his movies. Will people who might find this funny even know who Terrence Malick is? Will Malick fans find this funny? I’m a big fan and I did. But I wrote it, I’m biased.

When I started writing this article, I had a brief exchange of words with my wife:

WIFE: What are you writing?
SHEP: Nothing, I just got a funny idea for an article.
WIFE: What’s it about?
(pause)
SHEP: Terrence Malick.
WIFE: That doesn’t sound funny.

Yeah. Maybe not.

Then again, if you hated the first movie, I can’t believe you’ll feel any different now.

Why is this? Because Todd Phillips and his cronies have basically remade the first movie.  Sure, the setting is different and a few characters are swapped out for different (but similar) characters, but every situation, every twist, and every beat is substituted with a new joke, gag, or scenario that functions for the plot and characters in exactly the same way as something in the original.

And ya know what?  For this movie, that’s a good thing.  In fact, it makes the film funnier.

Because instead of trying to “reinvent” the franchise (I’m looking at you, Pirates 4) or making the plot, characters and situations even more goofy and ridiculous than the admittedly ridiculous original (I’m looking at you Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay), this film just says “We did it well.  We got it right.  Let’s do it again.”

And that makes the entire movie one huge in-joke.  From the first frame, where we see a concerned wedding party interrupted by a phone call breaking bad news, we get the joke. And when Wolf-Pack member Phil says “It happened again,” you can’t help but laugh out loud.  The idea of the exact same thing, of this proportion of silliness, happening twice is almost interesting enough to carry the movie all by itself.

Phillips does do a few things differently…kinda.  Yes, the story structure and character dynamics are identical (and I do mean identical), but the movie is still clever with its jokes and uses its change of scenery (the gang is shanghaied in Bangkok this time) for the better.  The whole thing feels somehow darker, seedier and more desperate this time around.  Lives are at stake (kinda), and we’re treated to severed fingers, bullet wounds, drug overdoses and a violent monkey.  It’s pretty creepy stuff, really, but somehow that just makes it all the more enjoyable.

Walking into this film, my one thought was “They’re going to be trying too hard.”  It’s a common thing in comedy sequels to try and recycle jokes and characters and pat yourself on the back saying “Hey, remember that first movie?  Wasn’t that funny!”  Luckily enough, the filmmakers seem to know what’s fair game to copy and what needs to be original.  Instead of cramming a whole slew of call-back jokes, the movie copies the structure, pacing and plot of the original…you know, the obligatory comedy stuff that is hard to get right and can stand to be recycled.  Mix in some original jokes and outrageous situations, and you’re good to go.  Effortless.

There is one exception, though.  A cameo by Mike Tyson feels tired, forced, and thrown in just…because.

Still, it’s a slight misstep in a movie that knows what it is, how it functions, and what it needs to do to get its target audience laughing. In short, you already know how you’re going to feel about this movie.  Act accordingly.

As a buddy of mine put it, I was looking forward to watching “The Adventures of Jack Sparrow.”  I thought maybe this character, if given the right quest, could become this generation’s Indiana Jones. Unfortunately, I was very, very wrong.

I’m not even sure where the blame lies. It’s not with Depp…his Jack Sparrow is the same charming, cocky bastard as always. I can’t really blame the writers (at least not completely); they write the same twists and turns and over-the-top dialogue that I loved in the other movies.

In the end, though, there are two elements I can point to and say “No…this was just all wrong.”

The first is director Rob Marshall. Don’t get me wrong…Rob is a talented guy. I’m a huge fan of what he did with Chicago, and the man has a great eye for choreography and action. The problem, though, is that he’s not nearly as “playful” as Gore Verbinski was with the first three Pirates movies. Jokes are over-played, gags and plot “twists” are telegraphed, and, overall, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides just doesn’t work hard enough to get me involved. It’s one of those situations where the characters, on paper, are interesting and engaging and the plot is action-packed and exciting.  In execution, though, the movie just feels flat…like the filmmakers are saying “hey, you like this!  It’s Jack Sparrow!  We don’t have to do the hard work of drawing you into a plot, you just want Jack!”  Laziness.

The second (and larger) problem with the film is, ironically, “too much Jack.” If you remember, Jack Sparrow was originally supposed to be a very strong supporting character.  The first film was an ensemble with a love story (albeit a weak one) at its heart. And, not surprisingly, the public called for “more Jack.”  With Pirates 2 and 3, there was more Jack, but he was always balanced by a strong supporting cast of heroes.

In this film, we get Jack front and center.  And you know what? It gets boring.  As my girlfriend said when walking out of the movie, they got Jack all wrong.  This movie, for the first time, shows Jack thinking.  We get a glimpse behind his wild antics and see him scheme…and that’s all wrong.  What was always great about Jack is that he was one step ahead of the other characters in the movie as well as the audience. It always comes together in that one “aha!” moment that lets you know that you’ve been watching a skilled con artist with a heart of gold.  In this movie, the few “aha!” moments that exist are obvious, telegraphed and simplistic. What a waste of a great character.

I’m not one hundred percent sure of why and how this franchise jumped the shark.  But I’ll take a stab at it…

While the first movie was a giant success both commercially and financially, Disney and the filmmakers had to be disappointed with the reception of the sequels. Pirates 2 was considered (unrightfully, in my opinion) overlong and convoluted. Three, penned and shot at the same time as two, was just noise, and you could tell it was heavily re-edited to take the negative feedback of part two into account.

So when it came time to make this new movie, you just know the Disney execs had some ginormous notes for the filmmakers.  Like 1) GIVE ME MORE JACK!, and 2) KEEP IT SIMPLE STUPID!

So when the writers wrote this one, they were writing scared. They were terrified of losing their audience like they did with two. They toned down the double-crosses and the plot twists.  They made Jack less intelligent so the audience could keep up.

The only problem being that these things are what make the original trilogy worth watching.  Whether you like part two or not (I love it), you kind of have to respect its boldness, sense of fun, and clever writing. It goes so off the rails with complicated plot that you just kind of have to laugh and go with it. The first movie was similar but in a more dialed back way.

But by taking this level of complicated plot and character motivation out of the fourth movie, the filmmakers have effectively ripped the guts out of the franchise.  And any cleverness that is left is played too obviously…like Rob Marshall is terrified of losing his audience, so he makes the most obvious, most “okay we get it already” choices possible.

I’m more than a little disappointed. Maybe there was (is?) a way of making Jack Sparrow this generation’s Indiana Jones, but not like this…not with a soulless rehash of the original films that fails to understand what made those films work in the first place.  We need either a reinvention of the series or a movie that better aligns with the original, ensemble concept.

Because this movie made me utter words I never thought I would: “I missed Orlando Bloom.”

One of the newest and most pervasive brands of film to make its mark on the face of mainstream American cinema is the Apatow comedy. Be they the films Judd Apatow himself writes and directs (The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Funny People) or the ones he merely produces (Superbad, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Pineapple Express), they have spawned countless imitators, all R-rated man-centric comedies under the newly coined label of “bromance.” Some aren’t too terrible. This year’s sci-fi bromance, Paul, was lightweight but enjoyable. Others have a tougher time of it—personally, I couldn’t stand 2009′s Apatow knock-off, I Love You, Man. And let’s not forget this year’s widely shat-upon medieval bromance Your Highness.

Apatow’s movies have received widespread critical and commercial success due in large part to their heart and relatability. They’re about crude, crass men, but they strip them down to explore their vulnerabilities and insecurities. I’ve been saying it for years that Knocked Up plays like a drama that happens to be about people who are really funny. Imagine my sense of satisfaction when Apatow’s next movie, his most dramatic to date, was called Funny People. The humor in his movies come solely from the characters, rather than a series of gags and whacky hijinks.

And the best thing is that they sell. American audiences really aren’t as dumb as the box office numbers for the Transformers movies would suggest. Simply the title of The 40-Year-Old Virgin suggests a goofy, camera-winking farce—the kind of movies that comes out, makes a decent sum of money in the first couple weeks and then disappears. But that’s exactly what the movie wasn’t. It was original and sensitive and funny in a new and widely appealing way. And it was a huge hit. The movie came out in August of 2005; I recall that I didn’t see it until October, when it was still at a first-run movie theater. Pretty damn impressive.

Movies with that level of success have to appeal to a wide range of people. Men and women alike have attended and enjoyed these movies. They aren’t genre films with a specific demographic and niche within the film community. They’re smart, accessible, and funny. Everybody wins.

Now there’s Bridesmaids—produced by Judd Apatow, directed by Paul Feig (creator of the Apatow-produced cult TV show Freaks and Geeks), and written by Annie Mumolo and SNL‘s Kristen Wiig, who stars in the film. It follows what one might call the “Apatow formula” to a tee, although there’s one catch—and it’s the one that the title pretty clearly suggests: this time it’s about women.

Let’s face it: women have it pretty crappy in Hollywood. When they’re not being stripped naked and slaughtered in whatever killer-fish movie is popular at the moment, they’re being sidelined by genuinely talented male filmmakers who don’t know how to write interesting female characters (Chris Nolan comes to mind). Female audiences are fed brainless manufactured crap like Bride Wars and Something Borrowed and Kate Hudson Shames Her Gender Again as if they just came off an assembly line. In the 83 years that the Academy Awards have been given out, a woman has won Best Director only once…for directing The Hurt Locker, a movie about men. Judd Apatow, too, has come under fire for his female characters coming off as humorless shrews. It’s tough going, being a woman.

And to make matters even trickier, most men pretty much won’t go see movies about women. Sure, you may hear a friend say “Ugh, I got dragged to (fill-in-the-blank chick flick). It was awful.” But let’s take a moment of silence for all the young women that got dragged to Fast Five.

But you know what? A lot of them probably liked it. There isn’t as much of a gender bias when it comes to women seeing guy movies–particularly among this generation. Most women will tell you that they liked The Dark Knight every bit as much as their husbands or boyfriends.

Getting men to see “chick flicks,” however, is like pulling teeth. Getting men to admit that they liked a chick flick is like rocket science. You know…because we straight men can’t have people thinking we’re gay or something. It’s the natural conclusion to jump to and because of such assumptions, civilization will surely crumble.

But even if it’s merely a guilty pleasure (and most women will attest to that type of satisfaction on their own part, anyway), every guy has some arsenal of chick flicks that they’re total suckers for. I, for one, love While You Were Sleeping, You’ve Got Mail, and The Holiday. And I’m not ashamed.

It’s one of the key differences between the two sexes. You can get girls to do guy things, but there’s just no way in hell you can get a guy to do girl things. There are plenty of womens’ sports teams, but male cheerleaders get looked at funny. When my wife and I were trying to round up a group to go see Bridesmaids with us, Quaid stubbornly refused on account of the fact that the movie was “about weddings.” He missed out.

Not that I’m so high and mighty. The marketing campaign professed a movie that appeared to be The Hangover for women, and the jokes used in it weren’t too impressive. And I didn’t even like The Hangover. I had no interest. But, movie nerd that I am, I was taken in due to the Apatow pedigree and the 91% on RottenTomatoes. And I was so glad that I went. It’s a fantastic movie and possibly the best that the Apatow camp has churned out yet.

It’s fair to say that it is to women what something like Knocked Up or Funny People is to men. It’s crass R-rated comedy that portrays its characters the way that people really are, and is all the more cathartic for doing so. Ultimately it shows us that, when Hollywood does it right, the average woman is really more interesting than the average man.  Hence all the crying.

However, like I said, the ad campaign does not suggest this movie at all. The laughs aren’t focused on goofy gags, but are rather more character-driven, and the story itself is far more about Kristen Wiig’s character and her struggles with her own tumultuous personal life and as maid of honor than it is about the titular bridesmaids as a unit. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that the script used to be called Maid of Honor, until the widely-panned 2008 rom-com Made of Honor got a jump on the title.

And it should be stated that Wiig is extremely talented and has been great on SNL and in her supporting roles in many popular films of the last few years, and I’m so glad she finally has her own vehicle; and she hits it right out of the park, ably carrying the movie on her shoulders. But that doesn’t mean that each and every one of these women don’t get their time to shine and create familiar, funny, and memorable characters.

And not only is Bridesmaids the most consistently laugh-out-loud funny movie that I’ve seen in a very, very long time, but it has a wholly unique tone, perspective, and honesty that I’ve never seen in any movie before. It sets a new bar for depressing “could-it-get-any-worse?” comedy, finding ways to be both wildly hilarious and emotionally affecting in the same scene the whole way through.  It’s like A Serious Man for gentile women.

At 125 minutes, it’s long for a comedy—most Apatow movies are—and really does feel every bit of it. But I mean that in a good way. Many scenes are like short films unto themselves. I recall noticing when certain scenes were going on way longer than the most ordinary version of this movie would allow them to, but that I was also completely okay with that.

The trick to making a movie like Bridesmaids is knowing that the audience knows how it’s going to end, and that it’s the filmmakers’ duty to make them care about how it’s going to get there. Here specifically, you may know how it’s going to end, but you don’t know where it’s going. Especially if you’ve seen a trailer. It’s a film richly populated with characters I genuinely wanted to spend time with. I can honestly say that I wasn’t ready for it to end.

Bridesmaids has all the markings of an honest-to-god game-changer, and I really hope it is.  Assuming it’s a hit—and if the audience I was with is any indication, it will be—I believe that Bridesmaids will very likely reroute the “chick flick” in a direction it badly needs to go. It may even bridge that wide gap between what guys will and won’t see—or own up to liking. It’s an accessible chick flick–nay, it’s a movie about women–that both genders can and will enjoy.

But if the Tarantino retreads have taught us anything, it’s that just because one movie pulls it off successfully, it doesn’t mean that its imitators always will. Hollywood already tried the crude R-rated chick comedy with 2002′s The Sweetest Thing, and that movie was terrible, so there’s more than enough room for failure. However, that movie’s star, Cameron Diaz, will be seen later this summer headlining Jake Kasdan’s R-rated comedy Bad Teacher—and that looks pretty funny.  Good things could be on the way.

But at this point, it’s too soon to say for sure. I’d say give it a year or so before we are able to determine if we’re entering a new era in terms of smart, funny comedies about women which are accessible to everyone. Perhaps there will no longer be “chick flicks” and “guy movies.” Maybe, from now on, we can all get along and sing a song, and we’ll just have “movies.”

I’ve never liked comic books. (Gasp, shock, anger, indignance, get it all out, it isn’t going to change anything.) They have always struck me as the middle ground between movies and books, suited for an audience lacking the attention span for either. Last I knew, Quaid and Shep were fans of the genre, so I’m not firing salvos off into the ether – I know that perfectly reasonable, rational, engaged movie enthusiasts and readers can enjoy graphic novels and their ambiguous relations, the comic book. Hang with me, here, though. Books shine in background, non-dialogue information – thoughts, impressions, and descriptive language. Movies are about the sensory details that are too involved for text – sound, color, light, costuming, expression, and music. Comic books are the worst of both worlds – they lack the narrative insight of books and the dynamic detail of film. They hit the bullet points of the plot in short clips of dialogue with some well-shadowed picture-boxes, and they call it a day. But they must be doing something right.

Out of this genre have come Super Man, Spider Man, and Batman in generations past, and Xmen, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man, The Punisher, Hellboy, The Fantastic Four, and The Green Hornet, amidst various others, in the more recent past. There have been winners and losers in that pack, but on balance the contributions the comic book universe(s) has made to film have been undeniable. Most notably, the characters have been epic. Noble, self-sacrificing, torn, tormented, and always wrestling with the tension between human relationships and a higher calling, they form a fantastic spectrum of heroes. On one level, every one of these movies is pretty much the same, but on another level, the same virtues that make comic books endlessly engaging, reboot after reboot, even with the same characters each time are what carry the hero genre in movies to endless recyclablity. Maybe the two Incredible Hulks was a bit quick, but beyond that, there’s nothing that I can see that says that we should slow down converting these comic book heroes into film. They’re at home there, and this deep pool of content shouldn’t be off limits because it’s been used recently.

The long and short of it is this: I’m psyched to see Thor, and I’ll keep ponying up my theater dollars to attend comic book movies just as long as they keep them coming.

Like a great many of American moviegoers, I loved Christopher Nolan’s 2008 Batman sequel The Dark Knight. It was big and challenging and rewrote the superhero genre in a way that no one had ever even considered before. It flat-out rocked.

In fact, it was such a cultural phenomenon that many (except us nerds) forgot all about the very existence of its equally-fantastic predecessor, Batman Begins. If you’re reading this, odds are you aren’t one of those people, but look at the numbers—the ones that show us that where the 2005 original pulled in a hefty but underwhelming $373 million worldwide, The Dark Knight broke multiple box office records, ultimately taking in more than $1 billion internationally. Judging by that, we have to assume that scores of people who saw and loved TDK never even saw Batman Begins in any capacity.

How does that happen exactly? Sure, there was lots of publicity in the wake of Heath Ledger’s death, and rumors a-floating that the dark recesses he entered in pursuit of his sinister (and posthumously Oscar-winning) performance were to blame for the tragedy. But is the tabloid bloodlust of humanity really so extreme as to be the sole reason for a major franchise sequel nearly tripling the business of its predecessor?

No. I’m more optimistic than that, and there were other factors than just that at play. There was an insurmountable amount of hype leading up to it, not to mention the almost unanimous critical acclaim, and boatloads of repeat business (I don’t know about you, but I saw it seven times).

But at the end of the day, what I think made the film such a hit more than any other factor was plain old word of mouth–it was just simply that good of a movie.

But hang on!  So was Batman Begins!  As a matter of fact, I’m constantly going back and forth over which film I prefer, so if it was as simple as that, why didn’t Batman Begins make more money?

Well, look at them both:  they are very different movies which strike very different tones.  Where Batman Begins is really a brooding and mysterious film, unfolding like a story of legend, The Dark Knight is first and foremost a crime thriller, drawing its largest inspiration from Michael Mann’s Heat.

In my book, both films achieve an equal level of A-grade movie quality, but Dark Knight undoubtedly boasts the most widely-accessible appeals of the two films–it’s like Law & Order times infinity.  It already had both the fanboys and Hollywood gossipers at hello (not an easy feat), but by being the kind of agreeably straight-faced action thriller you’d recommend even to your parents who don’t waste their time with silly superhero movies, it managed to rake in massive amounts of cash and, domestically, became the 2nd-highest-grossing film of all time (now 3rd, thanks to Awfultar).

It was a far different movie from Batman Begins and succeeded–both commercially and artistically–in large part because of its differences.  Nolan didn’t make the same movie twice; it wasn’t just a grab for some quick Bat-cash.  The Dark Knight was its own film, standing on its own two feet and bowling people over all by itself.

And now the inevitable second sequel is finally underway and there’s been speculation since The Dark Knight‘s opening weekend as to what this new one would be like.  New details are slipping out about it every week, and thus far it’s been a mixed bag of news, but thankfully there are more encouraging details than discouraging ones.

First to unveil itself was the release date–July 20, 2012–and confirmation that Chris Nolan was returning.  This was good.  It was actually happening.  Thank God!

Then came the title: The Dark Knight Rises.  Hmmm…a little dopey-sounding but I got used to it pretty quickly.  The only thing that bothered me was the continued use of Batman’s honorary title, the Dark Knight.  The juxtaposition of the three movie titles, in one fell swoop seeks to cash in on the success of the last film while coldly alienating the first one.  It makes the whole effort seem less like a trilogy and more like a money-making venture that resulted in the formula that serendipitously worked.  I’ve been crossing my fingers and hoping that the title was the only detail that would be borrowed from the previous film.

Then more details came pouring in–casting choices and villains.  Tom Hardy, who was so good in Nolan’s Inception, was going to be in the film.  There was a plus!  Hardy was soon confirmed to be playing the role of the villain Bane, which made me ecstatic that Nolan was apparently listening to the suggestions that I was keeping to myself.

Bane, as he exists in the comics (and not as he exists in 1997′s Batman & Robin) is a perfect villain to introduce at this point in the story.  The Dark Knight ends with Batman placing himself in a very vulnerable state, and Bane is an ideal choice to challenge the Dark Knight’s self-appointed authority over Gotham.  Bravo, Nolan!  Looks like this thing is coming together.

And then they added Anne Hathaway…I was starting to get nervous.  I’m not a big fan.  Hathaway was confirmed as Selina Kyle, and many people are jumping to the conclusion that she will appear in the film as Kyle’s alter ego, Catwoman, but I wouldn’t be so sure just yet.  Hathaway playing a comic book villain just sounds like a recipe for disaster.  Maybe we can just keep her as a familiar love interest?

But now they’ve unveiled the most subtly intriguing bit of information yet–shooting for the film will take place in…(drumroll)…Pittsburgh!  Now, like most everyone else except the honored citizens of Pittsburgh, my first reaction to this news was something along the lines of “Whaaat?”  But the more I think about it, the more I like it.  A lot.  It’s the most encouraging piece of news so far.

You see, for both Batman Begins and The Dark Knight, Chicago was used for Gotham City.  Although, while all of The Dark Knight took place in downtown, urban environments (we don’t even see Wayne Manor, which burnt down at the end of Begins), much of Batman Begins took place in international (not to mention less metropolitan) locales.  As such, the movies have very different visual sensibilities, one of the key factors that distinguishes them so starkly from one another.  And now with the move to Pittsburgh, it seems they’re switching things up again.  And I doubt it has anything to do with budgetary concerns.

No, it’s our wonderful confirmation that Nolan is planning on making The Dark Knight Rises a different film from both of its predecessors, down to every last detail.  I’ve never been to Pittsburgh, but I can’t imagine that it looks much at all like Chicago–otherwise why wouldn’t Nolan just shoot the film in Chicago again?  No, this shows that he has a distinct idea for this film–what it needs to look and feel like, and it’s not at all a decision being made based on the success of The Dark Knight.

In light of this, it’s very possible (probable) that this final film in his trilogy may not be nearly as successful as its immediate predecessor.  It’s not going for the same appeals, the same tone or style.  It will stand on its own and people will have to accept it as it is.

And I suppose it makes sense.  Nolan isn’t one to cave into studio pressure, nor should he have to.  He’s made millions upon millions upon millions of dollars for Warner Brothers and I think they feel comfortable giving him creative control.  And with this decision we can rest assured that we’re in for another unique and stunning Batman picture from Christopher Nolan.  The years have shown that he is a filmmaker to be observed and admired–now we know he’s one to be trusted too.