Sure, I identified with a lot of the storyline, a lot of the bits, and most of the jokes.  And yes, I laughed out loud a few times, in very short bursts of laughter.  Was I rolling around crying with my sides hurting? No.  But that’s not what Judd Apatow movies are all about — at least not for me.  While surely funny, his movies have more heart than humor.  I absolutely loved Funny People, despite not many people liking it.

Paul Rudd is his usual awkward, yet hilarious self.  We don’t see anything new or ground breaking from him here, but we still get our typical laughs out of him.

Leslie Mann is great, as she always is.  Just the right amount of “I’m funny” mixed in with “I’m a serious actress” to balance it all out, and not be too much of either.

Apatow’s kids, Maude and Iris, are growing into fine young actors. Which they should, since their dad’s been putting them in movies since they were tiny children.  Maude, especially, is really becoming quite an actress, and stole a few scenes from those that she was acting with.

Overall I enjoyed This Is 40. I wouldn’t say it was the best movie I saw this year, not by a longshot. But it was still good for a few hours at the movies, laughing with those around you (even if the theater was mostly empty on Christmas Eve.)

Want to win a Friends prize pack including two Friends mugs, and a limited edition picture frame exactly like the one that hung over Monica’s door?  Just drop a comment on this post, and you’re entered! Winner will be picked at random on December 5th, 2012.

Also be sure to check out the Friends weekly trivia game!

And be sure to get your copy of the Friends: The Complete Series on Blu-ray, available now at any reputable retailer!

The Awakening, I’d go as far as saying, is fantastic.  I loved it.  Perhaps it’s because I’ve loved Rebecca Hall since The Prestige.  Perhaps it’s because I was dying to figure out what was actually going on the entire time.  I kept thinking I had it all figured out, and then it turned out I was wrong.

I think the reason some people didn’t like this movie is because they expected to be scared out of their minds the entire time.  And that’s not what The Awakening is meant to do.  Sure, it’s a “ghost story” in the traditional sense, and that’s how it’s been billed in the (limited) trailers I’ve seen for it.  But that’s not what it is at its core.  It’s got a few jump out of your seats spots, but nothing to make you want to cry.  It’s not that scary, and I’m okay with that.

What is it then? It’s a story that happens to take place at a boarding school for boys, that happens to be haunted.  The story that we see, and the point of the movie is to tell why the boarding school is haunted. And I loved the way they tell this story.  It gripped me in a way that one of these types of movies hasn’t in quite a while.  I think back to the last of these types of films that I saw in the theater, which was the absolutely dreadful The Woman in Black, starring Daniel Radcliff. Which was abysmal, at best.  The Awakening doesn’t scare your pants off, but it does get the job done.

I don’t want to say too much, or give away too much of the reveal at the end, as that’s the whole point of the movie.  So I can just reiterate how much I loved the film.  It’s not perfect, which is why I’m only giving it 4.5 stars, instead of 5.  But it’s close enough to perfect that I’ve pre-ordered the Blu-ray (which as of the writing of this review, does not have a release date.)

If you like movies that make you think, let you try to figure out what the “answer” is, and have people with British accents, this film’s for you!

Since it came out a couple of years ago, Taken (the original) has become quite the cult classic.  While it didn’t do that well at the box office, people adore it, and most people (like myself) will watch it any time it’s on television, regardless of the channel or editing.

Its sequel comes flying at us, written and produced by Luc Besson who did the original, but not directed by him.  And it’s clear that it’s directed by someone else, which may or may not be a bad thing, depending on how you look at it.  I personally didn’t care for the directorial style during the fight scenes, but some of the cinematic shots of Istanbul and Los Angeles were quite nice.

Neeson returns as Bryan Mills, all around bad-ass kung-fu ninja with marksmanship to boot.  Famke Janssen returns as his ex, mother of Kim (played by the never aging Maggie Grace), with a much larger role than the first film. Which, if you’re a fan of Famke, is a good thing for you.

Taken 2 has plenty of punching, shooting, and a pretty bitchin’ car chase scene where Kim herself gets to do the driving.  The entire time she’s trying to elude bad guys, and her dad’s shooting at them out the passenger window, he’s yelling at her to drive faster.  Which makes her more nervous.  It’s both hilarious and awesome at the same time.

As we were leaving the theater, my movie going partner turned to me and asked what I thought, and I could only tell her that while I enjoyed it, I didn’t love it.  In reading some other reviews before heading to the theater, it seems most others had the same reactions.  It’s a good film, but it fails in comparison to the firm Taken film, which was one of my favorite movies the year it came out.

I won’t waste time in summarizing the plot for you, it’s really simple: revenge.  Marco (from the first film) is dead, and his dad is pissed.  That’s about all you need to know going into this.  Dad wants Bryan dead. Bryan wants to not be dead, ergo, fighting.

I’d definitely see this again, and while it has its flaws, it’s also a great film to pass an hour and a half of your life.  It’s not perfect by any means, but it’s certainly a film worthy of taking your $10 at the box office.

This re-imagining of the Snow White fairy tale is a bit different. Darker and grittier than what we’re used to in the cartoon version. (I believe Mirror, Mirror which also came out around the same time was gritty, as well.)

There were a handful of things I really liked about Snow White and the Huntsman, but more things that I didn’t like. Let’s start with the positive, shall we?

The CGI in this film is impressive. I was actually surprised at how good some of the elements looked (the bridge troll, for example, and the actual mirror when it becomes a person).  The studio certainly spared no expense on making the animation realistic, and did a great job at it.

Charlize Theron was stellar as the evil queen Ravenna.  So often do you forget how talented she is, as she so often takes bland roles that don’t really let her spread her wings.  If you ever have any doubt as to how talented she is, just re-watch Monster.

I wouldn’t necessarily call this a “period piece”, as the timeframe that it takes place is most fictitious. But it does have a certain medieval feeling to it, that’s for certain.  Though I think that’s more to do with the fairy tale aspect of it, than actually trying to take place during that time.

The downsides of this movie, of which I feel there are many:  it’s really long.  Over two hours, in fact. And there’s many parts where those two hours really feel as long as they are. (As opposed to The Dark Knight Rises, which flies by.)

Kristen Stewart. I said it.  I’m not sorry.  She’s terrible in this. Well, she’s terrible in practically everything (Panic Room excluded), and there’s no reason why studios should keep casting her. Her performances are so boring and monotonous that it’s almost painful to watch her.  I watched Kevin Smith’s ”Spoilers” that talks about this film, and someone in the group points out that Kristen’s mouth is 50% open the entire time of the film. Clearly I knew this going in, so I kept an eye on it. And she really has her mouth gaping wide open the entire film.  ”Spoilers” also pointed out that Chris Hemsworth is either holding or swinging a weapon in almost every scene, and that’s also true.

Truth be told, I really wanted to like this movie.  It’s a great fairy tale, and one that I’m very familiar with from my childhood.  In actuality, though, I couldn’t like it.  While it had its high points, the amount of low points just outweighed it all for me.  I couldn’t get past how long the movie felt, and I always have a problem with the way that modern actors speak in these supposedly older films.  I just don’t buy the way the dialog is written in most times, and find myself thinking “there’s no way they’d say something that way!” and getting frustrated.

I’d say only bother with this film if you’re a real diehard Snow White fan. And even then, it’s just to see Charlize’s portrayal of Ravenna, as she’s quite brilliant.  The rest, as they say, is for the birds.  (That’s a joke about Ravenna, which’ll make sense if you’ve seen the movie.  Yep, I’m ending this with a joke, deal with it.)

The Five-Year Engagement is another movie that Segel has his hand in writing. And after the hilarious Forgetting Sarah Marshall, I wanted to check this out.

The first thing you’ll notice is that it’s long. It’s a two hour plus comedy. And there are a lot of points of downtime. Many times throughout I felt that it was dragging along, and would have definitely edited out some parts of it, were I an editor.  That’s not to say that each scene couldn’t be seen as important to the plot of the story, but they could have trimmed some bits to save on time.

I laughed quite a bit throughout. Not as hard as Sarah Marshall, but still enough to say I enjoyed it.

What I most definitely enjoyed was the last 15-20 minutes. There is an amazing payoff at the end of the movie.  My gut reaction when it happened was (and I said outloud), “it took way too long to get there, but I’m glad that’s where it went”.

Overall I enjoyed the movie. It may me laugh, (almost) cry, and root for the characters.  The title may be a bit misleading, but it’s still worth seeing.  A good ol’ fashioned romantic comedy that you can snuggle up and watch with someone you love. (Be warned though, there are some sad parts throughout!)

That said, I loved this movie.  Probably more than I should have.  I should probably also admit that I (embarrassingly) am just about done reading the book too, because I liked the movie so much.  I’ve always been interested in seeing what things get cut from books to make them into movies.  I’ve often read the book first, so I’m approaching this a bit backwards.  My real goal in reading the book(s) is that I want to know what happens next.

Pretty much everything about The Hunger Games fascinated me.  Seeing these entire worlds that digital artists get to create is amazing.  Seeing how someone takes the vision of a writer and transposes it onto screen is a feat that I wish I had the ability to accomplish.  And The Hunger Games certainly is beautiful.  The scenery, the villages, the city, the arena.  Everything about the movie is visually beautiful.

Like any good movie, in addition to looking good, you have to have substance. You need characters and a story that people want to invest in and fight for. And this movie has all that, and more.

I’m sure you know the premise of the story by now, so I won’t bore you with telling you what the movie’s about. But I will say that I immediately wanted to root for Katniss.  From the very beginning where we’re learning about who she is, and where she lives, I wanted her to win whatever it was that was coming her way.   That doesn’t happen too often these days with movies (maybe Iron Man and The Dark Knight Rises.)

While the film runs a bit long (almost 2 and a half hours), it doesn’t feel like it. There are very few dull spots where you want things to pick up and move faster.  I was actually surprised once the film ended and I was reading about it online to see how long the actual runtime is.  Granted, you can probably cut 10 minutes off the end, unless you’re the type that wants to watch every last second of the credits (which I’m not, unless I know there’s something hidden at the end.)

The combination of characters I actually liked, and a story that’s compelling and different from the normal dick and fart jokes that Hollywood is churning out these days made me really enjoy The Hunger Games.  I’m comfortable saying that, in writing, on the internet, as a man in my thirties.  If I’m okay with liking it, you should be too.

While I loved it, it wasn’t a movie that I felt like I immediately needed to run out and buy a copy of, or even see again in the near future. Though I imagine when the time comes closer for the second film in the series to come out, I’ll want to re-watch this one. Just to refresh my memory on who’s who, and what’s what.  (I’m also sure that if Amazon has a deal on the blu-ray sometime in the near future, I’ll score myself a copy.)

If you like action, good characters, a fun story, and fighting for the good guy, then The Hunger Games is for you!

Sadly, that’s where the happiness ends.

People are going to make the obvious comparison to Bridesmaids since this is a written-by/directed-by a woman film which has to do with bridesmaids and weddings and the high-jinx that ensures there.  Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t care for Bridesmaids either.  It was one of those films, for me, that just didn’t live up to the hype.

Bachelorette. Do I call it flat out terrible? No. That’d be an insult to the word terrible.  It’s just so not funny that it was almost painful to sit through.  And that’s horrible because, like I said, the trailer is actually quite hilarious.  Though I suppose once you’ve seen those funny bits from the trailer once, they’re not really funny a second time. And that was the case for me, I already knew those jokes were coming, so I couldn’t think they were funny again.

I’ll admit that there were a few unexpected “ha”s here and there.  Certainly not laughing uncontrollable (like I do every single time I watch Mallrats), and nothing to write home about.

I really wanted to like this movie. I wanted to be able to have another go-to chick comedy that I can put on as background noise when I’m working, and just laugh to myself as I repeat all the lines in my head.  Sadly, Bachelorette isn’t it.

I could go on, writing thousands more words about why it’s unfunny, and why I didn’t enjoy it. But I’ll spare you that time of your life.  Skip this unfunny, boring, and uninventive movie.  If you want to laugh, seek laughs elsewhere.

Here’s what he said, courtesy of ComingSoon.net:

“Alfred. Gordon. Lucius. Bruce . . . Wayne. Names that have come to mean so much to me. Today, I’m three weeks from saying a final good-bye to these characters and their world. It’s my son’s ninth birthday. He was born as the Tumbler was being glued together in my garage from random parts of model kits. Much time, many changes. A shift from sets where some gunplay or a helicopter were extraordinary events to working days where crowds of extras, building demolitions, or mayhem thousands of feet in the air have become familiar.”

“People ask if we’d always planned a trilogy. This is like being asked whether you had planned on growing up, getting married, having kids. The answer is complicated. When David and I first started cracking open Bruce’s story, we flirted with what might come after, then backed away, not wanting to look too deep into the future. I didn’t want to know everything that Bruce couldn’t; I wanted to live it with him.”

“I told David and Jonah to put everything they knew into each film as we made it. The entire cast and crew put all they had into the first film. Nothing held back. Nothing saved for next time. They built an entire city. Then Christian and Michael and Gary and Morgan and Liam and Cillian started living in it. Christian bit off a big chunk of Bruce Wayne’s life and made it utterly compelling. He took us into a pop icon’s mind and never let us notice for an instant the fanciful nature of Bruce’s methods.”

“I never thought we’d do a second – how many good sequels are there? Why roll those dice? But once I knew where it would take Bruce, and when I started to see glimpses of the antagonist, it became essential. We re-assembled the team and went back to Gotham. It had changed in three years. Bigger. More real. More modern. And a new force of chaos was coming to the fore. The ultimate scary clown, as brought to terrifying life by Heath.”

“We’d held nothing back, but there were things we hadn’t been able to do the first time out – a Batsuit with a flexible neck, shooting on Imax. And things we’d chickened out on – destroying the Batmobile, burning up the villain’s blood money to show a complete disregard for conventional motivation. We took the supposed security of a sequel as license to throw caution to the wind and headed for the darkest corners of Gotham.”

“I never thought we’d do a third – are there any great second sequels? But I kept wondering about the end of Bruce’s journey, and once David and I discovered it, I had to see it for myself. We had come back to what we had barely dared whisper about in those first days in my garage. We had been making a trilogy. I called everyone back together for another tour of Gotham. Four years later, it was still there. It even seemed a little cleaner, a little more polished. Wayne Manor had been rebuilt. Familiar faces were back—a little older, a little wiser . . . but not all was as it seemed.”

“Gotham was rotting away at its foundations. A new evil bubbling up from beneath. Bruce had thought Batman was not needed anymore, but Bruce was wrong, just as I had been wrong. The Batman had to come back. I suppose he always will.”

“Michael, Morgan, Gary, Cillian, Liam, Heath, Christian . . . Bale. Names that have come to mean so much to me. My time in Gotham, looking after one of the greatest and most enduring figures in pop culture, has been the most challenging and rewarding experience a filmmaker could hope for. I will miss the Batman. I like to think that he’ll miss me, but he’s never been particularly sentimental.”

I had gone into it with the thought that it was a paranormal film. I don’t know why, but I was corrected shortly into it.

The premise of Silent House is interesting, though poorly executed and pretty transparent.  The entire film (albeit short) wants you to focus on the man that’s come into the house to torment this family.  They want you to focus on what’s happening on screen, while they clearly spent most of their time trying to film the entire thing in a way that made it seem like one continuous take. (I read afterwards that they filmed in ten minute segments and then cleverly spliced together.)

I had the entire plot figured out pretty quickly.  I won’t flatter myself and say that I knew what was happening right away, but it wasn’t too far into the movie before I figured out the backstory.  Towards then end there’s a “twist”, but for any skeptical moviegoer, it’s not that big of a surprise.  I didn’t completely see what the twist was, but I knew there was one that was coming.

It’s a relatively dark film, mood wise not just visually.  It deals with some pretty deep things in a way that I don’t necessarily agree with.

Elizabeth Olsen (younger sister to the famous Olsen twins) was pretty good in her first leading role.  I was a bit surprised by how genuinely frightened she seemed in many of the scenes.  Perhaps some clever film making behind the scenes lead to her actually being scared, who knows.

Unfortunately, the film didn’t really do it for me.  I went in wanting to be scared. I wanted to jump and yell and be afraid of every time she walked around the corner. But I wasn’t. There were only one or two times where I asked myself “Did that just happen?” as the majority of the scary parts were just “oh, there’s a guy standing way in the back of that room, and you can make out his silhouette” and the like.

The “twist” at the end (that again, I saw coming) was what I like to refer to as a cheap movie ending.  They try to convince you that all of the things you’ve been seeing for the last hour and a half actually played out differently than they had.  Which doesn’t line up if you go back and think through the various bits and pieces.  Similar to The Sixth Sense (I hate to make that comparison when talking about a twist ending, but it sets the precedent), when you look back after knowing the ending, it makes sense. He really didn’t talk to anyone but the kid. He really is dead, etc.  Silent House wants you to believe much the same, but you can’t.  You can’t buy into what they’re selling as the ending, because you saw what you saw.  They want you to believe that what you saw wasn’t real, that it was imagined, but it’s not.  It’s real, and you did see it.

My guess is that they needed a way to wrap up the movie, and went for the easiest way out.  Or that the original ending was much more gruesome, and it didn’t test well.

In summation, I didn’t care at all for this movie, and am glad I didn’t spend any money to see it.  Even if you’re a big horror movie fan, you can skip this one as it’s not really worth a whole lot of your time – despite how short it is.