It’s hard to say anything about Sex and the City 2.  As usual everyday reality is non-existent in the plot as well as in the previous pathetic movie and the infamous TV series.  Major movie critics already panned it,  young audience stays away from it, but international female audiences of certain age are voting for it with their purses. They stream to the movie theaters as if they are members of some secret cult. And this so-called romantic comedy film has some healing effect if one applies it right to all their problems.

It certainly makes me wonder at the flight of the film creators’  fantasy. Are they high on something?  My eyes can’t take anymore when I see scary face of  bow legged Sarah Jessica Parker or cellulite body of Kim Catrall.  The rest of this old girl team Kristin Davis and Cynthia Nixon are merely supporting actresses for two divas mentioned above.  However, the movie tries to convince me that these are some chique babes and intellectuals, book writers like Carrie or PR genius like Samantha.

The plot of the movie looks like the infantile dreams of an ADD person that somehow come true.  Here is the gist.  If my  husband is upset with me, he will punish  me with a diamond ring.  If I need to go on a business trip, let it be all expenses paid luxury vacation in Abu Dhabi. No. hold on, this is not enough.  I should be invited by an Arab sheikh who allows me to take all my friends on this luxury vacation.  Each hotel room should cost no less than 22,000 dollars per night.

And, naturally, girl shop, dine in expensive restaurants, parade in nice clothing and get more shoes.  There is no drama in this movie, only multiple happy endings.  Posters claim that Sex in the City 2 is a romantic comedy film, but I would call it a distorted reality garbage.

Have you seen SNL lately? Then you’ve seen “MacGruber”. SNL writer and featured player Will Forte co-wrote the movie and stars as MacGruber, a disaffected ex-special operative who has been assigned to take down the bad guy Dieter Von Cunth. A pretty simple and ridiculous plot, the ideal foundation for slapstick humor, allows the movie to avoid being confusing, and so, keep the audience there with the jokes. Good structure and effective set-up is all expected from professional comedians. But, just like SNL has lost its luster in recent years, there seems to be a certain ‘je-ne-sais-quoi’ lacking from the humor of this movie.

So, what fails to redeem the movie in the end? The character of MacGruber. The protagonist is supposed to be lovably clumsy and incompetent, retired for the right reasons but admired for his perseverance. Unfortunately for the Will Forte, the audience does not fall in love with him. His role is only marginally funny and it seems like his character is not written to be successful. He struggles to capture the audience’s attention throughout the entire movie and we’re left with an awkward and desperate MacGruber.

Somehow, practically all SNL sketches brought on the movie screen are commercial and critical flops.  Yet, once every several years  somebody in Hollywood picks up a movie script based on a 3 minute sketch and thinks it is gonna be a hit.  It is official – Tinseltown has run out of ideas.

Kenny Polyak
Film Critic

Is it really forever after?  I certainly hope so as the 4^th Shrek. Dreamworks is really juicing this fruit for all it’s got. That’s four animated fantasy movies made about the roughly the same subject. This is always ambitious, as historically storytellers often rely of the power of three and the relative success of conventional trilogies.

But Shrek is far from conventional. In fact, the Shrek universe is so unique that Dreamworks thinks it can run it for a fourth go. Although the premise is getting old, not to mention the character-associated jokes and stock conflicts, they seem to know at least to some degree what they’re doing. Because, to be entirely honest, every Shrek has been, without fail, fun. If nothing else, you have fun watching these movies, and the guys over at Dreamworks know this. Shrek is family friendly, with enough cartoony slapstick humor for the kids and enough social commentary for adults, and the eccentric characters are loved by all. So, although the formula is visible, Shrek always spells a good time.

Shrek is no masterpiece, mind you. There is nothing shocking about “Shrek Forever After”, nothing too unpredictable, and certainly nothing too thought-provoking. But the magic that exists in the Shrek universe seems to enchant the audience into enough of a pleasant state that the film serves as an entertaining diversion from the non-stop race of daily life.

Kenny Polyak
Film Critic

Sometimes the second time around is just as good as the first. The new movie remake of the classic horror flick  A Nightmare of Elm Street shows us just that. And with flying colors. Director Samuel Bayer delivers a tantalizing example of the type of horror movie that sends shivers down your spine without leaning on a star-studded cast.

What is also impressive about the film is the confidence it appears to display. Instead of simply adapting the classic movie saga  to a contemporary movie audience, director Samuel Bayer re-imagines the Elm Street universe and makes this film his own. While of course the mystical serial killer Freddie Krueger is still the anchor of the story, the film does not rely on the story’s historical success but rather takes upon this new project with assertive and deliberate strides, painting a fresh horror for audiences to admire.

Not only is this horror movie engaging and admirable, its also godforsaken terrifying. The constant pulse of the movie never lets your heart rest, and the previously ingrained image of Freddy Krueger haunts the audience before he ever appears on screen. I mean, somehow the fact that the story is familiar to you only further feeds the fear that the movie unleashes. And hopefully you caught the movie tagline as well: “Never sleep again”. While Freddy Krueger murders his enemies in their sleep, you’ll have plenty of reasons why to skip a night of sleep after seeing this movie.

Kenny Polyak
Film Critic

It’s  important to preemptively qualify my movie review: had Iron Man 2 been independent film or a prequel, my viewing experience would have been a significantly different one. Unfortunately for the filmmakers, this is not the case. In fact, this circumstance is hopelessly tragic – Iron Man 2 is not objectively bad, but compared to Iron Man 1, and you can’t avoid comparing the two, it is crap. This is the predicament. Essentially, Iron Man 2 fails because Iron Man 1 was such a success. I guess the producers should have anticipated this one (unless they haven’t seen a sequel since  The Empire Strikes Back), but sequels, more often than not, fail miserably. So, after having made what was probably the most successful and honestly engaging super hero film of 2008, one should seriously consider the risk of making an inferior sequel.

Now, all this being said, the movie is not repulsive. The movie is, well, simply average. The storyline is mediocre (again, a popular sequel downfall), the acting is acceptable though unimpressive considering the shining cast (Robert Downey Jr., Don Cheadle, Scarlett Johansson, and Gwyneth Paltrow), and the direction is flashy though is falls short of the spectacle presented in the first Iron Man. Director Jon Favreau simply didn’t have enough juice for two movies on the same subject, since his track record does demonstrate that he’s a competent director and actor. As a result, we basically yield a predictable superhero Hollywood flick, where you can insert the name of Marvel hero and expect more or less a similar movie viewing experience, and in this case its about Iron Man. This formula usually does the trick, as far as being reasonably entertained for two hours on 10 bucks – unless you already saw a better version of the same movie. Then you should go and buy the old one and scrap the new.

Kenny Polyak
Film Critic

In case anybody wonders what kind of superhero movie should be oriented to, the answer is already here: Kick-Ass. With a little budget around 28 million and without relying heavily on CGI effects or a team of movie celebrities (with the exception of Nicolas Cage), director Matthew Vaughn created an incredible film. Of course, audience was not ready for it. I bet Kick-Ass shocked a lot of parents around the world because of a swearing and killing little vigilante Hit-Girl (Chloë Moretz) and Damon Macready – a father with extremely special family values.

Even though, currently Kick-Ass is practically a financial disappointment to producers, I am positive that there will be a huge demand when its DVD is available to the general public. Currently this film did not even make 100 million bucks worldwide. Give it time, those who skipped the cinema theaters will follow to return in full the investments.

I am not gonna search for flaws and pick on the creators of the film. To me as a viewer, it is important that Vaughn decided not to shoot another caricature for masses, he took a big steps from regular canons and went for a bigger price – leave for the history a memorable and intelligent film. I am not much of a Nicolas Cage’s fan – there is usually too much of him in other movies. Yet he kept his cool in Kick-Ass and did not try to look other actors as his supporting cast.

It did not bring much surprise that family advocacy groups angrily kept on attacking this film. After all, they usually attack anything creative and new preferring stale and boring standards of the 1970s. This is one of the rare occasions when I hope that a sequel will follow and outshine the original.

I think, acting career of Jennifer Lopez has run its course. If you are unfortunate and somehow find yourself watching her latest so-called romantic comedy Back-up Plan, you will know what I mean.  Besides, this movie will probably put an end to the acting career of Alex O’Loughlin who plays one of two main characters in the movie.  Alex already showed us his bad acting in the TV series Moonlight that was canceled even before the end of the first season.  But Back-up Plan truly spells the end for him, at least in the US.

In my opinion, not only this movie is stuffed with all bad stereotypes from the films of the 80s, it also truly stinks.  Not just literally but figuratively as well. For example, the passionate sex scene between Zoe played by J. Lo. and Stan played by Alex O’Loughlin.  This episode takes place in the barn full of aging lumps of cheese. What they were thinking about? It is like making love in the sight of thousands unwashed feet!

The plot written by Kate Angelo is as primitive as it can be. The unmarried Zoe for some unknown reason is desperate to have a baby.  So her best solution this desire  is to be artificially inseminated by the sperm of her male employee.  Zoe got her wish – she is pregnant.  But  she stumbles upon  Stan and this meeting changes everything.

All the “romantic complications” that follow will not put a smile on your face unless you are a completely insensitive person.  You will see that at the early stage of her pregnancy with twins, Zoe periodically falls on her belly, lifts heavy weights, jumps and exercises at the gym as if there is not tomorrow.  There will be a lot of vomiting and discussions about the famous ass. You will also see a turd from children playground, burps, fainting, goats and goat cheese,  and a dog with a disability.  Do you want me to go on?

Zoe owns a pet shop but she is never there, Alex owns an animal farm but he is scared of blood and a birth process.  Close to the end J.Lo. dives into a container where another woman’s water has just gave a natural birth to a baby, etc. The movie ends with bloopers repeating some of the most disgusting things that never go well with any romantic comedy.

I went to check Wikipedia and was absolutely amazed to see a quote of some Kirk Honeycutt from The Hollywood Reporter  who  gave this movie  a positive review (what???)  saying  “‘A winning performance by Jennifer Lopez overcomes a formulaic and predictable rom-com that involves a planned pregnancy”. 

Go figure Tinseltown. It’s like they are all in cahoots there.

Three seemingly born losers travel to the place of their “old glory” to feel young again and fence off an approaching midlife crisis.  One of  them played by John Cusack takes his nephew  who is well on the way to become a young loser.  The trip sucks, the ski resort hotel looks run down, but, at least hot tub gets fixed. They all jump into it, get drunk and find themselves in 1986.  This is, basically, the premise of the comedy film  Hot Tub Time Machine that is worth seeing.  It wins in comparison with many man-child comedies that I watched for the last couple of years.

Besides, the cast is pretty good just to pass by this film. Aside from John Cusack, there is this wild bald man Rob Corddry whom we often saw at the Daily Show with John Stewart.  Comedian Craig Robinson from Zack and Miri Make a PornoZack and Miri Make a Porno plays good in the team. And,  I enjoyed a rare true eccentric Crispin Glover who pays a tribute to his old role of George McFly in Back to the Future.  Even Chevey Chase pops up here and there several times.

Hot Tub Time Machine is not, I repeat, is not a family movie. You will see a lot of naked boobs and even a male ass in the movie.  You will hear a lot of coarse humor and observe frenetic behavior. However, the film still remains true to the comedy genre and shows us pretty targeted picture of the “wild 80s”.   Thus, it wins.  Even convoluted happy end could not ruin it. After all, everybody wants to go back and fix the clumsy moves of the near past and eradicate the gloomy future.

Even if you have nothing else to do I would still not recommend you to go and watch The Bounty Hunter. It is one of the most boring and stupid films I ‘ve seen for the last year. The major heroes are played by swiftly looking her youthful looks Jennifer Aniston and the guy nobody heard about several years ago – Gerard Butler.

One would think that this kind of movie should be filled with actions. But, in fact, all the creators can offer are some crude immature games between two heroes who used to be a husband and a wife not so long ago.  Authors also heavily borrow from all other flopped bounty hunter movies that ever appeared on Hollywood screens.  Really, if I go back in my memory I recall only one movie from this genre that was worth watching –  Midnight Run with Robert De Niro and Charles Grodin.  It was not a masterpiece either but, at least, it was entertaining and had some good jokes in it.

Another thing that makes me wonder – who appointed Jennifer Anniston to be an “American sweetheart”.  So-called actress plays one and the same person in all her movies.  If you watch one by one several of her movies you will see what I mean.  Come on, Friends TV series ended awhile ago, get over it.  Two more bombs like The Bounty Hunter and she will join the fate of Meg Ryan,  Halle Berry and the like.

I was reading some professional critic reviews who were singing praises to Jennifer and Gerard in this movie,  shifting the blame to producers, scriptwriter and director.  I wish I knew what critics are smoking these days.  Even 2002 bombshell like Serving Sara with Matthew Perry (a colleague from Friends) and Elizabeth Hurley looked hilarious comparing to The Bounty Hunter.

There are days when I would take one computer-animated movie over a dozen films filled with all-celebrity cast. Fantasy How to Train Your Dragon rules! It has a positive message, it is a family movie packed with action and thrills, and it has  happy ending but with slight dark overtones. It took a lot of courage to take a leg off the main character. Yet, it gave some twist to the film. Imagine, Hiccup reawakens in his home some and tries to get out of bed he realizes that his left foot was lost.

I noticed some similarities with Avatar when little rascals were flying up in the sky on their mighty dragons. But I guess, it just shows that many CGI animations use the same prewritten templates or something like that.  So, this was not a big deal.  All the air battles turned out to be an eye candy that looked great in 3-D.

I heard that when they first decided to make a film based on a novel of the British author Cressida Cowell, the intent was to follow blindly the contents of the book.  Luckily, they quickly changed their mind because it was turning into this cheesy and sweet cartoon for preschool kids, which would be a huge turn off grown-up audience.  Lucky for them. In fact, I could never understand this notion of “loyalty to the book till the end”.  Sometimes this spells a disaster for a movie and looks like cinematographers themselves have nothing to say.

Overall, dear dragon lovers here is my advice go and see it. You will love it as I did, especially since the last “dragon” movie I watched was a nasty Eragon that was not worth a dime.

The myth about bloodsuckers mutated  and grew to ridiculous proportions on a small screen.  Now vampires moved into our living rooms, basically, telling us that it is pretty cool to be undead.  At least,  this is what I think when I watch Vampire Diaries on my TV set.  Being a vampire does not seem to be that bad anymore. The main hero Stefan Salvatore  walks under the sun, does not give a damn about garlic or crosses.  He also stays away from human blood. Which makes him, according to this new vampire lore, weaker than a regular blood sucker.

Naturally, Stefan is a brooding hero, he rarely smiles. This brings him closer to a “vampire with the soul”  from Angel TV show.  It goes without saying that all Vampire Diaries blood suckers have superb physical abilities: they can jump up to  10 feet and approach and attack people with a speed of light.  One can see similarities with Twilight Saga film series on which this show tries to capitalize.

Stephan and other vampires can manipulate mere mortals and hypnotize them in an instant. The only thing that can save you is a plant of vervain – you can eat it, drink it or keep it in your pocket – it will still work.  Other attributes makes Stephan hot to all the school girls: he is well groomed and educated, he lives in a big mansion and owns cool cars, he does not have any money problems and acts “wisely”.

The moral aspect of this character somehow misses the general public. After all,  this guy is reminds me of a pedophile who inserted himself into a public school and dates a school girl who is almost of minor age.  And its easy for a 168 years old pedophile and his almost same age brother Damon  to look much cooler than all the boys from the public school system due to all mentioned above qualities.  The only difference between them and the regular sexual predators is this – they don’t look old and don’t have gray hair which allows them to get away with murder.

New cinema grand event – Alice in Wonderland visually dazzles and the whole Wonderland looks pleasing and amazing. Colors and CGI effects are great too.  I don’t think, that Tim Burton’ other movies ever were as successful as this one.  But that is about it.  The rest of the movie contents is extremely boring and disappointing.

The Victorian era introduction including marriage proposal of Hamish Ascot definitely and plainly suck.  And the end of the movie is even worse. For some reason when Alice gets back to normal she smartens up and…  becomes an apprentice  with the idea of beginning trade routes with China.  And all this, mind you, happens in Victorian times when women were not even allowed to vote and had only a couple of options between becoming a governess, a cook  or get into marriage.  This is what we know, but we still see how the film ends with Alice sailing away on a ship.

I must say that actors play is also quite the opposite to the beauty of Wonderland.  Australian Mia Wasilkowska performs terribly – it looks like she just can’t act.  This could be true because I haven’t seen her anywhere except HBO series In Treatment. Unfortunately, Johnny Depp does not bring anything new into play.  All his monologues reminded me of drunkard’s rant on the streets of an English town.

I don’t have any idea why such a talented union of Burton and Depp let us down turning a great book into a fantasy dud like Eragon and such.  Right now, this film is making money and probably will keep on making it on a large scale. But, eventually, it will fade away pretty fast from the memory without a trace.

There is nothing really going much in TV sitcom world. Reality TV shows slowly but surely are killing it.  So no matter what’s going on in Mr Charlie Sheen’s household, they just must keep Two and a Half Men show on air.  It is hilarious and most of the jokes are still funny even after six year’s run.  And it is still better than The New Adventures of Old Christine, even though Julia Louis Dreifus threatens to bare her breasts on every show.

Aside from these two, other sitcoms carry a true feeling of a dying genre.  There were times when the word “TV” was unthinkable without the word “sitcom”. Not anymore.  Don’t get me wrong: I believe that audience still has some interest to the genre, but the studios just can’t satisfy this interest and produce mostly garbage these days.  That is why I feel that Charlie Sheen is going to survive the scandals related to alleged drinking and fighting with his wife because there is nothing to replace his show.  With these  two sticoms gone what is left for the public? Just a TV wasteland.

Listen to my advice and avoid the movie Cop Out at all costs if you can.  The first hint was given to us when the title of the movie changed out twice. First it was A Couple of Dicks, then it changed to A Couple of Dicks to Cop Out.  Then they just cut off the first part of the title as if this could save this buddy-cop movie. And they even had the audacity to call this a comedy. Maybe, because they are laughing at the audience that spent money on movie tickets.

This is a new low for a director Kevin Smith. Maybe, he was kicked off that plane because the pilot and his crew watched Cop Out. You won’t enjoy movie characters as well. Anyways, throughout the whole movie Bruce Willis looks tired like he does not even want to be in this film. Tracy Morgan jokes are not funny and pretty crude.  The only one who made me grin several times was Sean William Scott – but they typecast him so much.

Don’t blame the studio – it got the good actors. Don’t blame the actors because actors’ cinema is gone.  Just  thank for this pathetic script writers Cullen brothers – Mark and Robb.  Brothers, probably, needed quickly to buy another expensive house and were quite in a hurry.

Overall, the film is that bad, that you won’t even get a kick while you are watching its DVD version on your couch.  Even if they call it a Director’s Cut.