{30 Minutes or Less opened in Seattle on Friday August 12, and is playing at the Metro, Oak Tree Cinemas, and AMC Pacific Place} 

We've all had those days. You're minding your own business, delivering pizzas at a dangerous rate of speed when a couple of get rich quick lazy dipshits go out of their way to totally harsh your buzz. But when their plan is to strap a bunch of explosives to your chest in order to coerce you into robbing a bank, most people would agree things have gone too far. 

That's basically the premise of 30 Minutes or Less - a comedy that crams a lot of things into a pretty short span of time. While overall it may be a bit silly, I had a good time. And it's edited in a way that shows a respect for movie-goers who don't feel the need to sit through a two and a half hour bloated endeavor when there's really only 90 minutes of material to be had.
 
Nick (Jesse Eisenberg) is an adult delivering pizzas for a living. Why this level of achievement is enough for him isn't exactly clear. In the meantime, he makes due with with his crappy job and unexpressed (yet obvious) love for the twin sister of his male best friend/roommate.

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{The Help opened in Seattle on Wednesday, 8/10 and is playing at the Metro, Oak Tree Cinemas, Majestic Bay and AMC Pacific Place} 

I am one of the only women on earth who hasn’t read Kathryn Stockett’s amazingly popular book, The Help, so I have no idea how close this film adaptation is to the beloved story or not—but I guess I’ll find out shortly when there’s either tons of outrage or tons of applause.

But honestly I can’t imagine anyone being outraged (except maybe some rich white ladies who grew up in Jackson, Mississippi during the 60s), since The Help does its job as an empowering dramedy well, with enough heart and substance to make it better than what you’re expecting.

The story revolves around recently returned from college Eugenia (the amazing Emma Stone, stuck with some atrociously bad curly hair) annoyingly nicknamed “Skeeter,” who would rather take a low-paying job answering cleaning advice letters at the local paper than engage in the time-honored Jackson tradition of hunting for an eligible husband.

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{Green Lantern opens in Seattle on Friday, June 17 and is playing at the Metro, AMC Pacific Place, the Cinerama and Oak Tree Cinemas}

Even though I have a comic-nerdian background, I’m only slightly familiar with this particular superhero's lore, and thus probably not qualified to judge whether Green Lantern does it justice or totally ruins it—that said, I found it to be pretty damn entertaining.

The whole thing reminded me of vintage Superman (as in Richard Donner’s 1978 version), with a lot of exposition at the beginning explaining the origin of the Green Lantern Corps, and a ton of space exploration with prettily colored stars and crystalline spaceships. With uh, much more advanced special effects and some pretty damn fantastic alien makeup.

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{Bridesmaids opened in Seattle on Friday May 13th, and is playing at The Big Picture, Pacific Place, the Metro, and Oak Tree Cinemas}

Hi, my name is Rich and I'm a big fan of romantic comedies. But even if you don't have this particular personal problem quirk, I think most people will find something to laugh seriously at in Bridesmaids. If you're male and in a dating situation it also has the benefit of appearing to be a chick flick while (I'm pretty confident) appealing to a broad population.

Guys - don't worry, this isn't like Sex in the City 2, where you went to be nice and spent the next two and a half hours deciding if the downside of clawing your eyes out outweighs the benefits of not having to see what was going on for the rest of the picture. That said, Bridesmaids isn't is a film to bring your young daughters (or sons) to...unless you want to expand their vocabulary a bit, and not in the workplace acceptable way.

Even the most casual film viewer from the last hundred years will recognize the story and the milestones along the way. Annie (Kristen Wiig), a woman without a lot of luck in love or business, struggles with emotional baggage while serving as her best friend Lillian's (Maya Rudolph) Maid of Honor.

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{Something Borrowed opened in Seattle on Friday, May 6, and is playing at the Metro, Meridian, and Oak Tree Cinemas}

I'd like to tell you that Something Borrowed takes a gutsy stab at making something painfully unfunny, funny - but honestly, there's just no way to spin "sleeping with your best friend's fiance" into something hilarious, no matter how hard you try to pad it with stereotypes and OMG! LOL! moments.

This packed-with-cliches rom-com is dependent on many unbelievable things. The first of which is that best friend Darcy (Kate Hudson) is so smoking hot that no one would take a second look at Rachel (Ginnifer Goodwin) - which is of course, incredibly ridiculous. Even if you stick Goodwin in plain clothes and bad hair, hi. She's still GORGEOUS.

That doesn' t really matter though, because Rachel is such a sad-sack doormat that she let Darcy steal the man of her dreams years earlier because "hot guys don't go out with girls like me". Uh. or something.

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{Paul opened in Seattle Friday, March 18 and is screening at the Metro, AMC Pacific Place, and Oak Tree Cinemas}

To paraphrase a popular T-shirt,  there are 11 types of people in the world:

- Those who are confident in the belief that they who would NEVER enjoy a road movie about two guys picking up a wisecracking, foulmouthed, pop culture-obsessed ET hitchhiker (personally I think such people are weird - but I'm sure they exist).
- Those who are now sort of curious, but are unable to view the idea of attending Comicon in a non-ironic light, and
- Readers who both get the joke that started this list, have attending Comicon on their bucket list, and have now probably stopped reading to check their local theater listings for when they can catch a screening of Paul.

To those in the first group - all I can say is: how far has this alleged self awareness really gotten you? In this case, it's going to keep you from seeing one of Seth Rogen's best performances since Freaks and Geeks. Those in the second segment - I feel pretty confident saying you're going to get good comedy value for the money. As an added bonus, you'll finally be able to point to folks from SNL in a movie that doesn't at all suck.  

But for those in the last group? Bottom line is: you sort of have to go. This is the movie you hoped Fanboys was gonna be.

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{The Rite opened in Seattle Friday, 1/28 and is playing @the Metro, the Oak Tree, the Meridian, and Crossroads}

So if you believe the trailer, The Rite is supposed to be a kick-ass horror/thriller with tons of action and suspense. But really it goes like this: handsome Michael Kovak (Colin O’Donoghue) works at his father’s funeral home, and he’s depressed. So he decides to go to a Catholic college to become a priest, and he’s depressed. Then he tries to quit, but instead gets talked into going to Rome to attend one of the Vatican’s new-fangled training courses on exorcism, and he’s depressed.

While he’s brooding his way through Rome, he runs into a hot female journalist (of course!), and gets a talking to from Father Xavier, who recommends he drive out to the middle of nowhere to visit Father Lucas (Anthony Hopkins), who will prove to Michael once and for all that the devil does, in fact, exist. Wait a minute. Why does everyone in the church want to help this guy out, when he’s told them all over and over he doesn’t believe in god? “Oh, great. So you don’t believe in god and you don’t want to be a priest. You’d make a perfect exorcist!” I…don’t get it.

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{The Town opened in Seattle on Friday, September 17th at the Guild 45th, Oak Tree Cinemas and AMC Pacific Place}

Ben Affleck’s second feature, The Town, proves to me once again that he’s a better director than actor. This is only unfortunate because he also plays the main character and he’s in almost every scene—but even I can put up with his blank, open-mouthed stare for a movie with enough action to keep me interested, which The Town totally is.

Opening with a few statistics about Charlestown, Boston and the excessive criminal population therein, the film thrusts us directly into a bank heist with 4 men wearing Slipknot masks. When an alarm is pulled, one of the men promptly beats the dude he suspects to a pulp, and grabs bank manager Claire Keesey (Rebecca Hall) as a hostage.

After the job, we meet the men: tortured, wanting-to-change Doug MacRay (Ben Affleck), short-fuse-guy “Jem” Coughlin (Jeremy Renner), muscle and getaway driver Albert Magloan (Slaine) and safe-cracker/alarm expert Desmond Elden (Owen Burke).

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Getting tired of formulaic rom-coms designed to tug at your heartstrings yet? Most of the film-going audience must not be, based on the amount of laughter & "aww"s I heard at the screening for Valentine’s Day. 

But this is directed by Gary Marshall! The guy who gave us such classics as Pretty Woman! And Beaches! And those Princess Diaries movies everyone loves! Of course, he’s also responsible for the train wreck that is Georgia Rule, but I digress. Gary Marshall should know how to make a romantic comedy, and yet all he’s done here is take a bunch of popular actors and fit them into an anthology of predictable scenarios designed to make audiences go all soft & gooey. Let me break it down for you:

Ashton Kutcher is the loveable boy-next-door type, who asks gorgeous, work-obsessed girlfriend Jessica Alba to marry him. Meanwhile, his best friend & girl-next-door/grade school teacher Jennifer Garner is sleeping with selfish a-hole Patrick Dempsey. WHAT WILL HAPPEN?

Bradley Cooper (mygod WHY is he in everything???) meets military Captain Julia Roberts on an INTL flight into LA, and marvels at her strength and courage! Also, she’s on leave for just 24 hours to "visit someone special". How endearing.

Mailroom boy Topher Grace has luckily stumbled into hot sex with office temp Anne Hathaway, who has a burning *secret* to conceal, and Queen Latifah plays Anne’s sassy temp boss (of course she does), who is also pro-ball player Eric Dane’s Agent (and he has a burning *secret* too! Ooooh). 

Jessica Biel gets stuck playing the unfortunately stereotypical lonely single girl who has an anti-valentine’s party every year and chokes down her unhappiness with boxes of chocolates followed by 4-hour treadmill sessions, and then ends up collapsing in tears into the arms of a total stranger: local sports news reporter Jamie Foxx. Oh yeah, he's a player who HATES Valentine's Day.

(take a deep breath, we’re not done yet)

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{The Box opened in Seattle today, Friday 11/6 and is playing at The Metro, Oak Tree Cinemas, and Pacific Place}

After seeing Director Richard Kelly’s long-anticipated thriller The Box, I imagined that his decision to make it originated like so; "Oh, you people didn’t like the futuristic-comic-booky-comedy-political-musical statement (Southland Tales) I created? You just want another Donnie Darko, is that it? WELL HERE YOU GO".

That’s not to say that The Box is anything close to Donnie Darko – of which I am a big fan - but you can definitely tell it's patterned after the 2001 cult classic: dark, brooding atmospheric shots, multi-dimensional sci-fi effects, similarities to Darko characters: a glaring old lady (think a more upscale Grandma Death), and a sullen, slightly-more-maniacal mini-Frank (sans bunny costume). There’s even a suspicious similarity between this film's "Human Exploitation Handbook" and "The Philosophy of Time Travel" from DD. Tie-in, much?

So goes the plot: Norma (Cameron Diaz) and Arthur Lewis (James Marsden) are a school teacher and NASA scientist who apparently live in a giant, perfect house in a giant, perfect neighborhood with really nice things, but are struggling with money. When Arthur loses his chance at becoming an astronaut and Norma is told she can’t get the faculty discount for her son’s private school tuition anymore, they start feeling a bigger crunch - or something. I couldn’t really tell because the script spent exactly 5 minutes examining their money issues.

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