What follows is less in the vein of my traditional reviews. I've seen a few movies recently, but haven't been particularly driven to write about any of them. None of them possessed with me with that necessary spike of love or hate for me to write a full-fledged review, and my usual motivator (newspaper editors threatening bodily harm) wasn't available either.

So instead of dissecting one film, I've decided to provide a quick guide to everything I've seen recently. Instead of interesting analysis, you get a summary judgment accompanied with the usual sarcasm. I promise more effort in the future.

Gran Torino

Clint Eastwood aimed admirably high as an actor and director in Gran Torino. He missed the mark about half of the time, but it's a valiant effort and worth the price of admission.

At times, it's a bit difficult to take seriously. About halfway through, I became convinced that the script was inventing new racial epithets. How many times, fair reader, do you think you can hear Clint Eastwood say the word “gook” before breaking into fits of laughter (or, if you're a normal, boring, well balanced person, being offended).

Gran Torino was, overall, moderately entertaining. Most writers would use the term “above-average”, but I'm of the opinion that the average quality of media is lower than the deepest pits of the Marianas trench.

Paul Blart: Mall Cop

I have a theory on why people went to see this movie.

No matter how much hyperbole and vitriol a critic throws into a review, each film usually has some degree of redeeming value. It is, admittedly, easier to make an amusing negative review than an enlightening positive review. Many writers simply take the easy way out, and the viewing public has grown jaded with most media reviews as a result.

But Paul Blart is not a victim of this unfortunate trait of critics. It is every bit the storm of failed fat jokes critics have characterized it as. Some movies fail to execute a good concept, or futilely pursue a poor concept. Paul Blart: Mall Cop does the absolute worst it can with an fundamentally flawed premise.

Before seeing this poor excuse for a movie, I had never gone through an entire comedy without laughing. This is no easy feat: there is an infantile part of my persona that is very, very easily amused. But every second I sat in the theater, I could feel another piece of my brain slipping away into the abyss. By the end of the film, I had an IQ comparable with the average chunk of granite.

Slumdog Millionaire

It's good. Everyone else in the northern hemisphere of Earth has told you it's good, and now I'm joining the horde. Watch it. Tell your family to watch it. Coerce your friends into watching it. Force random strangers to watch it.

Push

Imagine a world unlike any you've seen before, unless you've paid rudimentary attention to the sci-fi or superhero genres over the last fifty years. A world where vaguely rebellious mutants fight an oppressive government agency in a sprawling urban metropolis. Now imagine it is far, far less interesting than X-men.

A consistent criticism of action films of this sort is the main character and associated sidekicks being portrayed as indestructible gods among men, floating through conflicts with dull ease. Push teaches the viewer that the opposite extreme is just as annoying: the central protagonist is the most frustratingly incompetent, unsympathetic dullard I've seen onscreen in a long time. Out of all the screen time filling fights, the dull male lead wins two. Most will be rooting for the generic government mastermind's bodyguard to finish him off so that the movie can go in a more interesting direction.

In short, Push is that special combination of boring, stupid, and unoriginal that leads to me spending the majority of the film cursing under my breath.

Taken

Human trafficking is a serious issue, correct? Hollywood is a big fan of intelligent, emotionally gripping pieces that effectively increase awareness of serious issues, correct? So, theoretically, a movie about female trafficking would treat the subject with dignity and respect, instead of reducing the topic to your typical gung-ho action film, correct?

I am, as usual, wrong.