Despite great action scenes, this potentially fascinating look at the Iraq war is spoiled by weak story elements and almost no character development. Matt Damon once again manages to catch me up in his great grasp of character and I love him in this film. Green Zone is a look at the early days following the “Shock and Awe” blitzkrieg of G.W. Bush’s war. Like George Senior’s war, there were almost no casualties, but unlike his father, George W. couldn’t walk away and there were weapons of mass destruction to find. The problem – he couldn’t find them. No one in Green Zone seems to be able to find any either. Green Zone’s take… there were no WMDs and the U.S. government, or at least a few elements, knew it. READ MORE

Based approximately 30 years in the future, The Book of Eli envisions a world destroyed by a holy war. As a result, humans rid the world of all evidence of God, including each of the holy books. Only one is left in the possession of an anointed guardian played by Denzel Washington. That book is called The Book of Eli and Carnegie (Gary Oldman), the leader of a small surviving community, is desperately looking for it. His goal: to use the holy words to manipulate his followers. Eli must pass through the evil man’s territory in his journey to the west coast, a task he was assigned to by God, at least so he says.

In The Book of Eli, the Hughes brothers manage to mix the practical with the spiritual to make the film puzzling and yet strangely challenging. There’s a clever combination of gritty apocalypse and hope for a bright future in the film, but more: the sense that something great must be involved. READ MORE

Daybreakers: great talent, original plot, good direction and even some great bloody action mean nothing when the story elements are so illogical and sophomoric that the film falls apart. That is Daybreakers: a vampire fest where vampires rule and humans are simply cattle. Think Matrix with blood instead of energy.

Ethan Hawke is Edward, our hero, a reluctant vampire hematologist trying desperately to find a blood substitute for millions of starving vampires. Meanwhile his brother, and maker, Frankie (Michael Dorman) hunts humans to bolster the short supply of nutritious, delicious red stuff. Neither Edward nor Frankie are happy about the arrangement but both are rather stuck, that is until Lionel (Willam Dafoe), a former vampire, kidnaps Edward to perpetuate the cure. READ MORE

James Cameron's dream becomes our reality in Avatar: a delight to audiences and a great leap forward in movie making. Packed with some of the most thrilling special effects in film and with an attention to detail that seems pathological, Avatar brings to life a world new and fresh and as complete as the Earth herself. This attention to detail is what made such films as Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings legendary and will do the same for Cameron’s film. Avatar will forever change the way films are made!

Pandora, Cameron’s imagined world, is breathtaking. A beautiful, stunning and thoroughly real as any world ever made real on film but nearly all designed with and through the magic of computer graphics. Amazingly it doesn’t take a thing away from the delight of falling thousands of feet on the back of a dinosaur-like alien beast or facing an enormous panther-like carnivore. Pandora is as real as any world brought to the screen, including ours. READ MORE

Old Dogs manages to be incredibly stupid, predictably sophomoric and phenomenally insulting (to the audience) while still having a few great laughs and a marginally touching story. Robin Williams, at his straight man best, and John Travolta, actually rather endearing, manage to take a fairly good idea and run it right down into a sewer of complete vapidity.

Dan (Williams) and Charlie (Travolta) are partners in a sports marketing firm working with a Japanese company trying to break into the American market. Dan, the more serious partner, discovers he has twins, a boy and a girl, from a quickie marriage to Vickie (Kelly Preston). Being a confirmed non-dad Dan still tries to manage enthusiasm when he meets his progeny. READ MORE

Ninja Assassin delivers on everything it promises and more. There is all the expected action and plenty of gory Ninja goodness, but surprisingly, the back story is somewhat interesting and engaging. Don’t worry, I’m not going soft…the violence in Assassin is nearly overwhelming but, except for the first assassination scene, not totally gratuitous, but part of the attraction of the film.

The story is typical and familiar: young orphans are adopted to become killing machines (think Fagan only with razor sharp Ninja swords, Shuriken and blood). The “father” is head of one of nine Ninja families for hire to whatever entity has 100 lbs. of gold. Be prepared, each of the children is trained with some of the most brutal methods ever seen on film. The little ones are taught to fear nothing and to stand excruciating pain. All is good in the family until Raizo (Rain), the number one trainee, sees the woman he loves brutally murdered for trying to escape the Ninja compound. Biding his time and trying to follow the rules Raizo continues his training letting no one know his anger. READ MORE

The Twilight Saga: New Moon is almost exactly the film I expected: teenage angst, a love triangle and a smattering of violence. What I did not expect was the overwhelmingly (though few) great action scenes, the excellent cinematography and CGI. Unfortunately New Moon suffers from absolutely uninspired dialogue and lack of sexual tension. It was nearly impossible to believe that Bella (Kristen Stewart) and Jake (Taylor Lautner), two legs of the love triangle, are friends let alone potential lovers. I blame this almost entirely on the writing, that, and the lack of physical contact between them. I just did not believe the love story. READ MORE