Harold and Kumar are back for another chaotic adventure in Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay, where everything can and will go wrong. Writers of the past and present H&K, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg, also take a stab at directing this one. This is their first time directing for both of them. In fact, the H&K movies are the only movies these two have ever been involved with.

H&K 2 picks up right where the first one left off ? literally. It’s the morning after the White Castle feast, and the boys are getting ready to depart for Amsterdam in one hour. While on the plane, Kumar decides he can’t possibly wait a few hours for them to be in legal marijuana heaven and begins toking up in the bathroom. He uses a homemade device that allows him to get high without any smoke. Unfortunately, a woman sees the device and thinks it’s a bomb. It doesn’t really help when Kumar says, “No, no, it’s a bong!”

Everyone still hears the word bomb, and before you know it, H&K are arrested for being terrorists. An overzealous Homeland Security officer (Rob Corddry- Semi-Pro, The Heartbreak Kid) makes the ‘obvious’ presumption that North Korea and Al Qaeda must be working together on this one. The boys are sent to Gitmo, escape, and then try to get to Texas so their friend with some political power can clear their names. Kumar is also trying to stop that same guy from marrying his ex-girlfriend in a sub-plot.

The disappointing thing to me is that the movie is titled ? Escape from Guantanamo Bay, but the actual escape happens in the middle of the film and lasts about 60 seconds. In Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle the entire movie was about getting to White Castle. Therefore, the title of this film leads you to believe escaping is the ultimate goal of the movie. It’s not. It’s more about fleeing to Texas or ultimately getting to Amsterdam.

The great thing about the movie is that TV star Neil Patrick Harris (“How I Met Your Mother,” “Doogie Howser, M.D.”) is back as Neil Patrick Harris. An interesting tidbit is that you may think Harris is playing himself, but technically, he is credited as playing a character named Neil Patrick Harris. I could be wrong, but I doubt Harris is actually a horny shroom addict in real life, making Neil from H&K a fictional character.

Neil adds some excitement to the movie by hallucinating that there are unicorns everywhere and bringing the boys to a whorehouse. The roles get reversed in the sequel slightly as H&K steal Neil’s car this time.

Harold and Kumar are played once again by John Cho (West 32nd, American Pie) and Kal Penn (Bachelor Party Vegas, Van Wilder). Each plays their character just as well as in the first one. It’s not these two that make this movie fall short of the first, it’s the writing. Again Kumar is responsible for getting the twosome into one terrible situation after another, and again Harold is dragged along for the ride, questioning why he’s friends with Kumar along the way.

A new standout addition to this movie is Kumar’s ex-girlfriend Vanessa, played by Danneel Harris (“One Tree Hill”, Rule Number One). One of the memorable scenes in the movie is a flashback to college that illustrates how Vanessa and Kumar met, and oddly enough, how Kumar began his passion for weed. The flashback also shows Harold with an “awesome” haircut.

The movie features a George W. Bush impersonation by James Adomian. George W. shares a joint with the fellas and stands up to his father before pardoning the so-called “terrorizers.”

This movie is like a comedic version of the Oscar winning Crash. It’s about racism, stereotypes and how America deals with those issues. Only it takes a comedic approach rather than a serious one and completely mocks the U.S. government; something that everyone enjoys a little.

The Judd Apatow gang is back for another genius comedy. The so-called ‘gang’ spawned when Apatow produced cult-favorite TV shows Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared. They are more recently known for the hit movies Superbad, Knocked Up and The 40 Year Old Virgin. This time, it’s Jason Segel’s turn at glory as he both wrote and stars in Forgetting Sarah Marshall.

Peter (Segel) is a lovable teddy bear who is rather sensitive for a guy. He’s a musician with a good steady job in Hollywood. He composes music for a hit TV crime show much like that of CSI. He’s really low key and a bit of an underachiever. Peter enjoys lying on the couch in cheap sweatpants while eating an entire box of Fruit Loops out of a giant popcorn bowl. He’s in a five-year relationship with the star of the same TV show he writes music for, Sarah Marshall.

Sarah (Kristen Bell) decides she’s through with the relationship, leaving Peter devastated and weeping?constantly. Peter decides he needs to get away for awhile to get over his ex and leaves on vacation for Hawaii. However, upon his arrival, Peter discovers Sarah and her new Brit-rocker boyfriend Aldous (Russell Brand- Penelope) are also vacationing at the same resort.

Having come alone, Peter befriends several members of the hotel staff. The adventurous front desk girl Rachel (Mila Kunis- That ’70s Show, Moving McAllister) can relate to Peter as she too is recovering from a break up. The two become obviously attracted to each other, which leads to several awkward encounters with Sarah and Aldous.

The movie is not a gut-busting comedy, but you will chuckle several times at the wisecracks, awkward moments, Dracula puppet theater songs, raunchy sex scenes and of course ? full frontal male nudity that pushes the limits of R-rated standards.

I have to admit I was a little skeptical about Segel being the lead role in the film. He’s great as a supporting role in Knocked Up, but I just didn’t think of him as funny enough to be the lead. I was wrong. Segel opens the comedy right away by both beginning and ending the movie with scenes that expose his private parts. He uses his sensitivity, or rather lack of being masculine, to make the audience feel sorry for him and care about him. We feel that Sarah Marshall is obviously evil and wrong for leaving him.

Kristen Bell does a good job of convincing the audience that Sarah is not as heinous as we think she is. As the movie goes on we find Sarah had her reasons for leaving Peter. She shows this vulnerable side to her that allows us to feel partially sorry for her while feeling that way for Peter as well.

Mila Kunis, who looks absolutely stunning compared to how I remember her on That ’70s Show (I’m sure the tan and up-to-date clothing had a lot to do with it), gives Rachel compassionate warmth while maintaining a free-spirited wild side. She helps Peter by letting him stay in a $6,000 a night suite for free, and then later gets him to leap off a cliff. She kisses Peter to make Sarah jealous, and then in one of my favorite scenes, Sarah and Rachel have a ‘moaning’ match through the walls to try to make each other jealous, as their hotel rooms are coincidentally adjacent to each other. Rachel helps Peter out of his funk, but in the end, I think Peter does the same for Rachel.

Forgetting Sarah Marshall is right there with Knocked Up in that they are both cutting edge romantic comedies. They almost create a new breed of romantic comedy. They’re not the same old romantic comedies your mom likes with Drew Barrymore or Meg Ryan. They’re a new kind of romantic comedy fit for our generation. There won’t be any guys being embarrassed when their girlfriends drag them to this one. In fact, if anything, it might be the other way around.

Leatherheads is a throwback movie in more ways than one. Not only is it about professional football in 1925, but it’s also a slapstick comedy. A slapstick comedy is defined by answers.com as a type of comedy characterized by broad humor, absurd situations and vigorous, often violent action (e.g., a character being hit in the face with a frying pan or running full speed into a wall). The style is common to those genres of entertainment in which the audience suspends their belief of natural laws.

Old Charlie Chaplin films or The Three Stooges are the legendary faces of the genre. It’s a genre that I feel isn’t done very well, or often anymore, but George Clooney pulls it off nicely with his third attempt at directing. (Clooney has also directed Good Night, and Good Luck and Confessions of a Dangerous Mind.)

The story starts out in Duluth, Minn., which is home of the Duluth Bulldogs. Clooney plays Dodge Connelly, the aging team captain whose life is football. The season is just getting started when the Bulldogs, and several other teams in the league, go broke and can no longer afford to pay their players. Several of the players go back to their deadbeat jobs. Dodge, knowing no other trait than football, sets out to save the league.

Dodge hears over the radio that Princeton all-star and war-hero Carter “The Bullet” Rutherford (John Krasinski, The Office, License to Wed) attracted more than 40,000 fans to a college game. So Dodge heads to Chicago to convince Carter to quit paying tuition to play football and start getting paid to play football. The conquest is a success, and Carter joins the Bulldogs, saving the team and perhaps the league.

Meanwhile, the quick-witted Chicago Tribune reporter Lexie Littleton (Renée Zellweger, Chicago, Bridget Jones’s Diary) is trying to write a story claiming Carter is no war hero at all. Being as beautiful as she is, it’s not hard for her to get Carter to trust her. However, she also catches Dodge’s eye, creating the classic love triangle.

Clooney and Zellweger have amazing chemistry on camera. Dodge is full of charm while Lexie is fast to react with her quick wit. The two go back and forth taking shots at one another several times throughout the film until Dodge finally breaks through Lexie’s defense. The way the two spar back and forth seems almost like verbal foreplay.

Believe it or not, this movie isn’t as much about football as you would think. Granted the bar brawls and football games are entertaining and provide the funny slapstick part of the movie, but the dialogue really stood out to me. Not just the words that were spoken, but the way they were spoken. I already mentioned how enjoyable it was watching Clooney and Zellweger’s scenes together, but Krasinski did a great job, too. His character was the perfect all-American guy. Krasinski makes him that guy with his perfect responses to every question from the media and his proper use of language. I’m not even sure if he swears in the movie.

Zellweger verbally nailed the part of an intelligent woman in the 1920s. Of course, her acting was over the top as it should be in slapstick, but if I had to guess how a woman talked back then, her performance would be it. Then, of course there is Clooney, who always seems charming no matter what role he plays.

This movie isn’t just about football. Clooney’s movies always seem to have this feel to them that he’s trying to tell you something else. In this film, he’s telling us that it’s fun to break the rules. It’s okay to be rebellious. The movie shows us what commercialization can do to a sport and to movies themselves. He shows us this as both Dodge Connelly and as the director of the movie.

Dodge saves professional football, but it changes in a way that is no longer fun to Dodge. So Dodge breaks the rules and has his fun anyway. Clooney broke all the rules by making a slapstick comedy in this day and age. Perhaps he was a little fed up with Hollywood and decided to break the rules and have his fun, too.

Counting cards. It’s something we’ve all heard about but have never taken the time to understand how it works. 21, which is a spin-off from the true story of six MIT students who took Vegas for huge sums of money in the 90s, takes us on that journey.

The script by Peter Steinfeld and Allan Loeb was loosely adapted from Ben Mezrich’s best-selling novel Bringing Down the House. As with any Hollywood adaptation, it’s certain to be fictional, but it sure does entertain.

Our hero is the hard-working 4.0 G.P.A. MIT student Ben Campbell (Jim Sturgess, Across the Universe). Campbell is nearing graduation and has already been accepted to Harvard Medical School. The only problem is he needs to come up with $300,000 for tuition or win a scholarship that 70 other people with 4.0s from Ivy League schools are also applying for. Campbell needs to write a “dazzling” essay using his life experiences to emerge from the rest of the applicants. Campbell has been conservatively working hard his whole life so he could be an MIT student with a 4.0 G.P.A. He has no life experiences.

One day, Professor Micky Rosa (Kevin Spacey, K-PAX, American Beauty) notices Campbell’s Rain Man-like ability with numbers and invites him to a secret meeting. The secret meeting is to learn how to count cards while playing blackjack with a team of four other students. The group takes flights to Vegas every weekend to legally rob the casinos of their money.

Campbell declines at first, but after stressing over how to come up with $300,000 and being enticed by the beautifully blonde Jill (Kate Bosworth, Superman Returns, Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!), he decides to join the team.

Campbell catches on quickly and gets to experience being young and rich in the fabulous Las Vegas. He is a hot shot with money, a girl and for once, an exciting life until a disagreement with Rosa leaves Campbell busted and broke.

Director Robert Luketic (Monster-in-Law, Legally Blonde) builds a nice setup to a completely unsuspected sting. You’ll have to go see the movie to figure out who gets stung.

Jim Sturgess does a great job of playing a low key guy from Boston considering he’s a Brit. He’s a relatively fresh face, taking into account I’ve never seen anything else with him in it. Throughout the movie, I was trying to think of what else I’ve seen him in, but I think he just reminds me of Emile Hirsch from The Girl Next Door. Anyway, if he can keep acting as well as he did in this movie, then I suspect we’ll be seeing a lot more of him in the future.

Spacey is absolutely perfect for his role. It’s a blast watching him perform his classic cruelly-sarcastic remarks as he conducts his “business” that has no room for errors or mistakes. Spacey has always been good at being a prick.

Bosworth is, of course, stunningly beautiful in the film. She really makes you care about her character by adding this wholesome girl feeling to Jill. With some of the outfits she was wearing and things she was doing in Vegas, she could have come off as a wild child or a free spirit, but I think she makes the audience feel warm about her. Therefore, she makes you concerned about her character. By the way, in case you feel something is a little off when you look at Bosworth, it’s probably because she has one brown eye and one blue eye.

Laurence Fishburne (The Matrix, Fled) plays the intimidating Cole Williams, a loss prevention agent whose job is to catch and put fear into card counters since it’s not really illegal. He is also perfect for his role because who wouldn’t be scared of Fishburne? The guy is huge and has a petrifyingly powerful voice.

With films being as predictable as can be these days, I really appreciate one that’s actually surprising. 21 has a nice twist in the climax that really works. 21 is no Ocean’s Eleven, but it’s a “dazzling” Vegas movie that certainly jumps off the page.

Writer-director Roland Emmerich is usually anything but realistic. He has directed such films as Independence Day and The Day After Tomorrow. The concept of reality has absolutely no grasp on his imagination. We saw it when the earth went from normal to Ice Age in about three days in The Day After Tomorrow, and we surely see it again in 10,000 B.C.

The story is centered on D’Leh (Steven Strait, The Covenant) and the Yagahl tribe. The Yagahls are hunters and totally dependent on the woolly mammoth population, which is depleting. The tribe’s psychic elder or “Old Mother” forsees a prophecy; after the last hunt a group of four-legged demons (horses) will come and destroy the tribe. It will then be up to one man to save the tribe. That man turns out to be D’Leh.

D’Leh’s character has to make the transition of being an unsure young man to the strong leader of a rag-tag army and his people. Strait does a good job of making this transition convincing and seamless. It didn’t seem like his character flipped a switch, like the director did for the climate, as much as it seemed like D’Leh actually progressed into his new role.

D’Leh and a small group of men set out to save the people that were taken prisoner by the men on horses. After magically walking out of the Ice Age and into a jungle the men find an African tribe called the Naku. They too have had members stolen from them. As D’Leh travels across what I assume to be the entire continent of Africa, he picks up many warriors who wish to avenge their stolen and murdered people.

When the men reach their destination, they find that their people have been captured for slave labor. Thousands of slaves are being used by a wealthy “god,” with really long finger nails, to build the Great Pyramids of Egypt. It is up to D’Leh and his men to free their people and overthrow this “god.”

The thing about a movie being titled 10,000 B.C. is you think it’s going to have some actual historic orientation, but it doesn’t. If you think about it too much, the movie makes a mockery of any factual thought. D’Leh and his men start in an icy climate, walk out of that and into a sweltering jungle (where they are attacked by ferocious oversized turkeys), and continue on into a desert. Even in 10,000 B.C., that wouldn’t make sense. Furthermore, structured civilization and cities did not form until approximately 5,000 B.C., horses were not domesticated until around 4,500 B.C., and the corn given to D’Leh towards the end of the movie could only be found in the Americas at that time. Oh, and I’m pretty sure woolly mammoths weren’t used to help build the pyramids.

Camilla Belle (When a Stranger Calls, The Quiet) plays Evolet, the mysterious blue-eyed girl who wonders into the Yagahl tribe, triggering the “Old Mother’s” prophecy. Evolet and D’Leh form a love connection strong enough to fulfill about three different prophecies in this movie. Belle’s acting performance isn’t really amazing either – nobody’s really was – but she is still stunning in the film. Those contact lenses, computer graphics, or perhaps a combination of the two turn her brown eyes to an absolutely beautiful shade of blue. With a mostly masculine cast, she was the one good thing to look at in the movie. Question: Did they have eye liner in 10,000 B.C.? Answer: Yes.

Even though this movie is full of computer-generated imagery and seems really ridiculous, it has a rather throwback theme: a story of a young love that will not die and a young man who is a hero in the making but doesn’t know it; like King Arthur or even The Matrix. Even The Matrix only had one prophecy to be fulfilled; I counted three in this movie. Even though I’m still wondering if the Yagahl people put their hair in dreadlocks or if it just grows naturally like that, the movie was pretty entertaining – ridiculous, but entertaining. So, if you’re bored some night go see 10,000 B.C.

Semi-Pro is a classic Will Ferrell movie that features Ferrell as Jackie Moon. Moon is the one-hit-wonder singing artist who uses his music earnings to own, coach and play for the Michigan-based Flint Tropics.

The Tropics are an American Basketball Association (ABA) team in 1976. When the ABA decides to merge with the more popular and well-financed National Basketball Association (NBA), Jackie believes he has finally done it; he became an NBA owner. To Moon’s dismay, the NBA will only be taking four already selected teams while the remaining teams will be left to “dissolve”. The Tropics are not included in the four. Moon furiously disagrees with the terms and gets the league to allow the four teams with the best record to merge with the NBA at the end of the season. There are still a few problems. For one, the Tropics are not good.

In a bold move, Moon trades the team’s washing machine for a washed-up player named Monix (Woody Harrelson, Kingpin, A Scanner Darkly). Monix’s claim to fame was riding the bench during the Celtics’ championship season. He only accepts the trade because of an old love interest living in Michigan, Lynn (Maura Tierney, ER, Welcome to Mooseport).

Monix and Lynn have a sub-par love story on the side that doesn’t really get too in depth in the film. The movie could have utilized Tierney’s comic ability a little more. However, there are some funny scenes that feature Lynn’s current awkward but comical boyfriend, Kyle (Rob Corddry, The Daily Show). Kyle is a superfan of Monix and finds him in a compromising position.

Will Arnett (Arrested Development, Blades of Glory) and Andrew Daly (What Love Is) provide most of the witty dialogue as commentators Lou Redwood and Dick Pepperfield. Although they may have stolen the idea from Dodgeball, these two are funny both on and off the court; especially during a scene where everyone plays Russian roulette without actually knowing it. Pepperfield is the more professional one with that classic ’70s commentator look while ex-player Redwood is more edgy. While on air, Pepperfield asks Redwood to put out his cigarette. Redwood replies, “No, I like to smoke when I drink.”

André Benjamin, a.k.a. André 3000, plays Clarence ‘Coffee’ Black, the star player for the Tropics. Black and Moon combine to invent a new basketball play that leaves fans speechless and the referee so confused that he calls a foul the first time it happens. Benjamin was a good fit for this role. He has the charisma and voice quality makes him one cool cat.

Some of the funny parts in the movie are brought on by how they use swear words. The use of swear words is really somewhat of an art form in movies. Some movies seem to use them for no reason at all other than so it could be rated R; while other movies use them in a way that is really witty. For instance, Superbad wouldn’t be the same movie if it didn’t use about 2,000 swear words. Semi-Pro doesn’t have nearly that many, but still uses them in a clever way. Actually, this movie has very few swear words, but then when you least expect it someone drops a huge f-bomb that shocks and amazes you. This movie’s sparing use of swear words that makes it funny.

If you’re a Ferrell fan, you will want to see this movie. It’s not a monumental comedy like Old School or Anchorman, but it’s good enough to make the audience laugh like Talladega Nights or Blades of Glory. If you didn’t like those last two, then you may want to skip this one. It’s not the best Ferrell movie, but survives because of his over-the-top acting and mannerisms, which is good enough for me.

If you’ve watched any sort of television in the last three months, then you knew the movie Jumper was coming to theaters. It has been advertised for months, including: sponsorship of playoff football games, cast appearances at the Super Bowl and on American Idol, as well as a tie-in advertisement with HP that featured Hayden Christensen “jumping” around the screen during a seemingly normal HP commercial. I have a feeling all this advertising was to get you to see the film the first weekend it hit the silver screens, because after reading this review, or any other for that matter, you won’t want to see it.

The film follows David Rice (Christensen, Star Wars, Awake) who inadvertently discovers he has the power to teleport during a potentially fatal accident. He then uses his unique ability to escape from his lousy father and starts robbing banks. David simply teleports into the vault, takes the money and teleports back to his apartment with the loot.

What David doesn’t know is that after eight years of robbing banks, someone has caught on to what he’s up to. That person is known as Roland (Samuel L. Jackson). Roland is a Paladin, an organization dedicated to eliminating Jumpers. David escapes his first run-in with Roland and returns to his hometown in pursuit of his teenage crush, Millie (Rachel Bilson, The Last Kiss, The O.C.). He whisks her away to a romantic vacation in Rome but in doing so, puts her at risk as well.

That’s where David meets Griffin (Jamie Bell, Flags of Our Fathers, King Kong), another Jumper who is well aware of the battle between their kind and the Paladins. Griffin educates David on the history of both Jumpers and Paladins all the way back to medieval times and welcomes David to the war.

Jamie Bell stands out as the single highlight of this movie. His character gets to have the most fun with his exuberant and punk type personality. Hayden Christensen is likeable enough but has failed to prove, at least to me, that he can truly act. His role in Shattered Glass is the closest to “good” that I can think of. He has potential but needs to deliver a breakout performance sometime in the near future for me to really believe in his abilities as an actor. Let’s face it, anyone could have been waving around that light saber, and you still would have loved it.

This movie is lacking one very important thing: a good PLOT. Don’t get me wrong, this movie has an interesting concept; it just wasn’t put together very well. It’s crammed into 90 minutes and seems to leave out a lot of information. You can definitely tell that this screenplay was adapted from a novel (Steven Gould’s Jumper) and of course, all the juicy details were left out. This really comes as a surprise to me considering it was written by David Goyer, Jim Uhls and Simon Kinberg; writers of Batman Begins, Fight Club and Mr. & Mrs. Smith. It’s also surprising considering director Doug Liman has directed films like Mr. & Mrs. Smith and The Bourne Identity in the past.

Two rather important questions that don’t get answered in the movie are: Who are the Jumpers, and who are the Paladins? The Jumpers apparently have their abilities because of something in their genes, yet nobody else in David’s family has such powers. So what really causes it? I know that Peter Parker got bit by a spider, and I know that Clark Kent came from another planet. I would like to know how the Jumpers came to be.

We also know nothing about the Paladins other than they want to kill the Jumpers. The movie suggests they fight for the moral reason that “only God should have the power to be all places.” I really doubt that moral code alone is the reason for a battle that has been raging for centuries. Who are the Paladins? How did they get started? How does this organization get its resources? All the questions I wanted answered but weren’t.

The movie trudged on in a way that made me wonder, “Why are they doing this, and why are they doing that?” The movie simply needed more scenes. The climax was anything but climactic. I looked down at my watch and thought, “This is going to be it? This is really supposed to be the climax of the movie?” Of course, they leave it wide open for a sequel, but let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. If it does, I imagine Jumper 2 will be a mid-summer release along with Rush Hour 4 and xXx 3.

The Coen brothers, Joel and Ethan Coen, return to the silver screen with No Country for Old Men. The critically acclaimed film is up for eight Oscar nominations, including: Best Achievement in Cinematography, Best Achievement in Directing, Best in Editing, Best in Sound, Best in Sound Editing, Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role (Javier Bardem), Best Writing Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published and last but certainly not least, Best Motion Picture of the Year. We should be so lucky that the Brookings Cinema 5 finally decided to play this highly praised movie only two months after its initial release date. Better late than never.

Set in Southwest Texas in 1980 somewhere near the Mexican border, No Country for Old Men follows average Joe, but retired Vietnam veteran, Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin: American Gangster, Grindhouse). Moss is hunting in the Texan desert when he stumbles upon the aftermath of a drug deal gone sour. All that remains are several bloodied bodies, both human and canine, and a truck bed full of blow. Moss eventually finds “el ultimo hombre” dead some distance from the shoot-out and a satchel containing 2 million in cash. Moss fleas the scene successfully, but his role changes from the hunter to the hunted.

Moss is being hunted by Anton Chigurh (Javier Bardem), a bounty hunter hired to secure the missing cash. Bardem gives an intense performance and makes Chigurh the best villain since Hannibal Lecter. Wherever Chigurh goes, he leaves a trail of dead. At times, it seems pointless to kill, but Chigurh finds a motive or creates his own that makes it reasonable, at least in his mind. Whether it be, because someone saw his face or because a coin was heads instead of tails, the reason is just in Chigurh’s mind. You can see Chigurh’s method of thought in one of the best scenes of the movie: a simple conversation with a gas station tenant.

No Country for Old Men turns an air gun into an iconic killing tool, much like Texas Chainsaw Massacre did for the chainsaw or I Know What You Did Last Summer did for the meat hook. It’s an original and unique idea that I can see being copied in the future.

Tommy Lee Jones plays the humble and wise sheriff, Ed Tom Bell, who comes from a family of law men and has seen it all in his years of service. He and Deputy Sheriff Wendell (Garret Dillahunt) converse in some of the most interesting dialogue of the film. The conversations illustrate the large gap in experience levels between Bell and Wendell. Bell also has a nice monologue to conclude the movie. His summary of his dreams from the night before leaves you with the dreary feeling that he does not feel that he accomplished enough in his life or lived up to his father’s expectations. Woody Harrelson has a short role as bounty hunter Carson Wells, the third man on Moss’s trail.

This adaptation of Cormac McCarthy’s novel is actually very simple. The plot is simple, the characters are simple people, and I don’t believe there was even any music until the ending credits rolled. However, the cinematography was done extremely well. Many images in the movie do speak 10,000 words, and I feel No Country for Old Men has a strong chance of winning the Oscar award for that category. No Country for Old Men is a good movie, but with all the Oscar hype, I was expecting a little more.

It’s Godzilla meets Blair Witch Project, but better, much better. “I saw it! It’s alive! It’s huge!” I was already so into the movie and anxious with anticipation from the unrevealing trailers and television commercials that I literally leaned left and right in my theater seat to get a better look at the creature. Then, of course, I thought, “It’s a flat screen idiot.” (Don’t act like you’ve never done that before.)

I’m going to come straight out and say that I thoroughly enjoyed this movie. I would recommend that you see it, but I have some guidelines. I found from my online research that there isn’t much of a gray area with this film. You either love it, or you hate it. I loved it. However, if you easily suffer from motion sickness, this movie is not for you. This is due to the documentary/handheld-home-video style of filming. Several theaters across the country are actually displaying disclaimers on their movie posters and ticket stubs warning movie goers that Cloverfield may cause motion sickness. This was in response to several people wanting their money back after becoming ill during the film.

Secondly, if you know you will be bothered by not having enough explanation or details to what is happening, this movie is not for you. You simply have to take the movie for what it is: a single point of view of an extraordinary event experienced by normal people living in New York.

Which brings me to my next point: the casting for this movie was perfect. In order to truly believe that, the characters are ordinary people the cast had to seem ordinary. The movie wouldn’t feel as real if we were watching Tom Cruise or some other big star running through the streets of New York. Watch the credits or look the movie up on IMDB and I’ll be surprised if you can recognize a single name. In fact, the movie appears to be made for TV. Writer Drew Goddard had only written TV shows such as Alias and Lost before Cloverfield. Director Matt Reeves had only directed TV shows since his last movie The Pallbearer more than a decade ago.

The actors had mostly done TV in the past as well. Michael Stahl-David, most known for his role on the failed TV show The Black Donnellys, plays Rob Hawkins while giving the most convincing performance of the cast. Hawkins watches his brother die before deciding to lead a small group of his friends deep into the city and hostile territory to save the love of his life, Beth McIntyre (Odette Yustmen, October Road, South Beach). Lizzy Caplan’s (Crashing, Love is the Drug) performance as Marlena Diamond was intriguing. She left me wanting to know more about her character. I was curious about her life story. Unfortunately, this movie does not provide us with all the details. T.J. Miller (Carpoolers) provides just the right amount of comedic relief as Hud Platt, the socially awkward man behind the camera whose biggest concern while walking down a pitch black subway tunnel is the fear of attack by a flaming hobo. You’d think he would have something bigger on his mind.

The special effects in the movie are stunningly realistic, especially considering it had to be done using the home-video-style shooting. Everything looks like it’s actually happening. The monster reeking havoc on the city and its people looks believable. It’s not so over the top that you totally disbelieve in its existence, which is a mistake that could have easily been made. The tarantula-like creepy crawlies that seem to spawn from the beast are also realistic. The creatures terrorize the people on the ground, and a seemingly non-fatal bite eventually leads to extreme internal bleeding to the point that a person’s stomach possibly explodes with a burst of blood, but I can’t be certain about that. Did I mention the movie gets pretty intense?

All in all, it’s an amazingly entertaining and realistic thrill ride that makes 85 minutes feel like 45, but still leaves you about as confused as the characters in the film. Although, that’s how we should feel since we only see exactly what the characters see. If you can accept that, and if you can stand watching a shaky camera, then go see this movie.

Juno is a delightfully light-hearted comedy about a rather serious situation, unwanted teen pregnancy. Directed by Jason Reitman (Thank You For Smoking), the movie is placed in a small Minnesotan town somewhere within an hour of St. Cloud and begins with a chair. Yes, a chair. The chair that Juno (Ellen Page) and best friend/kind of a boyfriend Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera, Superbad) “experiment” in. That experiment eventually leads to Juno’s third positive pregnancy test in one day and “?one doodle that can’t be un-did, home skillet.”

Juno decides to give her baby to an infertile couple that would really enjoy the gift of life. So Juno and her best friend Leah (Olivia Thirlby) turn to the ads in the penny saver, right next to the exotic bird section, for a loving couple to adopt her baby. They find that couple in Mark (Jason Bateman) and Vanessa (Jennifer Garner) Loring. However, as expected, a pregnant 16-year-old and even the Lorings are bound to hit some bumps on the rocky road to happiness.

Although I feel that the movie takes the whole teen pregnancy situation a little bit too casually, it is great because of its excellent dialogue and perfect casting. Ellen Page delivers a wonderful performance as a spunky, easy to love but somewhat odd teenager full of quirky zingers and random thoughts. You’ll be sure to want to see this one, two or three times to make sure you catch all the dialogue you missed because you were laughing. Juno’s loving and supportive parents played by J.K. Simmons (Thank You For Smoking, Spiderman) and Allison Janney (The West Wing) seem to steal every scene they are in. Simmons gives off a genuine warmth that makes him a perfect father figure. Janney is the dog-loving stepmother ready to pounce to her defense whenever needed. During an ultrasound session, she defends Juno and rips the ultrasound technician a new one, leading them all to be escorted off the premises. Michael Cera plays his usual role as an awkward under-confident high schooler (hopefully you caught a few episodes of Arrested Development before it was wrongfully cancelled, and I already know you have seen Superbad), but he does it beautifully and gives a very convincing performance. He’s also on the track team, which seems to be in season year round.

Juno was up for several awards including Best Motion Picture- Comedy, Best Actress in a Motion Picture-Comedy and Best Screenplay from the Golden Globes alone. Ellen Page has already won Best Actress awards from the Chicago Film Critics Association Awards and the Florida Film Critics Circle Awards. She is also up for some “breakthrough” type awards.

Personally, this is my favorite kind of film. It’s a small production that is wonderfully cast and involves a real life situation. The best films are ones that could actually happen. If something in a movie makes you think, “that only happens in the movies,” then it doesn’t fit in this category. This is a great film especially for college students. Grab a group of your friends to create the right atmosphere, and go see Juno.