Based on Suzanne Collins’ bestselling YA series, Gary Ross’ screen adaptation has already become a mega hit. The film was supposed to be the next TWILIGHT and it has surpassed it at the box office already. But is it any good? In the categories of story and especially acting, it is certainly better than any of the TWILIGHT films. With its dystopian society and futuristic technology, it tells a compelling sci-fi yarn. But I still have a sneaky feeling that I’ve seen it before and done better.

Oscar-nominee Jennifer Lawrence plays the heroine Katniss Everdeen, a scrappy teen who lives in a future America where the country is split up into 12 districts. Each year a boy and a girl from each district are selected to participate in the Hunger Games, a televised battle to the death. The solo winner is awarded food and wealth from the State for their home district. On selection day, Katniss’s younger sister Primrose (Willow Shields) is chosen to represent District 12. Katniss instead volunteers to take her place.

Katniss is whisked off to the Capitol, taken away from her true love Gale Hawthorne (Liam Hemsworth, LAST SONG). Her fellow District 12 competitor is Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson, JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH). As Peeta says, his mother is finally hopeful that their district will win and she isn’t referring to him. Katniss is a skilled hunter and archer. She has survival skills in her blood. What Peeta has going for him is charisma and in the Hunger Games that is just as important. If a contestant can get the crowds to like them, they can gain sponsors, which provide them with advantages during that game. To say the game is rigged would be an understatement.

Helping the District 12 tributes prepare are: Effie Trinket (Elizabeth Banks, ZACK AND MIRI MAKE A PORN), an overly-made-uped government butt-kisser; Cinna (Lenny Kravitz, PRECIOUS), the tributes’ stylist, and Haymitch Abernathy (Woody Harrelson, NATURAL BORN KILLERS), the only winner from District 12. Katniss quickly learns that the Hunger Games is not just a competition, but a big show. Part of the strategy is to impress important people like show host Caesar Flickerman (Stanley Tucci, THE LOVELY BONES) and Seneca Crane (Wes Bentley, AMERICAN BEAUTY), the game’s architect, who manipulates the rules in order to up the drama and gain the result he wants. However, President Snow (Donald Sutherland, M*A*S*H) is afraid at the popularity of Katniss. She comes from one of the rebellious districts and could bring too much hope to the people.

Once the game commences the tributes the wealthy districts team up to hunt down Katniss. The four teenage killing machines have been raised to win this game. But they’ve never faced anyone like Katniss. Unions start to form and Katniss takes the young resourceful tribute Rue (Amandla Stenberg, COLOMBIANA) under her wing. But it is these unions that start to make the world of HUNGER GAMES unravel a bit.

When I said earlier that the film seemed like I had seen it done better before, I am not saying that it is made up of well worn clichés. I’m specifically thinking of one film – BATTLE ROYALE. That 2000 Japanese film, one of the best of the 2000s, has a very similar premise where each year a group of teens are selected to compete in a battle to the death in order for the government to keep people in line. The differences between the two films, which are both based on books I have not yet read, make a world of difference.

The chief difference is that in BATTLE ROYALE the contestants are all from the same class. This makes the teams logical. Friends would team up and have reasons to not kill each other. In HUNGER GAMES, the unions between anyone are unlikely. Why would you trust anyone? Even when it seems to have a strategic reason, the characters don’t react with the dog eat dog nature that the game insists upon. For instance, if a weaker character is recruited to help hunt down a stronger tribute, why wouldn’t the weaker character be killed by his “teammates” the second the stronger character is found?

Another thing that having the contestants know each other ahead of time does is form interesting character dynamics. ROYALE had a large cast but we get to know dozens of the characters, while in HUNGER GAMES, any character other than Katniss and Peeta is one dimensional or no dimensional. This undermines big emotional moments, because we don’t know the supporting cast at all because they are given no screen time. Also, in BATTLE ROYALE, the way the contestants “play” the game highlights their character and teenage dynamics. In HUNGER GAMES, the lead up to the game and the game itself show off the personalities of Katniss and Peeta nicely, but the motivations of the rest of the tributes are in question and at times even suspect. Deaths in BATTLE ROYALE have more weight and meaning, in HUNGER GAMES, they’re too often just part of the show.

Another big difference between the worlds of BATTLE ROYALE and HUNGER GAMES is that in the former the rules never change and in the latter the rules change too often. From both an audience perspective and from a world building perspective, changing the rules diminishes the drama. If Seneca can come in and manipulate the game, giving one contestant an advantage over the other, the viewers of the film and of the game in the film will begin to feel cheated. And both audiences need to care about the world being creating. If the purpose of the game is to put fear into the population with just a little bit of hope, the more the game seems rigged with sponsors and game manipulation the less hope people will feel and only fuel resentment toward the game and ultimately the government.

Francois Truffaut is credited as saying that the best form of film criticism is to go out and make the movie the way it should be done. With that thought in mind, it is hard not to compare BATTLE ROYALE having seen it with HUNGER GAMES, because it seems to stand as a shining criticism of the weaknesses in the latter film. But the criticism doesn’t make HUNGER GAMES look awful, only highlights how it could have been better. If one were to take HUNGER GAMES as a criticism of TWILIGHT, Gary Ross’s film looks strong in comparison.

As a teen action romance, HUNGER GAMES is anchored by a powerful performance from Jennifer Lawrence. Just watch her petrified look before entering the game arena. The love triangle is nuanced even if Gale is abandoned for the games. The action sequences create real tension as strategy plays a greater role than who can punch harder. Even with the manipulation, the final moment of the games holds great emotional weight. Katniss does turn into the hope that makes President Snow scared. The hope of a real hero.

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SUPERMAN, LORD OF THE RINGS, STAR TREK, STAR WARS, AVATAR and dozens of other sci-fi and fantasy tales owe their origins to Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Barsoom series. This new film is based on Burroughs’ A PRINCESS OF MARS, a classic of pulp fiction. Now Andrew Stanton, who won Oscars for FINDING NEMO and WALL*E, has brought the world to the screen.

John Carter (Taylor Kitsch, WOLVERINE) is your Han Solo-esque reluctant hero type. A Civil War vet who refuses to get pulled back into a cause (Indian Wars) because he is only seeking gold. But fate has other plans and like Frodo, he gets thrust into a world he couldn’t imagine when he gets teleported to Mars. In a reverse of Superman’s tale, he, the Earthling, travels to another planet and gains superpowers because of the alien world’s environment. Like the worlds of STAR TREK and STAR WARS, various alien races are warring and the good guys must stop the superior weaponry of the villains. Like in AVATAR, Carter is a human who establishes himself as a leader in an alien culture. In this world of Mars, aka Barsoom, the giant, four-armed alien race is led by Tars Tarkas (Willem Dafoe, SPIDER-MAN).

In the long tradition of fantasy, there is a princess named Dejah Thoris (Lynn Collins, WOLVERINE), who is being forced to marry the enemy of her kingdom. This villainous warrior is named Sab Than (Dominic West, 300). He has been waging a campaign of destruction across the planet, using a superior weapon given to him by the mysterious Matai Shang (Mark Strong, SHERLOCK HOLMES), the leader of the Therns, a bald, pale, robed species bent on shaping the future of Barsoom. But the princess has developed a new technology that could save her people, but the Thern secretly sabotage it.

At the core of the story is the romance between John Carter and Dejah. John Carter is a heartbroken man, suffering over the murder of his wife and child. The princess is a smart warrior who is trying to escape a forced marriage. A hero trying to save a princess in distress is a tried and true element of sci-fi and fantasy. In 1912, saving the princess was motivation enough, but modern audiences need more. While Kitsch and Collins’ screen chemistry sells the romance to some degree, it never fully comes over the hurdles of Carter’s relationship with his wife, who serves as his key motivation for not wanting to fight. This comes strikingly to the forefront in the brilliant sequence where Carter cartoonish single-handed destruction of an army of aliens is given emotion poignancy as the clash of his blade is cut with the strike of the shovel as he buries his loved ones. At this point, we feel the switch in him. He will not let the innocent be murdered by the horde again. However, how does this transition to love for Dejah?

Admittedly, I am not a student of Burroughs’ world. I can only judge what was presented on the screen. But it seems that it brings into play too many of the problems of an early 20th century view of the universe. Tars Tarkas and his Thark use guns, so why are they not superior to the human-like Barsoomians who are still using swords? I mean when the Thern give Sab lasers, he takes over pretty quickly. Just look back at the list of worlds that have been influence by this one. They borrowed pieces that fit into their worlds. At times, all the ideas seem crammed into this one.

All these issues weaken the experience, but never break it. Most importantly, I cared about John Carter and Dejah. While I might not have fully bought their quick romance, their motivations to save Barsoom did resonate. Carter wants to fight for Barsoom where he failed to do so on Earth. Dejah wants to lead her people, but she is forced into the position of political pawn. While their stories might be set against a muddled world, it is still endlessly inventive. Stanton honors Burroughs ingenuity with a grand scale, assured pacing and the right dose of levity.

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Here is a unique use of sci-fi. For the most part this film is a drama regarding recovering from a tragic event that fundamentally transforms one’s life over night. The concept of a doppelganger planet is used as metaphor for how decisions we make create new lives and even selves.

Rhoda Williams (Brit Marling, upcoming THE COMPANY YOU KEEP) is a high school student who has just gotten into MIT. After a night of drinking, she makes the mistake of driving home and along the way hits another car putting college professor John Burroughs (William Mapother, TV’s LOST) into a coma and killing his pregnant wife and young son. In an instant, she transforms from a promising future astrophysicist into a convict who must serve four years in prison.

By the time Rhoda gets out, humans are planning a trip to Earth 2. With seemingly no prospects, she decides to enter an assay contest to win a seat on the space ship set for the approaching planet. Meanwhile, she gets a job at the high school as a janitor; she tells her counselor that she wants a job where she doesn’t have to talk to people. Consumed with guilt, she seeks out John to apologize, but when she knocks on his door, she panics, and in seeing the disarray his house is in, says she is from a maid service giving out a free trial. She doesn’t know what to do when he hires her.

As they get to know each other, we see the lives they lost, but also see an alternative to the miserable lives they have now. They discuss the nature of their doppelgängers on Earth 2. Are they exactly the same or did they make other choices? Does it all come down to perspective? I mean the people on the approaching planet aren’t calling themselves Earth 2 one would suppose. To them they are simply Earth. If the number of universes is infinite then mathematically anything is possible.

Director Mike Cahill, who wrote the script with Marling, creates a rich drama and then uses the sci-fi as a hook to talk about deeper emotional ramifications. It’s ingenious. When dealing with his two main characters or the sci-fi elements, he never get pretentious. The droning Emo score gets a little heavy handed at times, but does set the right mood for the material. The only misstep comes with Rhoda’s fellow janitor Purdeep (Kumar Pullana, THE ROYAL TENEBAUMS), whose philosophical grand gestures beat the viewer over the head with New Age metaphorical platitudes.

Marling isn’t a name I knew before, but her performance makes it certain I won’t forget. In the few scenes before the accident, she embodies promise and then afterward, she becomes a shell. With each scene with John, she becomes slightly more whole again. It’s a layered and nuanced performance that even makes us question her sanity at times. Mapother matches her work, making John a man struggling to emerge from darkness where he has lived for years. Some days are better than others.

ANOTHER EARTH proves why plot and character need to be intertwined. Cahill and Marling find the emotional core to the idea of parallel universes. The idea was discussed in last year’s wonderful RABBIT HOLE, which also dealt with picking up after extreme loss, but this film takes it further. It’s nice to think that there is another version of ourselves living out what we perceive as our perfect life, but it’s another thing entirely to seek out that person in ourselves on Earth.

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Depression is an oppressive force. It filters all light through murky waters that the sufferer is drowning in. Lars von Trier finds a metaphor for it that seems so obvious and yet it comes off ingenious. A mysterious planet is headed for a collision course toward Earth. That’s a big weight on your shoulders.

Justine (Kirsten Dunst, SPIDER-MAN) is getting married. But she’s not really happy. Her new husband Michael (Alexander Skarsgard, TV’s TRUE BLOOD) seems to know that she suffers from bouts of depression, but he doesn’t understand the extents… or doesn’t want to admit it. Her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg, ANTICHRIST) is putting on the lavish event for her, but tells her that she hates her sometimes for how she acts to ruin things. Claire has the added pressure of being constantly reminded how much the wedding is costing by her husband John (Kiefer Sutherland, TV’s 24). When you meet Justine and Claire’s divorced parents Gaby (Charlotte Rampling, SWIMMING POOL) and Dexter (John Hurt, THE ELEPHANT MAN) you might understand why Justine is depressed.

Von Trier does a remarkable job of putting us into the feelings of Justine. We feel the heavy pressure that the wedding, her family and her job put on her. Her boss Jack (Stellan Skarsgard, GOOD WILL HUNTING) announces her promotion during the reception and then sends the assistant Tim (Brady Corbet, FUNNY GAMES) to follow her around asking her to make decisions about a new project. With everyone coming at Justine, he natural reaction is to retreat and hide. This is supposed to be the happiest day of her life, but as the night goes along, she sinks deeper and deeper into a funk and she begins to sabotage her chances at happiness along the way. When she reaches out to her parents, they are more interested in fighting old wars than simply being there for their daughter.

After the wedding, we jump into the future after Justine and Michael have split. He may have thought he could “fix” her, but he wasn’t up for the job. So Claire takes it on as best as she can and we can see that despite hating her sister sometimes, she does greatly care for her. Justine’s depression gets so bad that she can barely move at times. Then the planet Melancholia moves out from behind the sun. Some believe it will just fly by Earth, but Claire starts to panic that it might not. John just brushes off her concerns, but it’s just his way of not dealing with his own fears. So how does Justine react? Well before a rogue planet was set to destroy Earth, she always expected the worst so this new scenario only confirms everything she’s ever thought about life.

Von Trier has gone to a complete 180 from his Dogma style days. This production is high gloss with some stellar visual effects. The opening is like a musical prologue that sets the somber tone with surreal imagery. Claire and her son sink into the green of a golf course. Lightning sparks from Justine’s fingers. Dressed in her wedding gown, Justine slogs along as black gooey tar stretches out to hold her back. These images will come back into play at the end when Melancholia approaches Earth for its fly by or collision.

Dunst gives one of her best performances of her career. She makes Justine slightly bi-polar, but always vulnerable. Anything could make her fragile stability crumble. It takes a brave performer to sink into the depths of melancholy as she does. Von Trier lumps it onto her character and she delivers the truthful response for a depressive.

Calling a Von Trier film accessible is a bit of a stretch, but not since BREAKING THE WAVES has he made a film that could touch a wider audience. The simplest explanation would be to describe it as a character piece on depression combined with an apocalyptic thriller. And like WAVES, this is more emotional without being manipulative or unneededly cruel to his characters. Justine is cruel enough to herself.

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I’ve seen bits and pieces of this over the years since it came to cable. Some of the pieces I caught impressed me, because it seemed the whole thing was a spoof of the FRIDAY THE 13TH series, as well as space horror films like ALIEN. Now that I have seen the film from start to finish, I have come to the conclusion that it is trying to make fun of the series, but the problem is that it was written like one of those late-night softcore spoofs.

In the prologue, Jason Voorhees (Kane Hodder, HATCHET) has been captured and is set to be cryogenically frozen, because he can’t be killed. He gets loose in the facility and Rowan (Lexa Doig, TV’s ANDROMEDA) lures the killer into the freezing chamber and accidentally gets frozen along with him. Apparently Earth was doomed with or without Jason on ice because in the future humans live on Earth II. An education mission is sent back to Earth to check it out, discovering Rowan and Jason and taking them back on the ship to thaw them out.

On the ship, the plot is a complete rip off of ALIEN. Prof. Lowe (Jonathan Potts, DEVIL) is the weaselly corporate hack who sees Jason as dollar signs. Simply replace the alien with Jason and the space miner victims with scientists and horny students. The rest of the film is watching one horny teen after another getting hacked up. One victim gets her head dunked in a sink of liquid nitrogen and then has her face smashed on the counter. I lost count of the number of victims that get slashed by a machete. One even loses his arm via the big knife while Jason is still frozen for goodness sake.

None of this is taken seriously in the least. Losing an arm in the future is no big deal because there is a machine that will reattach it. That’s if you don’t forget to bring it back with you like the dummy does in this film. His great line when someone hands him his arm, “I gotta stop losing my arm. Hi arm.” Kay-Em 14 (Lisa Ryder, TV’s ANDROMEDA) is an android who is like the Terminator crossed with a dominatrix version of the sex bots from AUSTIN POWERS. Her nerdy programmer

The only truly funny moment is one where the crew get Jason stuck in a virtual reality room and send him back to the 1980s Crystal Lake camp where he started his murders. Two buxom beauties give him come hither looks from their sleeping bags, which become killing tools for the confused and frustrated monster.

In a big tense moment, the spaceship comes full speed into a space city and takes out tops of buildings. The pilot says they just need to turn around because they over shot it. It’s not campy funny; it’s just stupid. Even the opening sequence there is not tension when it is clear it’s trying to play things straight. Director James Isaac (SKINWALKERS) cuts the sequence to an awful score that sounds like it came from one of those bad Halloween music CDs you buy at the drug store.

As the tenth installment in the horror franchise, this one does nothing to improve its reputation. It’s not as low-rent as FRIDAY THE 13TH: A NEW BEGINNING, but it’s not worthy of being a theatrical release either. It’s cheap in every meaning of the word. When a franchise has run out of ideas, they always send the characters to space. So why not Jason? He’s beaten every other cliché to death why not that one too

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Arnold Schwarzenegger faced off against these skilled hunters in the original film and now Oscar-winner Adrien Brody picks up the big gun. Too bad Brody didn’t get the better role. This sequel goes back to the essence of the original, but loses all the suspense.

Brody plays Royce, a special ops soldier who is dropped from the sky into a jungle. He doesn’t know why he is there. All he remembers is a flash of light. Others start joining him. They’re all killers from various locations on Earth and it becomes clear quickly that they are not the hunters in this scenario.

Director Nimrod Antal’s film is populated with stereotypes from central casting. Isabelle (Alice Braga, I AM LEGEND) is the woman… and also the most kind of the group. Noland (Lawrence Fishburne, APOCALYPSE NOW) is the kooky survivor who has lasted against the aliens the longest. Hanzo (Louis Ozawa Changchien, FAIR GAME) is a laconic yakuza. How much you want to beat he finds a samurai sword? Stans (Walton Goggins, TV’s THE SHIELD) is a cruel Southern serial killer. Nikolai (Oleg Taktarov, NATIONAL TREASURE) is a Chechen rebel whose massive gun is disproportionate to the size of his brain. Cuchillo (Danny Trejo, MACHETE) is a Mexican drug cartel. Mombasa (Mahershalalhashbaz Ali, TV’s THE 4400) is an African warlord. Edwin (Topher Grace, TV’s THAT ‘70S SHOW) is a surgeon who seems misplaced with these savages. Seems.

These characters exist to get killed off one by one. Who will last to the very end is obvious from the start. Disoriented by their location and disadvantaged by their weapon supply, the group is hunted by various ugly predators and their toothy attack hounds. They are being toyed with and that’s how the audience feels as well. The story starts with some suspense, but by the time the big reveal comes, the story just plods forward with nothing else to surprise us with.

The big reveal I will not reveal, because I didn’t know it going in, so I will keep the surprise. It’s not a great surprise, but it does increase the hopelessness of the humans’ cause. But it also puts into question the motivations and bank accounts of the predators. They go to a lot of effort to basically play with mice.

Once the end comes, Antal, producer Robert Rodriguez or one of the four credited screenwriters couldn’t help referencing some of the classic lines from the original. That’s where the film completely lost me. It just highlights the problem with this sequel. It doesn’t build on the first film; it’s just tries to copy it. Because the outcome is so clear, this actioner is as thrilling as shooting fish in a barrel. And as original as that metaphor.

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Despite having the superhero in the title, this animated feature seems less like the Dark Knight’s story and more like that of James Gordon, who at this time is new to the Gotham police department. Based on what is hailed as a seminal comic series from writer Frank Miller and artist David Mazzucchelli, the transition from the page to the screen is faithful, but also highlights the differences between mediums.

Bruce Wayne (Ben McKenzie, TV’s SOUTHLAND) was returned to Gotham from training abroad. He has begun the preparation for becoming the vigilante, but hasn’t found his identity yet. Jim Gordon (Bryan Cranston, TV’s BREAKING BAD) is the new lieutenant in town, having been exiled to the most corrupt city after smoking out police corruption in his last post. His wife Barbara (Grey DeLisle, TV’s THE FAIRLY ODDPARENTS) is pregnant and he is guilty to bring a new child into this dirty, grim world.

The stories of Wayne and Gordon cross over the course, but they don’t seem to have the same weight. Both are interesting, but Gordon’s seems the most original and nuanced. Cranston provides a wonderful voice performance, giving the tormented police officer a personality in turmoil. The corruption of the city starts to creep into his soul and that’s not good when your partner looks like the beautiful Sarah Essen (Katee Sackhoff, TV’s BATTLESTAR GALACTICA). He has the nearly impossible task of being true to himself, while navigating the twisted politics of the police department that is not beneath fire bombing innocent people. Now he is tasked with hunting down a giant bat.

McKenzie doesn’t have the weight of voice for the Batman role that others have, notably Bruce Greenwood from last year’s wonderful BATMAN: UNDER THE RED HOOD. As the fledgling hero, he makes mistakes that get him hurt and trapped. You get a glimpse at him learning on the job. What I felt was missing was a more in depth look at his foreign training. It’s a problem that comes with being slavishly faithful to the source. Also it seems less fresh because we’ve seen Batman’s origin before and the struggling new hero has been handled in various versions before. The comic was first, but BATMAN BEGINS and the imitators have made it to film first.

The third most important character is Gotham. The story does a great job of setting the tone of hellish city. We really feel the great slope that Gordon and Batman have to climb. There isn’t one villain, but a city full of them. The corrupt police force is led by Commissioner Loeb (Jon Polito, MILLER’S CROSSING). He is just another dinner guest of gangster Carmine Falcone (Alex Rocco, THE GODFATHER). Prostitutes and pimps fill the streets. But the Batman inspires one to put on a cat suit and trade tricks for burglary. Selina Kyle aka Catwoman (Eliza Dushku, TV’s BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER) seems crammed into the story a bit, but is interestingly recast as a black dominatrix.

For the most part, the comic was used as a storyboard start for the film. The pacing of a four-issue comic is so different than a film. At just little over an hour, more time could have been taken to create more tension. But one has to respect the devotion to the source and the quiet moments that are not common for animation made in the U.S. The origin of Gordon really makes him a true partner for Batman. They have the same goals and need each other. Gotham is not a place for angels… but these flawed men will do.

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This film is not based on Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots. Now that we got that out of the way, we can find out what this film is really about. One could claim though that this film is based on a dozen previous boxing movies such as ROCKY and THE CHAMP.

Set in a future where robots have replaced humans in the boxing ring because people like the carnage more. Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman, X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE) is a former boxer who has become involved in the low-rung world of robot boxing. He gets a shock one day when he discovers that the mother of his son Max (Dakota Goyo, THOR) has died and that he needs to work out who will take the child. The 11-year-old’s aunt Debra (Hope Davis, AMERICAN SPLENDOR) wants to take him and Charlie sees her rich husband as a chance to make some money out of the situation.

As part of his deal with Max’s uncle, Charlie will take the kid for the summer. Having used the money to buy an older champion robot named Noisy Boy, Charlie wants to quickly get out on the road again. So he tries to dump the boy off on Bailey (Evangeline Lilly, TV’s LOST), the daughter of his former trainer. But Max maneuvers his way into tagging along. Up to this point the film goes through the paces of so many other films. Charlie is a rash, skuzzy know-it-all, while Max knows all the right moves to make.

However, once the training bot Atom is introduced the film improves. The old generation robot isn’t meant to compete, but Max has faith that he can take on all contenders. It’s not surprising that Charlie and Max bond over the training of the bot. But I’ll tell you it works. The reason it works is because it’s not maudlin and is presented from the point of view of Max, whose enthusiasm toward the robot-boxing world starts to rub off on the viewer. Young Goyo might look a lot like PHANTOM MENACE’s Jake Lloyd, but that’s all the comparisons you can make. Despite the fact that this is a PG-13 movie, it’s appeal will hit boys Max’s age like a swift uppercut.

Adults who know all the movies the film is pieced together from will be less engaged. The script lifts key moments from ROCKY, which do not work in context. The robots being in the ring and the humans controlling them from the outside lessens the jeopardy and the intimacy of the underdog underpinning. Atom is Max’s robot and I never saw him as an underdog. I never really saw Charlie that way either. He’s more of an impulsive type, not a lovable loser. The problem is you can’t just weld random pieces together and think you have a champion on your hands.

Additionally, many characters don’t have the investment in the story as they should. Lilly’s Bailey is a forced love interest. It would have been better if her dead father were in the film; he would have meant more. And I never bought the subplot about her trying to keep the gym open. It seems Charlie is the only member, so I think she has bigger problems than him not pay his rent. There isn’t a powerful bad guy either. The fair grounds boxing promoter Ricky (Kevin Durand, TV’s LOST) is wicked and is the catalyst for an important plot turn, but he isn’t involved in the climax at all. The owners of the undefeated bot Zeus — Tak Mashido (Karl Yune, MEMOIRS OF A GEISHA) and Farra Lemkova (Olga Fonda, LITTLE FOCKERS) — are walking clichés and have no real antagonism with Charlie or Max, even though the little kid tries to start something.

Like I said once Atom gets in the ring, the film started to grab my attention. Director Shawn Levy (NIGHT AT THE MUSEUM) and writer John Gatins (HARDBALL) do a nice job of setting up the fights to maximize tension. The fights for the most part deliver strongly on the promise of epic robot on robot violence. But then the film lets you go with some stupid moves. When the film needs to soar, it just limps to a finish. On the way home, kids might be jazzed up to play the REAL STEEL videogame. Their parents will be wondering if that Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em set is still at grandma’s house. At least with that you never know when the head is going to pop off the robot. In the film it’s completely telegraphed.

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From time to time a standard story can be lifted up by a great performance. Oscar nominee Saoirse Ronan gives that performance in this Orwellian sci-fi adventure from MONSTER HOUSE director Gil Kenan. She makes the standard plot points seem new, because she makes us see them through her character’s fresh eyes.

Ronan plays Lina Mayfleet, a new graduate eagerly awaiting her assigned profession. She lives in an underground society where the government randomly selects jobs for its grads. She is hoping to become a messenger, who runs notes from person to person. I guess they forgot to preserve email in the future. Unfortunately she gets assigned as a pipe worker. Luckily, Doon Harrow (Harry Treadaway, CONTROL) gets messenger and is willing to trade. He has an agenda behind wanting the lowly job.

The reason their society is underground is because a catastrophic event on the surface left it uninhabitable. The builders of the society felt 200 years would be enough time to let the surface heal. They left the mayor in charge of a clock counting down the time and instructions on how to get back above. Each new mayor is to hand the information down, but over the centuries the information has been lost. Now it is decades past the 200 years and the underground society is running out of food and power. This has led to great corruption. Mayor Cole (Bill Murray, GROUNDHOD DAY) has too much power at stake to lead his people to the surface.

It’s curious that Doon is considered the main character when Lina is far more dynamic. Doon’s father Loris (Tim Robbins, BOB ROBERTS) once tried to find the way to the surface, but that just lead to tragedy. He wants to discover the truth about the surface because the real story has been twisted over time. Lina is an energy force that inspires him. She takes to their world with youthful enthusiasm. We buy this world because she so believes in it. But has she put her faith in a lie?

Kenan keeps this movie moving at a clip. There is nothing extraneous here. The teens race around decoding clues that will lead them up. But the obstacles they face are not easy. The crumbling city, mutated moles, water wheels and a railway chase are harrowing experiences for the young heroes. But they are determined. The world itself is a character taking ideas from Orwell and visual flare from Terry Gilliam and Rube Goldberg. Like I said there is no email, there aren’t computers in this future at all. It’s steampunk without the steam.

This simple family sci-fi adventure doesn’t take grand ideas from Orwell, but the vibe. It’s a kids up against a weasel adult adventure. And of course the fate of the world is at stake. While it’s not quite in the same league, it’s like a sci-fi GOONIES.

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This is one of those movies that baffles the mind. Based on the visual excitement in the previews and track record of director Zack Snyder, I eagerly anticipated his first original enterprise. After seeing it, one hopes he sticks to faithful adaptations of other people’s work. It’s epic for sure. An epic fail.

The film beats us over the head right from the start. Baby Doll (Emily Browning, LEMONY SNICKET’S) is a 20 year old woman living at home with her mother and stepfather (Gerard Plunkett, EIGHT BELOW). When her mother dies under suspicious circumstances, she fears for her and her young sister’s life at the hands of their stepfather, who doesn’t inherit the family wealth unless the girls are dead. A series of events transpire that leads the stepfather to have Baby Doll institutionalized and set up for a lobotomy. One has to give it to Snyder to tell his entire first act without dialogue, but it’s done like an aggressive music video and robs the viewer of any emotional connection with the characters and their plight.

The asylum is run by the corrupt orderly Blue Jones (Oscar Isaac, ROBIN HOOD). Dr. Vera Gorski (Carla Gugino, SIN CITY) runs play acting exercises for the patients in order to help free them from their problems. Baby Doll takes to the therapy very well and delves into rich fantasy worlds to escape from her “prison.”

The film presents two layers of fantasy and with each layer the film gets less engaging to the audience. In the first layer, Baby Doll casts herself and her fellow patients as striptease artists. Her dances are so provocative and raw that the men get mesmerized by them. This allows her fellow patients to steal the items they need to escape. So you might be thinking, well let me see these dances, but we never see them. When Baby Doll begins to dance, we enter the second and more pointless layer of fantasy.

If having his beautiful young cast dressed up in lingerie and leather in one fantasy world isn’t fetish-like enough, Snyder has them dressed that way and fighting giant metal samurai, zombie WWI soldiers and a dragon in the second layer. Each layer distances us from the reality of what is happening to the characters in the real world. For a good portion of the film there is no sense that anything in the fantasy worlds has any real impact on reality. Thus these extended action sequence drag as Snyder throws every random idea from his Id at the screen.

Trapped in these adventures with Baby Doll is a host of scantily dressed and thinly developed young women. Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish, BRIGHT STAR) is the mother hen of the girls who doesn’t like the risky escape plan of the new girl. Rocket (Jena Malone, SAVED!) is Sweet Pea’s sister who is a trouble magnet. Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens, HIGH SCHOOL MUSICAL) isn’t blonde. Amber (Jamie Chung, THE HANGOVER PART II) is the sexy Asian. The girl’s mentor in the action fantasy sequences is a wise man, played by Scott Glenn (THE RIGHT STUFF), who must be the alternative to David Carradine as the go-to actor to play white guy Asian-like fortune cookie philosophy spiritual masters.

The substance of the story is secondary to the style. This is never more apparent than in cheating the audience of seeing a key plot point. Not seeing Baby Doll’s dances is a sick tease. The big action sequences are fueled by testosterone not character or emotion or logic. In getting a chance to put his own ideas on the screen, Snyder tried to cram every idea he’s ever had into one film. But all these ideas don’t gel or make a compelling singular story. After being punched in the head with this feature length music video, I’m the one that feels like the sucker.

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