Flix Pix

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

In Theaters:

Dark Shadows

Johnny Depp teamed up with (surprise, surprise) Tim Burton in what was their eighth collaboration. And once again, their dark humor and exploration of the bleak side of the human psyche take the viewer on an interesting journey through a tunnel of morbid curiosity.

Barnabus Collins (Depp) is awakened after 200 years to a world he no longer understands.

After being transformed into a vampire and imprisoned by a scorned witch (played by Casino Royal's Eva Green), he finds himself in his hometown of Collinsville, with a family of descendants who have fallen out of favor with the town and have let the family business fall into bankruptcy.

With their competition headed by his old nemesis Angelique (Green), Barnabus sets out on a quest to restore his family name to honor and exact revenge on his former captor.

It is always interesting when the likes of Depp and Burton get together. It seems you never quite know what to expect, the only thing certain is that there will be moments where you will laugh and moments where you will scratch your head.

In their newest work, they take you on a journey to the darker side of comedy and while there were moments of extreme hilarity, there were just as many moments that push the envelope. With crude humor and thematic elements, it seemed to be a very liberal PG-13.

Opening this Week:

Battleship

A fleet of Navy ships is forced to do battle with a legion of aliens of unknown origins to attempt to stop them from completing their destructive goal. If that synopsis was all I knew of this movie, then I would probably just think "another alien movie . . ."

However, the cast is intriguing. The two male leads are a couple of newcomers who have made their names on hit television shows (Friday Night Light's Taylor Kitch, and True Blood's Alexander Skarsgard).

Add in Brooklyn Decker, who we all remember as the swimsuit model turned actress that appeared alongside Adam Sandler in Just Go With It and reminded us that Sports Illustrated was still in publication and musical sensation Rihanna in her feature film debut, and we are in for a "never know what will happen scenario."

On DVD:

The Grey

Up until 2005, Liam Neeson was a successful, albeit fairly little known actor. In that year, he played a very convincing villain in Christopher Nolan's Batman origin story Batman Begins.

Following that up in 2008 with Taken, Neeson proved that a man pushing 60 years old, could still be a believable action star. Then again in 2009 with Clash of the Titans and A-Team, and once more in 2011 with Unknown. This year he struck gold again with the wilderness suspense The Grey.

John Otway (Neeson) works as a hunter for a corporation protecting the workers from wolf attacks in Alaska. He finds himself on an ill-fated flight back home that crash lands in the frozen wilderness. He must band together with the survivors to get out alive.

It wasn't enough to survive the plane crash and the freezing landscape, because they find themselves walking directly into the lair of a vicious pack of man-eating wolves.

Neeson surrounds himself with a stellar cast of character actors, unknown to most people but who have been in so many big titles you can't help but recognize them, including Dermot Mulroney, Frank Grillo and Dallas Roberts.

It is an edge of your seat thriller that keeps you asking what else could possibly happen to these people?

Releasing Next Week:

This Means War

In the spirit of Knight and Day, Killers and The Bounty Hunter, This Means War mixes action with romance as two government spies, played by Chris Pine (Star Trek and Unstoppable) and Tom Hardy (Warrior and Dark Knight Rises), compete for the attention of the same girl, played by the ever lovable Reese Witherspoon.

With the action spinning out of control and the attempts to thwart the other gentleman caller's advances, this promises to be a laugh out loud comedy enjoyed by both men and women.