DIRECTOR: Peter Hedges
CAST: Steve Carell, Juliette Binoche, Dane Cook
THE PLOT: A widower finds out that the woman he fell in love with is his brothers girlfriend.
BEN'S VIEWS: Dan in Real Life is the equivalent of those sweet little girl scouts that innocently show up at your door and before you know it you've shelled out 50 bucks on cookies. That's because both are manipulative as hell. Dan in Real Life contains so many moments designed to warm your heart and make you feel all fuzzy inside that you might feel compelled to go home and get a family match of charades going. The film is packed with artificial sweetener but you will be helplessly pulled into to Dan's story. The film would not work without the fantastic performance from Steve Carell. He makes you care deeply for his character. The films comedic timing is dead on and there are many laughs to be had. So yes the film is manipulative but it is also very good at it and if you surrender yourself to the film you'll enjoy every minute.
DIRECTOR: Darren Lynn Bousman
CAST: Lyriq Bent, Tobin Bell, Donnie Wahlberg
THE PLOT: Jigsaw is dead, but the FBI must sift through his latest grisly remains and piece together another puzzle.
BEN'S VIEWS: OK this movie sucks but didn't we all kind of know it was going to anyway? So its not really that big of a disappointment or anything. But you have to wonder a little about the type of people who make a film like this and about the type of person who gets excited watching this film. The first Saw was an above average horror flick that made a lot of money through word of mouth. It was disturbing but their was a certain level of craft involved. Now the filmmakers are just trying to get a film with the sickest torture scenes imaginable out before Halloween. You have to wonder about the mental stability of the people hired to sit around and try and tope each other by thinking of the most horrible death trap for the next movie. You also have to wonder about the person who enjoys watching the autopsy scene that occurs in the most graphic detail imaginable. So if this kind of stuff is your thing then enjoy I guess, but if you hate messily constructed plots, horrible editing and all around boredom in a movie theatre then you will hate Saw IV.
DIRECTOR: David Slade
CAST: Josh Hartnett, Danny Huston, Ben Foster, Melissa George
THE PLOT: After an Alaskan town is plunged into darkness for a month, it is attacked by a bloodthirsty gang of vampires.
BEN'S VIEWS: 30 Days of Night could have been one hell of a horror film. The setting is perfect for a vampire flick: Barrow, Alaska where the sun don't shine for 30 straight days. The director is even David Slade who made a great debut with Hard Candy. But the film is victim to a slew of problems: one is bad character development. We are as coldly detached from these people as we are from the chilly Alaskan landscape. Secondly, these vampires just descend on this town out of nowhere. Where the heck did they come from? The pacing is not so good either. A week passes by in the blink of an eye. The vampires are effectively creepy but Slade is struck with "shaky camera" syndrome during action sequences which is a lazy technique. We think we just saw something cool happen but couldn't quite make it out because that damn camera won't just sit still and let events unfold. OK the last twenty minutes of the film are cool but not cool enough to save this one from being another forgettable horror film.
