After school punishment, Harry Potter fights some ghosts, Jewish rivalry, a prison in space, and hockey brawls

Let's cut straight to the chase...

Detention (Dir. Joseph Khan) - 2012
Available on Instant View? No.
Rating: 4 1/2 out of 5

Holy fuck. Director Joseph Khan's Torque is one of the all-time ridiculous guilty pleasure movies. I mean, it has motorcycle kung-fu in it. Finally Khan returned to the feature film business (he directs a lot of music videos) and what we get is Detention, a high school slasher flick than seems to tackle about 7 genres and throw them into one film. Kids in high school, drama and awkwardness, killer shows up and starts cutting them all up, you know how these things work. Yet somehow it takes the sci-fi route, body horror route, and the teen comedy route, it even seems to dabble in John Hughes Breakfast Club territory. It's all over the place when it comes to narrative but I wasn't judging because I was having too much fun laughing hysterically and trying to take in every little text detail, every absurd joke. Why Detention wasn't successful is beyond me but it has all the makings of a cult classic just waiting to be embraced by the right crowd.

The Woman in Black (Dir. James Watkins) - 2012
Available on Instant View? No.
Rating: 3 out of 5

Now for an entirely different type of horror, The Woman in Black treads the traditional ghost story/old dark house territory finding Daniel Radcliffe as a lawyer who travels to the countryside to settle some estate affairs and it turns out the house is haunted. We're talking woman's son drowned in the marsh and now she terrorizes the villagers by taking their kids' lives sort of antics. The paranormal is always a tough sell for me because I'm a much bigger fan of horror based in realism so if I had the choice between this and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, I'm going for the latter even if it will make me want to take a shower afterwards. Woman in Black is rarely ever scary, it just utilizes the typical stinger scare moments and half that shit showed up in the theatrical trailer. It has a solid performance by Radcliffe (who looks to have a future in acting outside of Harry Potter flicks now that said franchise is done), a decent if underused supporting turn by Ciaran Hinds, and some really great cinematography. Still, it's kind of a letdown when I'm watching a horror film and I'm more interested in all the foggy shots of the landscape and watching the estate turn into a murky floodplain. My advice? Watch The Orphanage because it does everything this film tried to do only better.

Footnote (Dir. Joseph Cedar) - 2011
Available on Instant View? No.
Rating: 3 1/2 out of 5

A nominee in this past year's Academy Awards Foreign Language category, Footnote details the relationship between a father and son who are both professors in Talmudic Studies in Israel. The son, Uriel, is the talk of the town and a highly successful author while his father, Eliezer, had his own claim to fame snatched away from him by a fellow colleague just as he was about to reveal his work. Footnote, while a touch dry at times, is an interesting and sometimes entertaining study of rivalry and isolation with fine lead performances serving as bookends. And no, you don't have to be Jewish to "get it."

Lockout (Dir. James Mather and Stephen St. Leger) - 2012

Available on Instant View? No.

Rating: 3 out of 5

Stop me if you've heard this one before: president's daughter gets kidnapped by prisoners and it's up to one man who is on the verge of being disowned by his government to get her back safely. Never been done before, right? Luc Besson has essentially become the master at rehashing action plot lines that have been done countless times only trying to add a small twist. In the case of the lockout it's the aforementioned plot only the prison is in MOTHER FUCKING SPACE. President's daughter goes to space prison because of rumors that the prisoners are suffering from mental disabilities when they come out of cryo-stasis and yep the prisoners escape and kidnap her and kill a bunch of people. Guy Pearce plays Snow, an officer on the outs with the American government because he was supposedly friends with another officer who was selling secrets. Don't wanna go to jail, Snow? Get up to MOTHER FUCKING SPACE and save the president's daughter. 90 minutes later Snow can say he came, he saw, and he conquered. Lockout is by no means awesome, but it's not a terrible way to spend your time just watching Guy Pearce chew scenery, be a sarcastic prick, and kill baddies. If you watch it, pay attention to how uncharismatic and dull the president is because it's laughably awful when he finds out his daughter is being held hostage. Peter Stormare is in it, too!

Goon (Dir. Michael Dowse) - 2012

Available on Instant View? Yes.

Rating: 2 out of 5

There's an audience out there for Goon and I'm not part of it. Maybe it's because I'm not a hockey fan, maybe it's because crude, toilet humor is very hit-or-miss with me. Seann William Scott is Doug Glatt, a rather sad sack of a bouncer who happens to excel at beating the shit out of people. Doug attends a hockey game with his best friend/hockey commentator Pat (one of the worst and most annoying performances I've ever seen Jay Baruchel give in a movie AND he co-wrote the flick) and ends up knocking out an unruly player. This event catches the eye of the manager of the Halifax Highlanders and Doug gets a one-way ticket to the minor leagues purely to serve as an enforcer on the ice. What follows is hockey fight after hockey fight mixed with Doug trying to make sense of his otherwise unfulfilled life. An awkward romance between him and Alison Pill, tensions with the parents and fellow players, the usual threads are at play. Goon does have two things going for it: a very un-Stifler performance out of Seann William Scott and a brutal final brawl between him and Liev Schreiber. Still, I couldn't really get into it and barely laughed. Slapshot it certainly is not.

UP NEXT: Moriarty revealed, the last slice of American pie, Taylor Kitsch does not encounter the Mars Rover, and a double shot of Hal Ashby.

Japanese Cuisine, American Angst, Swedish Noise, and Tasmanian Tigers

Don't call it a comeback.

For ages I've been a film critic on and off for different publications, sites, and so on and everyone always wants to know things like "Have you seen this? What did you think of this? What do you recommend?" The list goes on and on. While I constantly tell folks to never trust a film critic, people still want to know what I think of the movies I watch.

What you'll be getting on this here blog is largely my Netflix intake on a weekly basis and probably whatever random stuff I come across both at home and in the theater. I'll try to keep it brief and to the point. Be forewarned: we aren't always going to agree on things and some of the stuff I love you may end up hating and vice-versa, but don't shoot the messenger.

But enough talk. Have at queue!

Jiro Dreams of Sushi (Dir. David Gelb) - 2012
Available on Instant View? - No.
Rating: 5 out of 5

What a joy this documentary was to watch. Jiro Ono runs what is considered one of the best sushi restaurants in the world and it's located in a subway station in Tokyo of all places. With only 10 seats and meals beginning at $300, people plan months in advance to dine there. Surprisingly, his sushi is as basic as it gets - no frills, nothing fancy. What elevates the cuisine is the master himself who even at the age of 85 is still trying to attain perfection. Sushi is already considered an art but with Jiro it reaches a higher level due to his passion which consumes him more than he consumes the food itself. Mix in the all the wisdom, philosophy, and humor among shot after shot of sushi that seems to posses a heavenly glow to it and what you get is a foodie doc that'll make your mouth water faster than any episode of Man vs. Food.

God Bless America (Dir. Bobcat Goldthwait) - 2012
Available on Instant View? No.
Rating: 4 out of 5

Upon learning he has an inoperable brain tumor, Frank has had enough with American idiocy and decides to set out on a cross country killing spree taking down everyone from bratty teen princesses to poor political commentators to American Idol-esque judges and plenty in-between. After he blows away the latest My Super Sweet 16 failure, Frank attracts the attention of high schooler Roxy and together they ride the open road with pistols in hand.

God Bless America is about as black as a comedy can get on top of being wildly politically incorrect but I enjoyed the ride except for when it lulled occasionally. If you're a fan of Goldthwait's other work such as the equally funny but far more depressing World's Greatest Dad, this is probably going to be your cup of black coffee. You might want to steer clear of it if a guy blowing away a crying baby with a shotgun and killing kids for talking in the movie theater on their cell phones won't sit well with you.

Sound of Noise (Dir. Ola Simonsson and Johannes Stjarne Nilsson) - 2012
Available on Instant View? Yes.
Rating: 3 1/2 out of 5.

Tone-deaf detective Amadeus Warnebring takes on a band of noise terrorists in Sweden. These masked marauders don't want money or fame, they just want folks to hear real music played without proper instruments. By the time the first number "Doctor Doctor Give Me Gas (In My Ass)" came around, I was hooked. The musical numbers are definitely the highlight, think STOMP taken to a completely different level of absurdity, which helps the movie keep moving despite the rather boring plot involving said tone-deaf detective being mopey about how much he desires silence and hates living in the shadow of his virtuoso composer of a brother. Still, when Warnebring is on the actual cases, things get much funnier and interesting.

The Hunter (Dir. Daniel Nettheim) - 2012
Available on Instant View? No.
Rating: 4 out of 5.

The Tasmanian Tiger went extinct in the 1930s but even today people claim sightings of them in the bush. Willem Dafoe plays Martin, a hunter tasked with going into the country posing as a zoologist in an attempt to hunt down one of these beasts and bring back DNA/tissue/organ samples for a shady medical corporation. The Hunter is no Brotherhood of the Wolf (then again what is?) but it does have one of the best performances Dafoe has given in recent memory - something that really elevates the film when it leaves man vs nature thriller territory and turns to Martin's living arrangements with a local family where he bonds with mom and the kids of a man who went missing searching for the same mythic predator.

UP NEXT: After school punishment, Jewish rivalry, and Harry Potter fights some ghosts...