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Let me preface this review with the confession that I tend to cry easily at sappy moments. Greg made fun of me just the other day for misting up a bit at a stupid AT&T commercial about a lost dog that gets found via texting. No judgment, okay? Anyhow, so when I was walking into a film about a man whose wife dies of cancer very early on into the plot, I braced myself for what was to come. And, surprisingly, no tears came. It’s not that The Boys Are Back isn’t touching—it is. It’s not that the film isn’t hopelessly sweet—it is. It’s not that that precocious Australian boy isn’t endlessly adorable with his floppy hair and smattering of freckles because, by God, he is. It’s just that I couldn’t get deeply invested in this film, but it’s not for the lack of trying on Clive Owen’s or director Scott Hicks’ (Shine) parts. 

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At this point in his career Michael Moore has transcended his role as
a filmmaker and turned himself into a boisterous character of his own
making. Much like Sacha Baron Cohen transforming into Borat or Brüno, as soon as the cameras are on Moore fully embraces his role as a bleeding heart liberal anxious to embarrass America's higher-ups and rub the country's nose in the mess he feels it has made. By interjecting himself into his films, he has cost himself the ability to make an honest-to-goodness documentary. For example, midway through Capitalism: A Love Story Moore calls one of the many rich, powerful men he has been lambasting to request an interview. Not only does Moore not get the interview, the secretary hangs up on him as soon as she hears his name. His character has become so one-sided that he couldn't even tell the other side of the story if he wanted to.

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The Informant! is kind of a difficult movie to explain. First of all, it’s based on a true story of a VP at a major corporation who turned whistleblower for the FBI. Secondly, it’s starring a tubby Matt Damon. Thirdly, it’s directed by Steven Soderbergh. These are all great things that should add up to a more than phenomenal movie, but somehow The Informant! becomes slightly muddled and perhaps a bit boring.

That’s not to say there aren’t some great bits in this film, because there are, but The Informant! maybe isn’t quite the movie it markets itself as.

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In the realm of computer-animated films, there seem to be two choices: Pixar movies and a bunch of crap with talking animals.  Fortunately, 9 falls into neither of those categories and, if nothing else, offers a break from the monotony of the aforementioned options. Rather than targeting aging mothers and their snot-nosed brood, 9 seems to set its sights on the angsty teen crowd, an audience that wants something a bit "darker" and would roll their eyes at the thought of chatty penguins. To that degree, 9 delivers. It's certainly more mature than something like Ice Age and is free of the heavy-handed preachiness of Wall-E.

The world of 9 is a post-apocalyptic one populated by pint-sized sack people with numbers for names and predatory machines that hunt them in a gritty game of cat and mouse. For younger viewers who this concept might resonate with, it's a plus they've yet to sit through too many cookie-cutter Orwellian tales of a bleak future, but anyone who's familiar with more than one dystopian tale will find no big surprises in 9's plot. In typical end-of-the-world fashion, mankind's reliance on technology eventually yielded super-powered, independent-thinking machines that turned on their makers and left the earth a barren hellscape. Survival is now the only order of business, but this time, rather than humans it's enchanted voodoo dolls that are fighting for tomorrow.

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Mike Judge has brought us some funny in his time. The adolescent boy in us loved Beavis and Butthead, the Texan in us enjoyed King of the Hill, and the everyman in us simply adored Office Space. And though it may not be hip to say, I found Idiocracy pretty hilarious. So when it came to the release of his latest comedy starring the likes of Jason Bateman, Ben Affleck, and Kristin Wiig I was pretty excited. Well it didn't take long for this film to dash any and all hopes of me laughing as I found the film all encompassing of the word 'meh'.

The story follows average ordinary Joel (Bateman), the owner of an extract plant. He loves and is fascinated by various flavors of extracts. Joel has his own company, a frigid wife, and his employees are always trying to find ways to take advantage of him.  On top of this, Joel's wife might be less than faithful, and the only advice he gets is from a drug-popping bartender at a local hotel (Affleck).

Sounds like the ingredients are there, right? Wrong.

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