Certain roles can be flawlessly executed by Robert DeNiro, who is a master of his craft. He’s great at playing hardened criminal masterminds, veteran police officers, and detectives. His role in Hide and Seek, however, just seemed a little less than where it needed to be. I can’t say anything more without giving away the entire film, so just suffice it to say that this was pretty good but not nearly as frightening as it could’ve been. Dakota Fanning was great, and can usually pull off the creepy child thing without too much trouble. Three flames out of five.

Okay, Peter Jackson is much better off sticking with imaginary films like Lord of the Rings than ‘true story’-based pictures like this creepfest, which is about two young girls who become friends and then basically fall in love with each other. They create a plot to kill one of their moms so they can be together. I was totally weirded out by the whole thing, and so I guess that means Jackson did a good idea of transposing this whacked out tale to film, but that still doesn’t make me like it.

I’m not sure what I would say about this film except that certain parts of it, which come to around a minute and a half in length, were cut out of every home release since it came out in 1989. The latest 20th Anniversary DVD I just saw, however, was the un-cut version of the film.

Needless to say, it’s about as gory a flick as you could possibly imagine, being that I think the main character actually manages to kill someone about every twelve seconds. If you really like seeing dead people who were murdered using a variety of creative methods, watch this. It was shot on 16mm and has that really raw, grainy look to it, and was hailed by some as a masterpiece back in the day. Personally, I could have slept better last night had I not watched it just before retiring for the evening.

From back in the days when Ben Foster was just some kid actor on the Disney Channel to his role here, you’d think he was a schizophrenic. He’s absolutely chilling as the villain in this action thriller. That’s three ill words in a row, so it should be pretty obvious that I’m trying to make it seem like I know what I’m talking about.

Even a blind monkey with attention deficit disorder would be floored by Foster’s wicked presence as a dangerous and unrelenting criminal. While his two accomplices seem to be amateur mischief-makers - just some kids looking to get into trouble - Foster assumes the role of the evil overlord, goading them into deeper and more troubling behavior as the film goes on. Bruce Willis takes on the good guy role of hostage negotiator in an attempt to rescue the victims of the film - some kids trapped in their own house by the three subversive youths. Overall a very nice piece of filmmaking, worth a watch.

A great little flick about being in the right place at the wrong time. Tim Robbins was phenomenal in The Shawshank Redemption as a seemingly simple guy who turns out to be a genius. In The Hudsucker Proxy he plays a simple guy who’s, well… actually a genius. It just so happens that Norville Barnes (Robbins) is on his way to pitch his new idea to the Hudsucker toy company when the president commits suicide. Long story short, he is perceived as being so dumb that he can easily be put in the position as a proxy while the less than scrupulous Sidney Mussberger makes plans for a company takeover. A quite enjoyable sequence of events takes place, as you can imagine. The film has a certain charm and stylistic quality to it that only appears every so often. A recommended watch, for sure.

I kind of expected an epic, like a lengthy account of one man’s rise to fame and what happens when he follows his dreams. I love those kind of movies, where things start small and eventually they grow so big that the protagonist can’t handle them anymore and it all starts to fall apart. Hustle and Flow is about a two-bit pimp who decides to get into the rap game, yo. With the help of a few of his best niggaz, he sets up a recording studio all up in his triflin’ crib and gets to steppin on some stale, repetitive, over-simplified hiphop tunes - tunes that, predictably, become popular on the local rap music scene. Then he goes to jail and the movie ends. Yeah, I’m serious. It was an alright movie, but only watch it if there are like two movies left at Blockbuster and the other one is “The Land Before Time XVII”

Have you ever seen that one movie, “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”? Hero is basically the same movie except with different actors and scenes. Also it had tons of black arrows in it all the time for some reason. I think it was awesome, because it had a real message to it, and the super-secret 10-meter killing technique that Jet Li’s character developed in the movie blew my mind. I gave it a 4 because although it rocked and was better than that other movie which was sort of the same, I thought the ending was drawn out too much. They could’ve easily ended it five minutes sooner than they did and it would have had a much sweeter effect.