Sam Rockwell is a great character actor, but he’s usually reserved for being the sidekick, playing minor roles and having a strong back-up presence on screen. In Moon, he’s the leading man, and is actually the only human being who appears for more than a few minutes of the entire film. Matter of fact, he appears more than once – at the same time! But that’s all I can say without giving away too much of the premise of this unique space mystery. The discovery of what is really going on as Sam’s character maintains a solar energy harvesting plant on the moon is what separates this sci-fi film from its counterparts. An interesting watch that gets a 3.5 on our flaming scale of awesomeness.

Since I can survive for an incredibly long period of time under water in sub-zero temperatures, I don’t consider Max Payne to have gotten a free pass and escaped certain death by doing so in this movie. It also takes me an extremely long time (just over an hour and a half, actually) to figure out that, because everyone who makes trouble in my life has the same tattoo, these people might somehow be linked to one another. If I wasn’t busy being so sarcastic right now, I might have had time to ignore this entire film until the final 10 minutes and still know exactly what was going on. If you’re a fan of the video games this film was based on, you might enjoy seeing Max come to life. Then again, you might be a fan of the video games and still not enjoy the movie, which is what happened to me.

Still not sure how you feel about Jim Carrey as an actor? I know I’m not. In certain movies I love him and want to have his babies, but in others I can’t stand anything about him. Example. The Truman Show + The Mask = complete contradiction in how many of Jim Carrey’s babies I want to have. Man on the Moon is a bio-pic that sees Carrey in the role of Andy Kaufman, a controversial, half-crazed comedian who was known for his random and erratic performances. He does a good job with the character, and is actually the perfect candidate for the task. The variety of impressions and personas he pulls off are astounding; you really have to do a double-take sometimes to believe he does both Kaufman and Tony Clifton, one of his less appealing alter-egos. Altogether a decent film worth a good look into the ‘true story’ life of a celebrity.

After the crappiness of MI: 2 I was sure this movie was going to be a disaster. As usual, I was utterly mistaken. The creators of the third installment in the MI film series did exactly what they should’ve: they went back to the basics of what made Mission Impossible great to begin with. Awesome missions, hi-tech gadgets, a star-studded cast, and plenty of betrayals and plot twists keep this movie entertaining and take it far away from the over-produced, overly unrealistic (even for Mission Impossible) second film. Tom Cruise is just as nutty as ever, and he does a great job crying in the first scene. Wuss. A man as old as Cruise should appear ancient and decrepit, barely clinging to life, but somehow he manages to look even younger than I do. Not to mention ten times more physically fit. A very, very decent movie. Three and a half.

How do you take one of the most promising empires in the history of film and completely ruin it? Hire the Wachowski Brothers. An even more poorly written script than its predecessor, fewer cool effects and a lack of continuity made this movie almost as bearable as ripping off your toenails with a pair of plyers. All the fighting was tired and overdone, with little finality save for a few bits of “magic” that led to a really great ending. By great, I mean it sucked so bad I wanted to puke all over my new shoes. I spared it from a zero rating on the Awesomeness Scale because it’s so bad you have to see it before you’ll believe me.

The special effects and fight scenes are absolutely stunning. Everything else is crap. The second, horribly overrated film in the Matrix trilogy was a disappointment to say the least. If you have been thinking about seeing it, find some way to watch it without paying any money. The only part that’s worth a cent is the big highway scene, now that rocked. Too much psychobabble in a screenplay that made no sense and had no point made for a terrible middle act in this once great entity. I gave it a 2.5 simply because the action was some of the best I’ve ever seen.

For those of you who haven’t seen this year’s blockbuster, The Medallion, don’t. It’s a worthless movie, produced by Jackie Chan and starring the same. I’m usually willing to watch any movie all the way through, but in this case I’m sorry I did, because the ending was worse than the rest of the movie put together. I would tell you what the movie is about, but I’d rather not waste my time and I suggest you don’t either. 0 out of 5 on the scale, because it has no awesomeness whatsoever.

A relatively entertaining film that had slightly repetetive themes, but managed to pull off the “epic” feel fairly well. Acting was nicely done, but the monotony of a streamlined plot kept it from being better. If you’ve seen one “fearless leader who outsmarts the enemy and wins” movie, you’ve seen this. Its simplicity negated its value as a historically-based film. Usually, screenplays from novels are either extremely good, or relatively poor. This one falls in the middle; in other words, sometimes a writer can make reading about boring things better than a director makes watching them. The gnarly scene where the kid gets his arm sawed off was sweet so I gave it an extra half a point, to bring the grand total to 3.5 on the scale.