Emilie de Ravin and Robert Pattinson in Remember Me
Photo: Summit Entertainment

Anything can happen at any time. The quote “life is full of surprises” is a popular one because it’s true, and it’s not often in filmmaking a movie is able to capture the essence of that quote and give it true meaning. Remember Me manages to do just that, using well developed characters in a story that, admittedly, is rather generic. But the story is only a starting point as first-time screenwriter Will Fetters and director Allen Coulter (Hollywoodland) are much more interested in the idea of living your life to the fullest because you never know what’s around the corner, which ultimately outshines the relatively simple and predominately cliched plot.

Robert Pattinson is best known as Edward Cullen in the Twilight franchise, but here he shows there may be some talent locked inside, which has otherwise laid dormant while he cashed paychecks for playing a diamond-skinned vampire. Here he plays Tyler, a tortured New York twenty-something with no goals in life and no real direction. His brother Michael committed suicide six years ago at the age of 22 and Tyler is just a few months away from turning 22 himself and his connection to his lost brother is one that’s never been broken.

Tyler also maintains a great relationship with his younger sister Caroline, played by Ruby Jerins who steals the show and does much of the heavy lifting in creating a believable brother-sister relationship while Pattinson is often left to brood in the window sill with his cigarettes. Jerins carries herself much like Haley Joel Osment early in his career; she brings a maturity to her performance that feels entirely authentic and proves to be to her character’s benefit as a potential artistic prodigy.


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Matt Damon in Green Zone

Photo: Universal Pictures

Paul Greengrass’s Green Zone would have best been left to videogame developers. Adapt the action that makes up nearly 80% of the film into a first person shooter and add a few cut scenes to keep hammering home the film’s irrelevant political point and you’ve got a multi-million dollar game franchise. But no, instead we get a monotonous and unnecessary movie. Bad luck I guess.

Green Zone takes place in Baghdad in 2003 with Matt Damon starring as Chief Warrant Officer Roy Miller who, along with his team, has been assigned the duty of finding weapons of mass destruction believed to be stockpiled throughout the Iraqi desert. Unfortunately, all of their missions are coming up empty and with a couple of recent casualties on fruitless missions Miller wants to know why they’re coming up empty and where the bad intel is coming from. When he begins challenging the system he finds most doors slamming shut, but the CIA is willing to listen, sending him on a mission into the desert to find the truth.

Unfortunately for Miller, whatever truth he comes up with will be irrelevant as he’s fighting against a power not only unwilling to listen, but the actual cause of all the troubles at hand. While masquerading as a thriller, Green Zone is actually more interested in making sure audiences are aware the war in Iraq was started under false pretenses (the fact there were no weapons of mass destruction), a point we’ve all been aware of for some time now, which means Green Zone isn’t telling audiences anything they didn’t already know. What this leaves us with is a shell of a movie that asks a few questions, but seems either unwilling or unsure of how to answer them.
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Jay Baruchel and Alice Eve in She’s Out of My League
Photo: DreamWorks Pictures

I had a lot of fun with She’s Out of My League despite the fact it’s filled with cliches and genre stereotypes. The foul-mouthed jokes are frequently funny, the actors fit their roles, the typical plot developments never get in the way and perhaps it just fit my mood. Nevertheless, I had good time.

Jay Baruchel (Tropic Thunder) stars as your average, everyday twenty-something, but to go by the film’s rating scale he’s perceived to be a 5-out-of-10. He works as airport security and by chance just happens to meet and begin dating a beautiful event coordinator (Alice Eve) quickly declared a solid 10 and who, by all standards, would be “out of his league.”

His friends can’t believe it and he can’t believe it, two factors that ultimately end up having an effect on the film’s obvious outcome with every plot turn as foreshadowed as the next, but there is a certainly level of sweetness and everyday, stereotypical human behavior that had me digging this flick almost every step of the way.

As with most R-rated comedies, there are moments when things either go too far or seem out of place, such as a male grooming scene that doesn’t really fit, or the finale, which goes a bit haywire, turning into a bit of a fall-down slapstick comedy that doesn’t measure up to the rest of the film. But these are nitpicks in a rather moronic, yet equally fun, comedy that doesn’t rely on raunch as much as most films of its ilk, even though it does have its share.
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Richard Gere and Ethan Hawke in Brooklyn’s Finest
Photo: Overture Films

Brooklyn’s Finest is an immensely frustrating film. While it never does anything to set itself apart from so many other cop dramas you’ve seen involving dirty cops, the lack of pay for their public service and the overall effect dealing with the scum of the Earth can do to a person, it actually does a decent job building up a group of characters that represent these certain aspects of the profession. And then it throws it all away in an ending that was too long in the coming to begin with and made it even worse by just giving up on everything it had developed to that point.

After directing the Oscar-winning Training Day in 2001 it seems Antoine Fuqua can’t find his footing and while Brooklyn’s Finest serves as a return to similar territory, it doesn’t come close to living up to its predecessor. Starring a large list of recognizable names, including Training Day’s Ethan Hawke, Brooklyn’s Finest revolves around a depressed retiring cop (Richard Gere), an undercover cop (Don Cheadle) and a cop (Hawke) that needs more money to take care of his pregnant wife and four kids. Admittedly, a cop with four kids and twins on the way doesn’t have much room to complain when he finds out he’s low on cash, but I like Ethan Hawke so to that point the film gets a pass.
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