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The Woman in Black is a much better title as well as a breath of fresh air on the heels of the dual atrocities above. While there will never be a time that I will watch Daniel Radcliffe without thinking of Harry Potter, he is quite impressive in this role as a lonesome widower trying to do right by his young son. The character is forced to redeem himself as a lawyer by performing some paperwork at a small town manor. In the process, he encounters supernatural events that include some of the creepiest imagery in recent memory. I had chills more than once. This is not a perfect movie but it is a satisfying thriller. I wish I'd saved it until Halloween.

I am one of those people who had a brief love for Sacha Baron Cohen between Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby and Borat. Since then, I have slowly grown to hate him. There was one brief moment where his work in Hugo reminded me that he can be great in small doses. When he carries a movie, however, there are problems. Cohen is a boundary pusher who needs a great deal of restraint from his director to save the comedian from himself. He did not get this from Larry Charles in The Dictator. Forty-five minutes into the movie, I was enjoying myself and thought that his career was back on the right track. Only 20 minutes later, I found myself wondering how I could be so stupid. If I judged only the second half of The Dictator, it would be the worst movie I have seen since Uwe Boll was run out of Hollywood. Since the first 45 minutes is entertaining, I guess that means the movie gets a passing grade of a C- or so. Still, my advice to you is to quit watching halfway through The Dictator. Otherwise, you will regret your choice.

Red Tails is a well known story regarding the Tuskegee Airmen; the Lucasfilm version does not attempt to bring a lot of new ideas to the table. All we get here is a big screen adaptation of a story HBO told better in 1995. This is not to say that Red Tails is unworthy of your time. To the contrary, if you have never watched the Laurence Fishburne version, I strongly endorse this update. The films take slightly different approaches to tell the same story as the 2012 title spends more time in the cockpit attempting to recreate the air battles. The performances are also quite solid with David Oyelowo of Rise of the Planet of the Apes again standing out with his acting ability.

I laughed a grand total of six times during the entirety of The Three Stooges. That's roughly once every 14 minutes. The movie is almost all noise, no signal. I will say that the thoughtful director's notice at the end is a clever finish but the overall proceedings are lousy. Also, I'm pretty sure that one nun is a dude.

I inadvertently caught a double feature of The Vow and The Lucky One as I was cleaning out my unwatched Vudu titles. Suffice to say that if you are a man forced to watch a romantic comedy this weekend, pick The Vow. No, it isn't great but it is Four Weddings and a Funeral in comparison to The Lucky One, quite possibly the laziest romance ever written. There is one character in the film that I'm pretty sure is named "Poorly Written Jerk" in the script. Also, the romance fails. Zac Efron's heart is not in the film at all. And the actress, Taylor Schilling, gives a performance so robotic that it doubles as an excellent audition for Terminator 5. While The Vow is flawed, Rachel McAdams and Channing Tatum have enough chemistry to overcome the story's weaknesses, almost all of which involve the family of McAdams' character.

I am not offering a huge compliment when I say this but A Thousand Words is not as bad as you've heard. Yes, this is an oftentimes unbearable Liar Liar knockoff that feels an hour longer than it is. Yes, it is still 0% fresh at Rotten Tomatoes almost six months after release. And no, I am not recommending it as a good movie. If you do sit through the entire film as I did, however, I suspect you will discover what I did. The last ten minutes is almost enough to swing your opinion of the movie itself. The denouement of A Thousand Words involves the final acts of redemption of a dislikable character with crippling personality flaws. In performing these tasks, I suddenly understand the point of the movie, leaving me with the lasting impression that with better producers, this could have been a powerful film. Rather than hating the film as so many critics have, I believe A Thousand Words to be an understandable swing and a miss.

Battleship is disappointingly not awful. I really, really, reaaaaaaally wanted to hate this movie. I don't often feel that way as the fact that I gave A Thousand Words a chance should demonstrate. Everything about Battleship as a movie production offends me, though. There are so many brilliant ideas that remain un-filmed that deserved a chance yet this woefully outdated board game gets a $200 million budget. That makes me sick. Keeping this in mind, I must admit that on the whole I enjoyed the movie. It's not great but it features enough personality to stand out. Had this been a generic naval movie rather than one tied to the concept of Battleship, I strongly suspect it would have been received quite differently by North American audiences. The idea of a Battleship movie fails to pass the laugh test, so the film itself never received a fair shake. If nothing else, Battleship will always claim the title of funniest burrito purchase in the history of cinema.

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