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Kim Hollis: Like everyone else, I saw Gravity, and I think I've already commented here how much I liked it. It's one of the best films I've seen in some time.

I also had the chance to catch up on a bunch of stuff while on vacation. In advance of Halloween, I watched Mama and The Conjuring. Mama is one of the best horror movies I've seen for a while. I really liked the kids in the film, and I also appreciated that they didn't try to give some lame, real-life explanation for what was happening. It just was. Along with The Woman in Black, we've had two pretty terrific ghost stories over the past couple of years. The other scary movie I watched was The Conjuring, which probably suffered a bit from having been seen right after Mama. It was more deliberate and not really as scary as Mama, but I liked the way the story was told and that it allowed some ambiguity that leaves some things up to the viewer's imagination.

Another double feature of sorts was the double-punch of Melissa McCarthy comedies. The Heat was a lot of fun. Clearly, McCarthy and Sandra Bullock enjoyed working together, as they had great chemistry. McCarthy's stream-of-consciousness weirdness can be really fantastic in the right setting, and it worked here. Bullock is more the "straight man," but still shines. Identity Thief, on the other hand, was just horrible. It had some redeeming moments at the very end (I guess) but I found it to be mostly hateful and totally unfunny.

Finally, I saw two other movies that were just incredibly awful. A Good Day to Die Hard was noisy, joyless, and pointless. I think there could have been a good story in putting John McClane with his son (or both his kids), but this wasn't the project for it. There wasn't even much humor to save it.

The other horrible film was Movie 43. I wasn't expecting much from it, but I got next to nothing. Justin Long is sort of funny in one sketch, but that's about all I could find to redeem it, and the rest of that same sketch Long was in was not good. At all. Along with that, Naomi Watts and Chris Pratt utterly humiliate themselves, while Dennis Quaid acts crazed for some reason. The opening vignette with Kate Winslet and Hugh Jackman goes on way too long, particularly because the (one-note) joke isn't funny in the first place. Avoid these last three at all costs.

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