Jack The Giant Slayer

Are you wondering why director Bryan Singer is crawling back to the X-Men movie franchise? It’s because he really needs a hit and this latest in the never ending stream of fairy tale retellings isn’t going to do him any favors. With nearly $200 million thrown at this mess and a cast featuring Nicholas Hoult (“Warm Bodies”),  Stanley Tucci (“Captain America: The First Avenger”) and Ewan McGregor (“The Star Wars Prequels”), it still looks like something that belongs on the SyFy Channel. The repetitive TV ads aren’t fooling anyone into thinking this will succeed and it’s a shame no one learned anything from “John Carter.” Hopefully this will nix the idea of a “Goldilocks The Bear Hunter” film. The only plus side to this film is that most screenings at the IMAX will be near empty, so take the chance if you wish, but proceed at caution.

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21 and Over 

This “wild-night-of-partying” plot was already covered in last year’s “Project X” and there wasn’t anything else to add. Don’t let the “From the Writers of ‘The Hangover’” tagline fool you. The writers of that first incarnation of the script were vastly different from the final version. This time, director Todd Philips isn’t there to salvage it. Unless you like to see things you’ve already seen in “Project X” and “The Hangover,” this film is the definition of “stand clear.”

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The Last Exorcism Part II

Wasn’t the point of calling the last “The Last Exorcism” was that it was expected to be the last movie dealing with exorcisms? I guess this dead horse was alive enough to get beaten again. It seems that the filmmakers forgot how terrible the sequel to “The Blair Witch Project” was because it deviated from new genre, that the first “Last Exorcism” film took. This obvious cash cow is not even worth the time of day, even when it comes out on video.

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Phantom

Don’t get excited. This isn’t a reboot of the Lee Falk comic strip character. Ed Harris (“Apollo 13”) and David Duchovny (“The X-Files”) star in a submarine film that’ll I liked a lot better when it was called “The Hunt for Red October” and “Crimson Tide.” It makes me even nostalgic for “K-19: The Widowmaker.” It’s a shame that there’s nothing even intriguing to go see at the theater this weekend, but it’s probably for the best with all of the snow piles ups. Hopefully there’ll be something worth seeing when the snow’s melted.

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