The Rite in 150 Words or Less

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It feels cruel to single out The Rite's pretty-boy priest Colin O'Donoghue as being the biggest problem with the film - he's very pleasant to look upon, especially when fully collared up, and since this was his first starring role to lay the blame upon him feels like it could limit our future opportunities to look upon him. And yet... yet... god does he give a lifeless performance. One flat note from start to finish, while Anthony Hopkins grows broader and bigger filling up every frame screaming out words like "Kissylips!" with abandon, and O'Donoghue just bats his gorgeous blue eyes blankly. It's not entirely his fault - one gets the feeling Hopkins sucks the air right out of every room he enters these days - but whether his drab performance is a symptom or the cause of the film's deathly dullness it don't matter, it's DOA.

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Giallo in 180 Words or Less

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Terrible movies don't live up to their hype as often as you'd hope. And even when they are quite terrible enough thank you, for every delightfully horrible Troll 2 there's a bash-your-skull-against-the-wall boring Birdemic. Dario Argento's Giallo is every ounce as awful as I'd heard, but it willfully denies you the camp factor too. Actually that's narrow-minded of me - it denies you everything. Like attractive people (it makes Adrien Brody and Emmanuelle Seigner look monstrous) in shots you like looking at, or a story that's even trying to make sense, or the feeling as if someone was paying attention to what was going on at some point, whether while putting the movie together or while filming it or afterward when all that footage is sitting there asking to be put together into a thing called a movie. None of these things are anywhere to be found. Indeed it seems so purposefully void of anything worth looking at it seems diabolical, as if it were a dare. Let's all hope that nobody ever double dares Dario Argento then.

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Your Highness in 150 Words or Less

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Probably could've lost about twenty minutes, but the film's not anything approaching the dung-pile some've claimed. I had fun! Sue me. And I was sober, even. It's loose and stupid in that precise stoner-flick way. It was very nearly exactly what I expected and wanted from having enjoyed the trailer. I want to buy a van just so I can airbrush this movie on the side. Puppet molestation, shirtless James Franco, Minotaur erections, oh my. The finger-dragons were really nifty, and I still wholly enjoy Danny McBride's shtick. But the whole show's stolen by a hilariously underplaying Justin Theroux, who flitted through just long enough to make me sad he never seems to want to act anymore. Why, Justin? Why? You are always the highlight of the things you occasionally grace with your presence.

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