Does. Not. Want.

"Bound": Why did it take me so long to see this?

After lingering on our Tivo for weeks (and our Netflix list for years), we finally watched Bound last night. What a great movie - smart, well-acted and incredibly sexy.

I certainly wasn't expecting it to be so beautifully and inventively shot, with surprising camera angles that make every scene genuinely exciting. It wasn't until the credits rolled that I found it was written, directed and produced by the Wachowski Brothers, who'd find fame with The Matrix three years later. Watching this in high definition on the nicely uncensored Universal HD channel was a great experience.

They brought in sex columnist Susie Bright as a consultant, and that influence definitely shows up on screen. The first half of the movie feels like high-class lesbian porn. Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon are very believable as secret lovers, with each alternating between aggression and vulnerability.

On top of all those achievements, the story is actually pretty good. It lacks the tangled skien of most noir classics, but that works in its favor by concentrating on the characters instead. They act like intelligent human beings, even when they're at the end of their rope. Watching poor Caesar's unwitting betrayal of his mafia family is alternately heart-breaking and hilarious.

If Bound has been hanging around on your "to-watch" list for a while, get off your ass and see it. You'll be glad you did.

"Get Smart": (Insert sarcastic 'smart' pun here)

Whatever you came up with, it'll be funnier than most of what you'll see on the screen.

I appear to have been watching an entirely different movie than the rest of the world, because the one I watched mostly sucked. From the abundance of tired, recycled jokes (think the makers maybe saw Naked Gun at some point?), to the annoyingly written and woodenly acted love interest, to the embarassingly on-the-nose music used in every damn scene, to the wholesale adoption of the frenetic "no shot shall last longer than 5 seconds" philosophy of modern film's worst offenders, it commits a litany of sins that I can't forgive.

There are some good points. When the timing of his jokes aren't off due to the aforementioned editing, Steve Carrell offers a solid performance. Alan Arkin steals every scene he's in. The Rock is just as ridiculously likeable as ever. There are some genuinely clever scenes at the beginning of the film. The way they worked in the history of the show was smart and, surprisingly, doesn't go overboard (though the less said about their repeated efforts to work in Max's signature catchphrase, the better).

It slowly sheds those good qualities, becoming more and more generic, until, by the end, I wondered if an entirely different team of writers had taken up the pen.I was forced to recall my "how do I get through this Time of Great Annoyance without falling asleep or walking out?" skills that I learned those many years ago in the lengthy worship services of my youth.

It's not particularly offensive, really - just another meh summer movie, focus-tested to appeal to people who either haven't seen or don't remember the infinitely funnier comedies of summers past.

"Top Secret" is hilarious!*

*If you see it for the first time when you're twelve in 1984. If you're on the wrong side of 30 in 2008, not so much.

It's not a bad movie - there are a few cute gags here and there - but it's not even up to the quality of any given episode of Police Squad. The humor's less pointed and dark than other Abrams/Zucker efforts, and tends more towards absurdist silliness.

Val Kilmer, while a terrific actor, doesn't work well here. The twinkle in his eye defuses the humor, letting us know that he's in on the joke and ignoring one of the most important rules for this type of comedy: Play it straight.

I know this one has legions of fans - I beg them not to watch it again and taint their good memories.

Do not accept deliveries from "The Messengers"

Don't remember this movie? Don't blame yourself. Though it was a major release with the producing might of Sam Raimi and Robert Tappert behind it, the actual film is kind of a mess.

We begin with a flashback to a child and his babysitter being stalked by an attacker through their house. After that, the main film begins. It the concerns the troubles that a family encounters in their quest to set up their sunflower farm in an old, abandoned farmhouse. The youngest child (a mute) sees J-horror ghosts, who then turn their gaze on the troubled teenage daughter. Finally, we learn the terrifying secret of the old farm and wackiness ensues.

Crimes:

• Trying to make crows scary. An ever-increasing number of the beasts hangs around looking vaguely threatening, until at the end a virtual cloud of them attacks a person (barely damaging him, sadly). If you're going to attempt to scare audiences with something that's not that scary, you'll have to do better than that.
• Shots that make no sense and/or are completely pointless. From repeatedly watching ghosts over the child's shoulder (ooh, a child sees a ghost and giggles, terrifying!), to an inside sequence where a girl walks towards a window and gasps when a crow's wing moves across the frame (how did he do that from outside?), to a people staring way down the hall at a door that closed in their faces in the previous shot, to people turning around in surprise at something they couldn't possibly have known was there... plenty of nonsensical sequences to go around here.
• Blowing its wad way, way early. The ghosts are shown in all their derivative glory as soon as the director could possibly work them in. Less is more when it comes to this kind of thing, as they could have learned from, I dunno, every horror movie ever made?
• More than one plotline goes absolutely nowhere. The guy who keeps showing up and wanting to buy the farm? Never really has anything to do with the plot, though he later pointlessly appears in a flashback. The daughter realizes that the child can see the ghosts and wanders around the house with him, but that sequence trails off into nothingness

There are some positives to balance the bad out a bit. It's beautifully shot, with nice use of color. The actors do as well as they can with the material. Um... the teenage daughter is cute? I'm kind of reaching here to find positives.