Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows (2011)

4/5

Guy Ritchie's sequel, Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows, is an entertaining action flick that fails to engage the audience in the same way that the original did. The plot centers around Professor Moriarty (Harris), who has been planting bombs in government buildings to incite fear and anarchy. Holmes (Downey Jr.) and Dr. Watson (Law) must figure out his plan and stop him before he starts a world war. The plot itself doesn't matter, however, because this is just a summer blockbuster that was released 5 months too late. Ritchie (or his screenwriter) has eliminated the complex, flawed characters from the first film and instead replaced them with hero archetypes without any unique characteristics. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and his creations are nowhere to be found in this film. Just Guy Ritchie and his eye for cool.

This is a solid action movie, exciting and enthralling, dripping with slick humor and slicker style, but there's no substance. Just like the popcorn you eat while watching, nothing on the screen satisfies. It's just empty calories that never seem to fill you up. But this is some of the best popcorn I've had this year.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1515091/

Alice in Wonderland (2010)

3/5

Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland is as weird and darkly comic as all his other movies. The plot follows the young Alice (Wasikowska) after being proposed to in front of a huge party by a wealthy lord named Hamish. She is a young independent soul who doesn't like corsets or stockings and certainly doesn't want to wed someone just because he is rich and she is getting older. But that is the option she is presented with, and the hundreds of guests in attendance seem to be pushing her towards the safe choice. She asks for some time to think it over. And with that time, she manages to fall down a rabbit hole and into "Underland," which she mistakenly calls Wonderland.

The movie is blandly quirky and innocently morbid, but somehow also reassuring and uplifting by the end. There were some funny moments (almost entirely involving Helena Bonham Carter) and some boring moments (almost entirely involved Johnny Depp). The oddness of the story didn't work for me. I found it neither charming nor endearing; it was just a charade to distract the audience from the simpleness of the story. And the visuals, while Burton-esque to a T, were filmed and/or animated poorly. Quite frankly, nobody understands 3D as well as James Cameron does right now. (That scene where Alice is falling down the rabbit hole made me almost vomit from nausea.) At first I thought Tim Burton just made bizarre movies for the sake of being bizarre, but now I'm starting to think that he doesn't really know how to make a movie that isn't bizarre. That, or he doesn't see the point in it. Still, this is a pretty entertaining movie. Watch it if you're a Burton or Depp fanboy, but don't expect anything grand.

IMDb link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1014759/