Weekend Movie Guide: Hooray, Another Ice Age

Opening Everywhere: Ice Age: Continental Drift 3D, Red Lights

Opening Somewhere: The Imposter

FilmDrunk Suggests: I’m going to take a nap now that Vince is back from his Meatball Summit at the Leaning Tower of Pisa. You should all go see Magic Mike so it makes $100 million.

Ice Age: Continental Drift 3D

Rotten Tomatoes Scores: 43% critics, 65% audience

Gratuitous Review Quotes:

“They offer a distinct visual style, a brisk narrative pace and a handful of chuckles for the parents. In short: these films are generally good at being good enough, and the fourth installment, ‘Ice Age: Continental Drift,’ doesn’t deviate from that modest tradition.” – William Goss, Film.com (He’s my friend but he recently unfollowed me on Twitter.)

“Geologic time might not register the mere decade that has elapsed since the first Ice Age movie, but in that interval, the animated-franchise world has widened, and now delight dissipates.” – Jonathan Kiefer, Village Voice (*fart noise* Snifffffffffffffs)

Armchair Analysis: I crap all over animated sequels because I hate that we’re giving our kids the same damn jokes and stories over and over, but also because they’re just a very lazy way for studios to make a ton of money. Forgive me if it’s awful that I’d like to see some originality in story-telling for the sake of expanding the imaginations of our children. But it appears I’m not alone, because the reviews mostly suck for this one, so hopefully 20th Century Fox puts a cork in Ray Romano’s voice already.

Red Lights 

Rotten Tomatoes Scores: 33% critics, 44% audience

Gratuitous Review Quotes:

“Someone should have stopped Red Lights.” – Claudia Puig, USA Today (*slide whistle, drops pants, somersaults into diaper*)

“Following the cheated containment of ‘Buried’ and the expanded misdirection of ‘Red Lights,’ Cortes has proven himself to be a filmmaker not as clever as he seems to think he is.” – Mark Olsen, L.A. Times

Armchair Analysis: I like Robert DeNiro and Cillian Murphy, and I really enjoy ghost movies. That said, this thing is getting nailed like the Phillie Phanatic at a furry convention. Here’s my dare to Hollywood, though – make DeNiro work for it again. Challenge him. This is beyond sad.

The Imposter

Rotten Tomatoes Scores: 96% critics, 77% audience

Gratuitous Review Quotes:

“The Imposter is almost traditional in its use of re-enactments as literal recreations of the events related in the film’s interviews. What sets the film apart is the way in which Layton uses this staged reality to heighten the tension of the film’s slowly unfolding mystery.”- Ian Buckwalter, The Atlantic

“Beyond the clashing perspectives of Bourdin and the Barclays, who each get equal time in telling the story, the genius of The Imposter is that it’s Bourdin who becomes the audience surrogate, rather than the family of the missing child.” – Scott Tobias, NPR

Armchair Analysis: The Imposter is an incredible story about a kidnapping that just becomes an insane story, and I don’t want to ruin it for anyone who doesn’t know it. I don’t know where this documentary will be showing, but the story is so worth it.

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