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This year's Oscar ceremony was proof that sometimes content matters more than marketability in Hollywood.
Sometimes.
Ms. Bigelow walked off with the directing trophy for The Hurt Locker, which truly was one of the best films to come out in 2009 and for several years prior as well.
I loved her remarks when asked about how it felt to be the first woman to win that award, she basically said that she longs for the day when saying the first woman to do something will no longer be necessary.
Then they get the best picture as well, it couldn't have been better that night unless Star Trek had won for best special effects. But the movie biz couldn't live without kissing James Cameron's ass for something or he'll pack up his toys and go home with his billion dollar box office draws and all.

There are certainly a lot of bad movies about angel mythology out there.
Some of them are pretty enjoyable, like The Prophecy and Dogma, and there are tons of crappy ones too, like John Travolta's Michael and It's A Wonderful Life.
Paul Bettany plays a much better archangel than Travolta did, but Legion certainly falls in the lesser category of films.
Despite a storyline that is actually somewhat intriguing, decent acting from the lead angel by Bettany and the promise of much angel-fighting, Legion drowns in poor dialogue and sappy, melodramatic performances from most of the human cast.
The plot has promise, at least for anyone with a passing interest in angel mythos and old-timey biblical vengeance.
God has grown tired of the many ways in which mankind has squandered the many gifts it was given. There is a child in the gestation process that has a possibility to bring light and goodness back to the humans. God says eff it and sends an archangel to Earth to kill the unborn child and his mother.
Michael decides that instead, he will show God the goodness that humanity has save the child from an untimely demise and allow him to grow up and lead us all into the light.
So all of the armies of heaven are now trying to end humanity, which is a fun concept.
So many reasons why this movie could have been enjoyable:
-Angels possessing weak humans to do the dirty work.
-Gabriel coming down from heaven to pick up where Michael's disobedience left off.
-Lots of guns.
-Lots of ammo.
-Lots of explosions.
One main reason that a deity should want to destroy us all:
-The script.
We have two hours of sappy monologues delivered by cliched characters. We have lots of down time for those cliches to blather on and say nothing of importance.
We have very little of the angels fighting each other. The only good part of the whole movie is the promise of biblical vengeance and winged combatants trying to destroy each other. And that is reduced to a few short minutes of screen time that we are forced to wait for while we watch a painful performances of characters that you can't care about if you try.
Legion gets a D if I'm approaching it logically, but an F if I add in my extreme disappointment in the lack of angel fights.
--John Berry, Online Editor--

Jim Sheridan made his directorial debut a long time ago with My Left Foot and helped get Daniel Day Lewis on his road to being one of the most well-respected actors of all time (Lewis' first Oscar performance).
He has made a career of intense story telling and serious topics garnering some of his actors' best performances.
His latest offering, Brothers, (based on a Danish film called Brodre) hits another tricky topic, war in Afghanistan and the effects on the families of the soldiers.
Again, Sheridan coaches out some great performances from his actors and makes it look easy.
The best performance in this film is from Jake Gyllenhaal as younger, troubled brother Tommy Cahill. His older brother, Tobey Maguire's Sam Cahill, is a captain in the USMC and makes another trip to Afghanistan.
Tommy's wife, Grace, is played by the lovely and talented Natalie Portman. It's important to note how pretty she is because it is a fact repeated by several of the characters throughout the movie.
Some of the dialogue is clunky and cliched, parts of Maguire's performance are overacted (he overdoes the crazy eyes a few times), and there is a line delivered by the oldest daughter that is just preposterous, but overall the movie is a satisfying character study that provides an interesting look at the effects of war on the soldier and on the family they leave behind to cope with their absence.
The movie is thoroughly entertaining the whole way through, but has some major holes in spots but manages to get past that and deliver one of the better movies of 2009. Not that 2009 has brought too much competition, but it is actually the second best Iraq/Afghanistan war movie to see wide release this year, following The Hurt Locker which might be the best movie so far about the current war.
Brothers could have used a little more of the experiences Sam has in Afghanistan, and a little refining of the dialogue, but the whole film is solid and thought-provoking, so it gets a B+.
--John Berry, online editor--

Oh, Roland Emmerich, what do you have against the White House?
Emmerich loves destroying stuff in bizarre end-of-the-world scenarios. From Moon 44, Godzilla, Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow and now 2012. Emmerich is now the modern day king of the disaster epic. This new piece or the apocalyptic puzzle portrays the ancient Mayan prediction of planetary alignment bringing about the catastrophic disasters across the globe. This prediction never really existed, though, so all of this fear of the year 2012 is going to be oddly reminiscent of the y2k debacle a few years back. But the idea is that the solar wind is creating different charged particles because of the alignment that are heating up the Earth's core, causing free-floating plates on the surface.
The nonsensical premise aside, Emmerich and company deliver exactly what his fans want: over-the-top special effects not bogged down by complicated story or character exposition.
With a large ensemble of characters that never get a chance to fully develop and a convoluted connections between random disaster victims there is very little reason to care about anything in the entire movie. Which is fine, since half of them are dead by the end.
One of the leads is John Cusack as Jackson Curtis (not 50-Cent, that's Curtis Jackson) is bland and his family is annoying. The president of the USA is played by whispering Danny Glover and no one is sure why he can't talk. His daughter is Thandie Newton who is a doctor of picking art to save. Oliver Platt is the White House chief of staff who is kind of a prick. The only interesting character is the geologist who discovers that the end is coming played by Chiwetel Ejiofor, who seems to be constantly great in supporting roles, so it's nice to see him with a larger part, even if it's in a mediocre movie.
The main flaws in 2012 are the dialogue and the back story.
Nobody seems to get that disaster films don't need to be populated by the employees of Hallmark. There are no fans coming to see a touching goodbye between a father and son, or a valiant effort by the President to whisper a touching speech to the American public, or see a budding romance in the midst of the tragedy. People see movies like this to watch stuff get absolutely wrecked.
Emmerich should stick to what he does well. Special effects and epic destruction are the only draw for a movie like this. Stop pretending that you know how to make an emotional side of the end of the world.
If you're looking to see crap go boom, see 2012, but I'm giving it a C- overall.
--John Berry, online editor--

Not being a fan of the Twilight books, New Moon was not a terribly exciting film for me to watch. Of course, I'm also not a 14-year-old girl, so I have yet to even pick up one of the Stephenie Meyer penned junior romance novels.
There are a lot of very slow points in the movie and an excessive amount of poorly written dialogue. All three lead actors were clearly chosen for their aesthetic appeal, and not for their acting abilities. Pretty vampire-boy Edward, broodingly pretty werewolf-boy Jacob and the lead actress Bella, whose name means pretty.
The special effects are patchy throughout the movie, with some scenes done well and other scenes feature the wolves. Not more than a handful of shots of the (were)wolves looked like the animation was from this decade.
Hearing cringe-worthy lines pepper the entire story made it almost unbearable at points. Robert Pattinson's Edward delivering lines like, "You're my only reason to stay... alive. If that's what I am," with all of the passion of cold white toast with store-brand margarine makes me wonder how these movies are even making money. But then I realize how unsophisticated teenage audiences are, and it starts to make sense.
With that in mind, the whole movie is not without merit.
The story, when it is actually moving, is enjoyable enough for an escape from reality. Action scenes are well done for the most part, with the exception of the poorly animated wolves. Even some of those fights are fast moving enough to ignore that problem.
My friends who did read the book tell me this movie adaptation sticks closer to the source material than the first Twilight film did, so that is bound to please the fans in their Team Edward or Team Jacob t-shirts. I was looking for my Team Victoria shirt, but probably only because Victoria is the villainous vampire that wants to kill Bella.
Or possibly because she is played by Rachelle Lefevre, the only actress in the movie old enough for me to find attractive without having to register with the county.
I'm going to give New Moon a C- for anyone over 17, but it'll probably be adored by all of the teenage fans.
--John Berry, Online Editor

Though it's being eclipsed by the latest disaster flick, there is a great new movie that just hit the theaters this weekend.
Lacking the explosions and carnage might create less furor at the box office, Pirate Radio is bound to have much more value to viewers and will outlive the end of John Cusack's world.
Once upon a time when rock and roll was young and Britain was even more stuffy and oppressive than it is now, sex, drugs and rock were quarantined off shore as pirate stations who defied the government's restriction of the Stones, Beatles, Dead, etc., tunes and gave the kids what they want.
With a goofy premise, abstractly based on real stations that existed in the 60s, it was bound to be a fun movie, if done right.
Early promos had it called "The Boat That Rocked" which led me to believe they were not doing it right.
The story centers on a young kid named Carl (Tom Sturridge) who goes to live amongst the DJs and crazy folk of Radio Rock, anchored in the North Sea.
He arrives and finds an eccentric group of rock-and-rollers who border on cliche, but manage to stop short of going over-the-top.
The ensemble cast includes the ever-impressive Philip Seymour Hoffman and a veritable who's who of the U.K. actors who you know even if you can't always remember their names.
Writer-director Richard Curtis led the production with the same surprising grace that weaved the stories in his previous directorial effort, Love Actually.
One of the best parts of the whole film is the soundtrack, which takes on a larger role than average, which is apt since it is a film about a radio station.
Lots of classic rock binds together the story of the struggling radio station, the government suits trying to shut them down, and the general populace loving the music and the changing times in the world.

Pirate Radio gets an A-