So, Whiteout is the film based on Grek Rucka’s graphic novel about a U.S. Marshal solving a murder mystery in Antarctica(!) I enjoyed the comic but I passed on seeing this in the theatre due the weak reviews it received from critics. Unfortunately I should probably have passed on Netflixing it. It’s that lame.

Rucka’s underlying story is still mostly there, but the pacing of the film is so awful that it’s just crippled in the adaptation. All of the character that seemed quirky or mysterious in the comics come across as bland and uninteresting in the film. It also suffers from a glut of Hollywood/committee style dumbing down with elements like flashbacks (because the audience couldn’t possibly remember what we showed them 25 minutes ago), complete removal of any discussion of the history/politics of Antarcita (that are critical to why solving the murder is so hard in the comic), and the gender switch out of a major character, I guess to serve as possible love interest where that didn’t exist before? (Also we wouldn’t want to market a movie with two strong female leads, right?) Also sad: the comic ends with a cool Mexican standoff that resolves unexpectedly, the film has a silly extended fight sequence that didn’t quite make sense.

So yeah, really not worth your time even if you like the source material. Antarctica is a pretty sweet setting for a story though, go reread the comic, or if you want to see a movie set there rewatch John Carpenter’s 1982 classic The Thing.

The implausible part is that everyone lives happily ever after. We never really find out what separated the parents in the first place, but it would have had to have been pretty bad, I’d imagine, for them to consider splitting up their children like chattel and then lying to them for the rest of their lives. I mean, that’s pretty messed up. And I’m supposed to buy that they’re all happy to get back together again some day? Golly, I can’t imagine where these kids get that lying, manipulative streak from.

In summary, The Parent Trap is a heartwarming story about how Disney is full of filthy lies.

12 Number of flights taken
411 Number of bylined Macworld articles I wrote
32 Number of books I read
3 Number of books I read that were graphic novels
45 Number of movies I watched
37 Number of new movies I watched
2 Number of Dungeons & Dragons adventures completed as DM
5 Number of Xbox 360 games purchased
4 Number of above games completed (for reasonable definitions of completed)
50,574 Number of words written for NaNoWriMo
84,508 Number of words written in non-NaNoWriMo novel
1,089 Number of photos taken (not including iPhone)
1 Number of spoof movies produced
10 Number of Doomcast episodes released
2:55:17 Length of total Doomcast episodes

2012 features your pretty standard disaster movie requirements: an array of scientific nonsense, depictions of your favorite landmarks dying fiery deaths, and more people-escaping-in-the-nick-of-time sequences than is worth counting. There are three separate scenes with airplanes taking off from runways being consumed by fire! Three! I was actually somewhat surprised at the array of characters they chose to follow throughout the movie and none of them particularly grated on me in that way most one dimensional action movie characters tend to. 2012 is generally fun and has some unexpected twists in the story toward the end, so if you haven’t seen a movie with lots of explosions and not much thinking this may fit the bill. Expect nothing intelligent about this movie and you’ll be fine.

Is there anything particularly notable about Punisher War Zone? We’ll there’s an obsession with colored lighting that makes it feel like the movie is set more in Joel Schumacher’s Gotham than New York City. You’ve also got an almost fetishistic enthusiasm for depicting not just people getting shot, but stabbed, decapitated, impaled, and exploded. This dedication to gruesome depictions of murder at times make me feel like I’ve been tricked into watching a slasher movie set in the Marvel universe. I’m all for a bit of the ol’ ultraviolence, but War Zone just feels gross at time.

So yeah, if you’re really into the Punisher I’m guessing you’ve already checked it out when it was in the theatres, everyone else can probably pass.

Okay?

Well, the trailers make this look like a hybrid between science-fiction and documentary about apartheid (but with aliens). And, to some extent, that’s true, particularly in the documentary-like cinematography. It doesn’t take long, though, before it becomes apparent that it’s really a hybrid between science-fiction and action—like pretty much every other sci-fi movie Hollywood has been willing to produce in recent years. In fact, the documentary-style imagery kind of confused me at times, as there are things that were definitely not supposed to be read as “shot by a man on the ground,” but known only to the viewer. I got it eventually, obviously, and the effects were neat, and it was smarter than most action movies, so it was a net positive overall. I just wish the filmmakers had been bold enough to really follow through with something truly original in approach—something like what the trailers seemed to promise.