With a dearth of creativity, Hollywood seems to be angling for movie ideas wherever it can get them.

Bobbing through the studio franchise vault, Dune Entertainment and director Joe Carnahan wrangled in a winner with The A-Team.

I’ll admit, I had my doubts before I entered the theater. Whose idea was it to make a multi-million dollar blockbuster based on a television series canceled over 20 years ago? Heck, I’ve never watched more than a few minutes from the original show on TV Land. I’m guessing many in the target demographic have never even heard of the show.

Recast and given a fresh coat of paint (not to mention special effects and action sequences beyond those any 80′s television writer could have dreamed up), 2010′s The A-Team offers a summer action/adventure romp well worth the cost of admission. It stands on its own for audiences completely uninitiated to the A-Team lore like myself.

I’ll try not to spoil too much of the plot, but the movie kicks off right in the center of the action. The film gives each of the four A-Team members a proper introduction as it tells the “origin” story of how the off-beat-but-kick-ass group of commandos joined forces. The story quickly jumps ahead eight years later, though, as our heroes are about to complete another mission for the military (their 81st). Unfortunately, things go wrong and the A-Team end up being framed for a crime they did not commit. Naturally (but very creatively), they bust out of prison to get revenge and clear their names.

The film has action and plenty of it. The filmmakers showed great creativity in the action sequences, including a very clever segment in which the characters “fly” a tank through the air. They avoided most cliches of action movies, making the film feel very fresh and new, despite being based on such an old property.

The quirky characters and the camaraderie and witty banter between them really set this movie apart from the typical summer action drivel. Pacing is also near-perfect as the film never seems to drag.

The filmmakers wisely kept the plot firmly tongue-in-cheek and it never takes itself seriously. It has a zest and fun to it reminiscent of many 80s action flicks.

Needless to say, I came away very impressed with The A-Team. Anyone looking for a fun – if not incredibly deep – summer action film will not be disappointed.

I pity the fool who doesn’t watch this movie! (Sorry, I couldn’t resist).

Bad movies are upsetting. After being disappointed with Jodi Picoult’s book My Sister’s Keeper, I had high hopes for the movie. Not since The Shawshank Redemption has a film outdone the book (or novella in Stephen King’s case). The streak continues.

Before going further, this review is filled with spoilers, both of the book and of the movie.

One problem with debate in America is the injection of emotion. Without a doubt, emotion is the reason for bloated ratings for My Sister’s Keeper. Even I bawled like a baby throughout the film. Having a friend die recently of cancer, seeing a young girl and her family struggle did evoke plenty of emotion. Those tears, however, were more a result of real life tragedy, and less the result of a poorly made movie.

To begin with, the movie seems to take some of the worst parts of the book and leave out some of the more interesting stuff. The book and the movie both jump around between the characters. Or at least the movie begins that way. Not long into, it as if the writer’s got tired and just decided to drop that particular gimmick. Why they even tried it escapes me.

Then there are the character flaws. Naturally, the book examined this a little more thoroughly, but even it used cliché to narrowly define key characters. The movie takes this a step further, barely giving the viewer a glimpse of the actual characters. The only hints we get are a series of very specific actions. The mother in both manages to be despicable in both the book and the movie, but with limited development in the film, is even less likeable.

There are major components of the book left out of the film. Most noticeable is the changed ending. I gave Picoult, as did many others, grief on her manufactured and implausible ending in the book. Credit to Nick Cassavetes for changing the ending for the movie, but it seems wrong to take a book and make such a dramatic change for the silver screen.

In both the book and the movie, one cannot help but fall in love with the sick Kate. The book provides some catharsis and an accident ends up leading to her rescue. Expecting this same ending in the movie, I was surprised when she died. Oddly enough, the movie leaves an empty feeling once she dies. Maybe that is because of the expectation created by reading the book.

Also absent is the love interest between the attorney and  a former lover involved in the case. I thought it cheesy that Picoult would insert such a side-story into a novel about a family dealing with cancer, but we all know love stories sell. The female half was not included in the movie, which still managed to stretch for nearly two hours. I am actually thankful she was not carried over to the film, or I might have wasted an extra hour watching that part of the story.

The brother in the book is a cookie-cutter juvenile delinquent. Not getting the attention he needs, he turns to drugs and arson. This is even more dramatic given that his father is a fire fighter. The film downplays the level of delinquency, and the arson story is completely dropped.

Finally, the attorney is given much more character in the book. The movie does feature his service dog named Judge, but missing are all the false reasons he gives for having a service dog. When it is finally revealed why he has the dog, the scene lacks impact since it is not played up throughout. Again, they had no real reason to put it in the movie if they could not give it full justice.

The movie making itself also fails. Not since Passion of the Christ have I seen a film that so obviously tries to manipulate my feelings. Gilded lighting, long, action-less, sweeping scenes on top of piano-driven sob songs, and focus on Kate’s face are attempts to evoke emotion. It might have worked if the movie were to take on an epic quality, but with choppy scenes and mediocre acting, they merely make all involved look a little silly.

The book is not written in chronological order. It skips around between characters and across time. They try this in the film, and it is sometimes hard to distinguish when they do so. They also do it frequently enough that it is impossible to get a real feel for the characters, and often difficult to weigh the gravity of a situation.

In the end, the viewer gets a movie that can generate tears. It is not a complete failure. There are some touching scenes, some decent observations about illness, and everything starts with a great premise: one young girl wants to die with dignity and her sister does not want to give up a kidney. It is, though, poorly constructed, often poorly acted, and completely manipulative when it comes to eliciting that emotional response.

You will see high ratings for this film: the average viewer will cry, and though those tears are probably more about someone they knew, they will credit the movie. As a movie watcher, I was able to distinguish between the two, and give My Sister’s Keeper two out of ten stars.

Marley & Me could have been junk. Most of us have lost a pet at some point in our lives. Why did John Grogan’s book experience so much success, and did they really have to make it into a movie just because the book made money?

I was skeptical about the book, so listened to it rather than reading it. Driving along the lonely roads of north-central Kansas, I listened to Grogan, seemingly nearing tears, tell about this dog. I got it.

At the time I listened, my dog was alive. Well, not really my dog. My sister originally bought Lily, the Welsh Corgi-Australian Shepherd mix that probably defied the odds of biology just to exist. The dog was such a mess, my parents had to adopt it to prevent her from going to the pound.

I see my parents on a nearly daily basis, and I was always greeted at the door by this hyper fox-looking dog that always had a smile on her face. We have always been cat people. My first pet was already four years-old when I was born, and the cat lived another 15 years before dying my freshman year of high school.

Except a few guinea pigs and fish, that was my first experience with the loss of a pet, and it was devastating. We had another cat that died several years later, and I remember being particularly troubled when I saw her food bowl in the trash can. What else my mom was supposed to do with it I cannot say, but it seemed cruel to just throw away such a vital piece of the cat’s life.

Dogs are a different story. Though I presently have a cat that redefines the word misfit, and though we seem to get along with each other but often struggle outside the safety of our house, even we are prone to hour long periods without seeing one another. Dogs are the constant companion. They can go outside and go for car rides. They seem pleased to sit and watch everything.

When something injects itself into your life so often, its absence is all that much greater. Unfortunately, Lily lived only a few short years. For a dog with so much energy, my parents knew something was wrong when she stopped bouncing around. I’m not sure we ever found a definitive cause, but kidney failure was the unavoidable death trap. Early on, I visited Lily in the vet’s office, thinking she would be home within a week. A few days later, while at a football game, we got a promising call that things were improving and she could go for a walk that weekend.

The hope turned out to be a false one, and she had to be put down just a few days later. Never one to handle death well, I avoided my parent’s house for a few days, knowing I could not stomach going through the door without being greeted.

Later on, I took a friend over to eat, and while we waited, I jumped on the computer. Minimizing the open window, I found a photo of Lily playing in the snow as the wallpaper. This, along with the empty food bowl still sitting on the kitchen floor, was just too much.

While my friend and parents thought I was avoiding the food, I simply needed to be alone for a minute. The “grown men don’t cry” society we live in did not apply to me at that moment.

Recently, I watched Marley & Me. After losing a dog myself, Grogan’s genius is revealed. There have been other dog stories, but few capture the essence of the imperfections of a pet and the relationships we build with them. Other than David Sedaris’s short story The Youth In Asia, a poignant story that uses a series of dogs in his life to parallel the loss of his mother, Grogan’s book may be the best example of just how powerful the pet relationship is.

A friend recently asked me how sad I will be when my cat dies. I think about that a lot. I sometimes regret that I ever took her in, knowing an end will someday come. Sometimes I wonder if I should get rid of her now, knowing the bond will only grow in the years to come. But that is no way to live. With great love comes great pain. There are too many good moments before we have to deal with the bad.

So why did they publish Grogan’s book, and why did they make it a movie? Because it offers a catharsis for anyone who’s ever lost a pet, but didn’t get the grief out of his system when he should have. Its success merely proves what we’ve all experienced.

Who would have thought that a screen adaptation of a television series over four decades old would feel this fresh, new and exciting?

Director J.J. Abram’s simply-titled Star Trek takes us back to the 23rd century, the days of Kirk, Spock, Bones and the rest of the crew of Gene Roddenberry’s famous U.S.S. Enterprise.

But here, we see how these famous characters come together as young cadets and form a lasting bond of friendship. The special effects and action are strong  in this new chapter in the Trek saga, but it is the character interaction that drives this film and gives it a necessary sense of light-hearted adventurous fun.

As an admitted die-hard Trekkie, I had my doubts about this film. How could new actors hope to fill the shoes of characters that were almost ubiquitous with the people who originally portrayed them? Thankfully, the cast took the roles in their own direction, while still capturing the essence of what made these characters so memorable. The film focuses on the origin of James T. Kirk (Chris Pine) and Mr. Spock (Zachary Quinto). Early scenes of animosity between young cadet Kirk and Spock are some of the highlights of the film, as are subsequent events as they slowly learn to trust one another.

Star Trek had started to grow stale and convoluted over the course of five television series and 10 feature films, bogging down good storytelling with the need to maintain the massive plot continuity of over 100 years of back story.

With a plot involving time-travel, Abrams effectively wipes out the original Trek time-line (without simply acting like it didn’t exist), opening up some interesting scenarios for future films with old characters and cultures from the Star Trek universe. (I’d like to see Kirk go toe to toe with Khan again, or maybe we could see an early appearance by the Borg? What if Khan was assimilated by the Borg? Oh, the possibilities!)

With virtually unknown young actors at the helm (much like in the original series), the new cast brings a sense of vigor and fun to a film that could have been a simple money-grubbing rehash of an aging, but still popular franchise.

But what would a Trek film be without a good villain? Nero (Eric Bana) is a conniving Romulan bent on avenging the destruction of his home world, which he blames on a (future) Ambassador Spock. While Nero doesn’t rank up there with the best villains of Trek, the character more than adequately plays foil to Kirk and the Enterprise.

But not everything is new here. The Enterprise (NCC 1701, with no bloody A, B, C, or D) is back and looks remarkably similar to how we last saw it, a classic design that the filmmakers were wise to leave intact. Called into action on its maiden voyage, the awe factor is back as Kirk is shuttled aboard the magnificent ship, an homage to a similar scene in the franchise’s first feature film, Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

While this film effectively re-invents the franchise (for a broader audience), it doesn’t do so at the expense of the rest of the previous four decades of Trek. Little homages (the death of a red shirt), choice dialogue (set phasers to stun), a simulated training voyage to save the ill-fated Kobayashi Maru, and a role for a time-traveling Ambassador Spock (Leonard Nimoy), along with some well-timed classic musical interludes, tie this film to the overall franchise and brought a smile to this long-time fan’s face.

While I wouldn’t say this film is the best feature in the franchise (The Wrath of Khan still holds that banner), it definitely ranks among the best and opens itself up for a promising series of sequels. I highly recommend it.

Grade: A+

Paul Blart: Mall Cop is a film at odds with itself. It almost seems as if they wrote part of an offbeat romance comedy, then decided they’d rather make a comedic version of Die Hard. The first part works, but the second half just falls flat.

The first half of the movie details the life of awkward, shy, dorky and overweight single parent Paul Blart (Kevin James). His profession; Mall Cop. Yeah, he is one of those wannabe police officers who ride through the mall on Segways (a major star of this film). He tried to get on the police force, but failed the test because his hypoglycemia causes him to pass out at inopportune times if he doesn’t get enough sugar (they go to this well for comic relief frequently). But Blart takes his job as a mall security guard very seriously, even if his co-workers do not.

The man lives with his mother, who helps take care of his daughter. His ex-wife married him for a green card and then took off, leaving Blart with their daughter. He’s lonely and looking for companionship.

And then, cruising with his Segway through the mall (after getting beat up by an angry fat woman at Victoria’s Secret), he meets the mall’s hair extension vendor, Amy (Jayma Mays), also a very odd and off-beat person. It seems to be love at first site.

It is fun to see how Blart tries to woo Amy. We get to watch as he escorts Amy to her car on his Segway (it could get him fired), as he cites completely random facts, as he gets into an eating contest with another fat guy, and as he accidentally gets drunk, makes a fool of himself and ends up falling through a window, ruining their first date.

The set up was there for an entertaining second half of the film as the two fall in love and live happily ever after. It would have made for a quirky, sugary romantic comedy, with a bit of slapstick thrown in for good measure.

But then the Mall Terrorists come into play and the film takes an entirely different turn. These are not just regular crooks, they are like the coolest villains you’ll ever see. Instead of like, you know, walking down flights of stairs, these guys (and gals) would rather do backflips down the bannister for no apparent reason. These villains ride bikes and skateboards through the mall and know karate. They are just so totally cool.

The diabolical leader of this evil gang is none other than (SPOILER ALERT!!) Veck Sims (Keir O’Donnell), trainee security guard that Blart tried to take under his wing. Their plan is to steal some secret number from the mall credit card machines in each of the stores, somehow making them rich (I didn’t get it, either). O’Donnell puts in one of the worst acting performances this side of Hulk Hogan in Mr. Nanny. Let’s put it this way; he ain’t no Hans Gruber. The horrible dialogue, swiss cheese script, and overacting make the second half of this movie almost painful to watch.

Well, anyway, of course Amy gets captured, as do other friends of Blart and, eventually, his daughter (somehow she walks into the back door of the mall even as the swat and police teams have the building surrounded, just in time to get captured).

Our John McClane in this movie is, obviously, Paul Blart, the only man left on the inside. Watch as he waltzes his fat butt around on the Segway and fights off bad guy after bad guy. Listen as Blart farts in air duct and gives away his position to the baddies. Gross out as Blart must eat a sucker off the floor that is covered in dirt to avoiding passing out from hypoglycemia. Laugh at the product placement as Blart dukes it out in several famous mall establishments (most notably, The Sharper Image). Try not to question why the police do nothing to save the civilians (motion sensing lasers are a big deterrent, apparently).

The second half of the film is just a total mess and ruins what could have been a decent movie. A parody of Die Hard might be a good idea for a film, but this attempt botches it badly.

Just like real mall cops, this film is a wannabe.

Rating: D+

Terminator: Salvation, the newest entry into the famous sci-fi franchise, far eclipses previous Terminator installments in the action and special effects department, but in exchange it sacrifices some of the emotional core that distinguished the previous films.

It is, however, one exciting ride and well worth the price of admission.

While the original Terminator films were always set in the present day, this new film is set nine years in the future, the year 2018. The future, apparently, is set and the goal is no longer to prevent the apocalypse and the war with the machines, but rather to fight that war. This future war was glimpsed at before, but to see it brought to life with the size and scope of a real battlefield is a treat and something to which many fans surely have been clamoring.

The film starts off rather mysteriously as a convicted death row felon, Marcus Wright (Sam Worthington), reluctantly agrees to donate his body to Cyberdyne Systems for an experiment in the year 2003.

The next thing you know, it’s the year 2018, the future war is in full swing, and the action commences. John Connor (Christian Bale) is leading the human resistance (although not in charge of it) and he doesn’t like terminators. In fact, he’s got one heck of a grudge (probably something to do with the darn things coming back in time to try and kill him and his mom). The resistance has some kind of trick up its sleeve that may just end that war, though.

Meanwhile, Marcus wakes up in the future, confused and with no memory of anything after his execution, he discovers the world is not what he left it. Wandering through post-apocalyptic Los Angeles, he quickly draws the attention of a burly T-600 (a predecesor to the model of terminator played by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the first three films).  Luckily, a teenager named Kyle Reese (Anton Yelchin) rescues this lost soul from the battered remains of the city (“Come with me if you want to live,” Kyle declares to Marcus in a good bit of foreshadowing – postshadowing? – to the original film).

Salvation, despite a different director (McG), a new setting, and an entirely different style and focus from the original films, still manages to feel like a part of the larger franchise. Linda Hamilton lends her voice as Sarah Connor for narration through the audio tapes that we saw her creating in the first film. John still listens to the same music and enjoys riding motorcycles like he did as a teen. We even get a brief (but really cool) cameo of The Governator himself back as the Terminator. These, along with a few other instances, both help tie this film to the overall franchise and pay homage to what came before (although hearing Bale borrow Arnold’s “I’ll be back” catchphrase was a little strange).

Through a series of action sequences, Kyle Reese ends up getting captured by the machines despite Marcus’s best attempts to save him. After Marcus works his way back to resistance headquarters, John must decide whether or not to trust this new half-human/half-terminator hybrid who truly believes he is human.

In the midst of a organizing a potential war-ending attack on the machines, John must find a way to save Kyle Reese (who holds the key to John’s and humanity’s future survival).

The plot serves its purpose for the most part, although some of the characters are very two-dimensional and a few of the events make little sense. Still, the plot really only serves to set up the action sequences. Worthington, and Yelchin put in good performances and Bale cements his status as the modern action star.

The movie is a thrill-ride. The explosions are plentiful. The terminators are intimidating. The post-nuclear holocaust setting is chilling. The effects and action sequences are top notch and the movie will keep you on the edge of your seat.

Lost in the shuffle, though, are some of the strong, emotional undertones seen in the first two films. Those movies had an intimate setting as the characters ran from and fought off the singular force known as the terminator. Audiences connected emotionally with the characters on a level not found in this film. We could relate with those characters and we felt their pain.

Whereas the original films were primarily non-stop action chase sequences, this new film brings to life an entire battlefield where man faces off against the seemingly-unstoppable machines. The characters and the drama of their situation is lost in the shuffle to some degree. This movie won’t bring a tear to your eye, but it will make you break a sweat.

Much like James Cameron came in and redefined and reinvisioned director Ridley Scott’s Alien franchise with his sequel, Aliens, so too has McG borrowed Cameron’s mythos, honored it, but took it in a whole new direction with a larger scale. The Terminator and Terminator 2: Judgment Day remain great films ( Jonathon Mostow’s Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines was a decent film, but not close to the level of the other films). Salvation feels fresh and new, but not inferior to the other entries (nor repetitive, as was the case with T3).

Terminator: Salvation is a great film in its own right, just in a different way from its predecessors.

For any sci-fi, action, or Terminator fans, this is a must-see movie.

Grade: A