Quick Review: Predators

If you're familiar with the "Predator" movies, you know that the third and fourth were crossovers with the "Alien" franchise. The only "Predator" movie I've seen is the original, which is briefly alluded to in "Predators," the new and fairly successful reboot of the franchise. The others were ignored, and from what I've read that's a good thing. This new one starts with Adrien Brody waking up to find himself in mid-air, plummeting into a jungle. He opens a parachute and manages to survive the fall, but he has no idea where he is or how he got there. Neither do the others he meets, who have arrived in similar fashion (including Alice Braga, Danny Trejo and Topher Grace -- and who would have imagined both Adrien Brody and Topher Grace in this type of movie?). All except Grace's character (a doctor) are revealed to have some sort of military background or expertise in killing. They learn, by reaching higher ground and seeing an alien sky, that they're no longer on Earth. Then they're attacked by creatures. Brody's character figures, correctly, that these creatures were used to flush them out of hiding to be hunted down and killed. (Those Predators are pretty smart.) The explanation for what is going on, as it's eventually spelled out, is interesting enough and at one point there's a conflict over whether to abandon an injured party or risk everyone being killed. And, of course, there's plenty of action and gore. Without spoiling it, let's just say that they're set up for at least one sequel. My grade: B.

Quick Reviews: Killers, Splice

It's time to catch up with the movies. I'm not sure if these are still in the theaters at this point, so they may not be helpful if you're trying to pick a movie to see this weekend. Sorry. Regular readers know I sometimes procrastinate with these. And this is a case where these two different films arrive at the same grade for different reasons.

I had low expectations for "Killers." First, the female lead is Katherine Heigl, who followed up her success on TV's "Grey's Anatomy" and the big-screen "Knocked Up" with mediocrity like "27 Dresses" and "The Ugly Truth." Here she plays Jen, a careful, cautious, not remotely spontaneous woman who is on vacation in France with her parents (the fabulous Catherine O'Hara and the not-bad Tom Selleck), when she meets Spencer (Ashton Kutcher), who asks her to dinner. Unbeknownst to her, he's a contract killer for some secret government agency (right after they meet he blows up a boat. This is the second reason for my low expectations: I can't buy Ashton Kutcher as a super-spy/killing machine type. Anyway, they fall in love rather quickly, he proposes, she accepts, and he quits his contract-killer job. Cut to three years later, they're settled into a nice house and a normal life when his old life comes back to haunt him, and it puts the couple's lives in jeopardy. I enjoyed it more than I expected, especially seeing the people that actually are out to kill Spencer. My grade: B-minus.