Safety Not Guaranteed (2012)

Starring Aubrey Plaza, Jake M. Johnson, Karan Soni and Mark Duplass

Written by Derek Connolly

Directed by Colin Trevorrow

Safety Not Guaranteed, the newest film from Alliance Films and produced by the Duplass Brothers, may end up being one of the hardest movies to categorize this year. Part Sci-fi time travel opus, part romantic comedy, part melodrama and all oddball quirky comedy, Safety rides a lot on the performances of its leads. But is it one of those films that can get buried under its own quirkiness?

We start off with Darius (Plaza) completely blowing a job interview for a job she clearly has no motivation to get, but since she is an unpaid intern at Seattle Magazine she really just wants the money. During a pitch meeting at the magazine Jeff (Johnson) pitches the idea of an article based on a strange classified ad he…

Lovely Molly (2011)

Starring Gretchen Lodge, Johnny Lewis and Alexandra Holden

Written by Eduardo Sanchez and Jamie Nash

Directed by Eduardo Sanchez

In 1999 Eduardo Sanchez practically invented the now booming “found-footage” style of filmmaking with his massively successful Blair Witch Project. Now he’s back with another supernatural thriller that, while using some of the found-footage style of filmmaking, uses a more linear style and documents the rapid descent into madness of its lead character.

Lovely Molly starts with a montage of the wedding of Molly (Lodge) and Tim (Lewis) and them moving into the family house. Shortly after this sequence we are witness to the first incident that happens. Through this we discover that the couple have been living there three months. Tim is a long-haul driver, gone for stretches at a time, and the house as it turns out was the scene of the demise of Molly’s father…

Prometheus (2012)

Starring Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Guy Pearce, Idris Elba, Loan Marshall-Green, Sean Harris, Rafe Spall and Charlize Theron

Written by Jon Spaihts and Damon Lindelof

Directed by Ridley Scott

Much has been made over Ridley Scott’s return to Science Fiction, and more specifically to the universe he launched with 1979’s seminal sci-fi/horror masterpiece, Alien. Just as much hype has been made by Scott himself, downplaying the whole connection to the Alien franchise, and as it turns out, rightfully so. Prometheus is very heavy on the SCI part of the equation and very light on everything else as Scott goes completely cerebral for a film clearly inspired more by 2001: A Space Odyssey than his own Alien.

Prometheus begins with a sprawling montage of beautiful vistas and landscapes that we soon discover are not earth, but a foreign planet similar to our own. A very humanoid looking, extremely pale…

Piranha 3DD (2012)

Starring Danielle Panabaker, Matt Bush, David Koechner, Chris Zylka, Christopher Lloyd, Gary Busey and Ving Rhames

Written by Patrick Melton, Marcus Dunstan and Joel Soisson

Directed by John Gulager

In 2010 director Alexandre Aja delivered a campy, fun-filled, bombastic remake of the 1978 film Piranha. The film has lived on as a guilty pleasure of many, including myself, with its no holds barred and severe tongue-in-cheek attitude. As Alliance films delivers a sequel this weekend the only question that remains is can they recreate the same mix of humor and campy horror again?

Piranha 3DD starts with a recap of the first film’s events, via a news report styled montage, which explains what has happened to Lake Victoria since the end of the first film. After a short diversion, in which Gary Busey delivers his two days of work on the film as a doomed hillbilly, we…

Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)

Starring Charlize Theron, Kristen Stewart, Chris Hemsworth, Sam Claflin and Bob Hoskins

Written by Evan Daugherty, John Lee Hancock and Hossien Amini

Directed by Rupert Sanders

2012’s second reinvention of the classic Snow White tale, Snow White and the Huntsman, arrives in theaters this week hoping it can knock Will Smith out of the top slot. The movie unabashedly borrows from a multitude of sources, a more apt title may be Snow White and the Neverending Story of the Fellowship of the Chronicles of Narnia, but this is not necessarily something to be reviled as it produces a movie much better than my expectations.

We start with a Hemsworth narrated prologue in which we hear the origins of this version’s Snow White character. Snow White is a princess whose mother has passed away while she was still a child. Her father, the King, is…