MY GIRLFRIEND’S BOYFRIEND
Jesse meets Ethan. Ethan’s a little geeky, but luckily he’s the cute kind of geeky where he’s all “aw shucks” and witty and goofy-cute what with his flannel shirts and skinny ties but not super confident, and not the kind of geeky where he watches science fiction or reads comic books or doesn’t wear jeans or is generally socially stunted, because those guys can only hack computers and be comic relief. He’s a writer, but he’s struggling, but luckily a beautiful waitress gives him the inspiration that what the fuck that never actually happens. Writing is really, really hard. Inspiration doesn’t exist. There are kernels of ideas, and then there’s a lot of work and frustration and you think you’re the worst person of all time. Meeting the girl of your dreams doesn’t set off a firestorm of creativity; when you meet the girl of your dreams, you stop writing, because congratulations, you’re done. When you break up, that’s when you get writing. But. They go mini-golfing! Quirky!

But, you guys, uh oh! Jesse meets Troy. Troy is handsome, composed, assertive, romantic, financially stable, and an incredibly reasonable choice. “I think secrets are an important part of every relationship,” he states remarkably confidently over voice over, “Wouldn’t you agree?” I think it would be entirely impossible at this point to predict which guy she ends up with by the end (and she’ll end up with a guy, of course. Otherwise, how can she be a self-actualized woman?). Nobody at all could possibly come up with any reasonable guess as to which she’ll choose. It’s one hundo percent mystery. Incidentally, “One Hundo Percent Mystery” is the tagline of my new fragrance, Misanthropic by Dan Abromowitz.

By entertaining both of their romantic advances simultaneously, Jesse shows herself to be a strong and independent woman who can make her own choices. This last sentence is predicated on “strong and independent woman who can make her own choices” being a synonym for “duplicitous and self-absorbed bitch who thrives on attention and manages to slide by behind her attractive façade.”

TWO STARS DUE TO WHAT A WITTY TITLE MY INTEREST IS INSTANTLY PIQUED.

SALT
During what seems like an ordinary interrogation, a Russian defector tells tough-as-nails agent Angelina “There Are Serious Lines On My Face All Of A Sudden” Jolie that a Russian agent is going to assassinate the president. Not only that, she is that agent. Here is the actual dialogue:

RUSSIAN GENTLEMAN: The name of the agent is Evelyn Salt.

A GROTESQUELY LARGE PAIR OF LIPS WITH A HUMAN BODY ATTACHED: My name is Evelyn Salt.

RUSSIAN GENTLEMAN: Then you are a Russian spy.

The logic in that exchange is so tight that you’d need to employ children in order to crawl in there and mine the thick vein of screenwriting gold that it so clearly is. If her fellow agents were like, no wait, that’s incredibly dumb and probably impossible, we wouldn’t have a movie, but luckily they go apeshit, allowing her to do things like dye her hair and kick dudes through windows and leap from things onto other things despite how implausible it might seem that she would manage to land on that second thing. There’s also all of the obligatory action movie trailer filler bullshit, like Angelina Jolie not even fl inching while she detonates something while walking, or a fl ash of Angelina Jolie in jean cutoffs making out with a guy. Before, I didn’t want to see the movie, but now that I see that there’ll be a scene involving jean cutoffs, I changed my mind.

There is so much broken glass in this trailer that you’d think you were watching the trailer for Mirrors or I’m The Mayor Of Brokenglassopolis. But you’re not. You’re watching the trailer for Minority Report. Then, at the end, she pulls her own face off. What.

THREE STARS DUE TO JORT MANIA.

THE BLACK WATERS OF ECHO’S POND
If I had a shred of dignity for every word too many in that title, I would have enough to distribute to the excessively multi-racial cast, the poor things. Even though this trailer ostensibly has a bunch of things I like (black guys with chainsaws, girls making out, wheelbarrows), it has many, many more that I don’t. Let’s list them!

1.) An ancient evil that was buried. Oh no, it’s the mummy lo pan megatron pinhead khan the smoke monster rita repulsa.

2.) The old-timey filter on iMovie. It’s somehow worse than using the font Papyrus, but only by a little bit.

3.) A group of sex-charged teenagers, each with a different hairstyle.

4.) “It’s like Monopoly, you roll the dice and move a space.” Oh, now I get it.

5.) The way the blonde girl says, “Says here you have to roll again.” Based on that line alone, you can tell that she’s blown a guy she met on Craigslist in his car for John Mayer tickets.

6.) The fact that it’s obvious that the slightly mousey brunette is going to survive.

7.) The way the Hispanic guy hums when he’s getting ready to roll the dice. You just know that he does that every time it’s his turn as some kind of ritual. Shut the fuck up and roll, Miguel.

8.) The sped-up footage of the blonde girl running. Way to edit!

9.) A hillbilly with a shotgun. Cultural awareness!

10.) The way the blonde girl says, “It’s my lucky day!”Based on that line alone, you can tell that in seventh grade she gave her senior-in-high-school boyfriend a handjob in the back of a showing of Scary Movie 2 and he broke up with her as they walked out of the theater.

11.) The fact that, while the screen says, “COMING TO THEATERS SOON,” the voiceover just says, “Coming soon.” God damn it.

Let’s be honest: If you were a movie executive, and someone came into your office and said, “I want to make a cross between Jumanji and The Evil Dead,” you’d throw hundreds of pens at them in hopes that two would miraculously gouge out their eyes without you having to touch them.

ONE STAR DUE TO GANON THE NECRONOMICON AKU C’THULU THE FLOOD THAT DRAGON GUY FROM JACKIE CHAN ADVENTURES.

IN MY SLEEP
Blonde Chiseled Jaw Guy is a parasomniac. This means that he can do the following while he’s sleepwalking: “Just about anything:” sleep with his best friend’s girlfriend, murder somebody, smash a camera, pick the lock on handcuffs, drive, wear bright yellow boxer-briefs, party it up in a club, get dirt on his feet, wear what appear to be mylar shorts, and get set up. The trailer promises that he will do all of these things, and maybe even more. Here’s the thing: parasomnia is actually just generally the category of sleeping disorders, including sleepwalking, and none of these things can reasonably be expected to happen. The fact that BCJG can do all of these means that he is some kind of shitty, shitty superhero.

The teetering, Babel-like skyscraper of bullshit that In My Sleep constructs as its premise is buttressed by music extracted from the same well stiflingly melodramatic syrup that Tommy Wiseau frequents. Whether or not he’s guilty couldn’t mean less to me. I’d only watch this movie to find out what’s going on in this scene where BCJG’s swimming in a pool with a knife between his teeth, looking like a goddamn G.I. Joe.

Morning Star Pictures wants us to believe this is some kind of tense psychological thriller. I’m pretty sure it’s just a loosely connected string of scenes where people ask if he did it and he says he doesn’t know, with some scenes thrown in where he asks people if they think he did it, and then at the end it turns out his mother or something did it.

Also Tony Hale is in it, I guess. A movie like this could really arrest the development of his career, Maeby.

Here are some suggestions for titles of reviews of In My Sleep: “In My Sleep A Snoozefest,” “Leave Sleepwalkers Alone,” “You Snooze, You Lose,” “I Wish I Was A Parasomniac So That When I Fell Asleep During The Movie I Would Leave The Theater, Too, While I Was Still Asleep.”

ZERO STARS DUE TO WHEN I WAS ON OUTDOOR ACTION THERE WAS THIS KID IN MY GROUP WHO WOULD DO TOTALLY CRAZY THINGS WHILE HE WAS STILL ASLEEP, LIKE PUT ON HIS SOCKS AND SHOES AND WALK AROUND, YELL IN ROMANIAN, PACK UP HIS SLEEPING BAG AND PAD, AND KNOCK OVER ONE OF THE TARP POLES. SHIT WAS CRAZY. ANYWAYS, THOUGH, THIS MOVIE BLOWS.