BATMAN: ASSAULT ON ARKHAM [2014]

Batsy plays second fiddle to the Suicide Squad in director Jay Olivia & Ethan Spaulding's animated film Assault on Arkham.
Ol' Amanda Waller sends the Squad out on a mission to hunt down The Riddler, imprisoned in Arkham Asylum, who is holding onto a flash drive that contains some very important secret information.
I normally like me a heist film but somehow this one comes off as predictable, boring and easily forgettable.  It misses the opportunity to explore some interesting character conflicts and instead it blindly rushes into the action and mayhem without any reason to give a shit.  Is it better than the recent live-action Squad film?  No.  Not really.  It's about the same with even less flare.

2 bullet-proof prison cells out of 5

SUBURBAN GOTHIC [2014]

Director Richard Bates, Jr.'s sophomore effort comes in the form of a piece of shit called Suburban Gothic.
 This "zany" horror-comedy tells the tale of a lost in life twenty-something who moves back into his parent's house to discover there's angry dead folk floating around.  While leads Matthew Gray Gubler & Kat Dennings have enough personality to make them a delight to watch, the film itself is a mish-mash of unevenly timed humor, embarrassingly horrible CGI FX and moments of contrived weirdness, many of which seemed sloppily improvised.  With a pack of cameos from cult-film staples like John Waters, The Soska Sisters and Jeffrey Combs the film has it's audience built-in however they should prepare to be disappointed.

1 musical toenail out of 5

LIFE AFTER BETH [2014]

I ♥ Huckabees writer Jeff Baena's directorial debut, Life After Beth is a disjointed zom-rom-com that sputters out a few moments of promise.
Aubrey Plaza is grotesquely playful as Beth, a girl who has no memory of returning from the dead and wonders why her family won't let her lead a normal life.  Dane DeHaan is horribly miscast as her boyfriend that stumbles around while trying to pick up where they left before her "incident" without letting her in on the whole six feet under thing.
While it's nice to see a zombie movie shuffle the whole "epidemic" thing far into the background and instead focus on the character relationships, there's simply nothing imaginative or really funny here, apart from a few good chuckles.   

2 smooth jazz tunes for the recently deceased out of 5

500 Days of Summer (2009)

A Rom Com with a difference; the difference being it’s really good. Its greatest achievement is in successfully recognising the clichés that have dogged the genre for so long, playing around with them, using them when necessary and then tossing them by the wayside on occasion to create something fresh and engaging. It’s quirky but never irritating. I don't hate Rom Coms, but I rarely enjoy them as much as I did 500 Days.

4 non-linear narratives out of 5