RED DOG [2011]

Kill Me Three Times director Kriv Stenders brings us Red Dog, a lovable true story about an even more lovable canine.
A legend for his lone travels through Western Australia's Pilbara region in the 70's, Red Dog finds himself adopted by a ragtag group of miner's in a broken down community that needs the love a dog to help bring them together again.
Sappy right?  Well, yeah.  And at times it's pretty far-fetched but it's brought to life with a huge heart that is hard to resist.  It's also pretty funny too but be warned prudish North Americans, it is Trans-Tasman humor which isn't always welcome at the dinner table.  I never forgave Marley & Me for what it inevitably did to my still-broken heart but this one is easier to love because it actually is a good movie unlike the former.

3½ Red Cats out of 5

ARQ [2016]

Orphan Black alumni Tony Elliot writes and directs ARQ, a low-budget sci-fi thriller that's left to rely more on it's storytelling than it's flash.
Set in the near future, a young couple wakes up in a time loop that's set seconds before the beginning of a violent home invasion begins.
Time loops are nothing new to the sci-fi genre but it's such a strong concept folks are quick to make comparisons to the very few other stories that have done it before.  With that in mind it makes it easier to sit back and enjoy the story as it thickens and becomes more suspenseful through all it's twists 'n turns.  It's not too brainy but it isn't dumb-downed either, it's simply wonderful Sunday afternoon comfort food for those who enjoyed The Outer Limits.

3 apples out of 5

SHUTTER [2008]

Japanese director Masayuki Ochiai gives a stab at remaking the Thai garden variety ghost story film Shutter for American audiences.
Josh Jackson & Rachael Taylor play young newlyweds who move to Japan to further his career as a fashion photographer and weird things start happening when the ghostly image of Ju-On's Megumi Okina appears in all his work.
Ochiai has never been particularly good at telling a great story but he certainly knows how to set up creepy atmosphere and that's where this film excels compared to the original.  What the film does right it does a great deal better than it's source material and what it gets wrong is worse than wearing grandma's soiled undies.  What your tolerance is for tired retreads of scary Asian ghost girl remakes will depend on how you feel about this lost in the mix film.

2 haunted honeymoons out of 5

TRANSFORMERS [2007]

Huge explosions director Michael Bay aims for the hearts of 12-year old boys everywhere with the big-screen live-action adaptation of beloved '80's Hasbro toy line Transformers.
In the first installment of the film series, Earth becomes the battlefront for two giant robotic races known as the Autobots and the Decepticons.
There's a decently thematic Spielbergian story here that gets trampled all over with Bay's love of the military, juvenile bullyish jokes and shiny things that go boom.  There's supposed to be a lot of emotion in this story but it's hard to feel anything when clearly Bay knows how to speak better from his fists than from his heart.  Still keeping it somewhat simple, compared to the stupidly cluttered films that come after it, this one manages to muster up some mindless excitement and wide-eyed special effects thrills that scrapes the bottom of the guilty pleasures barrel.

2½ spectacles out of 5

THE LOFT [2014]

Belgian director Erik Van Looy remakes his 2008 mystery The Loft for American audiences with very mixed results.
5 married men share a downtown loft to discreetly bring their mistresses to but things fall apart when they discover an unknown dead women there and begin suspecting each other.
At it's core, the film could have been a seedy thriller filled with over-the-top twists 'n turns that capture the audience no matter how unbelievable it gets.  Instead it's filled with terrible acting, clunky pacing, lack of suspense and characters so unlikable you're hard up for anything to grasp onto.  In the end we get a despicable albeit beautifully shot Hitchcockian wannabe that's better left forgotten.

2 keys out of 5

SEE NO EVIL [2006]

WWE wrestler Kane makes his "acting" debut in porn director Gregory Dark's paint-by-numbers horror film See No Evil.
A hulking dim-witted murderer picks off a group of snotty American teenagers, each representing one of the seven sins, all of whom are played a pack of Aussies doing a dismal job at hiding their accents.   If it's mindless brutal violence you're looking for then you might find some interest in this.  If it's anything remotely scary or surprising then you're better off eating a box of laxatives and wait to see where that takes you.  It's troubled by jarring edits, out-of-date camera tricks and shaky zooms that annoy more than excite.  There's a few moments that caught my interest as a gorehound but the rest left much to be desired.

1 tasty telephone out of 5

THE DARKEST HOUR [2011]

Even in director Chris Gorak's alien invasion thriller The Darkest Hour, which takes place entirely in Russia, do the Americans come out on top.

With Timur Bekmambetov producing we're guaranteed some effectively imaginative moments and some haunting imagery that's reminiscent of 28 Days Later but there's nothing really of substance beyond that.  The characters are paper-thin so that the suspense & thrills are absent past the 20 minute mark. With a little bit more character development and additional thought put into the potential danger it might have been a better than average popcorn thriller.

2 Старбакс out of 5