The Tooth Fairy - **

As lame as this film is a lot of the time, it could have been a lot worse. It's a routine execution of a potentially interesting premise: a former hockey star stuck in the minor leagues is sentenced to be a tooth fairy after he is caught crushing kids' dreams.

Though I actually kind of enjoyed it, I have to say that for a film about encouraging imagination and dreaming, The Tooth Fairy is about as devoid of creativity as they come. The fairy court or whatever it's actually called, looks and runs exactly like it would on earth: just a bunch of plain desks in an office setting that was phoned in by the set designer and bathed in white light (so we know that angels and stuff live there). That said, the film has an awkward charm that almost makes you question who the real target audience is, from a cameo by Family Guy's Seth MacFarlane as a drug-dealer for angels and fairies, peddling pixie dust an the like (almost unforgivable missed opportunity: angeldust) to a series of Billy Crystal scenes where he plays a Q-like character for fairies, demonstrating James Bond-like gadgets for troublesome fairy situations. Every moment Billy Crystal is on the screen is weird and even a little creepy, but in the best way.

Extraordinary Measures - *1/2

As I have mentioned in previous posts, we started this blog about a month and a half late. So I have been trying to catch up on all of the movies that I have seen in the order that I saw them. I sat down a few minutes ago with the intention of writing about To Save a Life, which was a miserable piece of trash that I did not feel like thinking about, so I decided I'd go to the next film I saw after that. Upon consulting my film log for this year I realized that I saw Extraordinary Measures, which I had completely forgotten. For the past two weeks I have been thinking back on everything I've seen (except, apparently, Extraordinary Measures) and making notes on what to say about them, but not once did I remember this one until about four minutes ago. With that in mind, here are some of the things I do remember:

It felt like it was made for TV. It's a hokey, sappy story of a group of people banding together to cure disabled kids. Along the way they go up against the forces of evil corporate types that just want to make money off of the cure.

If it hadn't been based on a true story I would have been rooting for the kid to die.

I think Harrison Ford was in it. Yup, imdb says he was, but it doesn't state that this was the bored, old-age Harrison Ford who will say yes to anything, the Harrison Ford that will make you beg for the mediocrity of Indiana Jones 5.

I don't think I can remember the last time that I decided it was more important to go to the bathroom than actually watch the movie in its entirety.

When I went to the bathroom I was confident I wasn't missing anything.

The best part of the film was when I tweeted that a kid in a wheelchair had just bowled a strike, and a friend replied that Larry King would probably call it the best sports film of the year.

I checked late and Larry King did not actually make that comment, but it does sound like something he would say.

In the end they found the cure and the kid survived, and despite the fact that it was a true story, I felt that the filmmakers should have taken dramatic license and found the cure one minute too late.

Okay, maybe kids dying is a little harsh, but somebody should have died.

No, I take that back, I wish the kid would have died. This maudlin little story didn't have enough inspirational montages for the happy ending to be satisfying. It needed a little struggle, a little drama, or some shock moments. They could have at least had a moment where they thought the kid was dead, and had that shot of the heart monitor flat-lining, and then show Brendan Fraser and Harry Ford looking on in disbelief for a couple of seconds before they saw a couple of blips. But no, everyone was always safe. Kill the kid, I add a star to the rating.

Youth in Revolt - **

This is a one joke movie, with not enough of the joke. Michael Cera plays George-Michael Bluth Paulie Bleeker Nick Twisp, a boring loser who invents an alter-ego, Francois Dillinger so that he can impress a girl that he is in love with. Unfortunately Francois enters the film too late and isn't in it enough to make me want to like the parts he's absent from.

I saw this film about a month ago and can't remember any of the details, good or bad. And that's probably the most accurate way to describe the film: wholly forgettable.

The Spy Next Door - **1/2

Watching this film made me discover that the secret to making a great tough-guy-takes-care-of-children film is casting an actor that has trouble speaking English. And who better to cast than Jackie Chan, the new master of botching the English language? Watching Chan fumble over our language is one of the purest delights in modern cinema. Okay, maybe that's taking a little too far, but it's pretty fantastic, and I'm thoroughly convinced that the writers of this film were aware of that fact; why else would they burden Mr. Chan with the task of saying a word like "Frankenstein?" The film is worth watching for that one line.

You know the story: action star is entrusted with the care of children who don't like him. Hijinks ensue. While this is no Kindergarten Cop, The Spy Next Door actually does have a fair amount of charm. I went into this thing with a couple of derisory tweets already formulating in my head, but was surprised to find that Jackie Chan's tender side kind of makes this film work. As silly as it may sound, a scene in which Chan fights off a slew of bad guys while juggling a little girl's pet turtle is particularly entertaining. But silliness is what makes this film go: the villains are goofy, the plot is nonsensical, and it features a kid in third grade who accidentally downloads top-secret CIA documents onto his iPod, mistaking them for bootleg shows of an obscure German metal band. Yup, that really happened.

But don't get me wrong, this isn't a brilliant film. Even quite a bit of the aforementioned silliness doesn't exactly land, and there's plenty of awkwardness throughout, like when the kids' mother bakes them cookies, and then pretty much admonishes them for existing, because she can't pursue her own happiness with men that they don't like. And while one of the kids is kind of adorable, I sometimes felt like passing through the screen and rubbing Metal Kid's face in a pile of dirt. That said, I think that enough of this film works, and the stuff that doesn't is pretty harmless, and this film inspires more laughs than it ever should have, even if you're sometimes (a lot of the time) laughing at it. I wasn't always sure exactly why I was laughing, but the fact that I was laughing at all made this a pretty nice surprise.

Leap Year - *

What this film wants to be: cute, fun, lovable, friendly, harmless, funny, romantic, amusing, enjoyable, beautiful, witty, enjoyable, diverting, etc.

What this film is: insufferable.

Daybreakers - **

It is a new decade and I am full of hope. Hope that this film caps off this bullshit cinematic vampire infestation we've been sitting through for the last year or two. Hope that this is the last movie soaked in that somber blue Underworld Trilogy/Tim Burton in the 2000s color tone. Hope that this is the last time I have to sit through an Ethan Hawke film wondering how the hell one of the best actors around gets stuck in trash like Daybreakers.

The film follows Hawke's vampire scientist as he tries to find a cure for vampirism and bring mankin---oh, who the fuck cares? You've already seen it a thousand times. This incarnation is a horror film, or a suspense thriller, vampire drama, silly cartoonish comedy, apocalyptic vision of the future, or something else entirely. It succeeds intermittently in some of these categories, mostly in the silliness, though I think that is unintentional. The scariest part: watching a weird homeless vampire sneak up on a rich vampire couple and creep them out. The funniest part: also that weird homeless vampire. The goofiest/most tragic part: that Willem Dafoe, another respectable actor, plays the "They call me Elvis"-human-turned-vampire-turned-back-human-again-through-a-bizarre-coincidence-that-he-and-Hawke-try-to-replicate-for-the-rest-of-the-film character. While he almost makes it work, it is just so outrageous and silly for a film that wants to be so somber, with its Sleepy Hollow blue tone look and its reluctant, do-gooder vampires stuck in a corrupt, blood-thirsty (haha) world. The result is just kind of lifeless (haha, vampires are dead).

It's not my intention to simply complain about a good cast in a moronic film, but how can I not? Watching Daybreakers is watching these fine actors (Sam Neill is also dragged into this mess) waste their talent in a film directed by guys who would rather spend time animating their eyes yellow than develop their characters. Silly flourishes like these are abundant in this film, like showing a banner with Uncle Sam wanting you... to capture humans, or vampires taking blood in their coffee instead of cream and sugar. These things could have been interesting, or at least entertaining had they been used with any subtlety. But instead we get shots of the sub-walk, which has replaced the subway system (vampires cannot be exposed to daylight).

So why did I not totally hate this film? Maybe it's because there was enough silliness and cheap thrills to get me through, like a cartoonish exploding head or cars decked out with light-resistant panels and cameras on top so that vampires can drive during the day; maybe it's because I snuck into The Blind Side directly after and saw how bad films can really be; or maybe it's because I am filled with more hopes, like the hope that Sam Neill will go back to doing genre films with masters like Steven Spielberg or John Carpenter, instead of the Sperig Brothers.