Friday the 13th

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Directed by: Marcus Nispel

The Skinny: The ultimate 80's kill machine is back in an attempt to reboot the classic horror franchise. It's the same original formula with a new paint job: morally-questionable college students party near a spooky lake, then lose their sobriety, pants, and heads. But the star is Jason Voorhees, momma's boy, home-schooled butcher, and backwoods puritan.

The Good: This is not a sequel, which is a good thing in that the last time we saw Jason, he had been thawed out on a spaceship hundreds of years in the future. The best thing about this reboot is that the creators take care to be respectful of the original formula. The Friday the 13th movies were the perfect flicks for the Reagan Years. They served as cautionary morality tales in which hippie free love and casual drug abuse directly resulted in a huge, hulking dude skewering you to a tree with a pitchfork. This ethic is seeded throughout this new incarnation. For straight-up horror genre snobs, Friday the 13th is treated respectfully, and there are plenty of winks and references to past sequels. For normal people, there are enough fake-outs, jugular spurts, and screaming hotties to offer a pleasant jolt.

The Bad: It's Friday the 13th—if you find yourself in the theater seeing Friday the 13th, and you say, halfway through, "This is Friday the 13th! I hate it!" then screw yourself. This is 90 minutes of Real World cast members running into machetes. The worse that can be said about this flick is, even though it's first 15 minutes are gangbusters, the movie feels long at times. Longer than a movie that is an hour and a half should feel. And the kill scenes, the bread and butter of the genre, lack any kind of visceral impact. They neither disturb nor gross out, leaving a trail of anti-climaxes.

Harold and Kumar Die, Horribly: One lesson learned from this new Friday the 13th: do not gank J-Voo's weed.

Theater, DVD, or TNT in Five Years: If you're a horror junkie, see it in the theater. The rest can wait till cable to enjoy a reboot that verges on homage.

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The International

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Directed by Tom Tykwer

The Skinny: When a tubby, narratively expendable Interpol agent is assassinated while trying to flip an informant, his partner (Clive Owen) and a New York district attorney (Naomi Watts) embark on a multinational pursuit for truth and retribution. Their chase exposes an intricate plot by one of the world's largest banks to control the Third World arms trade and, in turn, the resultant debt left by the conflicts it serves.

The Good: When they say "international," they ain't kidding. The plot takes viewers to Germany, Luxembourg, Italy, Turkey and the U.S. as Owen and Watts uncover more clues, bodies and sage proverbs in working their way up the ladder of global intrigue and moral complexity. Based loosely on the real-life machinations of the now-defunct Bank of Credit and Commerce International, the movie addresses the suspected role of multinational corporations in shaping global policy and the eventual pointlessness of trying to fight them.

The Bad: As our nation's current financial fitness proves, the average person is hardly aware of the concept of debt management, let alone its geo-political ramifications, so making this elusive principal the villain might prove academic (i.e., borrrrring…) for some. But reality is usually more mundane than fiction, and the scheme diagrammed in The International more realistically imagines the kinds of conspiracies that stir the drink of global discord.

Fuck Art, Let's Shoot: All of the movie's action is concentrated in a single scene, but it's epic. Set in Manhattan's Guggenheim Museum, Owen's mid-movie showdown with the bank's hired guns ends in the wholesale perforation of a life-size replica of New York's famed fine art gallery.

Theater, DVD or TNT in five years? You won't gain much by watching this on a big screen, but if you're going to the movies anyway, it beats the tucked-in, wizened dick off of He's Just Not That Into You.

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Confessions of a Shopaholic

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Directed by: P.J. Hogan

The Skinny: Based on a Cosmo charticle posing as a novel, Shopaholic stars Isla Fisher as a Manhattanite living way above her means. Oh, not because of the economic crisis or her inability to make a livable wage due to her deficient education—she just can't resist a sale! Ready to join her on her wacky misadventures?

The Good: Fisher is adorable, but we wish director Hogan didn't feel the need to have every single line of dialogue, regardless of who's speaking, SHOUTED AT TOP VOLUME. Oh, and if Fisher had a real person to play, the movie might be more enjoyable.

The Bad: Shopaholic exists in a world where crippling debt is cute, magazine editors live a glamorous lifestyle of non-stop black tie events, and corporate publishing giants start new magazine titles on a whim. In other words, this is slightly below Hogwarts on the scale of believability. Also, check out the official site: It's a BlueFly.com link. So a movie about a moron who can't handle her money is encouraging other morons to mishandle their money. Any wonder our country is collapsing? But, hey, the movie might have managed to salvage something if it were a fraction as funny as it thinks it is.

DN-Nay: In what kind of twisted genetic lab does the mating of John Goodman and Joan Cusack produce Isla Fisher? We have a feeling the actual offspring would resemble Steve Buscemi. Regardless of sex.

Theater, DVD, or TNT in Five Years? Know how we sometimes suggest chick flicks you can tolerate? This is not one of those.