We recommend:
HOLLYWOODLAND
See Film feature. (Countywide)
THIS FILM IS NOT YET RATED
See Film feature. (Edwards University, Irvine)
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THE COVENANT
Four descendants (Steven Strait, Taylor Kitsch, Toby Hemingway and Chace Crawford) from the original 1692 Ipswich colony of Massachusetts are endowed with an unexplained power with unclear parameters (i.e., they have the ability to do anything, except when they don't). But wait . . . there were actually five founding families of Ipswich, and now the fifth descendant (Sebastian Stan) is back, and he's pissed, because, well, the movie kinda needs a villain and he'll do. The idiocy and sheer laziness of the whole concept ought to be the sort of thing director Renny Harlin (Deep Blue Sea) could make into glorious cinematic cheese, and occasionally he cuts loose with a swarm of CGI spiders or a final battle that resembles nothing more than a live action game of Street Fighter II. But he's hamstrung by the PG-13 rating and the budget, and way too much time is wasted on scenes of the generic-looking cast mumbling in monotone under blue lights. (Luke Y. Thompson) (Countywide)
THE PROTECTOR
Just as Arnold Schwarzenegger passed the action-hero torch to The Rock in The Rundown, Muay Thai star Tony Jaa gets the nod here from a similarly qualified veteran making an unbilled cameo. Jaa has the skills for the job, and shows them off in numerous fight scenes; it's just a shame that the movie he's in is barely acceptable in any other respect. The plot (if we may even call it that) sees Jaa traveling to Australia in order to bust a Sydney-based Thai crime syndicate whose leader (Jin Xing) kidnaps elephants in order to bedeck their skeletons with jewels and become one with their spirits—or something like that. Edited for the U.S. with atrocious partial dubbing and an incongruous new score by the RZA, the movie might be a waste if not for the four-minute, single-take restaurant fight scene, and the glorious final sequence, which does for breaking bones what Kill Bill: Vol. 1 did for amputations. Best to wait for DVD so you can skip directly to it. (Luke Y. Thompson) (Countywide)
