"Three Days to Kill" 2 stars out of 4 (C-)

When it rains, it pours. For some reason, Hollywood really wants to remind us that Kevin Costner exists. Now I'm not in the camp of people who dislike Costner. I grew up with "The Untouchables", "Robin Hood Prince of Thieves", and "Field of Dreams". There will always be a nostalgia factor to Costner. Costner will never be thought of as a good actor. His movies were good and he was simply in them. The criticism I've often heard is that Costner is simply the same in every movie. His Jim Garrison in "JFK" is just Crash Davis from "Bull Durham" who just got off a time machine. His Postman in "The Postman" was just the same as... never mind. Nobody saw that movie anyway. It can't be said that film-goers missed Costner but his absence was noticeable. Much like movies about asteroids, volcanoes, or the White House being attacked, Hollywood loves to overdo things. Costner was in "Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit", the upcoming "Draft Day", and his most recent film "Three Days to Kill". "Three Days to Kill", as most Costner films go, is not helped nor hindered by his acting. The film is instead hurt by a repetitive plot filled with mediocre action scenes that are interrupted by awkward although not unpleasant comedy. You walk out of "Three Days to Kill" simply shrugging your shoulders, no doubt forgetting the mess you just saw.

Ethan Renner (Kevin Costner) is a Secret Service Agent close to his retirement. His retirement will come from an unexpected sickness that gives him only a few days to live. He decides to spend his days in Paris with his estranged wife Christine (Connie Nielsen) and teenager daughter Zoey (Hailee Steinfeld). Renner's bonding time is interrupted when he runs into agent Vivi Delay (Amber Heard) who offers him an experimental drug that may cure his ailment. All he has to do is hunt and kill terrorists who go by the names The Wolf (Richard Sammel) and The Albino (Tomas Lemarguis). Renner has only a few days to survive his sickness, the terrorists, and his rebellious daughter in order to continue receiving the drug treatments.

For some reason, Costner has an odd gruff voice that sounds like he is doing a half-hearted Columbo impression. There is no reason to believe that Costner is the master agent he is thought to be. He limps through his scenes, can barely run, and doesn't seem to be all that great at his job. Renner comes off more like a detective who is expected every now and then to act like Jason Bourne. The film has Renner get more sick "unexpectedly" whenever there is a big chase scene. A plot device has him getting very sick when his heart rate gets too high. Every time this happened, the audience was audibly annoyed. It is bad when even the casual movie-going public is aware of cheap plot devices. Renner doesn't have a problem when he is near large explosions or in gun fights. Only when he is very close to his main target. It is eye-rolling at best.

"Three Days to Kill" is another hard to follow PG-13 action film. The plot isn't necessarily confusing as much as the editing. In their attempt to side-step the violence limitations of the rating, you end up just trying to keep track of the action instead of enjoying it. People get bloodless shot in extreme close-ups. There are no "pay-off shots". They are just a mess of gunshot sounds and people falling down. Every time we see a villain get taken down without a drop of blood or any real excitement we just kind of view it all. There is no reaction but boredom. Like the original "Taken", also written by Besson, it is a movie that no doubt has all the fun and excitement sitting on a hard drive somewhere waiting for the "Unrated Cut" to get released. By that time, nobody will even remember "Three Days to Kill" as anything more than "One of those 2014 Kevin Costner movies".

The one area that "Three Days to Kill" does well in is that it doesn't necessarily take itself seriously. This isn't a sex-trafficking kidnapping story like "Taken". It is an action film about about a spy taking an experimental mystery drug and fighting people with names like "The Wolf" and "The Albino". Costner brings a bit of charm to scenes where he has to confront of get information from people. These slight laughs are welcome, although when you start to consider that they are essentially torture scenes played for laughs it can be a little troublesome. It was nice to have a few laughs and light-hearted moments in an action movie though It may date Besson as the 1990s action filmmaker he is, but it is a slight bit of fun between the noise and chaos. A sub-plot involving a family of African squatters who have somehow been living in Renner's apartment is also an unexpected and charming diversion from the action.

"Three Days to Kill" won't revitalize Costner's career and it more than likely won't hurt it either. It will just go  down as yet another 2014 movie that Costner starred in. There is a entertaining B-movie somewhere in the jumbled mess of sub-plots and magic antidotes. If the film could have been a dramedy about Costner reconnecting with his family and the action scenes were there occasionally, it might have been a much better film. As it is, it is a forgettable film that would have done better to fully accept its ridiculousness.

"Vampire Academy" 0.5 stars out of 4 (F)

Zoey Deutch has a lot going for her. She is the daughter of actress Lea Thompson and "Pretty in Pink" director Howard Deutch. She delivered a wonderful performance in last year's underrated "Beautiful Creatures". She displays a sharp and quick-witted intelligence that is all but absent in today's young generation of actors. She would feel right at home with a fast-paced Sorkin series or even the second-coming of "The Gillmore Girls". Deutch is also gorgeous enough to make you She is also the only good thing about "Vampire Academy", a pathetic hodge-podge of other series that is among the worst films to come out in years.

Rose Hathaway (Deutch) is a Dhampir, a half-human/half-vampire who is sworn to protect her best friend Lissa Dragomir (Lucy Fry). Lissa is a Moroi, a peaceful, full-vampire who practice magic. The two are brought to St. Vladimir's Academy, a school for Moroi to practice and train their skills, where they had escaped two years earlier. The reason for their escape is not initially known but it is clear that the two are over the drama that comes with teenage vampire life. Shortly after they return, scary things start occurring in the form of attacks by the Strigoi, a group of evil vampires. Rose and Lissa must fight off catty classmates, bad boyfriends, and the Strigoi to make it through the Academy in tact.

"Vampire Academy" is so sloppily edited that the narrative flow is akin to falling asleep while the movie is playing. You seem to only get bits and pieces of who everyone is, what is happening, and why it is happening. The whole thing almost seems like a dream that you put together out of the remnants of other stories. You almost expect to wake up and tell someone "So... uh... it was like a Harry Potter school filled with Twilight kids... and they acted like they were in Mean Girls... but they were magic. The vampires... were magical." On paper the story the mismatch of already successful story ideas sounds like nothing more than a movie studio or book company throwing everything into a pot and hoping it creates something edible. What you get is this misshapen mess of half-cooked ideas that insults you by thinking you'd be interested in it. The story thinks you are stupid and don't need originality and logical plot points. They believe you (or more than likely teenage girls) will just lap up whatever concoction they put in front of you. I would imagine (or would like to think) that audiences are smarter than that.

The widespread selection of accents doesn't come off as globe-trotting or diverse. Instead, it comes off like they filmed in the cheapest areas they could and hired the closest actors they could. They flew in a few native English speaking actors who weren't already busy acting in straight-to-DVD films and just took foreign actors who could moderately speak English well. Danila Kozlovsky, the male love interest of Rose, speaks English far better than I could ever imagine speaking Russian but it is still difficult, if not impossible, to understand what he is saying. Hopefully the filmmakers didn't just count on his "dreaminess" to overshadow the lapse in comprehension. Considering the other flaws in the plot, I'm not entirely ruling it out.

The screenplay of "Vampire Academy" commits the sin of thinking it is incredibly clever. It never thinks the plot is clever but is thoroughly invested in believing the dialogue is fast-paced and witty. It comes off like an amateurish teenage writer who is desperately trying to impress the audience with how snarky she can be. Cultural references fly at you hoping you will think they are cool. No doubt they will date the movie terribly when in ten years nobody cares what a "hashtag" is. Hopefully nobody will even remember this film existed. The dialogue also is shockingly awkward. A character out-of-nowhere asks if another character had been "fornicating". The word "fornicating" is used multiple times. You can't expect me to believe your teenage characters live in a world with Twitter and yet use such antiquated and awkward words. These pieces come off a faulty Google Translate version of a foreign script where they simply forgot to double-check the dialogue before they started filming.

"Vampire Academy" is one of the sloppiest excuses for a film that I've seen come out in some time. Maybe the problem lies in the original source material but that definitely can't be the only area that is to blame. It is a wonderful example of a January film that will be buried and no doubt stay dead.

"The Lego Movie" 3.5 stars out of 4 (A-)

"The Lego Movie" should be a soulless cash-grab designed to sell toys, video games, and "Happy Meal" toys. The mixing and matching of Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, and even the Star Wars franchise sounds like it would be a blind tossing of ideas, hoping one of them will stick and result in a child crying for the merchandise. Even the title of "The Lego Movie" sounds like they took no creativity in assembling it. All of these assumptions are incorrect. Instead, "The Lego Movie" is a charming, gorgeous, creative, adorable, and hilarious movie. It surprises around every turn and is a total pleasure. It is the kind of family movie we all hope for when we plunk down far too much money for 3D glasses and snacks. It is the type of family movie where everyone will walk away with their face hurting from laughing, the songs stuck in their head, and maybe even a little sniffling.

Emmet Brickowoski (voiced by Chris Prine) lives a comfortable life. He wakes up and follows the same daily instructions as everyone else in his town. Get up. Greet the world. Sing "Everything is Awesome" (which appears to be the only song there is). Watch "Where's My Pants" (which appears to be the only show there is). Go to work. Repeat. One day though, Emmet comes into contact with a block piece known as The Piece of Resistance. A prophecy states that whoever comes into contact with this piece will be a special Masterbuilder, a person who can restore order to the LEGO universe. Emmet must team up with a group of unlikely allies to defeat Lord Business (voiced by Will Ferrell) who plans on using a weapon to make everything in the universe boring and plain.

Writers/Director team Phil Lord and Christopher Miller have proven with "The Lego Movie" that they are two of the brightest and most interesting writers in Hollywood today. The pair first came onto the entertainment world in 2002's MTV series "Clone High", a criminally ignored brilliant show. In 2009, they made "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" which took a small children's book and turned into a good family film. After that, they took the film version of "21 Jump Street", a project that sounded incredibly terrible on paper, and turned it into one of the funniest and most surprising films of 2012. Here, they have done it again and reached a new apex. "The Lego Movie" is so much more than any moviegoer could have expected it to be. It is a genuinely touching, interesting, and hilarious movie that will have you laughing hard.

One of the most interesting aspects of "The Lego Movie" is how gorgeous it is. A movie where every component is a LEGO brick doesn't sound like it would lead itself to cinematic imagery. The appearance is a combination of stop-motion animated and CGI and it looks perfect. LEGO block waves look far more stunning than you would guess they would be. Every scene is bright, imaginative, and excited. It is somehow active and exciting without being annoying or hard to follow.

There is something about "The Lego Movie" that will have you reduced to a giggling mess. You are constantly challenged in all the best ways possible. The film bounces between spot-on social commentary, movie/comic book references, time periods, universes, comedy, and even some touching drama. The audience, much like the lead character Emmet, is simply along for the ride. Again, on paper the idea sounds like a mess of concepts slamming into each other creating nothing but noise. Instead, we get something that hits viewers on a level we haven't felt in quite some time. This is the movie you would have created if you were a brilliant 8-year old.

To go into too much detail on "The Lego Movie" would give far too much away. Like any clever and surprising film, the surprises are better left for first-viewings. Just know that there is rarely a minute of the film where some new character isn't making an appearance and dropping some wonderful lines of dialogue. It is truly one of those times where the less you know about the story, the better. You need to see this movie even if the idea of a movie comprised of LEGO characters sounds ridiculous to you. This is the second-coming of a "Pixar-like" reign of family entertainment. Family films that don't talk down to their audiences, resort on toilet humor, or cliches. Instead, "The Lego Movie" surprises us in every scene and might even have you walking away with a new-found appreciation of creativity, both in film and in yourself.

"The Monuments Men" 2 stars out of 4 (C)

George Clooney's war film "The Monuments Men" desperately wants to be taken seriously. The booming and boisterous musical score by Alexandre Desplat evokes classic war films like "The Great Escape". The opening scenes even try to evoke that 1960s war film appearance in a montage where people are silently given their orders and they resolutely go to battle without a single hesitation. The problem is that at its core the story of "The Monuments Men" is art historians who go into unguarded areas and grab priceless works of art that are simply sitting there. The music and imagery act as if the characters are single-handedly changing the face of the war and history. While the actions of the real life Monuments Men is incredibly interesting, no amount of over-the-top music or long speeches is going to convince audiences that what they are seeing is an exciting film. "The Monuments Men" is a story that works best in a book of war anecdotes. It is a story that surprisingly hasn't been made into a movie yet. As you watch the film, you somewhat understand why.

Near the end of World War II, Frank Stokes (George Clooney) has put together a team to head into Germany for the purpose of finding art stolen by Nazis and hidden throughout the country. His team (Matt Damon, John Goodman, Jean Dujardin, Hugh Bonneville, and Bob Balaban) all instantly agree to join Stokes on his mission. They know that without their support, these works of art would no doubt be casualties of war. When they get to Germany, the group splits up to find art hidden in different parts of the country.

It is impossible not to find a good portion of "The Monuments Men" charming. If you put these actors in the same frame together you are bound to smile. Much like Clooney and Damon's "Ocean's" trilogy, you are not necessarily impressed or entertained by the characters and the writing as much as you are entertained by the fact that these actors are in the same room with each other. Murray and Balaban work especially well together. It would be interesting if we saw these actors team up again in a television series. Goodman and Dujardin are also quite fun together although they don't get nearly as many scenes as we'd like. The problem with having so many good actors working together is that you are bound to be disappointed. No character gets enough time for you to care about them. A few die and you will be hard-pressed to remember their names unless they are repeated. As I write this review, I have a difficult time even recalling character traits. Murray seems to simply be playing Murray if he existed in World War II. Damon seems to simply be playing Damon if he existed in World War II. These are not necessarily bad things but it is difficult to care about the real-life war heroes when they aren't given any real weight.

As good of an actress as Blanchett is it is almost glaring having her in the role of a French German woman who assists Damon. It is almost as if she simply took this role to fill out one more portion of "Movie Accent Bingo" card. You have Dujardin playing a French character and Bonneville playing a British character. There is no real reason to not cast a German woman for this role. It is not that Blanchett is not good in her role. It is that she is wholly unnecessary for any reason other than to fill in the only female role in the film.

"The Monuments Men" suffers from a tone problem. The musical score would love to make you believe you are watching a rousing action-packed 1960s war film. The problem is that the score is delivered over scenes of our non-soldier characters walking into buildings vacant of Nazis and picking up pieces of art that are simply sitting there. The films sole scene of suspense comes in the last act and simply deals with some other country that would also kind of like that art coming there in the not too distant future. The score would have you believe that there was an eminent danger around the corner. In reality, there is no suspense. Other scenes attempt comedy with an almost equal amount of success and failure. One scene involving Damon stepping on a land-mine that may or may not be disabled is both funny and interesting. Another that deals with Murray going to a dentist with a toothache seems as if it was just there to fit in a scene quota in his contract. The film is at its most awkward though when it attempts to be a rousing drama about the heroes of war. While the men no doubt did something amazing, the flash-forward ending set in a museum is so eye-rolling that it is almost pandering.

There is a wonderful story in "The Monuments Men". More than likely that story would work better in a book of the various missions and discoveries of the real-life men who recovered the art. A filmed version would work if it simply knew how subdued it was. These are not soldiers. These are art historians who are mostly out of their element recovering art. Had the film simply given the story the tone and appearance the story requires it would have succeeded. As it is, the tones shifts almost overshadow the story and we walk away wondering what we are supposed to feel or take away from it all. This is one of the few times where you might be better off reading a book or even perusing the Wikipedia entry of the real story instead of seeing the film. At these both will more than likely give you a more consistent form of entertainment.