Transcendence

On Halloween, I watched the creepy (not scary, creepy, and by creepy I mean ubercreepy) “Transcendence” (2014), a cinematic treatise on the moral struggle behind man’s quest to create artificial intelligence, starring Johnny Depp. (Side note: You know how pissed you get when tech support asks you if you’ve turned the machine off and turned it back on? OK, well, if your balky machine is designed to create an AI program capable of self-awareness and emotion while also scarily regenerating tissue, reanimating the dead and taking over the voices of others, that on/off thing actually works.) Like I said, ubercreepy.

Now You See Me

“Now You See Me” (2013) is a wet dream for 17-year-old boys with ADD. I think Joe Cliche Movie Reviewer would refer to it as a “nonstop thrill ride.” There are certainly lots of seizure-invoking strobe lights, swelling music and bombastic statements, all designed to obscure (like a good magic trick) the boilerplate plot twists in this traditional caper flick. Even if it’s empty calories, it’s definitely worth wasting a couple of hours on a Friday night for. Me? In the first two minutes, they did the “pick a card” trick. I picked a card. They got it right. Props.

Outbreak

Modern cinema suffers from a disease known as blockbusteritis. Symptoms are cookie-cutter plots in which the hero saves the world and hooks back up with ex-wife/girlfriend, in no particular order. Oh, and helicopters. Lots of helicopters. Experts are trying to track down the host virus, but it dates back at least as far as a 1995 outbreak called… well, it’s called “Outbreak.” Dustin Hoffman saves everyone from a killer disease by making impassioned speeches. Ex-wife Rene Russo might have been better off dead. In an unusual twist, neither of the two black co-stars (Morgan Freeman, Cuba Gooding Jr.), get killed.