The Magnificent Seven

The Magnificent Seven has a lot of flaws, and the acting isn't good enough to carry the lack of plot and character development. Some of the action is cool, but it's not really enough to make it worth watching.

The Magnificent Seven got mixed reviews, but I was hoping it could be carried on the virtue of the actors. Turns out it couldn't. The plot is ridiculously simple, but you know that going in, so they really need to do some character development or have some cool tricks or something, but they don't. It felt really tired and unispired. The whole "defending a small town with tricks" thing has been done to death. You've got to have some spectacularly impressive tricks if you're going to make it entertaining, and they didn't.

The Nice Guys

I probably would have enjoyed The Nice Guys more if I had understood what they were going for when I watched it. It was consistently funny, but some of the characters were annoying, a lot of the scenes didn't work, and the ending was strangely unsatisfying.

The trailer for The Nice Guys looked funny, and Roeper liked it, so I guess I had unreasonably high expectations. It was kind of disappointing. Russel Crowe's character was cool I guess, but March kind of got on my nerves. Ryan Gosling did look good at least.

In Time

In Time's concept and world are cool, but they're wasted on a lackluster plot and Justin Timberlake's bad acting.

I was interested in this movie when it came out, and I remembered it had gotten semi-favorable buzz. I couldn't think of anything else I wanted to see this weekend. I think it would've been a better movie without Justin Timberlake. I looked over Ebert's review after I watched it, and he thought Justin was great, but I'm not with him on that. His acting was terrible; it pulled me out of the movie practically every time he said something.

It's totally engaging just because of the concept, but plot is a letdown. They could've done a lot more with it. It was cool seeing people like Pete from Mad Men, Cillian Murphy, and Matt Bomer. They all really helped carry the movie. There shouldn't have been so many "time" puns. It got ridiculous.