In theory, an Underworld sequel that cuts out all the endless mythologizing and chatter and leaves nothing but the action might sound promising. In practice, though, Underworld: Awakening (Screen Gems) barely feels like a movie. It’s a repetitive series of CGI-enhanced leaps and gunfights, with a we-didn’t-really-care-about-this MacGuffin-driven plot cribbed from Ultraviolet. Any franchise stooping that low for its influences really needs to call it a day…
Tim & Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie (Magnolia) is an exuberant, feature-length “fuck you” to good taste, solid judgment, propriety, and commercial considerations. The Will Ferrell-produced provocation casts the anti-comedy cult heroes as glib show-business phonies who waste a billion dollars making an unreleasable film, then must make back that billon dollars by running a mall seemingly located in the ninth circle of hell for a lunatic businessman played by Ferrell. The Adult Swim duo remains as divisive and uncompromising as ever: In Billion, they’ve created a brazen, sometimes hilarious curiosity all but designed to scare everyone but the hardest of hardcore fans away…
If you see only one fact-inspired movie in which Channing Tatum plays the husband of a neurologically damaged Rachel McAdams who doesn't remember ever marrying him, make it The Vow (Screen Gems).