Do you remember 2009’s District 9? Of course you do! Because it was easily that year’s best sci-fi movie… eat that James Cameron! Not only was it a movie that looked spectacular, it also had a good story that came with some solid social commentary. This time around director Neill Blomkamp had Matt Damon and three times the budget of District 9 at his disposal. Needless to say that expectations were high.

Sofia Coppola seemed destined for greatness with her first two movies, “The Virgin Suicides” and “Lost In Translation”. After that however came the disappointing “Marie Antoinette” and “Somewhere”, a movie that was as vague as its title. So how about “The Bling Ring”? Can Coppola redeem herself or were those first two movies a case of beginner’s luck?

Those pesky aliens! That’s Dark Skies for you in three words. In this alien abduction thriller, Keri Russell plays a suburban soccer mom whose family gets harassed by nightly visits that scare the living shit out of them. And that’s even before the really weird things start happening. Well, I guess they’re only really weird if you’ve never seen Signs. Or Paranormal Activity. Or The Fourth Kind. Or The X-Files. How cool would it be if one of the characters would go right from the start… fuck, it’s aliens! I’ve seen this in Signs! Instead we get J.K.

In Promised Land Matt Damon (who wrote the script with co-star John Krasinski) plays Steve Butler, a nice guy who believes in what he does and who has come to the small town of McKinley, PA with his more pragmatic co-worker Sue Thomason (Frances McDormand) in order to convince the townsfolk to lease their land to a natural gas corporation.

I never got further than one lousy card trick that I kept messing up. The magicians that make up The Four Horsemen (Woody Harrelson, Jesse Eisenberg, Isla Fisher and Dave Franco) on the other hand take it to the next level in their shows  by robbing a bank in Paris while sharing the spoils onstage in Las Vegas. Is it all a trick or is the entire show part of an elaborate heist? That’s exactly what FBI agent Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) and professional trick exposer Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman) are trying to do in this Louis Leterrier directed flick.

Taking place somewhere toward the end of World War II, a platoon of Russian soldiers receive a distress call which sends them to an abandoned mining town. While they make their way over, we find out just enough about the different characters to be able to tell them apart. Other than that the movie is off to a pretty slow start. Thinking they’ll find some POW’s in the town, the Russkies find a whole bunch of creatures that have been assembled from human body parts and weapons and who only have one directive: kill!