"Red Riding Hood" - in theaters

Catherine Hardwicke tried so hard to make another "Twilight" with this picture. I think she also tried too hard to be like Tim Burton. The result was a superficial copy of greater films. But don't get me wrong - it was entertaining.

The twist on this Red Riding Hood tale is that the Big, Bad Wolf is actually a werewolf. And it likes to terrorize a small town that no one knows the name of back in a year that they never actually mention.

Now, Amanda Seyfried plays Valerie, the daughter of a woodcutter (Billy Burke, aka Charlie Swan [Team Charlie, baby!]) and his wife (Virginia Madsen), who is promised to Henry (Max Irons), son of the wealthiest family in the village. But alack the day! Valeria is in love with Peter (Shiloh Fernandez), a woodcutter like her father and hence, isn't too keen about marrying Henry. Then there's Grandma (Julie Christie), who lives in a house in the woods outside the village limits, and if truth be told, is a tad frightening. You never can quite figure out what her deal is.

When the wolf kills a human for the first time in 20 years, the village flips out and calls in Father Solomon (Gary Oldman), who is a renowned evil hunter. He's actually quite the lunatic, not to mention religious zealot, who will hurt anyone and anything to kill evil. Which really doesn't make sense. He also has these silver fingernails, which are so disgusting that it made me gag slightly. Father Solomon makes matters worse, by announcing that the wolf is someone in the village, and the witch-hunt begins.

I must admit that the filmmakers do a good job of keeping you guessing who is the wolf. The only thing for certain is that it is NOT Valerie, mostly because she comes face to face with it.

As one can imagine, the acting is pretty terrible. But at least the actors are nice to look at. Max Irons is so cute you just want to pinch his cheeks, while Shiloh Fernandez is very intense, and looks so much like Joaquin Phoenix it's disturbing. And Amanda Seyfried talks breathlessly through the movie, batting her giant blue eyes at everyone.

So on the CWeave scale, I rate this movie a 6.5. It's funny, but as I read back through this, it seems like I hated the movie, when in fact, the opposite is true. I quite enjoyed it. And in fact, I'll probably own it when it comes out on DVD. No one's mad about it.

"Alice in Wonderland" - in theaters

I think I'm going to add Tim Burton to the list of directors whom I don't trust directing movies based upon books that I love. So far that list only has Christopher Columbus on it, but it's a growing list, dammit.

I knew going into "Alice in Wonderland" that it wasn't going to be like the book at all. I had read enough articles about it in my Entertainment Weekly to know that. But I feel as if Tim Burton just took the characters from both "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass", not to mention Lewis Carroll's poem, "The Jaberwocky", threw out the story-lines, and just came up with a plot that involved all of them.

The first major change is the fact that Alice is in her late teens/early twenties when she "returns" to "Underland" (which she mistakenly calls "Wonderland" in her first adventure there). After she falls down the rabbit hole, she finds that she must drink the potion to make her smaller, and then eat the cake to make herself bigger again. But this time, her clothes don't grow with her, and I'm pretty sure Tim Burton just wanted that poor actress to be naked and/or wearing ill-fitting costumes for the entire movie (although magically her shoes remained on her feet...). Once she finally leaves the entryway, she runs smack dab into a whole mess of characters who debate about whether or not she's the "real Alice". The rest of the plot centers around this very debate as Alice must first convince herself that she's the "real Alice".

Overall, I found the performances a bit ridiculous. Johnny Depp couldn't decide if he was English or Scottish, and didn't really come off as mad; simply weird. Helena Bonham Carter was shrill as the Red Queen, and I must agree with Entertainment Weekly when they described Anne Hathaway (who plays the White Queen) as looking like "an Italian porn star".

I also think that the title should have been different. "Alice in Wonderland" automatically makes me think of the animated Disney feature from years ago, and doesn't accurately describe the film that I just saw in theaters. It should have been titled "Alice's Return to Wonderland", as that's really what the film is about.

I saw it in regular 3D and I'm pretty glad that I didn't pay the extra for IMAX, because I would've been disappointed that I spent that much money. Even though the performances left something to be desired, if you are at all a fan of Tim Burton, then I would still go and see this film. The special effects are pretty awesome, especially in 3D.

So on the CWeave scale of 1 to 10, I rate this movie a 6.5. I probably won't own it, but I'm glad I saw it in theaters. But then again, I like Tim Burton's movies for the most part. If you're not a Burton fan, you may rate the movie lower.