The title says it all. Period.

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is based upon a children's book which I have never read. So this story is totally new to me and of all the animation companies competing with Pixar I must admit this quirky story about a guy inventing a machine that makes is rain food is the closest anyone has come into reaching the levels of originality of the Pixar films. But if you take away the food part of the story the rest is a dime a dozen: our anti-hero saves the day, gets the girl and the bond between him and his dad becomes finally good again, what basically happens in every other movie. But that doesn't mean Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs is a bad movie, it really tries to do stuff with the material.

I must admit that I've never actually seen a Sherlock Holmes movie. The man is a household name yet he never had a movie as high-profile as this one released. Some big names have gathered here to take us back to Victorian England: Robert Downey Jr. as Sherlock Holmes, Jude Law as his trusty sidekick Watson, Amy Adams as the love-interest and Mark Strong as the villain Blackwood. Behind the camera is Guy Ritchie stepping away from gangster movies and trying something new. Sadly he's less energetic here than he was in movies like Snatch and Lock, Stock... I looked forward with high anticipation to watching this movie but came back slightly disappointed as the movie is not as involving as I would have liked it to be.

The saw franchise is proving to be quite a survivor. A strong first part that was succeeded by sequels that became less interesting with a new installment the Saw franchise still rakes in enough money to warrant another sequel the following year. What is most surprising is that the Saw franchise sticks to its formula tighter than others in the horror genre did. Even Friday the 13th had more development in the six movies than the saw franchise which basically delves deeper in Jigsaw's last months before he died every movie. This one is no different and has somebody else take Jigsaw's place after Amanda unsuccessfully tried: Detective Hoffman.

Before Roland Emmerich started blowing up buildings, landmarks and destroying the entire world he made an action movie called Universal Soldier starring Jean-Claude van Damme and Dolph Lundgren. At that time two rather big names when it came to action movies. It was a success paved the way for Van Damme and Emmerich to star in even greater movies. While Emmerich is still an A-list director his collaborators on Universal Soldier are wandering around in DTV-limbo for quite some time now. And it saddens me to see them return in the fourth sequel to the original, second if you don't count the made for TV movies starring some guy named Matt Battaglia as Luc Devereaux.

Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian or simply titled "Night at the Museum 2" outside of the US is the follow up to the successful family-movie from a couple of years ago. Back are all the familiar faces and joining them are a couple of new ones. Well not actually joining them, but rather replacing them as only a few get as much screentime as they had in the first. Sacajawea, Easter Island Head, Teddy Roosenvelt (Robin Williams), Dr McPhee (Ricky Gervais) and the monkey have all been degraded to cameos as characters like Amelia Earhart (Amy Adams) and Kahmunrah (Hank Azaria) now enter center stage next to Ben Stiller, Owen Wilson and Steve Coogan, along with another couple of historical characters.

The original Urban Legend was a clear rip-off of the Scream-trend and probably successful because they made a sequel to it. This time they rip-off Scream 2 by also having people make a movie based upon the events of what happened in the previous movie. Not because the high school killings became so well-known that it warranted a movie, quite the contrary: somehow the school managed to cover it all up according to surviving campus-cop Reese who was then quickly laid off because she wouldn't wanted to blow the lit off of it. Such an explanation of the events in the first film is an insult to the audience. Since when do schools have the power to sweep multiple killings by their own student under the carpet?

And the insults do not stop here...

With a deep timbre the voice in the trailer for Rob Zombie's Halloween 2 tells us "Rob Zombie completes his extreme vision of a terrifying legend". That vision however, he should have kept for himself, because after a decent re-imagining of the first movie Zombie absolutely fails on bringing a decent second one. Which is somewhat of a feat in itself as this is a slasher movie, not the hardest type of movies to make. But in trying to delve into the psyche of Michael once more Zombie loses himself in weirdo images of Michael being driven by the ghost of his dead mother and a child-version of himself. People familiar with The Friday The 13th franchise will probably recognize this as this was the case with Jason, especially in Part 2. Michael has become Jason, while Jason himself was a rip-off of the original Michael Myers. And to completely finish the insult to the character of Myers: Zombie has him ditching the mask and grunt while killing.

2010 starts off with a new Steven Seagal movie. And we're only two weeks into the new year! Last two weeks have been rather Seagal-filled as I've been keeping up with his new reality show "Lawman". So we have a TV-show that seems to get good ratings, an upcoming theatrical release with Machete where he plays a villain and a straight-to-DVD release that might actually be his best one yet. Yep, that's right... after years of watching badly directed and choreographed movies with an exception here and there I found A Dangerous Man to be very enjoyable, with lots of good fights and a simple, but not too simple plot to keep things going. Not once did I look at my clock while watching this and from time to time I actually sat up in my chair with excitement and a smile on my face.