Written Review: Paranormal Activity 4 (2012)

by Jason Pyles
Movie Podcast Weekly.com

Note to readers who haven’t seen any “Paranormal Activity” films: It’s not absolutely necessary to see the three preceding films of this franchise in order to watch this fourth one. The set-up for this movie picks up where the second installment left off, and the prerequisite highlights from “Paranormal Activity 2” are shown to us at the beginning of this fourth movie, anyway. But my recommendation to anyone who hasn’t seen any of this franchise is to simply watch the first movie and then call it quits on the franchise.

Premise: When a suburban family babysits a neighbor boy for a few days while his mother is hospitalized, bizarre and inexplicable occurrences start happening in their house. Continue reading

Written Review: End of Watch (2012)

by Jason Pyles
Movie Podcast Weekly.com

Premise: While going about their daily duties, two LAPD officers keep stumbling onto a ferocious drug cartel with zero tolerance for ambitious cops.

Review: “End of Watch” may be the first found footage, shaky-cam, docu-drama, pseudo-documentary cop movie that also doubles as a feature-length PR commercial for the Los Angeles Police Department. (Seriously, this whole movie could be an advertisement for the LAPD. Perhaps it is.)

Actually, “End of Watch” is quite a number of things: It’s also a love story between two men played by Jake Gyllenhaal and Michael Peña, not too far off from Gyllenhaal’s most famous role in “Brokeback Mountain” (2005). Continue reading