Oh England & Davy Jones's Locker & Washington DC...

Atonement(dir. Joe Wright)
The production values are superb, but the emotional content is lacking. The characters never become developed enough to resemble anything other than characters in a movie and when the shit hits the fan for them, it's not all that tragic. That's not to say that this movie was a bore because the production values like the costumes and sets go a long way to make this as unpainful of an experience as possible, but once the ending rolls around, which reminded me of the series finale of Roseanne, you realize that you pretty much don't care what happens to any of these characters. It was just ultimately a disposable experience.
** out of ****
Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End(dir. Gore Verbinski)
I didn't bother to see the second one, but I can't imagine having seen that film beforehand would have really changed my experience with this. The film starts off unusually bleak with people getting hung for piracy including a child and if you hung around for the post-credits scene, that scene starts to look even more relentlessly dark for a summer blockbuster. The film starts off on a surprising high note with that and for some reason, I was digging the whole musical aspect of it's beginning with that scene and the scene that followed, but it got shaky with it's rendezvous with Chow Yun-Fat's Singapore pirate captain mainly because he looks ridiculous and he's not all that sinister and it's ensuing action scene that was sloppily choreographed and shot. After that, however, the film quickly exposed two things that could be dubbed my critical kryptonite: pirates and a gorgeous Keira Knightley. These two things, however, were unable to prevent me from viewing it's epic sea battle as mind-numbingly long and once Knightley takes a backseat to some of the other actors like Orlando Bloom, the film suffers mainly because Bloom is a bland screen presence and the hallucination bits with Johnny Depp were pretty lame. Geoffrey Rush was particularly good in this for what the movie was, which is essentially a mindlessly fun pirate movie, but that sea battle really screwed up the film's pacing and took it to practically a halt in comparison to what preceded it. It felt unusually quick for a two hour and forty minute long movie, but that's probably because I dig pirates and Keira Knightley. Surprisingly, I thought the action sequences were the worst part about the movie. You'd expect a summer blockbuster to have some good ones, but this film had sequences that went on for far too long and were rather sloppy in execution. The characters aren't exactly deep or anything, but they were still entertaining along with the film as a whole. I slightly recommend.
**1/2 out of ****
The Walker(dir. Paul Schrader)
Paul Schrader is probably one of the most underrated directors ever. Sure, he has his flaws mainly stemming from his love for Pickpocket's ending and feeling the need to include it in every film he makes including this one, but he still remains an interesting one. This film can't compare to Mishima or Light Sleeper, but it still remains an intriguing character study even if it's not as intriguing as those films. Woody Harrelson's depiction of a gay socialite is a little stereotypical and Schrader's portrayal of homosexual love is surprisingly hands off. The couple only kiss once and it ends up being his 27th homage to the Pickpocket ending because he has them kiss through a wired fence looking thing in Carter's boyfriend's apartment. This film is disinterested in it's own mystery plot, but when it starts to put emphasis on it in order to move it's story along, it's usually for the worse since Schrader is unable to make this "grand" tale about corruption all that mysterious or thrilling. An on-foot chase also shows that Schrader is unable to direct a fairly traditional "exciting" scene and make it exciting. Thankfully, this film doesn't really dwell on such aspects all that much and instead focuses on it's character, who is interesting, but his problems with his deceased father are given perhaps too much time in the dialogue and makes him appear a little shallow in comparison to some of Schrader's other characters. Aside from these issues, I recommend.
*** out of ****