Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop
Directed by Rodman Flender
Starring: Conan O’Brien, Andy Richter
Release Date: June 24, 2011 (limited)
On Demand

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last year and half, you’ve at least heard of The Tonight Show debacle that happened last year. Conan O’Brien‘s short-lived reign as the show’s host only lasted 7 months, but the fallout from his departure lasted significantly longer. Though it was certain O’Brien would land another show with ease, as part of his exit deal with NBC, O’Brien was prohibited from appearing on TV and radio for six months. To fill the gap, O’Brien went on his “Legally Prohibited from being Funny on Television Tour.” But even during this time, O’Brien often found himself in front of a camera, as Rodman Flender filmed a documentary about the trip. Nearly a year later, the film is now showing in a very limited amount of theaters.

The appropriately titled Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop opens with a brief summary of the events that led O’Brien to leave his post and follows the tour from conception to its aftermath. Starting with the idea of a road show, O’Brien and his team of writers and producers hastily lay out plans for a 90-minute program that is little more than an idea even after tickets have gone on sale. Pressure begins to mount quickly as, to the visible surprise of everyone, the first two shows sell out in less than 20 minutes.

Transformers: Dark of the Moon
Directed by Michael Bay
Starring Shia LaBeouf, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley, John Turturro, Patrick Dempsey, Peter Cullen, Hugo Weaving, Leonard Nimoy
Release Date: June 29, 2011

Say what you will about Michael Bay, the man is not a fan of subtlety. It’s pretty well established that, if he could make money doing it, he would release a movie that is just pyrotechnics followed by credits. The third movie in Bay’s Transformers film trilogy actually comes pretty close to that, but surprisingly, it’s still better than the movie that proceeded it. While that doesn’t make Transformers: Dark of the Moon a great movie, it certainly hits the mark it is aiming for.

Perhaps learning from the mistakes he made with Revenge of the Fallen, Bay severely cut down the exposition, leaving an overwhelming majority of the two and half hour film to be filled with mindless action sequences. When the first Transformers film came out, some people were disappointed that there wasn’t more fighting between the giant CGI robots. This time around, it’s unlikely anyone will say the same, as the entire last hour of the film is dedicated to one long battle.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides
Directed by Rob Marshall
Starring Johnny Depp, Penélope Cruz, Geoffrey Rush, and Ian McShane
Release Date: May 20, 2011

It’s hard to believe that On Stranger Tides is the fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie to come out in less than a decade. But Disney has found a cash-cow and it’s obvious the two big stars are still having fun with their roles, so the series marches on. But by the fourth film, most ongoing series have run out of material and the second and third Pirate films were showing big signs of burnout. On Stranger Tides needed to be a new beginning as much as it needed to be a sequel, and in many ways it succeeds.

Picking up an unknown amount of time after the end of the third film, Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides finds the few returning characters in very different situations than we left them. Captain Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp) has long been without a ship, having lost the Black Pearl to Captain Barbossa (Geoffrey Rush) at the end of the last film. Barbossa, it turns out, is working for the British Navy, having also lost the Pearl, along with his right leg, in a battle with the most feared pirate in the world: Blackbeard (Ian McShane). Their paths cross once again after Spanish explorers find evidence of the Fountain of Youth. Joined by Angelica (Penélope Cruz), a mysterious woman with a history with both Jack and Blackbeard, everyone sets off in search of the fountain.

Paranormal Activity 2
Directed by Tod Williams
Starring Sprague Grayden, Katie Featherston, Brian Boland, Molly Ephram, Micah Sloat
Paramount Pictures
Release date: October 22, 2010 

It should be noted that a majority of this review was typed on a smartphone while sitting in the theater waiting for something to happen. Okay not really, but it could have been done that way given the amount of down time viewers have between scary parts of Paranormal Activity 2.

It came as no surprise that after the original ultra-low budget original film made millions worldwide that Hollywood would try to capture lightning in a bottle a second time with a sequel. While others have done the same before with weak results (Blair Witch anyone?), it’s likely Paranormal Activity 2 will get the same reaction as the first… because it IS the same as the first.

The first important detail the previews left out is that this sequel is, for 97% of the film, a prequel to the original film. Set roughly two months prior to the events of the first film, Paranormal Activity 2 follows the Rey family, a married couple with two children, including newborn Hunter. After finding their home in disarray from what they believe to be a break-in, they have several security cameras installed. The film combines the footage from these cameras and a single hand-held camera that switches hands at several points.

Descent: Part 2
Blu-ray | DVD
Directed by Jon Harris
Starring Shauna MacDonald, Natalie Mendoza, Douglas Hodge, Krysten Cummings
Lionsgate Entertainment
Release date: April 27, 2010

A lot of sequels make the same mistakes: they go too far, they add too much, and they assume bigger is always better. Add to that the familiar idea of “direct-to-dvd” usually is a sign of poor quality. Fortunately for fans of the original The Descent film, the sequel has avoided some of the usual pitfalls and manages to be a relatively satisfying sequel.

Picking up immediately where the original film ends, The Descent 2 clarifies the ambiguous ending of the original, which saw traumatized spelunker Sarah (Shauna MacDonald) escaping from an previously unknown cave system inhabited by inbred, mutated humans called “crawlers.” However, the original film also included an additional scene that implied Sarah had only imagined escape as she descended into madness and was still stuck inside the caves. This ends up being discarded in the new film, with Sarah’s escape being real.