The Reaping

I've always been interested in story about religous messed upness. Rogue angels, demons, armaggedon, etc. This falls nicely in there. God sending his 10 plagues down to some small town. Hilliry Swank, who happens to have had a crisis of faith, comes in to figure out the cause.

This one seemed like it was trying really hard to fit into that Creepy Kid mode of suspense movies of late. But Anna Sophia Robb just isnt creepy enough. She is a cute little girl, but has no sense of danger about her, she just ended up being a dry board. and while Im not normally a fan of Swanks, she seemed to do alright in this. No stretching her acting chops for sure, but didn't do a bad job either.

There is a twist at the ending that is almost expected in this day in age. I didnt see it coming, but that dosn't mean others wont. But on a whole the story by the end was pretty interesting, if not used before.

Gabriel

I'm a little biased with this movie, I’m a sucker for Angel stories.

Good: Story. It was an interesting take on Archangels, Fallen Angels and Purgatory. There was some slight character development, but nothing great. The look of the movie is great. The main baddy, Sammael, had the creepiest eyes I’ve seen in a while, and the actor wore them well. And the actor for Gabriel was not only hot, but I thought he was pretty good actor, doesn’t look like he’s really been in much other stuff though.

The style of the world was a lot like Dark City or The Crow, very dark, goth and dirty. And really the world is a character into its self. A big part of the movie and how the characters are the way they are is because of the world. I found the idea of Angels trying to cope with a world of darkness and violence really interesting.

Bad: It didn’t have a great budget, which when they use some of the special effects is real obvious. During some of the fight scenes they make it look like they were moving real fast by adding blur lines. But it just didn’t work. They should’ve just stuck with the nice martial arts of the first few fights.

It also looked like they pulled too many little things from other movies. There are several scenes that have been seen in other movies like Equilibrium, and The Transporter. Nods are fine for some genres, but stealing scenes from other movies isn’t.