Meat at the Movies: Where to Go From Here

A family comedy, a drama and an action/horror/adventure. This week, were looking at three very different movies: 'Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day' (which from here on will now just be called 'Alexander' for obvious reasons), 'The Judge' and 'Dracula Untold.'

Lets start with 'Alexander,' the family comedy - a book I remember reading back in elementary school. Following an 11-year-old Alexander and his comically extra bad day, we learn that this day just isn't following him but his whole family. And thats it. It really is just about have a bad day, we've all had those in our lives and now we get to watch a whole family deal with what should be a few days worth of bad days in one. Steve Carell and Jennifer Garner star as the parents. This gets a 4.7/10 on IMDB and 52/100 on Metacritic.

Moving on to something a bit more deep, the drama 'The Judge.' This one has a star-studded cast including Robert Downey Jr., Robert Duvall, Vera Farmiga and Billy Bob Thornton. A big city lawyer (Downy Jr.) finds his way back to his home town after the local judge who is also his father (Duvall) is charged with murder. He needs to save his father's name and along the way finds himself re-entering his family's life. IMDB gives this a 7.6/10 and says its a well crafted comedy/drama, yet, metacritic gives it a 39/100 and days it falls into a lot of Hollywood cliches. Because of this I had to check a few other places and the consensus is, it's long (nearly 2 and a half hours) and is filled to the brim with legal TV series cliches. So, take it as you will.

Lastly, something I'm interested in, 'Dracula Untold.' Following a just ruler in Transylvania, Vlad III, 'Dracula Untold' misses the point of Dracula according to Rotten Tomatoes. That saddens me, I'm fascinated with the story of Dracula and Vlad the Impaler, where the name came from. This story is of Vlad a.k.a. Dracula (Luke Evans) protecting his people from the Ottoman Empire. After peace was broken by the Sultan, Vlad make a deal with dark forces so that his people will be safe but in the end finds it hard to keep his humanity. This gets 6.2/10 on IMDB and 31/100 on Metacritic, nothing impressive but if I could only see one movie this weekend, this one would still be the one.

Check out all the trailers below, and as always, until next week, we'll MEAT at the movies.