“Beasts of the Southern Wild,” the directorial debut from Benh Zeitlin, is a one-of-a kind, first-person movie shot from the perspective of a 6-year-old girl named Hushpuppy and full of magical realism. It opens at Liberty Hall today and deserves the attention is getting.

“Beasts” won the Caméra d’Or award at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, and the Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival, where it premiered. The film’s lead actress, young Quvenzhané Wallis, is certain to get a Best Actress nomination come January.

Here’s a video review I did of “Beasts of the Southern Wild” with Jason Ridder from KCTV5 in Kansas City:

KCTV 5

On the other side of the coin, the big Hollywood picture opening today is “Total Recall.” Let’s make one of those obvious, bad movie puns and say right now what you’re probably already thinking: “Total Recall” is best forgotten, ASAP.

I’m not going to go off about how the 1990 “Total Recall” was a classic piece of science fiction and how the remake starring Colin Farrell should never have been attempted. The Schwarzenegger “Total Recall” (or as I prefer to call it, director Paul Verhoeven’s “Total Recall”) was a weird sci-fi flick for sure–it was twisted, campy, extremely violent, and all over the place in terms of tone.

As much as that made it a unique movie, let’s be clear: There was plenty of room for improvement. But this new “Total Recall” ignores all the fun and takes itself very seriously. Unfortunately, it doesn’t have the richness of ideas to back it up.

Rather than engaging with the central ambiguity of whether or not we are witnessing an implanted memory or actual events, director Len Wiseman prefers a straight-up, black-and-white tale of good guys fighting bad guys who want to take over the war-ravaged Earth — with a hero who’s a duller version of Jason Bourne.

Even though “Total Recall” is full of imaginative sets and design, its futuristic world is never anything but a nifty-looking backdrop for its action sequences, which are admittedly better than average. But the world never really informs the characters – whose dialogue is also pretty bland – and the result is a little underwhelming.

Kate Beckinsale is having fun as the wife who tries to kill Colin Farrell, but she’s the only one. In the end, the new “Total Recall” doesn’t improve on the old one, it just waters it down.