POMPEII

About a half-hour into Paul W.S. Anderson's Pompeii, the film's protagonist - a gladiator-turned-slave amusingly named Milo - hears the unfamiliar sound of the nearby Mount Vesuvius preparing to erupt. "It is the mountain," says Milo's comrade Atticus. "It grumbles from time to time." So do movie reviewers, and this latest 3D action spectacle by the director of Mortal Kombat, Death Race, and a trio of Resident Evil flicks would, at first glance, appear to be exactly the sort of thing I'd personally grumble about: a predictably corny, derivative, overscaled costume party with loads of generic violence and nothing in the way of subtlety or emotional nuance.

Yet while it's easy to name the movie's most direct influences, Gladiator and Titanic chief among them, what I didn't at all expect was for this swords-and-sandals outing to be so thoroughly, cheerfully indebted to 1970s disaster epics in the vein of The Towering Inferno and The Poseidon Adventure; Pompeii, to its cheeky credit, is kind of like 1974's Earthquake with the ancient Roman city cast in the role of Los Angeles.

Music

Miles Nielsen & the Rusted Hearts and Chicago Farmer

The Redstone Room

Friday, February 21, 8:30 p.m.

Americana musician Miles Nielsen performs at Davenport's Redstone Room on February 21 alongside his ensemble the Rusted Hearts, and in an interview in the Decatur Herald & Review, Nielsen said of his team, "I want the band to sound like guys who have experienced a winter." Let's hope, for his local set, that Nielsen also wants his audience to have experienced a winter, because otherwise, he's totally gonna be at the wrong venue.

THE LEGO MOVIE

Two of the characters in The Lego Movie are Lego Minifigures of Superman and Green Lantern, the latter of whom, here, is an obsequious suck-up whom the Man of Steel can't stand. That's a good joke. These decided non-friends are voiced by Channing Tatum and Jonah Hill, who famously played best friends in 21 Jump Street. That's a good in-joke. The Lego Movie is directed by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, who also directed 21 Jump Street. That's a good in-in-joke. But the news that this new animated release is not only the cleverest, most hysterical comedy since 21 Jump Street, but an altogether stronger, more audacious piece of work than at least 90 percent of everything Hollywood gave us last year? No joke at all.

Music

Griffin House

The Redstone Room

Thursday, February 6, 8 p.m.

Folk, pop, and acoustic rocker Griffin House plays Davenport's Redstone Room on February 6, and from all accounts, music fans and critics alike are just crazy about the man's Balls.

Which, of course, is the title of the musicians's latest CD.

Which, of course, meant there was no way I was going to open with anything other than a Balls-related joke. (I mean, come on: How long have we known each other?)