May 2013
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Red Dragon

reviewed on May 19th, 2013 09:09AM

Red Dragon is based on the same book as Manhunter, so this is basically Hopkins version of Brian Cox's take. The movie does a lot of things differently (and better) than Manhunter. I feel like Hopkins has a much bigger role an his relationship...

Hannibal

reviewed on May 19th, 2013 08:59AM

Based on the premise alone, Hannibal kind of does everything wrong. Its 10 years after Starling caught Buffalo Bill and Hannibal escapes. Starling is now a trigger happy field agent for the FBI, and Hannibal is nursing a massive crush on Starling ...

The Silence of the Lambs

reviewed on May 19th, 2013 08:28AM

Silence of the Lambs is based on a novel that is a sequel to the novel Red Dragon, which inspired Manhunter. BUt Silence of the Lambs isn't really a sequel to Manhunter. It would have been interesting to see what Brian Cox would do with a much mea...

Manhunter

reviewed on May 19th, 2013 08:02AM

William Peterson plays Will Graham, a FBI profiler who had a mental breakdown after being attacked by infamous cannibal, Dr. Hannibal Lecktor, played by Brian Cox. The character of Lector (spelled with a k in this one) has become pretty infamous t...

The Sandlot

reviewed on May 9th, 2013 06:12AM

The Sandlot is the biggest reason for baseball never being anything but a disappointment for me. The real thing just doesn't hold up to Hollywood romance. The Sandlot, for a kids movie, is cleverly written and surprisingly well acted make it se...

Galaxy Quest

reviewed on May 7th, 2013 06:21PM

The high wire act of parodying a genre while still honoring it is a tough one. Christopher Guest did it with This is Spinal Tap. Edgar Wright did it with Shaun of the Dead. And Galaxy Quest also totally nails it. Tim Allen, Sigourney Weaver, an...

Iron Man 3

reviewed on May 6th, 2013 06:16AM

For every positive thing I can think of about this movie, there is a small change that would make those positives 100x better. I love that we get more Rhodey, but he still feels like that guy who swoops in to help at the last minute. He also st...

The Way, Way Back

reviewed on May 2nd, 2013 09:03AM

If you are wondering who the hell Nat Faxon and Jim Rash are, that's ok. These guys have been utility comedy players for awhile showing up in small supporting roles. You may remember Faxon as a member of the German drinking team in Beer Fest. You ...

Upstream Color

reviewed on May 1st, 2013 05:39PM

Shane Carruth completely mindfucked the shit out of me. All the trippiest movies I have seen, they are either taken at face value (like Fear and Loathing...) or they are something like 2001, and there is an embedded with meaning. This definitel...

The English Teacher

reviewed on April 29th, 2013 09:55AM

This movie is kind of all over the place. For the most part the second act is basically about Julianne Moore's usually careful/neurotic/geeky English teacher breaking out of her shell when a spontaneous sexual encounter with a former student pr...

The Lords of Salem

reviewed on April 29th, 2013 07:58AM

Worlds colliding. Rock music and horror movies. Rob Zombie heaven I would think. Especially when Rob Zombie gets to riff on the old adage, "the devil's music." Heidi (played by Zombie wifey Sheri Moon) is a local DJ who gets a package in the ma...

Mud

reviewed on April 29th, 2013 07:02AM

Jeff Nichols is on a hotstreak. He is 3 for 3. Shotgun Stories is an immersive experience into a backwoods community. Take Shelter is grim psychological thriller. And Mud is a down and dirty backwoods genre movie. Matthew McConaughey is also o...

Much Ado About Nothing

reviewed on April 28th, 2013 07:25PM

I hated Shakespeare in high school. They forced me to read Romeo and Juliet and MacBeth. I just couldn’t decipher the ye olde English that the Bard used. I’m sure it made sense back in the day, but it might as well be another language at this poin...

Gone Baby Gone

reviewed on April 22nd, 2013 12:33PM

In a really strong directorial debut from shamed (at the time) actor Ben Affleck, Casey Affleck (Ben's brother) plays a Boston private investigator hired by a neighborhood couple to find their kidnapped granddaughter. This movie is littered wi...

Shotgun Stories

reviewed on April 22nd, 2013 10:43AM

This is the first movie written and directed by Jeff Nichols who made Take Shelter. It is about 2 groups of kids from the same father. One group was abandoned by their father. They don't even have proper names. They are called Son, Boy, and Kid. S...

The Incredible Burt Wonderstone

reviewed on April 22nd, 2013 08:05AM

Steve Carell plays stage magician, Burt Wonderstone, a geeky kid who liked magic and ran from bullies. He grew up to be a pompous ass though, and Carell uses a speaking inflection like a WASP-spoof in a Seth MacFarlane cartoon. It's really aggrava...

A Good Day to Die Hard

reviewed on April 22nd, 2013 07:37AM

First thing first: The first Die Hard movie is a top 10 movie for me. Second thing: I am a Die Hard 4 apologist. I don'[t feel guilty about enjoying it But this movie sucks and I don't want to waste too much time talking about it. It works ...

It's A Disaster

reviewed on April 18th, 2013 12:41PM

It's a Disaster is so far (which is still too early) one of the biggest surprises of the year. With the exception of 3 cast members, I didn't recognize a single person. The poster and title make me think of a "Disaster Movie" spoof type comedy, an...

Trance

reviewed on April 15th, 2013 07:31PM

James MacAvoy plays an art auctioneer, who in the middle of an art heist, is knocked over the head and forgets what he did with the painting. He was in on it afterall. To get to the bottom of his empty memories, the band of thieves he is working w...

To The Wonder

reviewed on April 15th, 2013 06:55PM

To the Wonder is so much like Tree of Life that it is hard not to compare them. Each of them uses the same dreamy, out-of-the-corner-of-your-eye type of cinematography as well as an under-reliance (if thats a word) on dialog. In a way, it is more ...

G.I. Joe: Retaliation

reviewed on April 13th, 2013 06:34PM

To say that this movie is an upgrade from the first movie means very VERY little considering how bad the first one is. It is still the same style over substance, action over story, cliches over character type action movies, who try to sell you on ...

Evil Dead

reviewed on April 12th, 2013 09:41AM

It is very easy to sell the original Evil Dead nowadays as a movie that is so bad its good. It is campy, has poorly written dialog which was even more poorly delivered, and the special effects reflect the $2 budget. It is essentially a college fil...

The Place Beyond the Pines

reviewed on April 11th, 2013 07:05PM

By now, you have probably read about this movie whether it be movie reviews or something else. I have. Every review I have read so far is front-loaded with Ryan Gosling as the bank robber. Makes sense because the movie is the same way, frontloaded...

Oz The Great and Powerful

reviewed on April 11th, 2013 06:28PM

This movie is a prequel to The Wizard of Oz and for some reason is actually about the Wizard of Oz this time. Oz, short for Oscar, (played by James Franco) is a stage magician and small time con man when a tornado throws him into the mystical worl...

The Last Stand

reviewed on April 8th, 2013 05:44PM

Arnold Schwarzenegger plays Sheriff Ray Owens, a former hotshot LA narco looking for a quiet retired life as a sheriff of a small, sleepy town. Soon, his spidey-sense gets tipped off. Weird wanderers in the diner. The stubborn old farmer winds up ...

Bullet to the Head

reviewed on April 8th, 2013 03:02PM

Jimmy Bobo (Sylvester Stallone) is a hitman with rules (aren't they all). He just finished killing a corrupt cop when he is attacked by a goon sent by his client. He almost loses his life. His partner isn't so lucky. That corrupt cop was blackmail...

Welcome To the Punch

reviewed on April 1st, 2013 04:28PM

Welcome to the Punch is not anything you haven't seen before and is definitely style over substance, but that does not stop it from being awesome. James MacAvoy is surprisingly convincing as a hot-shot go-getter edgy cop. He is over confident a...

Wrong

reviewed on March 22nd, 2013 04:43PM

Rubber was a pretty crazy movie. It wasn't great, but it is still such a cool, weird mindfuck that I reccommend it anyway. Wrong comes from the same filmmaker. He revs up the weirdness but not the quality. Jack Plotnik (who employs the boring p...

The Brothers Bloom

reviewed on March 15th, 2013 07:06PM

Mark Ruffalo plays older brother Stephen. He is the mastermind and charming rogue. He has a Bruce Willis quality where he makes being an asshole likeable. Adrian Brody plays younger brother Bloom. He is more quiet and reflective. Definitely more s...

Brick

reviewed on March 15th, 2013 06:19PM

For his feature film debut Rian Johnson brings Chinatown to the schoolyard. It just sounds stupid, but it isn't. Johnson makes it work. I think part of it is that he knows its stupid and takes shots at the premise a bunch of times. The other is th...

The Brass Teapot

reviewed on March 7th, 2013 05:53PM

I feel like movies like this used to happen more often. Comedies about regular people getting in way over their head. Like Men at Work for example. It couldn't have been just about 2 garbage men screwing around. They had to uncover some murder con...

Warm Bodies

reviewed on March 7th, 2013 05:09PM

I was really hesitant to see Warm Bodies because, before the trailers, it looked and sounded like just another Twilight, but it is more like what Twilight wanted to be but failed miserably at being. The linchpin of what makes it great is Nichol...

Bottle Shock

reviewed on March 3rd, 2013 12:12PM

This movie is based on the true story of Napa Valley wineries getting to compete in a blind taste test against the French. It centers on Jim Barret (Bill Pulman) and his slacker son Bo (Chris Pine) working and fighting at their personal winery...

Shoot 'Em Up

reviewed on February 17th, 2013 04:51PM

The set up is damn near perfect. A gunmen in the wrong place at the wrong time finds himself driven to do the right thing when a gang of goons chase a pregant woman. He ends up the caretaker of the newborn who's importance is a really great twist....

Sound City

reviewed on February 17th, 2013 04:16PM

A lot like the Conan O'Brien documentary, Conan O'Brien Can't Stop, Sound City looks at the drive and passion of artists. Sound City is a now legendary studio used by Stevie Nicks, Neil Young, Tom Petty, Rick Springfield, Trent Reznor, and Nir...

Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters

reviewed on February 17th, 2013 04:02PM

Jeremy Renner and Gemma Arterton are Hansel and Gretel, siblings who grew up to be witch hunters after being attacked as children. It is a textbook example of style over substance, but its a hell of a ride most of the time. The action is quick...

Gangster Squad

reviewed on February 8th, 2013 01:27PM

Gangster Squad was like a old classic gangster flick by the way of Zack Snyder. It is very glossy with some unneeded slow motion, but the story is really uninspired. I am torn on this movie. I was expecting something awesome . It wasn't awesom...

The ABC's of Death

reviewed on February 7th, 2013 06:34PM

Anthologies are tough. Its tougher when it is made up of 26 different parts. The potential for a few bad apples to ruin the whole bunch skyrockets, and ABCs of Death suffers for it. At the risk of sounding racist, the Asian ones were kind of we...

Stand Up Guys

reviewed on February 7th, 2013 04:02PM

Stand Up Guy was ok. A pretty decent waste of time, but could have been so much better. The script was pretty good. The dialog was mostly deadpan and conversational. The best scenes feel like they would have been great on stage in a play. Alth...

A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III

reviewed on February 6th, 2013 11:51AM

This movie was quite a surprise. I enjoyed it quite a bit. After appearing on the Channel of Bad Sitcoms for so long (and then moving to FX to do more of the same sadly), I forgot Charlie Sheen could act. Not that he gives some mind-blowing per...

15 Minutes

reviewed on January 31st, 2013 09:51AM

This was on the fringe of a few different things. It was on the fringe of really obsessive Internet usage, specifically social networking. Those kind of sites were in their infancy, and that obsessive attention theme of the movie would have fit be...

The Prophecy

reviewed on January 30th, 2013 12:04PM

I love movies the take the mythology of Abrahamatic religions and add on to it. It is why I consider Constantine a guilty pleasure, why I decided to try Supernatural after 5 seasons of ignorance, and why I even bothered to give Legion a chance. ...

Sin City

reviewed on January 16th, 2013 06:38PM

Sin City is Robert Rodriguez's attempt to bring the pages of Frank Miller's pulp comic franchise to the big screen. He strings 3 of the stories together with a nice intro from one of his shorts. In the opening segment, Josh Hartnett plays a smo...

SLC Punk!

reviewed on January 15th, 2013 06:02PM

SLC Punk stars Matthew Lillard as Steve-O. Steve-O moved "from New York City, the Mecca and hub of the cultural world to Utah! Nowhere!" He believed in anarchy, chaos, and ultimate freedom. He had blue spiked hair, wore tattered clothes, and spent...

Empire Records

reviewed on January 15th, 2013 05:42PM

Empire Records is not that original. It is a work place comedy where everything that can go wrong does all in the same day. There has been like hundred of those and much better ones actually. It stars an aging music lover who probably would rathe...

Repo Man

reviewed on January 15th, 2013 01:02PM

Repo Man has shades of John Carpenter, True Romance, and Ghostbusters. It is gritty and wacky and full of satire. Emilio Estevez is Otto, a suburban punk who was just enlisted to a group of repo men. They each see the world through barfly philo...

Wristcutters: A Love Story

reviewed on January 14th, 2013 07:27PM

This takes place in an after life inhabited by suicide victims. I love how weird the world is. It is very drab. The people there cannot smile. They have these weird scars on their body based on how they killed themselves. When you least expect it,...

PCU

reviewed on January 14th, 2013 07:14PM

This is like Van Wilder but WAY better. And I actually like Van Wilder. Jeremy Piven (of Entourage) plays the Van Wilder like character. He is a constantly drunk party going lovable asshole who is working on his 7th year at the college. He runs...

Whip It!

reviewed on January 14th, 2013 07:05PM

Ellen Page plays Bliss Cavender. She was raised in a very stereotypical Texas home. Her father is a jolly, beer swilling sports fan who can rock a cowboy hat. Her mother is obsessed with the teen beauty pageants instilling some moral superiority i...

Batman & Robin

reviewed on January 12th, 2013 05:23PM

This movie is absolutely terrible. i can't watch it for a second. That sucky part is this cast in a legit Batman movie would be fucking kickass. George Clooney as an awkward rich playboy lady killer who puts on a superhero suit and becomes ...

Batman Forever

reviewed on January 12th, 2013 04:58PM

So many changes to this one. Billy Dee Williams didn't get his chance to be Two Face. Theoretically, he wouldn't be a better choice than Tommy Lee Jones, but I just feel bad when you hear him say he took the role of Harvey Dent. Keaton dropped out...

Batman Returns

reviewed on January 12th, 2013 04:41PM

I saw this movie before I saw the first Batman. It is one of my earliest memories of loving movies, or at least live action movies. The animated series was out around the same time as this and I was aware of it and enjoying it before I saw this to...

Batman

reviewed on January 12th, 2013 04:25PM

With so many interpretations of Batman having been released since this early Burton film, it may be easy to look back on it and see all the faults like big sore thumbs, but I still like watching this one occasionally. Michael Keaton is no Chri...

Tangled

reviewed on January 11th, 2013 08:48AM

Who doesn't love a great Disney movie? This one was pretty good. Disney has a time tested way of bringing these fairy tales to life that seems like it will always make for a fun romp of an animated movie. Disney is very clever at rewriting the...

Zero Dark Thirty

reviewed on January 11th, 2013 08:21AM

I wasn't sure what to expect from this when it was first announced. I remember the title was originally Kill Bin Laden, which to me sounds like an ultra-patriotic grindhouse look at the hunt for bin Laden, like that Batman vs Al Qaeda graphic nove...

Southland Tales

reviewed on January 11th, 2013 06:18AM

This is Richard Kelly's follow up to his surprise cult hit, Donnie Darko. And I really wanted to like it, but I think Kelly gets a bit ahead of himself. The movie is really packed with so much stuff. It follows the last minutes of 3 characters....

The Frighteners

reviewed on January 10th, 2013 03:08PM

This might be a shock to MFC, but this is probably my favorite movie from Peter Jackson. It strikes a Raimi like balance between humor and horror. It was actually supposed to be a Tales of the Crypt presents... movie like Demon Knight or Bordello ...

The Paperboy

reviewed on January 9th, 2013 11:30AM

This is rednexploitation at its most specific. This is takes a bunch of redneck cliches and shoves it up its own ass. Nicole Kidman and John Cusack are so very very bad in this movie. Matthew McCaughney continues a very cool trend of out-of-charac...

The Sessions

reviewed on January 7th, 2013 09:46AM

This true story is about Mark O'Brien, a writer left completely immobile except his face when he came down with polio as a child. He can practically do nothing for himself and longs for a romantic relationship along with everything that entails, i...

Hitchcock

reviewed on January 7th, 2013 09:40AM

I am having a hard time judging the performances. I don't know these people past their on-screen personas and the actors in the roles seem to be channeling that version of them more so than the personal side. Just the cadence and the character qui...

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

reviewed on January 5th, 2013 05:45AM

Let me tell you where I stand for Lord of the Rings. I wold give the first one a 6/10 but its too pretty so it gets bumped to 7. The second one is a solid 7 and the 3rd is a solid 8, maybe 9. They are realy gorgeous movies with some outstanding ac...

John Dies At The End

reviewed on January 4th, 2013 09:33PM

John Dies at the End is kind of hard to describe. It is essentially about a drug that is connected to time and space and may be sentient. This drug is taken by 2 stoner buddies and they are forced to save the world. Sometimes they are gung-ho, som...

Lincoln

reviewed on January 4th, 2013 12:54PM

The movie opens up with a Civil War version of Normandy beach sequence from Saving Private Ryan. It is almost equally striking, disgusting, and violent. It then turns to Lincoln speaking to a few of the troops. It is a mostly sappy and melodra...

This is 40

reviewed on January 4th, 2013 12:42PM

When The 40 Year Old Virgin went into theaters, I thought, "this is someone who gets it." It was such a perfect blend of comedy and drama that neither was ever sacrificed for the other. So many comedies at the time were just funny in the beginning...

Django Unchained

reviewed on January 4th, 2013 07:03AM

Tarantino has a way with characters, and Django Unchained is no different. The characters are running the show here. There are implications of adventure, mystery, and horror, and there are even a few action scenes. That's all just stuffing to get ...

Frankenweenie

reviewed on January 4th, 2013 06:34AM

Tim Burton, to me, is hit and miss. He has a lot of passionate fans and passionate detractors, but my feelings tend to shift movie to movie. I love the use of stop motion animation here, a method that is often neglected, but clearly from this exam...

The Loneliest Planet

reviewed on January 3rd, 2013 07:14PM

Movies short on dialog are hard to sell. I usually enjoy them but this one just totally stunk. Usually the quiet characters have more to do or the director captures a tone and pacing that complements the silence. This one just comes off really bor...

Flight

reviewed on January 3rd, 2013 07:05PM

This is Robert Zemekis' first live action flick since he started doing mocap animation. He casts Denzel Washington as the aforementioned alkie pilot. Washington does a great job mostly. Playing drunk is sometimes hard. People tend to go a little c...

Hick

reviewed on December 17th, 2012 06:46PM

Psycho Southerners seem to be really popular this year. Deadfall, Killer Joe, Baytown Outlaws, Django Unchained. Unfortunately, just like Deadfall, Hick is never going to be considered as good as it could/should/would because Killer Joe made it bi...

Price Check

reviewed on December 17th, 2012 06:38PM

Price Check is an office dramedy with no real story. I was so bored with the story. It was like a soap opera or something. I watched it because I like Parker Posey, but this is the kind of project that a studio puts together after seeing Posey in ...

The Bourne Legacy

reviewed on December 17th, 2012 06:31PM

I was never a fan of the Bourne movies. They are cold and mostly humorous. The action scenes could hold my attention, but once they stopped I lost all interest. Jeremy Renner is better lead than Matt Damon for this franchise. Rachel Weisz and Edwa...

Savages

reviewed on December 17th, 2012 06:25PM

I haven't seen too many Oliver Stone movies, but the ones I have seen seem to take stories from the headlines, try to create something meaningful from it, and then hide that meaning under so much gloss, style, and shit, that he shouldn't have wast...

The Watch

reviewed on December 17th, 2012 06:11PM

Somehow Ben Stiller keeps getting shoehorned into the meek straightman of these studio comedies. Richard Ayodade gets too little screen time. Vince Vaughn is funnier as the quick talking douche than he has since the last 80 times he played that ro...

Trouble With The Curve

reviewed on December 17th, 2012 06:05PM

I thought Clint Eastwood retired from acting. if he was ever to come back this isn't really the vehicle I would have liked him to come back as. It has Clint written all over it, but it lacks dramatic depth. It is the same old man story over and ov...

Wreck-It Ralph

reviewed on December 17th, 2012 06:01PM

John C. Reilly, Sarah Silverman, and pretty much the rest of the cast absolutely kill it. It is pretty clever how they make the behind-the-scenes of an arcade work with plenty of licensed cameos. It is classic cartoon existentialism, and it makes ...

Kill List

reviewed on December 17th, 2012 05:55PM

I haven't seen Ben Wheatley's first project, but this project certainly put him on my radar. He masterfully creates an ominous and terrifying tone and pacing while escalating the stakes and danger slowly and surely. It has this very awesome score ...

Sleepwalk with Me

reviewed on December 17th, 2012 05:49PM

I have always thought that comedians make for better dramatic actors than should be expected. I think it is because they are overly observant of the people around them tuning into the human elements of life's absurdity and dragging it through the ...

End of Watch

reviewed on December 17th, 2012 05:42PM

At this point, the "found footage" is totally played out. They make it work the best they can. The footage isn't always of the found variety. Sometimes they have a very intrusive camera that bobs and weaves around like the cinematography on The Sh...

The Baytown Outlaws

reviewed on December 11th, 2012 06:58PM

The Oodie brothers are outlaws in the most general sense. They seem to be interested in mayhem for hire. Brick (Clayne Crawford) is the closest thing that comes to brains of this operation. He is overconfident and surprisingly savvy when he really...

Holy Motors

reviewed on December 11th, 2012 06:26PM

Holy Motors is a wild fucking ride, that’s for sure. It follows the adventures of Mr. Oscar, a very enigmatic man. He wakes up as a rich man on his way to work. He gets inside a limo driven by his assistant. She mentions to him that he has man...

Rise of the Guardians

reviewed on December 8th, 2012 07:32PM

Jack Frost (voiced by Chris Pine) is a troublemaking sprite who can control ice and snow. He was pulled from an icy lake by the Man on a Moon, a seemingly omnipotent being who watches over the Earth every night. Whenever there is a threat against ...

Killing Them Softly

reviewed on December 5th, 2012 06:32PM

Frankie (Scoot McNairy) and Russell (Ben Mendelson) are two-bit hoodlums who get wind of a possible heist. They hear that Mark Trattman (Ray Liotta), the man who runs a big time card game, has confessed to an infamous heist of said card game from ...

Silver Linings Playbook

reviewed on November 25th, 2012 04:34PM

Pat (Bradley Cooper) was an undiagnosed manic depressive sentenced to 8 months of psychiatric evaluation at a mental facility after beating up a man who was having an affair with his wife. After the required 8 months, he comes home to live with hi...

The Perks of Being a Wallflower

reviewed on November 17th, 2012 10:07AM

Charlie (Logan Lerman) is a lonely teenager suffering from psychological issues. It is a reputation he is desperate to get away from, but no amount of planning can possibly make him ready for a life as a bullied high schooler. Eventually, he conne...

Deadfall

reviewed on November 17th, 2012 09:50AM

Addison (Eric Bana) and Liza (Olivia Wilde) are Southern siblings who just robbed a casino. While making their getaway to Canada, they crash on the icy roads. They decide to split up. Liza ends up running into Jay (Charlie Hunnam). Jay is a former...

Skyfall

reviewed on November 13th, 2012 06:28PM

During a mission to retrieve a hard drive that contains the identities of all of MI-6’s undercover agents, James Bond is shot and presumed dead. He lays low in a beach community, getting drunk and bedding ladies. When a terrorist blows up M’s offi...

Fat Kid Rules The World

reviewed on November 13th, 2012 05:35PM

Troy (Jacob Wysocki) is a fat teenager. He is also really unhappy. Most people don’t even notice him at school. He lost his mother at a young age leaving him with a military father (Billy Campbell) and a motivated go-getter little brother, who usu...

Cloud Atlas

reviewed on November 7th, 2012 05:42PM

In 1849, Adam Ewing, an American lawyer, is travelling back from the Chatham Islands while suffering a debilitating disease. In 1936, a bisexual man befriends a struggling composer to help write his last movement. In 1973, an intrepid journalist ...

Sinister

reviewed on November 4th, 2012 12:27PM

Ellison Oswalt (Ethan Hawke) is an author of true crime books who claims to have a thirst for justice. He had a big hit with his first book, but he has had his reputation questioned after one of his other books pointed the finger in the wrong dire...

The Barrens

reviewed on November 2nd, 2012 08:50PM

Richard Vineyard (Stephen Moyer) is a family man who wants to take his family on the kind of camping trip that his father used to take him on. Unfortunately, his family is not at all interested in going. His young son, Danny, is more concerned wit...

Nature Calls

reviewed on November 2nd, 2012 08:15PM

Randy (Patton Oswalt) looked up to his father, his former Boy Scout troop leader. He has since taken over his father’s position, but he is unhappy that the new generation of kids does not have as much interest in camping, fishing, and all other ma...

Your Sister's Sister

reviewed on November 2nd, 2012 07:45PM

Jack (Mark Duplass) is having some hard times. Besides being a general man-boy without a job or any kind of financial ability, he has just lost his brother a year ago. His best friend is his brother’s old girlfriend, Iris (Emily Blunt). When she s...

Arbitrage

reviewed on November 2nd, 2012 06:26PM

Robert Miller (Richard Gere) is a successful hedge fund manager celebrating his 60th birthday with his loyal wife, Ellen (Susan Sarandon), and the daughter following in his footsteps, Brooke (Brit Marling). Miller is on the verge of selling his tr...

The Five-Year Engagement

reviewed on November 2nd, 2012 04:49PM

Tom Solomon (Jason Segal) is a sous chef at a fancy restaurant. Violet Barnes (Emily Blunt) recently graduated with a doctorate in psychology. They meet at a costume party, and they get engaged a year after they start dating. Unfortunately, one th...

American Reunion

reviewed on November 1st, 2012 05:17PM

East Great Falls high school is having a high school reunion, and everyone is invited. They are all older now and have the kind of problems that come with it. Jim (Jason Biggs) and Michelle (Alyson Hannigan) do not have the great sex life they use...

Man on a Ledge

reviewed on November 1st, 2012 04:28PM

Escaped convict, Nick Cassidy (Sam Worthington), checks into the Roosevelt hotel under a fake name. Once he gets to his room, he wastes no time stepping out on the ledge. This gets the attention of a number of passerbys and eventually the police....

The Dictator

reviewed on October 31st, 2012 06:28PM

Sacha Baron Cohen plays Aladeen, the dictator of The Republic of Wadiya, a Middle Eastern country that has started a nuclear weapons program. He travels to America to answer for that program at a UN assembly. He is kidnapped from his hotel room by...

Prometheus

reviewed on October 31st, 2012 05:44PM

Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) are archeologists who believe they have found a star map imbedded in a number of different cultures from varying eras and locations. They catch the interest of the billionai...

The Dark Knight Rises

reviewed on October 30th, 2012 06:42PM

Eight years after the events of The Dark Knight, Bruce Wayne has hung up the cape and cowl and has become a recluse nursing a bum leg back in Wayne Manor. Batman and Commissioner Gordon have been able to spin the events of the last movie to reinvi...

The Dark Knight

reviewed on October 29th, 2012 10:11AM

Batman has been operating for a while now. The police department and the legal system are still full of corruption. The gangsters are still running the street, but there is hope for the first time in a long time in Gotham City. It is not coming in...

Batman Begins

reviewed on October 29th, 2012 08:39AM

Batman was created in 1939 by Bob Kane. It is the story of Bruce Wayne, the son of a wealthy doctor who spent a lot of money keeping Gotham from going to pot. As a young boy, Bruce witnessed his parents being gunned down by a thief behind a theate...

Smashed

reviewed on October 27th, 2012 06:47PM

Smashed is a character piece, and as such, it doesn’t have that much of a story. So, it does occasionally lag and it doesn’t really have the best flow. At an hour and a half, it is not nearly as taut as it should be. It does, however, like most ...

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter

reviewed on October 25th, 2012 07:23PM

Abraham Lincoln as a young boy sees his mother die at the hands of a vampire. Once he is older, he goes after that vampire not knowing what he is. After surviving the ordeal, he is taught how to be a vampire hunter by a posh British man basing his...

Killer Joe

reviewed on October 25th, 2012 07:00PM

Chris (Emile Hirsch) is in deep with the wrong people. He owes them a very large sum of money. He tries to get the money from his father, Ansel (Thomas Haden Church), but Ansel and his wife, Sharla (Gina Gershon) couldn’t help him even if they wan...

Burn After Reading

reviewed on October 24th, 2012 06:30PM

Osborne Cox (John Malkovich) is disgruntled over his firing from the CIA. He begins writing a memoir which he saves to a disc and then loses it in a gym locker. It is found by two gym employees: Linda (Frances McDormand), who is self-conscious of ...

No Country for Old Men

reviewed on October 24th, 2012 05:46PM

Llewelyn Moss (Josh Brolin) is out hunting when he finds a bunch of dead bodies during a drug deal that went south. He finds a briefcase full of money and decides to take it. On the trail of the briefcase is a mob enforcer named Anton Chigurh (Jav...

The Ladykillers

reviewed on October 23rd, 2012 07:04PM

GH Dorr (Tom Hanks) is a gentlemen thief who has a way with words. Hanks is practically unrecognizable in the role. He doesn’t have to steal the show since it is practically handed to him fitting the usual talkative Southerner that the Coen Brothe...

Intolerable Cruelty

reviewed on October 23rd, 2012 05:47PM

This is the second in the Coen /Clooney Idiot trilogy. George Clooney plays Miles Masse’s a successful divorce lawyer known for securing the dishonest party of marriages their more than fair share of the marital assets. After a rich guy gets caugh...

The Man Who Wasn't There

reviewed on October 23rd, 2012 05:34PM

A single line premise for this movie does not do it justice. None of the single line premises that I have used in any of these reviews does justice to a Coen brothers yarn. They are far more complex and detailed, and at times even hard to pinpoint...

O Brother, Where Art Thou?

reviewed on October 23rd, 2012 05:03PM

Set during The Great Depression, Everett (Clooney), Pete (John Tuturro), and Delmar (Tim Blake Nelson) are stuck in a chain gang. One day, they make a break for it. They are after a big score that Everett stole. They only have four days before the...

The Big Lebowski

reviewed on October 23rd, 2012 04:41PM

A story about nothing hasn’t been this fun since Jerry Seinfeld got a tv deal. I’m not really exaggerating just how much about nothing this movie is. I have seen it said (and wish I could remember where) that the Coen brothers sense of cinema is n...

Fargo

reviewed on October 23rd, 2012 03:25PM

At this point in the Coen brothers’ career, Fargo is probably the best example of their style. Their thrillers had their fair share of dark humor. Their comedies had their fair share of tragedy, but neither of them have such a well-balanced combin...

The Hudsucker Proxy

reviewed on October 22nd, 2012 06:28PM

In December 1958, Norville Barnes (Tim Robbins), a naïve business school graduate from Indiana, arrives in New York believing he is destined for big things. He tries looking for a job, but each job notice requests experience. From firsthand experi...

Barton Fink

reviewed on October 22nd, 2012 05:59PM

Barton Fink is an experimental story written by the Coen brothers when they were suffering writer’s block while writing Miller’s Crossing. It focuses on a Barton Fink, played by John Tuturro. Fink seems like a very nervous and asocial guy. He seem...

Miller's Crossing

reviewed on October 22nd, 2012 05:04PM

Tom Reagan (Gabriel Byrne) is the right hand man to the Irish gangster in charge, Leo (Albert Finney). Leo is being challenged by an up and coming Italian gangster, Casper (Jon Polito). The two get into a disagreement about how to deal with a loca...

Raising Arizona

reviewed on October 22nd, 2012 03:26PM

Raising Arizona stars Nic Cage as H.I. McDunnagh, a pacifist who robs convenience stores. Since he gets caught so often, he starts having feelings for the police mugshot photographer Ed (short for Edwina) played by Holly Hunter. One day after bein...

Blood Simple

reviewed on October 22nd, 2012 02:30PM

The movie follows the very tragic misadventures of a few Texans as they try to deal with the relationship they have together. Abby (Frances McDormand) is unhappy in her marriage to bar owner, Julian (Dan Hedaya). She strikes up a friendship with o...

Seven Psychopaths

reviewed on October 19th, 2012 08:27PM

The title of the film refers to the screenplay that Martin (Colin Farrell) is trying to write. It sounds more like an anthology of stories about seven different psychopaths with not much throughline. Martin wants it to be more than just a movie ab...

Argo

reviewed on October 16th, 2012 06:57PM

In 1979, a group of Muslim protesters stormed the American embassy in Iran taking the people inside as hostages. They did this because the US had recently sided with the recently overthrown Shah, which the US helped put into power in the first pla...

The Faculty

reviewed on October 12th, 2012 09:05PM

Screenwriter Kevin Williamson tries to do for the science fiction genre what he did for the horror with Scream. He takes a very familiar plotline and tears apart so that he can try to put it back together better than before. The plot in question ...

The Dead Zone

reviewed on October 12th, 2012 07:29PM

“As he was a bachelor, and in nobody's debt, nobody troubled their head about him anymore.” This quote is from Sleepy Hollow about the disappearance of Ichabod Crane. It is also what Johnny Smith wants in his own life. Based on a Stephen King b...

Trick 'R Treat

reviewed on October 12th, 2012 03:52PM

More so than any other genre, horror has been rife with anthologies. If I had to guess why I would that is I would probably say it is due to the old tradition of telling scary stories around the campfire. The only problem is most feature length an...

Demon Knight

reviewed on October 12th, 2012 02:17PM

Tales of the Crypt is probably remembered for being one of the more iconic horror television shows. Each episode was its own movies revolving around a particularly frightening morality tale. It was framed by segments featuring our undead host, The...

Pontypool

reviewed on October 11th, 2012 08:13PM

Glen Mazzy is a former shock jock who bit off more than he could chew when his Howard Stern antics on the air. Now he finds himself stuck in the small market town of Pontypool, Ontario. His job now entails reading the news and discussing local eve...

The Master

reviewed on October 9th, 2012 07:40PM

Oh Paul Thomas Anderson, where do I even begin? Anderson has always seemed to have a real problem with the 3 Act structure. With every movie, he seems like he is getting further and further away from it. There isn’t anything inherently wrong wi...

Jack & Diane

reviewed on October 7th, 2012 03:18PM

This has been sold as a werewolf movie which is definitely misleading. Diane (Juno Temple) is a British born and raised teenager living in New York with her aunt. She has a twin sister back in England. Diane was expecting her sister to show up ...

Compliance

reviewed on October 7th, 2012 02:08PM

The premise seems like such an improbable series of events. Someone calls a fast food restaurant claiming to be a police officer. He uses a very broad description to get the manager to pinpoint a young, attractive, female employee and then claims ...

Red Lights

reviewed on October 5th, 2012 08:27PM

From what I have read about this movie, I am in a big minority. I actually kind of liked this movie. It is from the mind of Rodrigo Cortes, who also directed the fantastic Buried with Ryan Reynolds buried alive. This time he takes on a different p...

Rear Window (Re-issue) (1983)

reviewed on October 4th, 2012 06:36PM

L. B. Jefferies, known as Jeff to his friends, is an adventurous photographer. As the camera pans around his room, we see some of his work including a racecar crash where one of the wrecks is flying right at him. He is currently stuck in a wheelch...

Van Helsing

reviewed on October 3rd, 2012 06:09PM

Van Helsing sprouted from the mind of Stephen Sommers, who brought The Mummy back to the big screen for Universal. The first Mummy was a really great, fun action adventure, but the sequel fell pretty short. I always chalked it up to sequelitis. It...

Blade

reviewed on October 3rd, 2012 05:14PM

Born out of Marvel comics during a very trendy horror era, Blade was a typical blaxploitation protagonist dropped into a classic horror world. As the story goes, his mother was bit by a vampire while she was pregnant forcing her into labor. Becaus...

Bubba Ho-Tep

reviewed on October 2nd, 2012 05:54PM

Sometime in the 1970s, Elvis got sick of all the demands of fame. He hired the best Elvis impersonator he could find and switched places with him. Unfortunately, the impersonator is the one who ended up dying in 1977, and the real Elvis could not ...

Shaun of the Dead

reviewed on October 2nd, 2012 04:37PM

Shaun (Simon Pegg) lives in a London house with his two college friends, one of which is his best friend, Ed (Nick Frost). Simon leads a very unambitious life. He works in a store with moderate leadership going to the same bar over and over. This ...

Jaws

reviewed on October 1st, 2012 07:26PM

Chief Brody (Roy Scheider) has just moved to the small New England island community of Amity, even though he is afraid of the water. He is trying to escape the violent streets of New York so that his kids do not have to live in fear. Unfortunately...

Sound of My Voice

reviewed on September 30th, 2012 06:58PM

Peter and Lorna are a romantic couple, who are also making a documentary about cult. As part of their research, they have begun the process to join a cult that had just recently got started. This process involves a lot of outside preparation to pr...

Butter

reviewed on September 30th, 2012 05:07PM

In a rural town in Iowa, the local butter sculpting competition is incredibly popular. It has been one the last 15 years by the same man, Bob Pickler (Ty Burrel). When his wife, Laura (Jennifer Garner) learns that the board of the competition has ...

Rock of Ages

reviewed on September 29th, 2012 07:27PM

I cannot remember where I read this, but I remember Baz Luhrmann saying he used pop culture in Moulin Rouge because the worst thing about musicals is that people do not know the songs going into them. That is kind of the idea behind Rock of Ages, ...

Looper

reviewed on September 29th, 2012 01:55PM

Joseph Gordon-Levitt plays Joe, a hitman in the future. In this future, poverty has hit an all-time low. Homeless and vagrants work their way through the cities as if the world just ended. You keep expecting Mad Max to come bombing around the corn...

Snow White and the Huntsman

reviewed on September 27th, 2012 07:16PM

King Magnus unknowingly saves an evil witch, Ravenna (Charlize Theron), from a dark army of glass soldiers. The king is then seduced and killed by the witch who becomes the new Queen. In order to keep her throne, she locks up her stepdaughter and ...

The Raid: Redemption

reviewed on September 27th, 2012 05:52PM

In the Jakarta slums, there is a big apartment complex. At the top lives a drug lord who watches over the whole building from a bank of televisions. He has 2 generals: a very smart and clever strategist and a very violent fighter. The three of the...

The Hunger Games

reviewed on September 27th, 2012 04:23PM

The Hunger Games is another in a long line of scifi/horror/fantasy inspired young adult novels that has been taken to the big screen treatment. It takes place in a very disgusting future. The rich and powerful live in a lavish scientifically advan...

The Tall Man

reviewed on September 25th, 2012 06:10PM

This movie has all the making of your basic slasher. It takes place in an old mining town in Washington. They have hit hard times with the mine closing and the economy being in the shitter in general. The town was rocked by a number of disappearan...

3, 2, 1...Frankie Go Boom

reviewed on September 25th, 2012 04:19PM

Frankie (Charlie Hunnam) is an aspiring writer. He lives out in the middle of nowhere in Death’s Valley. He is trying to escape his past which includes his pregnant fiancé admitting to an affair with the Best Man, who is also the father, on their ...

Cosmopolis

reviewed on September 24th, 2012 07:18PM

Eric Parker is 28 years old and already a billionaire. It sounds like he is self-made working as an asset manager. It is one of those economic jobs where somehow they make money by moving money around. He decides he needs a haircut, and he can onl...

Dredd 3D

reviewed on September 24th, 2012 04:59PM

In the future, most of the United States has been left irradiated and unlivable. The surviving population lives in mega-cities, like Mega-City One which stretches from Washington DC to Boston. The conditions of these cities vary greatly. The city ...

Seeking a Friend for the End of the World

reviewed on September 21st, 2012 06:50PM

Seeking a Friend at the End of the World wastes no time getting to the nitty gritty. It opens up on our hapless protagonist, Dodge (Steve Carrell) listening to the broadcast that the world will end. His unhappy wife finally finds the guts to just ...

Dark Shadows

reviewed on September 21st, 2012 05:05PM

Johnny Depp plays Barnabas Collins, the heir to a fishing empire in Maine. He falls in love with a girl, but not before he has a fling with his family’s maid. The maid turns out to be a witch. She punishes Barnabas by killing his parents, his new ...

Premium Rush

reviewed on September 21st, 2012 04:07PM

I hate when cars have to share the road with people not in cars because for some reason about 75% of them just expect everyone to just bow their existence. It’s strange. I had a friend who used to walk in the middle of the road without looking as ...

The Campaign

reviewed on September 20th, 2012 08:09PM

So I just realized I copied and pasted the wrong review here and deleted the files already so fuck it. It made me laugh sometimes but not enough. Will and Zack get annoying quick, and all the satire lacked balls. 5/10

Bernie

reviewed on September 20th, 2012 07:32PM

Bernie is a mortician working in Carthage, Texas. He takes his job very seriously. He gives everyone all the information and opportunities they need to make their family member’s funerals. Even long after the funerals, Bernie was putting in time w...

The Expendables 2

reviewed on September 19th, 2012 12:37PM

What I like about The Expendables (referring to the actual team, not the movie) is that they are a bunch of hapless schmucks. They have nothing to show for themselves except the money in their pocket, the scars on their back, and the few relations...

Hit and Run

reviewed on September 18th, 2012 06:36PM

Dax Shepard, who also wrote and co-directed this movie, plays Yul Perkins, who in witness protection goes by Charles Brosnon. He based his alias on the famed British prisoner who based his alias on the famed action hero. Yul was a getaway driver f...

The Cold Light of Day

reviewed on September 18th, 2012 03:40PM

Will Shaw is a stressed out young professional. He is on edge because his company is hemorrhaging money and might be closing up pretty soon, not to mention that the airline lost his luggage. He is supposed to be enjoying a nice family vacation on ...

Lawless

reviewed on September 3rd, 2012 08:19PM

America has a love affair with outlaws. We are a country where shows like The Shield, The Sopranos, and Breaking Bad can reach critical acclaim. We are a nation who can look back on our history and see Jesse James as a hero. We take pleasure in a ...

V/H/S

reviewed on September 2nd, 2012 05:14PM

The movie opens up with a group of kids who probably saw Jackass one to many times. They are following a young couple around. They each take a strategic position standing around her and then molest her. As she screams and shouts, they try to rip h...

Safe

reviewed on August 31st, 2012 07:04PM

Jason Statham is often pigeon holed among the roided out meat heads that usually fill these roles, but he is far more charismatic than anyone gives him credit for. He never feels like he is reading cue cards or going over the top. He has a very ba...

Detention

reviewed on August 31st, 2012 05:39PM

In a nutshell, Detention is an apocalyptic, slapstick, time-travelling, body-swapping horror-comedy-scifi-action-fantasy love letter to the ‘90s. It’s a really big nutshell. Like a walnut. It doesn’t even try to start out like a normal movie. I...

Bachelorette

reviewed on August 30th, 2012 07:34PM

The story centers on three friends from high school: Regan, Gena, and Katie. Regan (Kirsten Dunst) is a borderline OCD-case and control freak. In high school, she was queen bitch of the school. Seriously, her and her friends called each other The ...

Paranorman

reviewed on August 30th, 2012 12:00PM

In 2006, a 3-D animated horror movie for kids called Monster House was made. It was about a demonic house that was attacking the neighbors and the brave group of kids who decided to stick up to it even though no one believed them. From my adult po...

Beasts of the Southern Wild

reviewed on August 1st, 2012 09:20AM

The American dream has always been associated with success and the possibility of obscene wealth through hard work, perseverance, and absurd determination under the guise of having the freedom of choice. That freedom is rarely depicted as choosing...

The Raven

reviewed on July 22nd, 2012 01:30PM

John Cusack plays Edgar Allen Poe, a writer famous for his gothic poetry and macabre short bstories. He has fallen on hard times with no money to his name but plenty of booze. He seems to have hit a writer’s block relying on criticism pieces that ...

2 Days in New York

reviewed on July 20th, 2012 09:13AM

Marion (Julie Deply) is a French-transplant to New York following her dream to become an art-photographer. Along the way, she met Mingus (Chris Rock), a journalist who writes articles and has his own radio show. The two of them live a hipster life...

Take This Waltz

reviewed on July 16th, 2012 07:01PM

Margot (Michelle Williams) is a freelance writer who is on assignment rewriting the brochure for a historical reenactment venue. While there, she meets a charming man, Daniel (Luke Kirby). By coincidence, they are seated next to each other on the ...

Why Stop Now

reviewed on July 14th, 2012 10:20AM

Why Stop Now takes place within a 24 hour time period. Eli has an audition to get into a prestigious piano program. This program would force him to move away for a year. To make sure that his home and young sister would be taken care of, he needs ...

Project X

reviewed on July 13th, 2012 03:41PM

The movie is presented as a home movie with the majority of it being recorded by an AV student’s camcorder with smaller scenes added from people’s phonecams. It is delivered as if it was really happening. Not necessarily found footage, but definit...

Wanderlust

reviewed on July 13th, 2012 03:10PM

Wanderlust was written and directed by David Wain, who made one of my favorite comedies of the last decade, Role Models. It was everything great about comedy. It was characterized by no restraint humor that was willing to be as clever as Wes Ander...

John Carter

reviewed on July 13th, 2012 02:31PM

John Carter is based on a book series by Edgar Rice Burroughs, who also created Tarzan, which he wrote between 1912 and 1943. This means it came out before the definitve decade, the 1950s, where interest in space travel and new technologies was at...

Detachment

reviewed on July 13th, 2012 01:54PM

Adrien Brody plays Henry Bathes (the s is silent). He is a substitute teacher who travels from school to school filling in for long term absences. He is capable of teaching and reaching students, but he recognizes his role as a babysitter. This do...

Ted

reviewed on July 11th, 2012 07:37PM

Ted has a brilliant premise. Most family and holiday movies have dealt with the idea of toys and other inanimate items becoming animated. None of them have ever really looked to the future to see how that newly animated object may have grown up. I...

Being Flynn

reviewed on July 11th, 2012 07:13PM

For years, it has been popular opinion that Robert De Niro has been phoning it in. He was once one of the greatest actors not just of his generation but possibly of all time. It is sad to see him slum it in some pretty horrific movies in some pret...

The Amazing Spider-Man

reviewed on July 11th, 2012 04:04PM

It is only 10 years since the first Spider-Man movie, and only 5 years from the last of that particular franchise. It definitely feels too early to reboot, but the politics of licensing Marvel properties since being bought up by one of the most po...

Thin Ice

reviewed on July 1st, 2012 06:55PM

The movie opens up with Mickey (Greg Kinnear) telling a story to a man at a bar in a tropical location. See, Micky used to be a hotshot insurance saleman, but it sales have been on the decline while his debts have only been going up. He starts try...

Lockout

reviewed on July 1st, 2012 05:42PM

The movie is produced by Luc Besson, who also helped write the screenplay. In true Besson fashion, the movie is characterized by excess. It is certainly not as outlandish as The Fifth Element, but it is nowhere near the gritty realism of Leon, eve...

Brave

reviewed on July 1st, 2012 12:09PM

Merida joins a long line of Disney princesses who has lives out the modern standards of females in a time where those standards were still a very distant future. Merida is so much more than that idea of the Disney princesses. They are usually so p...

Safety Not Guaranteed

reviewed on June 26th, 2012 08:04PM

Darius (Aubrey Plaza) is a disillusioned college graduate trying to earn her way in a non-paying internship at a Seattle magazine. When one of the staff writers, Jeff (Jake Johnson), gets a lead on a quirky classified ad looking for a time travel ...

Moonrise Kingdom

reviewed on June 25th, 2012 08:19PM

Wes Anderson movies have an unmistakable look. The color choices are much more vibrant than real life. They seem like they sprung write out of an illustrated children’s book. The settings have an almost sitcom like feel where all the rooms are rea...

Jeff, Who Lives At Home

reviewed on June 12th, 2012 03:47PM

Jeff Who Lives At Home is made by the writing-directing duo, Jay and Mark Duplass. They have played key parts in the “mumblecore” movement, a movement in independent film that spotlights dramedy, late 20s/early 30s hardships, and natural performan...

Men in Black 3

reviewed on June 11th, 2012 06:04PM

The reason why the first Men in Black movie was a risk is the same reason that the second one failed. There is far too much potential to get cartoonish and cheesy, while the first one really synced up with the buddy cop action-comedy it was meant ...

Safe House

reviewed on June 10th, 2012 06:31PM

Ryan Reynolds has dug himself a hole in which I think it will be hard for him to climb out of. His most famous character Van Wilder is a scene chewing example of excess that has haunted his career ever since. I consider myself a fan of his. I was ...

Death of a Superhero

reviewed on June 4th, 2012 10:22AM

Teenagers have it pretty rough. We might not believe it in retrospect, but they do. Hormones start pumping through your body making the former annoying opposite sex become the focus of all your attention. You also reach an age where all your child...

Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance

reviewed on May 30th, 2012 11:43AM

I want to like Neveldine and Taylor. I really do. That first Crank movie is so awesome, and their cinematography is really inventive and fun to watch. They get so caught up in their own style though I think they forget they are supposed to be maki...

Contraband

reviewed on May 26th, 2012 07:37PM

Mark Wahlberg plays Chris Faraday, a former smuggler now living a mundane life installing security systems. He lives with his wife Kate (Kate Beckinsale) and his two kids. He is still in contact with his old partner, Sebastian (Ben Foster). When ...

This Means War

reviewed on May 26th, 2012 11:18AM

This Means War is probably the most unbalanced movie I have ever seen. The proposed intention seems to be to make the ultimate date movie blending the characteristics of a saccharine romantic comedy and a slick action movie. Unfortunately, no ...

21 Jump Street

reviewed on May 15th, 2012 05:10PM

I have never seen “21 Jump Street” the tv series, but I am pretty sure it wasn’t like this. 21 Jump Street the movie joins a long line of tv remakes that twists old tv shows into semi-parodies like Starsky and Hutch and Dark Shadows. It is obvious...

Get the Gringo

reviewed on May 14th, 2012 03:32PM

The film takes place inside of a Mexican prison that is more like an enclosed shanty town. The inmates are allowed to freely move while inside the compound. They have jobs, currency, and stores and venues to spend that currency. I have absolutely ...

God Bless America

reviewed on May 12th, 2012 01:51PM

Bobcat Goldthwaite made a name for himself as a mumbling idiot archetype in 80s comedies, but he has making rebranding himself lately as a writer/director of some very dark dramedies. 2009’s World’s Greatest Dad was one of the best surprises of th...

Haywire

reviewed on May 6th, 2012 04:25PM

From the trailers and promotional material, Haywire looked like something director Stephen Soderbergh has never tried: a balls to the wall action thriller. While you watch, you start seeing the Soderbergh stamp on it. There is a very grainy cinem...

The Avengers

reviewed on May 6th, 2012 01:13PM

When I first heard about The Avengers movies, and they were going to lead up to it with solo movies for the heroes, there was a level of skepticism. My only fear was what if one of the solos sucked, what would that mean for the ultimate conclusion...

Chronicle

reviewed on May 2nd, 2012 07:00PM

The main characters of this movie are basically the male archetypes from The Breakfast Club. Steve Montgomery (The Wire’s Michael B. Jordan) is the popular jock. He’s a self-admitted politician with a thing for faces and an innate ability to migra...

The Divide

reviewed on April 28th, 2012 08:28PM

I think one of the only things worse than seeing a major American metropolitan area be attacked by a nuclear weapon is watching the crowd regress to primitive self-preservation due to panic. These are the two very scenes that start The Divide. The...

The Hunter

reviewed on April 28th, 2012 06:42PM

When I first saw this, I still had The Grey on the brain and was dying for some more meditations on masculinity especially on the connection to nature. The Hunter delivers on that concept about half the time. That half of the movie is a powerhouse...

The Cabin in the Woods

reviewed on April 26th, 2012 07:07PM

I AM GOING TO SPOIL THE CRAP OUT OF THIS MOVIE BECAUSE IT JUST WOULDN’T BE FUN TO TALK ABOUT THE MOVIE WITHOUT SPOILING The movie starts pretty cryptically. First there are 2 middle aged men played by Bradford Whitford (Hadley) and Richard Jenk...

The Innkeepers

reviewed on April 23rd, 2012 07:03PM

The Innkeepers is directed by Ti West, who made also made House of the Devil. I did not know that when I started watching The Innkeepers, and all I could think of is this reminds of the House of the Devil. More specifically, they share a similar t...

The Grey

reviewed on March 8th, 2012 07:16PM

The Grey is one more in a long line of man vs nature movies. It is essentially about civilized men finding themselves stranded in an uncivilized world. It is hard to forget that humans grew out of the animal kingdom, but the men act very much like...

Goon

reviewed on March 5th, 2012 07:27PM

“This has all the elements of a sports masterpiece.” - Ryan (Jay Baruchel) It’s true. It does have all the elements of the sports masterpiece. It is David vs Goliath story about an underdog team made up of a motley crew of rejects, has-beens, ...

Alien

reviewed on February 3rd, 2012 06:57PM

It starts off with a slow burn credit sequence that teases you with the title delivering it to the screen piece by piece. It then transfers to a dreamy introductory shot of the mining crew waking from their cryo-slumber. It’s this very brief scene...

Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

reviewed on January 23rd, 2012 07:13PM

This is Pixar’s Brad Bird’s live action debut. For someone who is used to directing and planning action based on limitless imagination. He definitely did not hold back. This one is probably has the most adrenaline of all of them. Considering what ...

Mission Impossible 3

reviewed on January 19th, 2012 07:07PM

J. J. Abrams returns to what made DePalma’s first entry did best. He has crafted an expertly twisty story that still adheres to a fairly simple 3 act structure. Abrams cashes in the elliptical story telling for a chronological storyline that prog...

Mission: Impossible 2

reviewed on January 19th, 2012 07:05PM

Famed director, John Woo, takes over directing duties from DePalma. He is notorious for his action-heavy thrillers filled with 360 degree shootouts and slo-mo action sequences brought to great dramaticism by the white doves that take up the backgr...

Mission: Impossible

reviewed on January 19th, 2012 07:04PM

The spy genre by Briana DePalma. The spy genre is known for its sleekness and sexiness. Adventurers go to exotic locales and bed exotic women. They have a gadget to resolve any problem, yet it never crimps their tuxedo. The spy knows exactly what...

The Artist

reviewed on January 5th, 2012 12:39PM

This is a love letter to a by-gone era of cinema. The movie itself is not just about silent movies, but is a silent movie. It is shot in black and white with the only sound being the overlaying music track. There is an undeniable retro charm to it...

Young Adult

reviewed on January 5th, 2012 11:30AM

Charlize Theron plays one of the most insufferable human beings ever, Mavis. Mavis is a writer of young adult fiction. She writes stories about an impossibly attractive and popular girl in highschool. At one point, it is even referenced that she w...

Shame

reviewed on January 5th, 2012 10:53AM

Two movies in and I can already see that the strength of director Steve McQueen and star Michael Fassbender is their brutally honest and unflinching look at controversial subjects. We live in a time when it is easy to forget that sex addiction is ...

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

reviewed on December 31st, 2011 07:51PM

David Fincher time and time again proves how great of a director he really is. When it comes to stylish and plot-heavy thrillers, no one directs them better. He has a great eye capturing a beauty and ferocity of the European winter at the same tim...

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

reviewed on December 31st, 2011 04:37PM

The first installment to this Sherlock Holmes variation was a big surprise. Guy Ritchie’s stylish action movie bravado and Robert Downey Jr’s lightning fast witticism makes for a perfect union. It is then blended surprisingly well with Holmes’ hom...

A Dangerous Method

reviewed on December 31st, 2011 03:36PM

I thought the relationship between Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud would be interesting. They are two of the most inquisitive minds when it comes to understanding human behavior. Instead, what we get is a very clinical discourse of dialog. They were m...

Midnight in Paris

reviewed on December 31st, 2011 02:59PM

Owen Wilson is a pretty good Woody Allen counterpart. He excels here at being charmingly awkward and humorously sincere. In fact, this may very well be Wilson’s best role outside of Wes Anderson films. He is essentially a shy man trying to break ...

Eyes Wide Shut

reviewed on December 26th, 2011 05:17PM

The movie opens with a married couple, Bill and Alice (played by Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman who were actually married at the time) just going through the motions. She is asks how she looks while sitting on the toilet relieving herself, and her h...

Kidnapped

reviewed on December 26th, 2011 04:22PM

This movie may be one of the most visceral horror movies I have ever seen. On a completely superficial level, there is a lot of crying and screaming and ugliness. At times it can get annoying, but it is off-putting by design. The repetitiveness of...

Just Friends

reviewed on December 18th, 2011 01:59PM

Just Friends hangs its hat on the idea that in order to get an attractive girlfriend, you need to be an insufferable jerk or else you will be stuck in the friend zone. The cynic in me wants to agree, while the romantic in me fights back. Regardles...

Moneyball

reviewed on December 17th, 2011 03:21PM

“How can you not get romantic about baseball?” – Brad Pitt as Billy Beane When it comes to baseball, cinema has always been about the mythology. Field of Dreams. Bull Durham. The Natural. The Sandlot. It is all about the feeling and energy and ...

The Descendants

reviewed on December 16th, 2011 08:47PM

The Descendants is a meditation on the responsibility we have to our families. The respect we need to show each other. The things we have to say, the things we don’t. On a small scale, Matt King juggles his two very different daughters. One is st...

Christmas Vacation

reviewed on December 11th, 2011 03:25PM

This Vacation movie stands out a little more than the others simply because it is really different than the rest. Instead of Clark trying to get them some place, he brings the vacation to them and opens their house to their many relatives includin...

Die Hard

reviewed on December 11th, 2011 11:17AM

Die Hard is, in my opinion, the greatest action movie of all time. The Expendables might have the all star cast. Black Hawk Down may have an abundance of used bullet casings. All the superhero movies may have the best CGI, but for my money Die Har...

Elf

reviewed on December 10th, 2011 09:33PM

The oldest, and possibly only, Christmas trope is that an entire cast of people have forgotten the true meaning of the holiday, and one wide-eyed wonderer needs to break them out of their funk. This is the basic premise of Elf. Now, most of the ti...

The Nightmare Before Christmas

reviewed on December 10th, 2011 08:48PM

Christmas movies are not unlike Christmas carols. The number of memorable additions has gone down significantly over the years. The likes of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and It’s a Wonderful Life were one in a million. The ones made today are u...

Martha Marcy May Marlene

reviewed on December 8th, 2011 05:34PM

Writer/director Sean Durkin experiments with the traditional cinema structure. While some auteurs may want to hide information from the audience, he deftly shows us exactly what we need to know when we need to know it. By showing Martha’s life wit...

The Ides of March

reviewed on December 6th, 2011 07:18PM

The title of the film refers to March 15th, the day that was prophecized as the death of Julius Caesar, in both history and Shakespeare's popular play. After he was given the information and the opportunity to change his fate, Caesar's own hubris ...

Muppets from Space

reviewed on December 4th, 2011 02:00PM

This is one of the most unique of the Muppet movies. It doesn't have any of the superficial trademarks. There is nothing that leads us to believe that there is some kind of canon going on. We don't see the Muppets employs as entertainers, nor are ...

Muppet Treasure Island

reviewed on December 4th, 2011 11:16AM

Treasure Island is probably the Muppet movie that least captures the magic of the Muppets. It seems to be trying to capture the success of Christmas Carol for a second time. For one, most of the muppets are pushed aside for a human character. This...

The Muppet Christmas Carol

reviewed on December 3rd, 2011 02:07PM

The Christmas Carol is a perfect vehicle for the Muppets. The material has a large cast with plenty of spots for the very large Muppet cast to fill and get their screen time. It has a cultural connection to the holidays where the shared family dem...

The Muppets Take Manhattan

reviewed on December 3rd, 2011 11:08AM

In the first Muppets movie when asked how accurate the movie within the movie was on how the Muppets came together, Kermit answered "approximately." This is a much more interesting and plausible (as far as felt characters are real go) origin of th...

The Great Muppet Caper

reviewed on December 2nd, 2011 02:22PM

This time around the Muppets ditch the screening room tactic, but they still hold on to breaking the fourth wall. In one scene, Kermit even criticizies Ms. Piggy's acting. The music montage that bookends this one pretty much states "we are making ...

The Muppet Movie

reviewed on December 2nd, 2011 10:43AM

How do you adapt a television show that is about the behind the scenes of a stage show just as much as it is about what makes it to the stage? You set it in a studio screening room where the stars watch a very self aware film. Its the kind of clev...

Killer Elite

reviewed on December 1st, 2011 06:46PM

Nowadays, what with CGI and short attention spans of the average audience, action movies have only gotten louder, faster, and way more 'splodey. It is nice to see a movie that seems to care about building intrigue and human characters, even if it ...

The Muppets

reviewed on December 1st, 2011 05:30PM

I am definitely one of those people who grew up with the Muppets (although most it was probably reruns), and I think it is great to see them back on the big screen. In true Muppets fashion, they treat their characters with the utmost respect and d...

Puncture

reviewed on November 29th, 2011 07:27PM

This movie was terribly mismarketed. The trailer I saw implied it was about some special drug that nurses were using to help cope with their long hours. The gimmick here would be a junkie lawyer who decides to go after a corrupt system that is pus...

The Debt

reviewed on November 28th, 2011 07:42PM

The tension of the film is palpable. The slick direction feeds us information when we need rather than when it happens. This effectively keeps us on the edge of our seats second guessing the events as they play out. A number of the scenes have a l...

The Help

reviewed on November 28th, 2011 06:39PM

The Help is handicapped by its premise from the get-go. My modern point of view stops me from every looking at those who mistreat these house maids as anything but inconsiderate, prejudice assholes (And that is putting it lightly). The filmmakers ...

Cars 2

reviewed on November 22nd, 2011 07:11PM

I am not a fan of the first Cars movie at any stretch of the imagination. I originally reviewed it at a 3/10 and stand by that rating. Cars 2, in my humble opinion, is a vast improvement. The biggest problem I had with the original Cars was it ...

The Way of the Gun

reviewed on November 22nd, 2011 05:36PM

The first scene tells you everything you need to know about the movie. It is violent to an incredible degree, and it has no quams about putting women in violent situations. Also, the one acting violent toward a woman, a character played by Ryan Ph...

Our Idiot Brother

reviewed on November 22nd, 2011 05:05PM

Our Idiot Brother centers on Ned. He is looks like your average hippie. Bearded and proudly unkempt. He preaches peace and love and the occasional herbal remedy. He enjoys farming organic produce and overall craftsmanship. But unlike most hippies ...

Burke and Hare

reviewed on November 10th, 2011 06:28PM

It is nice to see Andy Serkis out from behind the CGI curtain. There is no surprise that he would have a magnetic screen presence as it obviously bleeds through his animated fronts. He has some fantastic comedic timing, as well great chemistry wit...

London Boulevard

reviewed on November 10th, 2011 06:06PM

Colin Farrell is on a big career upswing. The movies themselves might not always be the best, but his individual performances have been a huge improvement over his formerly mundane roles. His Irish attitude is put to good use helping infer his cha...

Beginners

reviewed on November 9th, 2011 05:37PM

The movie is about a one man's relationship with his father and his new girlfriend. One comes after the other, but the stories are intertwined. The story involving his father is very interest. Oliver (played by Ewan McGregor) becomes more invol...

I Melt With You

reviewed on November 8th, 2011 06:57PM

A group of college friends get together once a year. They collect enough alcohol and drugs to kill an entire heard of rhinos, and then do their best to get rid of the evidence. For them, it is a weekend of catharsis where they can escape their mu...

Another Earth

reviewed on November 8th, 2011 06:34PM

Rhoda Williams is a young woman with a bright future. She has been recently accepted to MIT. The night she finds out, she celebrates with friends and than attempts to drive home drunk. A DJ on the radio starts talking about the new Earth coming in...

Fireflies in the Garden

reviewed on November 7th, 2011 08:51PM

Fireflies in the Garden is a drama about family members who practically hate each other, or at least overwhelmed with sadness that they cannot appropriately communicate with each other. A movie like that you would think would have an incredible ed...

Priest

reviewed on November 7th, 2011 08:33PM

Priest is an attempt to reinvent the vampire genre. These vampires are categorically different from most vampires we have encountered in film. They are much more like mindless beasts who can infect humans. These infected humans are called "familia...

The Ward

reviewed on November 7th, 2011 06:53PM

This was to be John Carpenter's return to form horror movie after a big hiatus after the cinema abortion that was Ghosts of Mars. It starts off seemingly like classic Carpenter-Halloween. There is a mysterious killer picking off teenagers. The add...

Ghosts of Mars

reviewed on November 6th, 2011 07:10PM

The premise has the making of a fantastic Carpenter fiction. Mixing his expertise at atmospheric paranoia horror and low-concept/high-reward science fiction. Yet he fails at delivering on both these concepts. The idea that people are capable of...

Vampires

reviewed on November 6th, 2011 06:42PM

It seems that every other piece of vampire fiction always includes a character who was adopted and trained by the Catholic Church to hunt vampires in secret. But where many of those pieces usually have some kind of British stuffiness to it, this o...

Escape from L.A.

reviewed on November 4th, 2011 02:31PM

This is Carpenter's sequel to Escape from New York that offers really nothing very different from the first installment. Instead of a walled-in New York, we have Los Angeles turned into an island. It is full of eccentric characters, just like New ...

Village of the Damned

reviewed on November 3rd, 2011 07:35PM

This is another remake from John Carpenter, but unlike The Thing, it doesn't really prove memorable. I suppose strange simultaneous babies can only take you so far. There is definitely something creepy about their origin and appearance, but they f...

In the Mouth of Madness

reviewed on November 3rd, 2011 06:43PM

John Carpenter is always trying to reinvent the horror movie. He redid Cold War paranoia with grotesqueness. He turned the slasher archetype into a car. I don't even think I have to bring up what he accomplished with Halloween. John Carpenter does...

Memoirs of an Invisible Man

reviewed on November 3rd, 2011 05:33PM

I was pretty impressed with Chevy Chase in the lead role. For the most part he plays it straight. As opposed to his usual clumsy oafish characters, the awkward humor here comes from the situation rather than his personality. In fact, he comes off ...

They Live

reviewed on November 3rd, 2011 05:12PM

The movie opens with our protagonist Rowdy Roddy Piper. He is dressed in flannel, armed with a killer mullet, and carrying a backpack full of what I assume are all his worldly belongings. He is begging for work and staying in a shantytown. This is...

Prince of Darkness

reviewed on November 2nd, 2011 08:05PM

Prince of Darkness is a very complex supernatural thriller. At least it wants to be. Much of the conversations are made up of quantum physics and existential philosophy. It was a meeting of the minds between science and religion blurring the big t...

Big Trouble in Little China

reviewed on November 2nd, 2011 07:34PM

Big Trouble in Little China is the ultimate combination of Carpenter's abilities. It is a high-octane action-comedy that pays homage too and sends up plenty of genre films that came before, all of which Carpenter has shown admiration for in the pa...

Starman

reviewed on November 2nd, 2011 07:19PM

This is not Carpenter's usual flare. His trademark grit and provocativeness is void. Instead, in its place is something resembling the early work of Stephen Spielberg. It is a light hearted adventure that doesn't forget to remain adult. It doesn't...

Christine

reviewed on October 31st, 2011 06:00PM

The most original thing about Christine is Christine herself. She is an old glossy red Plymouth Fury. She has a mind of her own and expresses herself through old timey rock and roll she broadcasts over her radio. At night, she drives around driver...

The Thing (1982)

reviewed on October 31st, 2011 04:39PM

The Thing is technically a remake of Howard Hawke's sci-fi, The Thing From Another World, but really a retelling of the even older story, Who Goes There? The entire purpose of the horror genre is to take real life fears and twisting them into s...

Escape from New York

reviewed on October 30th, 2011 09:01PM

Just like Assault on Precinct 13, John Carpenter seems to be using '70s exploitation and Western premise to his advantage. The marriage between them is impeccable. It still has Assault's ghoulish thugs and massive gunplay, but this time around Car...

The Fog (1980)

reviewed on October 30th, 2011 07:27PM

The Fog is an incredibly atmospheric horror flick that takes the technical expertise of Halloween and adds more obvious supernatural elements. Carpenter pick and chooses what to show and what not to show opting that more is less. It is impressive ...

Halloween (1978)

reviewed on October 30th, 2011 07:04PM

Halloween is a genre defining movie. Every slasher movie that came after it would be ultimately compared to this, and for good reason. It is some of the sleekest direction out there with Carpenter using every tool in his reach to increase tension....

The Rum Diary

reviewed on October 30th, 2011 11:44AM

Hunter S. Thompson made a name for himself with his drug-addled stream of consciousness tales full of his own rantings and ravings about the gonzo word around him. Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas in both book and movie form is the stand out example...

Take Shelter

reviewed on October 27th, 2011 06:53PM

Take Shelter starts off taking advantage of basic horror tropes. It has creepy, ominous score that plays periodically throughout. The apocalyptic visions slowly reveal more and more of what the main character is actually seeing, and they usually ...

Melancholia

reviewed on October 8th, 2011 12:45PM

The title of the film literally refers to the on-coming planet of the story, but it is also the name of the depression that Kirsten Dunst's character suffers from. I have no real world experience with depression, but from what I understand, Dunst ...

Meek's Cutoff

reviewed on October 8th, 2011 12:22PM

Meek's Cutoff is an intriguing attempt at time travel. The filmmakers aim to relocate the audience to the Oregon desert in 1845, where no romanticism turns outlaws into saints. It is just an honest portrayal of historic circumstances. The harsh re...

50/50

reviewed on October 2nd, 2011 06:22PM

It seems like this is the year of subtlety and nuance, and this film is no different. It is far less outlandish and outrageous than Seth Rogen's previous comedies. The humor is guided by awkward moments and sadness. It is also not so brutally sad ...

Valhalla Rising

reviewed on October 2nd, 2011 05:32PM

Director Refn establishes an amazing tone from the very beginning and commits to it. It is long and slow and quiet narrative that occasionally explodes with sound and blood . The haunting score is derived from guitar feedback creating an ominous w...

Hanna

reviewed on October 2nd, 2011 05:14PM

Hanna (as in the movie) is an attempt to bring subtlety and emotional substance to an often derivative genre. The indie spy thriller has been abound with flashy colors and camerawork hiding the shoddiness of its action. This time around more than ...

Bronson

reviewed on September 26th, 2011 05:45PM

Jesse James, Al Capone, John Dillinger, Charles Bronson. Despite the fact that most of those guys are American, there is something sexy and romantic in being a criminal especially in cinema. Bronson is no different. He is a big grand character ...

Terri

reviewed on September 20th, 2011 07:44PM

This is a character piece about your not so typical highschool tudent. Even for a social outcast, Hollywood usually dresses them up as some kind of artistic genius or a wise beyond his years boy of few words. Terri is forced to mature in a lot way...

Blitz

reviewed on September 20th, 2011 07:05PM

If The Bank Job wasn't evidence enough, Jason Statham takes on a role that proves that he is more than a guy who can kick your ass. I have always suspected that his tough guy bravado would translate well to this kind of story, and he proves it. He...

Bunraku

reviewed on September 19th, 2011 08:05PM

Bunraku actually refers to a traditional Japanese puppet theater. I fail to see the connection with between that and this film. The film seems to be more inspired by anime/manga. The story is like Eastern philosophy and style got put through a ...

Drive

reviewed on September 19th, 2011 05:59PM

This movie reminds me of Reese Witherspoon's line from Walk the Line. Steady as a train, sharp as a razor. That is Drive. It is absolutely hypnotic. It views Los Angeles through a dreamy lens of equal parts pride and shame. It is dirty and filmy a...

Warrior

reviewed on September 13th, 2011 07:23PM

The first half of the film is mostly a family drama. The brothers and their reformed alcoholic father don't seem to have much left of a relationship anymore. The two brothers have their own personal issues to work through, and can only be resolved...

Everything Must Go

reviewed on September 4th, 2011 10:03AM

If you ask most people their favorite Will Ferrel performance, they would probably say something like Anchorman or Step Brothers. I would say Stranger than Fiction. This performance is very similar to Stranger than Fiction as Ferrell reigns in his...

Attack the Block

reviewed on September 3rd, 2011 07:13PM

Attack of the Block is probably one of the best times I've had at the theater all year. What makes it so great his how flawlessly it combines genres making it a one-stop cinema going experience. It is a science fiction story. Aliens crash land ...

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides

reviewed on September 3rd, 2011 12:35PM

This new installment definitely left a better taste in my mouth than the previous 2 installments. The mythology they were introducing in the last two seemed unfinished. Here, the ideas seem fully realized, if nothing else. This is a far better suc...

Red State

reviewed on September 2nd, 2011 04:00PM

This may in fact be Kevin Smith's most interesting film. You might think that that isn't hard to top considering Smith's pension for juvenile comedies, but it blows even those little expectations out of the water. This one borders genius and comp...

Fright Night

reviewed on September 1st, 2011 07:40PM

I was never that big of a fan of the original 80s version. Chris Sarandon had a classic Dracula screen presence and Roddy McDowell was super cool as the horror hero Peter Vincent, but the rest of the cast struggled with the material turning what c...

30 Minutes or Less

reviewed on September 1st, 2011 06:42PM

30 Minutes or Less is never as consistently funny as I hoped. It certainly made me laugh, it just did a horrible job balancing the comedy with the rest of the movie. Instead of telling a story with a humorous tone, it was more like it would take b...

Crazy Stupid Love

reviewed on August 25th, 2011 08:57PM

What is love? Hollywood has been trying to find an answer to this question forever. They usually come up with something mushy and cliched, but Crazy Stupid Love comes really close to hitting the nail on the head. It states that love is a fantastic...

Cop Out

reviewed on August 25th, 2011 08:36PM

The script for Cop Out is super neat. It is a poor man's version of the great buddy cop comedies that have come before it. Smith does his best to put his personal stamp on the script, but it fails to be recognizable as a Smith adaptation or a memo...

Zack and Miri Make a Porno

reviewed on August 23rd, 2011 09:02PM

Zack and Miri has a lot of uneven storytelling. The plot changes pace and tone over and over over the course of the movie. Ultimately, it seems a little too long and should have taken advantage of more focused narrative. Yet I really like Zack and...

Clerks 2

reviewed on August 23rd, 2011 08:46PM

Smith revisits his most beloved characters. With the first Clerks he captured a certain zeitgeist, but instead of looking at the present one, he follows two guys who got left behind in the shuffle. Their once disillusioned dreams become completely...

Jersey Girl

reviewed on August 23rd, 2011 08:23PM

Jersey Girl is often seen as Smith's weaker films by his fanbase. It is characteristically different from his previous films. It has the bare minimum amount of humor, if at all. It has a more calculated plot, rather than the loose narratives he is...

Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back

reviewed on August 11th, 2011 07:40PM

I have reviewed the bulk of Kevin Smith's View Askewniverse movies, all of which have repeating characters, places, etc., but I have never talked about the one constant: Jay and Silent Bob. Honestly, I never felt the urge to. While they are memora...

Dogma

reviewed on August 11th, 2011 06:42PM

Dogma is a very interesting religious satire. Satire is a way of insulting society into changing armed with humor. Most religious satires would probably be used to mock and discredit religion and religious beliefs, but Dogma actually seems to try ...

Chasing Amy

reviewed on August 9th, 2011 08:47PM

This may be Smith's most verbose script yet. There is way more emphasis on dialog harkening back to Clerks instead rather than the action heavy Mallrats. At its best it is casual and confrontational discourse, while at its worst is emotionally che...

Mallrats

reviewed on August 9th, 2011 07:49PM

Kevin Smith attempts to recapture the zeitgeist from Clerks. He succeeds but it is far more superficial this time. There is more talk about sex than love, except in the closing minutes, but it feels too little too late. There is also way more effo...

Clerks

reviewed on August 9th, 2011 06:50PM

Kevin Smith's debut film was an indie darling. It reeks of independent spirit. Made on a shoestring budget by maxing out credit cards and selling off comic books, Kevin Smith was forced to resort to black and white cameras. He cast friends, family...

The Change-Up

reviewed on August 8th, 2011 05:32PM

It is a body-switching comedy. At least it is a subversion of the body-switching comedy. It tasks itself with going against the grain of the usual family fare that comes out of this particular premise. It is an incredibly raunchy comedy, probab...

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

reviewed on August 7th, 2011 06:55PM

Rise... is a special effects milestones. Hair is notoriously difficult to animate, yet this may be one of the most photoreal animals ever generated by computers. Andy Serkis, who does the motion capture for Caesar, lends a gravity to the character...

The Beaver

reviewed on August 7th, 2011 06:34PM

There is a really great character dynamic going on. Walter's father had mental issues and ended up killing himself. Walter feared he would end up just like him and did become suicidal before embracing the beaver. Porter, Walter's oldest son, is de...

Hesher

reviewed on August 7th, 2011 06:10PM

This is a very peculiar movie. It is humorously eccentric and darkly funny on occasion. I wouldn't call if offensive, but it is almost always inappropriate. It is also a movie full of sadness. Many of the protagonists are grieving for the loss of ...

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

reviewed on August 7th, 2011 04:13PM

The film is a whimsical fairytale about the fleeting nature of life. He is an odd vessel but gives a unique outlook on the American zeitgeist. It has been an age old saying that youth is wasted on the young, and this film sets out to examine what ...

Zodiac

reviewed on August 7th, 2011 03:44PM

Zodiac proves that David Fincher is a maestro with a camera and script. His ability to set up mood and tone is bar none the best in the business right now. Even in his lesser material like Panic Room or the Game which doesn't quite reach the same ...

Panic Room

reviewed on August 7th, 2011 02:51PM

This is a very serviceable movie. Nothing more, nothing less. It is very conventional story-telling. A victim is forced to turn the tables on her victimizers. There is a lot of by the book twist and turns. The guy face down on the floor isn't who ...

Fight Club

reviewed on August 5th, 2011 01:48PM

I AM NOT EVEN GOING TO TRY TO NOT SPOIL THE MOVIE This film concludes that the state of men especially in America is a sad departure from what it once was. We define ourselves by our possessions; a "he who dies with the most toys win" mentality...

The Game

reviewed on August 5th, 2011 10:36AM

The film is a fairly taught thriller that is often a victim of its own premise. You know what is happening is a game. He certainly blurs the line between fiction and safety as some of the things Van Orton becomes involved in are incredibly dangero...

Seven

reviewed on August 5th, 2011 10:12AM

Seven is like a punk rock take on the noir genre. It is dirty, bloody, cloudy, and dimly lit. It uses an unapologetic camera to capture this literal filth reveling in it. Some might say that it is unnecessarily gory, but I disagree. Most gore movi...

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2

reviewed on August 4th, 2011 07:23PM

Part 2 succeeds where Part 1 fails. This installment is more like a summer tentpole that the franchise as always been lauded as. Its thriller like pacing drives the plot home making its long runtime feel much shorter. It also makes good use of tha...

Friends With Benefits

reviewed on August 4th, 2011 06:38PM

Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake are fantastic. Timberlake performs admirably, but Kunis does shoulder some of his dead weight. Luckily, there isn't much of it in the first place, and the two prove to have really great chemistry together. The scri...

Bad Teacher

reviewed on August 1st, 2011 07:43PM

Bad Teacher is a raunch fest, but not in a good way. Cameron Diaz has no brain-mouth filter but relies way too heavily on the actual words rather than the delivery of them. Not to mention her character is completely unlikeable, which she should ob...

Cowboys & Aliens

reviewed on August 1st, 2011 06:47PM

With Cowboys and Aliens, director Jon Favreau successfully combines two subgenres that could not be any more different. The western elements are played very traditionally and for the most part take central stage. The protagonist is a knight errant...

Captain America: The First Avenger

reviewed on July 26th, 2011 07:19PM

Captain America is a refreshing character who is admirably a good person. He has a real soldier mentality. He longs for the brotherhood of the battle and to put his life on the line like so many have done and are doing for him. He cannot escape th...

Insidious

reviewed on July 25th, 2011 08:02PM

Insidious breaks the mold of most horror movies by seemingly cashing in gore, jump-scares, and villains that the audience would rather root for than the victims for legitimate scares. It is subtle and nuanced. It invests a lot of time in creating ...

Battle: Los Angeles

reviewed on July 25th, 2011 07:36PM

Battle: Los Angeles is an amazingly visual experience. The crumbling LA is a visceral image. Watching your own backyard, or at least something that appears like our backyard, get demolished by invading armies, extraterrestrial or otherwise, is qui...

Wall-E

reviewed on July 25th, 2011 07:09PM

The character of Wall-E is probably one of the most inventive characters ever put on screen. He has very limited modes of communication, but is somehow still expressive with his series of peeps and eye movements. Far more expressive than most acto...

Cars

reviewed on July 24th, 2011 08:25PM

Anthropomorphic transportation devices are far from the most novel idea, but they have definite kid appeal. Pixar uses the Michael J. Fox movie, Doc Hollywood, as a backbone for this newest entrant to the cinema world. Owen Wilson has a flashy pos...

Ratatouille

reviewed on July 24th, 2011 07:20PM

Pixar has a tried and true base for making great movies. It starts with appealing to kids, as well as the kid inside the adults. When it comes to rats, there is something rebellious about loving something that could make your mother scream. They a...

The Incredibles

reviewed on July 21st, 2011 07:51PM

The Pixar guys are absolutely fantastic at appealing to children. Toys to bugs, to monsters to fish. Now they are tackling the popular and intricate world of superheroes cherry picking some of the greatest aspects of the subgenre. The villain is a...

Finding Nemo

reviewed on July 21st, 2011 07:05PM

This is one of the most beautiful looking films that Pixar has created. Their 3-D style is tailor made for the underwater world. It is incredibly textured and vast easily incorporating levels upon levels of detail. Not to mention the difficulty of...

Monsters Inc.

reviewed on July 20th, 2011 08:23PM

I feel like up to this movie, this may be the most adult themed yet. Like classic science fiction, they have a dependency on all evils of corporate greed, a theme children probably have no experience with. It is also a more dramatic story offering...

Toy Story 2

reviewed on July 20th, 2011 08:07PM

Pixar is at it again exploring existentialism with animation revisiting the Toy Story gang. It is brilliant and clever in its execution. We take it from Woody's point of view. After being kidnapped, he is presented with with the possibility of ent...

A Bug's Life

reviewed on July 20th, 2011 07:17PM

A Bug's Life has the makings of a great Pixar story. It has a superb voice cast full of inspired choices. Dave Foley is far from a leading man, but he is a competently comedic talent. He excels at a small voice with a big personality. Denis Leary'...

Toy Story

reviewed on July 20th, 2011 06:37PM

This is the first film from Pixar, an ambitious group of animators educated by some of the most prolific filmmakers Disney had to offer. Their company is a landmark in technical expertise. With the use of computers, they are able to take graphics ...

Kill Bill: Volume II

reviewed on July 16th, 2011 07:10PM

THe Kill Bill series is severely unbalanced. The first series seemed to have all the absurd violence, while this second volume has the majority of the melodrama. It still has a fair share of violence I suppose, but it is far from being as ridiculo...

Kill Bill

reviewed on July 16th, 2011 06:47PM

This is Tarantino's biggest homage yet. It wastes no time reveling in being self-referential. It is a love letter of sorts from Tarantino to the movies he loved so much as a kid. Its quick pacing combined with the relative obscurity of the source ...

Jackie Brown

reviewed on July 16th, 2011 04:16PM

This is probably Tarantino's most straightforward tale. It still features a number of Tarantino's style trademarks, but they are far more focused than when they appeared in Dogs or Pulp. Despite being effective for its actual use, it sucks a lot o...

From Dusk Till Dawn

reviewed on July 16th, 2011 03:35PM

The first half of the film is a brilliant modern exploitation. George Clooney's bravado oozes from the screen. Every action and piece of dialog is laden with his trademark charisma. Tarantino playing his brother is creepy and unpredictable. The tw...

Natural Born Killers

reviewed on July 16th, 2011 03:00PM

The media is an easy and deserving topic. Even today almost two decades later, the media has continued down that self-obsessed road exploiting the worst of the worst news stories and milking them for all its worth. With this film, Oliver Stone ada...

Pulp Fiction

reviewed on July 16th, 2011 02:18PM

pulp: A magazine or book containing lurid subject matter and being characteristically printed on rough, unfinished paper. Pulp Fiction is true to its title. It is presented as an anthology style structure turning what could have been a straigh...

True Romance

reviewed on July 15th, 2011 07:36PM

True Romance, not unlike Reservoir Dogs, also seems like a shallow film. It is stylishly visceral and provocative. It regularly breaks out into unapologetic violence. Sex and violence never seem like a surprise to any of the characters, no matter ...

Reservoir Dogs

reviewed on July 15th, 2011 07:16PM

Quentin Tarantino creates an instantly memorable bloody and gruesome action thriller. What makes it stand apart from the rest is that its greatest weapon is the words. These strangers speak their mind bluntly and profanely. It is primarily shot i...

Full Metal Jacket

reviewed on July 14th, 2011 09:34PM

Full Metal Jacket is a narrative experiment. It is literally presented as if it was the first 2 acts of 2 separate movies with no real conclusion, but rather a murky foreshadowing ending. It is also Kubrick's most seemingly straightforward film, b...

Conan O'Brien Can't Stop

reviewed on July 13th, 2011 03:52PM

Joe Rogan says, and I paraphrase, "All comedians are broken in some way." There needs to be something really wrong with someone to need the attention of thousands of strangers by making them laugh. There is definitely something wrong with Conan. B...

Passion Play

reviewed on July 12th, 2011 07:18PM

The movie starts with a very interesting premise. A down and out musician in it big with a mobster meets a beautiful woman with wings. It is surreal by nature, and its characters are eccentric. Unfortunately, there seems to be a glass ceiling. It ...

Kill the Irishman

reviewed on July 11th, 2011 08:21PM

Ray Stevenson is undeniably cool. He has a boxer's demeanor and a barfly's roguish charm wrapped up in a blue collar bow. He is surrounded by a who's who of crime drama players. Christopher Walken always demands attention. This movie is no differe...

Horrible Bosses

reviewed on July 10th, 2011 09:09PM

The premise of Horrible Bosses has the potential to be a very dark comedy, but only ever scratches at being sadistic or cynical. Instead, it was very light-hearted and goofy invoking memories of The Three Stooges or Abbott and Costello. These 3 fr...

American: The Bill Hicks Story

reviewed on July 10th, 2011 08:35PM

Comedians are the modern version of philosophers. If Socrates and Plato were alive today they would certainly be seen at your nearest comedy club. The comedian has an undying need to question the status quo as well as to cut through all of our bul...

Elektra Luxx

reviewed on July 7th, 2011 07:44PM

Director Sebastian Gutierraz develops this movie with a very large amount of indie fluff. He uses noir-ish dialog and plot pacing to move the story even though nothing is really happening that would deserve such style. The characters' conversation...

Unknown

reviewed on July 7th, 2011 06:35PM

Unknown is a perfectly serviceable movie. It is a mildly clever plot with mildly thrilling action. It totally captures a drab, cold setting with its blue lens filter. It just cannot decide what kind of movie it wants to be. Sometimes it wants to b...

Vanishing on 7th Street

reviewed on July 6th, 2011 08:26PM

The Vanishing on 7th Street starts out quite dramatically. John Leguizamo, one of the survivors, is working at a movie theater as a projectionist when the lights go out. At the same time, the laughing audience goes silent and never returns. He wal...

The Trip

reviewed on July 5th, 2011 12:00PM

There is a great movie in here someplace. Steve and Rob have instant chemistry. When they sit down at a table and share a meal, their dialog is hysterical. They are very sincere in their tuisms. They are a line away from being too wordy, a thesaur...

Transformers: Dark of the Moon

reviewed on July 1st, 2011 01:56PM

Transformers: Dark of the Moon plays like a checklist of what went wrong with the second Transformers movie. For instance, the irritating twins who kept stealing screen time from better robot characters are replaced with triplets who take the form...

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

reviewed on June 28th, 2011 07:11PM

It is pretty basic behavioral psychology to give people more of what they want. We cannot always tell what people want, we only have to go on what people are talking about. So what did they talk about? "Oh those parents were so funny," so they get...

Transformers

reviewed on June 27th, 2011 05:08PM

Transformers is a very geek friendly movie for sure. Shia's Sam is an awkwardly funny kid with seemingly no importance. He befriends a giant robot and is thrown into events that echo the science fiction that he probably is a fan of. The girls are ...

The Shining

reviewed on June 27th, 2011 04:30PM

It is hard to imagine that a tv movie directed by I don't even know and starring that other guy from "Wings" would be held in almost equal regard to a feature length film directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Jack Nicholson. But The Shining is ...

The Tree of Life

reviewed on June 27th, 2011 03:55PM

The picture starts with a hodge podge of scenes like a puzzle where the image is all mixed up but the pieces still fit together. It is then that we take a trip through the beginning of the universe where the gases and chemicals come together spark...

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

reviewed on June 27th, 2011 07:47AM

Harrison Ford must know where the fountain of youth is because for his age he looks fantastic. He has no problem getting his hands dirty putting his whip and fists to good use against the Reds and jungle natives that stand in his way. There is no ...

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

reviewed on June 25th, 2011 08:51AM

The Last Crusade starts off with a trip to Indy's childhood. As a boyscout who runs off from the pack, he finds a group of adventurers uncovering an ancient artifact. Fueled by his father's sense of history, Indy steals it from them in order to gi...

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom

reviewed on June 25th, 2011 08:30AM

Temple of Doom is a prequel of sorts. I have heard a number of explanations why the move was made. For one, Indiana Jones is deadset on not believing in hocus pocus and after experiencing the Ark of the Covenant, no one in their right mind would q...

A Clockwork Orange

reviewed on June 23rd, 2011 06:29PM

A Clockwork Orange is one of the most controversial pieces of cinema. Like most stories that investigate violence, it is often mistaken for encouraging such behavior. But like a scientist, filmmaker Stanley Kubrick is able to separate himself from...

Green Lantern

reviewed on June 22nd, 2011 06:08PM

Ryan Reynolds is a great Hal. He can put his comedy styling and budding dramatic ability to good use as Hal, who is equal parts swagger-full hothead and tormented underachiever. To be fair though, he only does the bare minimum to make the protagon...

Dylan Dog: Dead of Night

reviewed on June 20th, 2011 06:03PM

Brandon Routh's last big leading role was Superman which I considered to be a disappointment. He does well with the noirish deadpan narrative, but when he is interacting with the rest of the cast, his apathetic delivery deletes the edge a noir goo...

Limitless

reviewed on June 20th, 2011 05:45PM

Limitless is, mind the pun, severely limited. It scratches the surface at amazing premises but never explores them to the full extent. For instance, as part of the withdrawal symptoms, Eddie turns on auto-pilot and his consciousness wakes up in a ...

Super 8

reviewed on June 13th, 2011 06:26PM

Super 8 is an incredible piece of blockbuster nostaligia harkening back to the the early days of Spielberg. Writer/director J.J. Abrams takes a grand scheme and sets it on a small scale capturing the catastrophe from a wide-eyed children's perspec...

Take Me Home Tonight

reviewed on June 8th, 2011 08:13PM

I really appreciate what Take Me Home Tonight tries to accomplish. It is reminiscent of the many '90s era teen sex comedies about a geeky high schooler trying to stray from the pack and get the girl. The 80s retro style was pretty cool too except ...

X-Men: First Class

reviewed on June 5th, 2011 05:21PM

In 2000, the first X-Men movie proved the blockbuster possibilities of the comic book subgenre in the digital age. Not since '70s Superman, maybe '89 Batman, had a comic book adaptation made such an impression. It seems fitting that X-Men: First C...

Cedar Rapids

reviewed on May 31st, 2011 06:51PM

Ed Helms takes the stumbling, bumbling idiot to a new level of charismatic. His lack of confidence and world-weariness helps his character develop to something much braver feel more extreme thus more impactful. He clashes perfectly with John C Rei...

The Hangover, Part II

reviewed on May 31st, 2011 04:53PM

As far as the Hangover Part II goes, it stays pretty close to formula. The 3 guys plus another get drunk, blackout, and wake up with that other guy missing. Many of the same beats are irritatingly played out again. Their friend is held hostage by ...

The Perfect Host

reviewed on May 28th, 2011 01:34PM

The movie starts with a hefty amount of exposition involving Clayne Crawford running around with a limp. The information about his robbery and motivations are given to us piecemeal. We get a good idea by the time Warwick comes into play, but the f...

Bridesmaids

reviewed on May 16th, 2011 04:40PM

The term chick flick usually corresponds with a shitty "romantic comedy" starring Katherine Heigl or Kate Hudson or maybe a broad comedy about female empowerment through characteristics that move fashion magazines like Sex and the City. Bridesmaid...

Thor

reviewed on May 9th, 2011 06:41PM

Thor has always been a difficult character to cast. His hulking body frame, long hair, and penchant for fighting evoke visions of professional wrestlers none of whom have the ability to balance the anger and grace of Thor. That is what makes Chris...

Raiders of the Lost Ark

reviewed on May 8th, 2011 01:19PM

Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of the single greatest cinematic experiences of my entire life. My only disappointment is the fact that I didn't get to see it in theaters during its original run. Based on serials of the 1930s and made by the te...

X-Men Origins: Wolverine

reviewed on May 8th, 2011 11:50AM

This movie suffers from severe prequelitis. Starting with the first installment of the X-Men franchise, we meet Wolverine and realize he is a man of quiet loyalty and physical strength. He is a macho man who keeps allies at arm's length, but he ha...

X-Men: The Last Stand

reviewed on May 8th, 2011 07:19AM

This movie had all the broad strokes to have a great summer blockbuster. The budget is increased and the special effects and abundance and visually appealing. If director Bret Ratner is good at anything, it is framing action sequences. Right from ...

X2: X-Men United

reviewed on May 7th, 2011 04:53PM

X2: X-Men United follows suit with many comic sequels. After the original sets up the surreal reality, it can finally skip much of the exposition and get right to the action everyone expects. It is still important though for a title like X-Men to ...

Super

reviewed on May 7th, 2011 03:51PM

There seems like there has been a slew of these realistic superhero movies. Special. Kick-Ass. Defendor. Even Watchmen tackled some of it. The colorful costumes and personalities definitely evokes Kick-Ass, which I didn't care for. Super on the ot...

Stake Land

reviewed on May 7th, 2011 03:14PM

Stake Land takes a very unique approach to vampirism. Sometimes they are Euro-trash assholes trying to live in a secret society or American nomadic outlaws traveling town to town acting like they can do anything. Instead, this seems more like zomb...

Fast Five

reviewed on May 7th, 2011 01:45PM

This is probably the best installment of all the Fast and Furious movies. The biggest difference from the other installments is it actively ignores the underground racing subculture it was originally based on and makes it a slightly generic heist ...

X-Men

reviewed on April 26th, 2011 05:59PM

X-Men is one of Marvel's most popular comic series. It started out when creator Stan Lee decided he was sick of coming up with ways how to give regular people super powers so he just decided they were born with them. A pretty simple concept; it is...

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1

reviewed on April 25th, 2011 05:50PM

This is it. The beginning of the end. It is time for all that setup to finally pay off. It starts off on a great note. Harry, Ron, and Hermione ponder the gravity of their situation. Ron stares into the distance with a look of fright and stress. H...

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

reviewed on April 24th, 2011 06:29PM

I find it hard to understand how a film series that changes tone so often could ever make it to the blockbuster status that the Harry Potter series has. It opens with a visually dazzling and terrifying segment where black clouds race through the s...

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

reviewed on April 22nd, 2011 06:43PM

I am seeing a trend with the Harry Potters. They seem to each take on a tone unique to that installment. The Order of the Phoenix has yet again paced itself very different. Like the first movie, it feels like an introductory story, but instead of ...

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

reviewed on April 21st, 2011 07:06PM

Goblet of Fire has taken in interesting tonal shift from Prisoner of Azkaban. Azkaban was both grim and reached a new level of maturity. While Goblet continues the same maturity level, the tone seems to have shifted towards the lighter side again....

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban

reviewed on April 21st, 2011 03:45PM

This new installment in the Harry Potter series has the perfect tone. It is much darker finally equaling the kind of threat they keep referring to throughout the series, but the cast, especially the chemistry between Radcliffe, Grint, and Watson, ...

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets

reviewed on April 20th, 2011 06:18PM

Sorcerer's Stone's biggest flaw is Chamber of Secrets' gain. While the first spends much of its runtime explaining this new reality, Chamber takes advantage of it and trusts the audience to follow along. Now, the adventure seems much more the focu...

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone

reviewed on April 20th, 2011 05:33PM

The hardest thing about having young protagonists is hiring competent actors. The Harry Potter series seems to have hit the jackpot. Daniel Radcliffe is honestly the diamond in the rough. He is very capable of being both lightheartedly humorous as...

Scream 4

reviewed on April 19th, 2011 06:40PM

My favorite part of the Scream franchise has been their ability to be meta. In each succeeding film, they get a little more meta that the last. They finally got to the point of complete self-parody with 2 false beginnings. We open on the first 2 v...

Scream 3

reviewed on April 18th, 2011 05:51PM

Meta-alert: Cotton Weary talks about how he doesn't want to make a cameo in a horror sequel just to get bumped off in the opening minutes, only to have that actually happen to Liev Schreiber, the actor playing Cotton. The movie steps up the meta o...

Scream 2

reviewed on April 17th, 2011 01:50PM

The movie opens up just like the first one with a very meta scene except this one takes it up a notch. A movie called Stab has been made based on the events of the first installment. Two characters are waiting in line for a sneak preview. They are...

Scream

reviewed on April 16th, 2011 07:59PM

The movie opens with Drew Barrymore's character, Casey, being tormented by a psycho over the phone. She thinks it is all fun and games in the beginning, but she quickly realizes that this isn't a game. She is cheeky enough to be spoofish, but sinc...

Your Highness

reviewed on April 15th, 2011 07:24PM

Your Highness has everything working for it. David Gordon Green is an indie darling that made a pretty flawless jump to comedy with Pineapple Express. Danny McBride is one of the best one-liner spitting comedy actors working today. He is supported...

Hobo with a Shotgun

reviewed on April 11th, 2011 05:24PM

Hobo with a Shotgun is an adaptation of the winning entry of the Grindhouse Fake Trailer contest associated with the Rodriguez/Tarantino double feature. It doesn't just feature all the B-movie grindhouse tropes, it revels in it in the same way Scr...

Source Code

reviewed on April 4th, 2011 05:33PM

Source Code is a thriller with a very interesting pacing. It is much like a roller coaster with its ups and downs: thrills followed by instant relief and repeated over and over. It feels sort of like a video game where you cannot beat that certain...

Win Win

reviewed on April 3rd, 2011 05:27PM

Win Win is a wonderful slice of life movie. It is a uniquely natural and organic movie, and it has its cast with Paul Giamatti in the lead to thank for that. Giamatti is in his wheelhouse as a man down on his luck, but often times he plays it with...

Wrecked

reviewed on March 26th, 2011 05:58PM

Adrien Brody is a fine actor, and he continues to do a fine job in this movie. He wears a number of prosthesis and fake blood on his face and body. He moans and groans and grimaces and weeps. It sounds pathetic, but he is very sincere and makes an...

Sucker Punch

reviewed on March 26th, 2011 03:33PM

Sucker Punch is a wild ride. Baby Doll imagines her institution as a gentleman's club front for back alley dealing where she and her fellow patients are dancers pimped out to sedate the many customers the boss, Blue, entertains. After this she con...

Rubber

reviewed on March 24th, 2011 06:40PM

Rubber begins with an old dirt road. The road is littered with wooden chairs. At the end is a skinny man holding numerous binoculars. A car drives slowly down the road knocking over each chair. When it reaches the end, a cop crawls out of the trun...

Paul

reviewed on March 24th, 2011 05:58PM

Paul is a love letter to science fiction and geek fandom from two of the biggest representatives of geek fandom, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost. The movie is riddled with references that any self-respecting geek could pick up on them. More impressive i...

The Adjustment Bureau

reviewed on March 16th, 2011 06:31PM

Right off the bat, the movie gets major points for using science fiction to try to expand our understanding of the human condition. Whether it succeeds or not is another story. Visually it is stunning. The ominous lurking men in fedoras hearkens b...

Rango

reviewed on March 16th, 2011 05:33PM

Rango is an interesting film. It collects a number of allusions and references and chains them together in such a way that it feels fresh and exciting. Rango is like an American Odyssey. Like Odysseus, Rango is a man of constant pain and sorro...

Drive Angry

reviewed on March 14th, 2011 08:20PM

The 3D format as it is known in the 21st century is still in its infancy. With so many studios relying on conversion techniques, it is nice too see a motion picture developed and shot for 3D, not just for depth, but maneuvering objects flying at t...

Hall Pass

reviewed on March 14th, 2011 07:22PM

There was a time that names like The Farrelly Brothers and Owen Wilson inspired notions of belly laughs and crude, immature humor that no one was guilty about laughing over. Instead, they give us this pale comparison of a buddy sex romp comedy bas...

The Mechanic

reviewed on March 14th, 2011 06:55PM

Jason Statham is eternally badass, and if anyone could step into the shoes of a badass alumnus like Charles Bronson, it would be him. He has a steely confidence and silent charm that makes his matter-of-fact protagonists all the more scary. Statha...

It's Kind of a Funny Story

reviewed on January 28th, 2011 02:26PM

"It's kind of a funny story" is the perfect description of this movie. It is occasionally funny movie, that continues to cycle back to the drama at the heart of the movie. This is thanks in part to the incredibly charming cast. While Gilchrist is ...

The King's Speech

reviewed on January 28th, 2011 01:44PM

It is no surprise that this movie is gaining all kinds of attention. It feels like a classic piece of cinema, focusing on well-written dialog and excellent performances. Its a taut drama leaving very little to the imagination. It is an often untol...

The Green Hornet

reviewed on January 24th, 2011 07:24PM

The Green Hornet, on the surface, is exactly the kind of deconstruction of the comic book sub-genre that I wished Kick-Ass would have been. Rogen's Britt is surprisingly human. His bad behavior and addictions are not easily forgotten even long int...

Ondine

reviewed on January 24th, 2011 06:53PM

The romantic relationship between Syracuse and Ondine is one of the more believable in the history of cinema. Where many films tend to rush the lead with a big romantic gesture to get to the inevitable melodrama, this one uses the budding part of ...

The Company Men

reviewed on January 19th, 2011 07:03PM

The Company Men does the impossible. It makes sympathetic characters out of the faceless executives who are usually villains in movies. It depicts the recent economic meltdown with brutal honesty and poignancy. Greed and thoughtlessness run rampan...

Winter's Bone

reviewed on January 19th, 2011 06:03PM

This movie throws out all the sentimentality we have come to expect from stories of Southern poverty, but it still has a poeticism to his frightfulness. The movie is a mesmerizing drama that presents people as cold as the winter setting. It portra...

Unstoppable

reviewed on January 18th, 2011 09:14PM

The new Tony Scott is all about style. For a long time he has been about kinetic cinematography, quick editing, and orange light sources. A little style can go a long way, but in Scott's filmography, it has seemed more like a burden lately, except...

Monsters

reviewed on January 18th, 2011 08:38PM

This isn't your normal creature feature. It feels more like a Nat-Geo documentary. The infected zone is full of wonder and beauty. But it is also full of mystery, and this mystery is what makes the otherwise eventful plot very tense. It banks on i...

Rabbit Hole

reviewed on January 18th, 2011 07:59PM

I have never seen a more authentically human movie in my life. I have never been a fan of Kidman, per se, but she blows all expectations out of the water. Instead of revving up the mania and chewing the scenery, Kidman implodes with emotion. Her e...

127 Hours

reviewed on January 17th, 2011 06:58PM

Danny Boyle strikes again with his personal brand of story. In an oddly life affirming way, Boyle presents problem and pain under the circumstances set against a never-ending feeling of claustrophobia. The cinematography brilliantly mirrors the po...

Due Date

reviewed on January 17th, 2011 06:33PM

Hot on the heels of The Hangover, director Todd Phillips tries to catch lightning in a bottle again. He has all the right elements. Robert Downey Jr. is charming and witty, and Galiafiankis does eccentric with impeccable comedic timing. With the l...

Four Lions

reviewed on January 15th, 2011 10:31PM

Four Lions is a satirical take on terrorism, by definition a ballsy and risky move. In a time of rampant paranoia, the film takes an honest and blunt look at a terrifying prospect. Very similar to the way Tarantino made crime look like a day job i...

The Kids Are All Right

reviewed on January 15th, 2011 09:36PM

Gay marriage is a hot button issue in America right now. Hollywood had long chosen its side, opting for the pro-gay marriage side. Its kind of brave to use this as a backdrop, but it is ultimately a non-issue. Except for a certain aesthetic, there...

The Social Network

reviewed on January 12th, 2011 07:10PM

If you told me that a movie based on the creation on facebook would be one of the best movies of the year I would not believe it. Facebook is a pulp culture phenom in the same league as reality television and the fashion integrity of the emo and g...

Somewhere

reviewed on January 12th, 2011 06:19PM

Somewhere is a pacing nightmare. The camera just kind of sits and waits for the end of the scene and then sticks around a little longer. It totally over stays its welcome while the characters sit and do nothing. Director Sophia Coppola was probabl...

Saw 3D

reviewed on January 12th, 2011 03:36PM

Despite the public opinion, I have always held the Saw franchise's continuity in high regard. I was very impressed at their ability to spawn a 7 film franchise with so many twists and turns from the very claustrophobic and seemingly low-concept or...

True Grit

reviewed on January 9th, 2011 08:26PM

The Coen Brothers have built their career on their ability to walk into a genre and make it their own. No other director has as clear a stamp as these two. From the get-go, the fast-talking wit reminds you of the linguistic dialogue of most Coen c...

Black Swan

reviewed on January 6th, 2011 08:35PM

They should just hand Natalie Portman the Best Actress Oscar now. Her performance was borderline brilliant and attracts all the attention. You cannot take your eyes off her when she appears on screen. Her character starts off as a naive young woma...

The Fighter

reviewed on January 6th, 2011 08:08PM

Christian Bale knocks it out of the park as Dickie Ecklund. From his gaunt physique, slurred speech, and shaky disposition, Bale got Ecklund to a tee. He finds the humor in Ecklund's stupor, but he is ultimately a warning sign, evolving from a pit...

Red

reviewed on January 5th, 2011 08:30PM

Red has formed a cast that is entirely too good for a genre movie of its bearing. Bruce Willis is in his wheelhouse with his natural comedic instincts and old guy toughness. John Malkovich brings the crazy, Helen Mirren brings grace, and Morgan Fr...

Nice Guy Johnny

reviewed on January 5th, 2011 07:39PM

Johnny is an amazing character. In a market full of depressed and both emotionally and physically traumatized individuals, it is a breath of fresh air to follow a genuinely nice, honest, and good intentioned character. He is easy to please and alw...

Buried

reviewed on January 3rd, 2011 08:11PM

I have been a big Ryan Reynolds supporter for a long time, especially when most people weren't. Even in his goofiest comedies, I felt their was a sense of sincerity and honesty to him. Most people would just write me off, but this movie is the bes...

Catfish

reviewed on January 3rd, 2011 07:30PM

Catfish falls into an all too big category of movie that are marketed incorrectly. What was described was a frightful real-life horror movie in the same vein as Alfred Hitchcock with an ending so emotional it would leave you shaken. What was deliv...

Devil

reviewed on January 3rd, 2011 07:05PM

The plot is rather simple. 5 people in one location fighting for their lives. With little to go on and do, the pacing and tone become all the more important. Here, the movie finds a natural rhythm slowly but surely building tension and never letti...

Predators

reviewed on December 30th, 2010 11:15PM

Robert Rodriguez writes and produces this sci-fi sequel that hearkens back to what made the 80s classic so good. A group of mercenaries low on weapons but stocked on wits vs. alien hunters with advanced weapons and tactics. Of course, Rodriguez do...

Easy A

reviewed on December 30th, 2010 08:35PM

I'll admit it. I have a crush on Emma Stone's Olive. She is seriously cute. She has a great sense of humor and can keep up with the ball-busting. She has a soft spot for geeks and John Hughes movies. She seems relatively low maintenance compared t...

The Town

reviewed on December 30th, 2010 07:40PM

Ben Affleck was the joke of the film industry for a long time, but after choosing his roles more carefully and changing to director, Affleck has earned himself one of the most successful Hollywood comebacks ever. With The Town he does both. He pro...

Never Let Me Go

reviewed on December 30th, 2010 07:00PM

This seems like an exercise in taking a simple context and letting two different filmmakers approach it from wildly different points of view. The worst thing about Michael Bay's The Island was how the pursuit of humanity from clones raised as orga...

Winning Season

reviewed on December 30th, 2010 05:17PM

The story is one that has been seen a dozen times. The underdog teams gets a down and out coach and end up helping each other in ways they could never do without each other. Despite having a tired and worn out story, the actors are able to add eno...

Machete

reviewed on December 30th, 2010 04:32PM

Robert Rodriguez continues a trend of trying to one up himself. He has reached a new level of absurdity. Even for a neo-mexploitation flick, the boundaries of ridiculousness are well tested. Even thought there is plenty of well done action, there...

Piranha 3D

reviewed on August 30th, 2010 06:46PM

Piranha 3D has a better cast than actually necessary. As a big fan of Adam Scott thanks to the cult hit "Party Down," he proved to be a more than capable action protagonist along with Elizabeth Shue who performed equally well. With great character...

The Other Guys

reviewed on August 30th, 2010 05:42PM

I am not a fan of Will Ferrell. His zany voice pattern and overly animated body language has never been funny despite being accepted by the general audience. That said, I loved this movie. Ferrell is hilarious in his subtley playing straight man t...

Centurion

reviewed on August 21st, 2010 11:17AM

Michael Fassbender has a steadfast resolve fitting the soldier archetype but adding a kindness behind his eyes necessary for a likable protagonist. He is balanced out by Dominic West's smug swagger regardless of its fleeting nature. Olga makes up ...

Splice

reviewed on August 19th, 2010 07:59PM

Adrien Brody excels as his sometimes sarcastic, sometimes cynical scientist who begrudgingly crosses the moral boundaries and holds the weight of that decision around his neck even in his more joyful moments with Dren. Sarah Polley on the other ha...

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

reviewed on August 19th, 2010 05:11PM

Michael Cera started out as a promising upstart comedic actor, but he has been circling the drain with a series of way too similar roles. While Scott Pilgrim was not conceived as a "Cera-esque" character, I feel he was forced into the mold. The ca...

The Joneses

reviewed on August 19th, 2010 04:20PM

David Duchovny is the ultimate everyman. He is instantly likeable in almost every role. This one is no different. There is a cold and a "manufactured" quality to the other three family members that Duchovny does not share. Usually, this would be a...

The Extra Man

reviewed on August 18th, 2010 08:39PM

Dano and Kline play both their characters like outcasts of a Fitzgerald novel. Their melodramatic voice patterns and 1920s vocabulary help create two of the most irritating characters put on film in a very long time. This does not help the audienc...

Jonah Hex

reviewed on August 18th, 2010 08:19PM

Despite Jonah Hex's appearance in the comic Weird Western Tales, he is not actually known for his supernatural powers. Hex in the film is able to talk to the dead by touching them. Apparently, after they perish they, become omniscient towards the ...

Where The Wild Things Are

reviewed on August 18th, 2010 04:01PM

Everyone handles emotions in a different way especially children, who's imagination is never more active and grasp on the real world never less understood. After throwing a temper-tantrum, the little boy, Max, literally visiting his wild side wher...

The Boondock Saints 2: All Saints Day

reviewed on August 18th, 2010 04:00PM

As a fan of the first one, I had very low expectations. I was pleasantly surprised though. I was almost positive it would go in the same direction as most action sequels go; amp up the cheese and over-the-top action and forget about the stories an...

G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra

reviewed on August 18th, 2010 03:58PM

G. I. Joe is a special branch of the military in cooperation with most countries enlisting the best of the best to fight the most dangerous and violent terrorists. Members Duke and Ripcord join up after a run in with Cobra agents and losing highly...

Up

reviewed on August 18th, 2010 03:55PM

Pixar's newest feature tells the story of an old, lonely widower, Carl Frederickson, trying to fulfill a promise to his late wife. He wants to bring their dream home to a special jungle dubbed "The Island that Time Forgot" that is the home to a nu...

Pirate Radio

reviewed on August 18th, 2010 03:42PM

The Boat That Rocked is about a fictional literal pirate radio station that was the only source for rock and roll in the '60's in the UK going to war with the stuffy bureaucrats who want to shut them down. As any ensemble movie, the cast is the...

Terminator Salvation

reviewed on August 18th, 2010 03:40PM

Last left in an underground bunker in Terminator 3, John Connor is now an active member of the resistance in a world overwhelmed with robots. While Connor searched for his would-be father to ensure his existance, Marcus deals with awakening in a t...

The Hangover

reviewed on August 18th, 2010 03:39PM

The morning after a crazy bachelor party, three friends find themselves without memory of the night or the bachelor. They spend the next day piecing the night together trying to find their best friend before his wedding. The plot is rather simp...

Moon

reviewed on August 18th, 2010 03:38PM

Sam, an astronaut living on the moon for the past 3 years to harvest a new, cleaner fuel source, comes face to face with a younger self. Sam Rockwell is Sam and Sam. Rockwell continues to prove that he is once the most underused resources in th...

Star Trek

reviewed on August 18th, 2010 03:37PM

The new Star Trek follows Kirk, Spock, and the other "Original Series" crew on their first mission together. The newly created crew faces off against a Romulan threat that knows more than they could imagine. First thing first, this is easily on...

Franklyn

reviewed on August 18th, 2010 03:36PM

Franklyn is the story of four individuals who feel incomplete and their explosive collision in a futuristic London setting...... .......at least from what I thought. Franklyn is easily the most miss-marketed movie of all time. In fact, 3 quarte...

Crank: High Voltage

reviewed on August 18th, 2010 03:35PM

Crank High Voltage finds the badass to end all badasses, Chev Chelios, played by Jason Statham, in a further fight for his life, where his unstoppable heart is stolen and he has to constantly shock his artificial heart until he can find the creep ...

Observe and Report

reviewed on August 18th, 2010 03:35PM

Observe and Report is a dark comedy about a delusional mall security guard on the quest for love, a thief, and a pervert flasher sexually assaulting women in the parking lot. The movie proves to be humorous, but entirely unmemorable. The movie'...

Adventureland

reviewed on August 18th, 2010 03:34PM

Adventureland tells a story of a recent college graduate witty beyond his years who misses out on a tour of Europe because of money troubles and gets a shitty summer job working at Adventureland, where he just happens to fall in love. This movi...

I Love You, Man

reviewed on August 18th, 2010 03:33PM

Paul Rudd is easily the best thing to come out The Frat Pack and The Apatow Crew. Up till now, he's plenty of likeable jackasses, but he takes a great turn as loveable loser. His comedic timing is impeccable, and dare I say, he's not too shabby on...

Watchmen

reviewed on August 18th, 2010 03:33PM

Zack Snyder set out to film the unfilmable graphic novel. As far as I am concerned: mission accomplished. Snyder from the very beginning understood the thematic weight of the story, the iconicism of the characters, and the importance of change in ...

Australia

reviewed on August 18th, 2010 03:32PM

Australia is a sweeping romantic epic set against a dramatic historical moment in similar vane to Casablanca and Titanic. The actual country serves as a fantastic aesthetic background. The landscapes are absolutely stunning. The filmmakers used a ...

Paper Man

reviewed on August 16th, 2010 05:17PM

Jeff Daniels is absolutely charming as the man child, Richard. He lives to make people laugh and entertain them with stories, even tragic ones. Writing is obviously his life, but he is plagued by obsessive compulsions. Emma Stone is equally charmi...

Clash of the Titans

reviewed on August 16th, 2010 04:41PM

Sam Worthington has found himself as one of the most sought after talents in Hollywood, if you can call it talent. Between Avatar and Terminator: Salvation, his work has not really been up to the expectations that the hype has implied. This was th...

Dinner for Schmucks

reviewed on August 14th, 2010 09:34PM

Paul Rudd has been on a hotstreak. He has been partnering up with the funniest actors and directors in the business. This time he finds himself reteaming with Steve Carrel, a very funny actor on the top of his game. Unfortunately, they both fall s...

Inception

reviewed on August 14th, 2010 04:18PM

The movie boasts an all-star cast including Joseph Gordon Levitt, Marion Cottilard, Tom Hardy, and Ken Watanabe. Cillian Murphy's mark's character arc is the face of a movie. Essentially, the film works as a visual depiction for Murphy's emotional...

Operation: Endgame

reviewed on August 9th, 2010 07:21PM

he acting is better than could be expected. Odette Yustman and Joe Anderson perform well as the protagonists for newcomers. Ving Rhames, Maggie Q, Adam Scott, and Zach Galifiankis add memorable moments, even Ellen Barkin who tends to chew the scen...

The Killer Inside Me

reviewed on August 9th, 2010 07:00PM

The movie is already making controversey with its approach to violence. It is gritty and unapologetic. It refuses to turn away when most films would fade to black. I would not call it overly graphic, but the intensity of the violence is mostly dir...

Toy Story 3

reviewed on August 9th, 2010 06:32PM

The voice cast slips back into place effortlessly. It is as if they never left. For a cast with such recognizable voices, they find a way to divorce themselves entirely from their previous iconic characters. Ned Beatty and Michael Keaton make for ...

The A-Team

reviewed on August 9th, 2010 05:46PM

Liam Neeson was an odd choice for this kind of flick, but he performed as to be expected, as did Bradley Cooper who was as corny and funny as the original Face. Rampage Jackson left much to be desired. His Mr. T clone brought very little to the ta...

Unthinkable

reviewed on August 9th, 2010 05:01PM

This dialogue heavy picture allows for some really fantastic performances to make it on the screen. Carrie Anne Moss excels in her role, while Samuel L. Jackson leaves everything on the reel. His mysterious "shadow man" is hard to read. His action...

Iron Man 2

reviewed on August 9th, 2010 04:37PM

Robert Downey Jr. is on top of his game. He is overflowing with charm keeping Stark likable and empathetic even in his darkest moments. Downey carries the weight of the entire movie from start to finish in a full on sprint. Unfortunately, his supp...

The Losers

reviewed on April 25th, 2010 07:23PM

It is pretty much your average PG-13 revenge flick. And as with most PG-13 revenge flicks, the protagonists are much more charismatic and likable than in their R-rated counterparts, where they are usually troubled and intense. Casting actors such ...

Kick-Ass

reviewed on April 19th, 2010 04:28PM

The beginning scenes offer a lot in terms of satirizing the genre. It's self-reflective nature turns most of the contemporary elements on its head. Dave's evolution to hero is not driven by a specific traumatic event, but rather an unflinching des...

The Crazies

reviewed on March 5th, 2010 05:03PM

Horror movie cliches are abound. It has all the elements of the average horror film, practically a text book example. The trailer promised a slow-moving but creepy pace, but the film has a much faster, action and gore motivated pace. It takes full...

Crazy Heart

reviewed on March 2nd, 2010 07:24PM

Just like The Wrestler mirrored Mickey Rourke's film career, Crazy Heart mirrors Jeff Bridges'. Jeff is a seasoned veteran. He has been in the spotlight for so long. He has inspired generations of actors, yet an Academy Award and big dollar payche...

Shutter Island

reviewed on February 23rd, 2010 03:50PM

Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio seem to have found their niche, depicting a relatable and empathetic leading man who spirals into instability. It started with The Aviator, fine tuned in The Departed, and has come to fruition in Shutter Islan...

A Serious Man

reviewed on February 22nd, 2010 07:38PM

The Coen Brothers are probably one of my favorite filmmakers. Their obsession with human suffering and mortality and the humor that lies within have been endlessly entertaining in their past work. It has never been more clear than in this film. It...

Legion

reviewed on February 20th, 2010 03:30PM

The movie has A-list effects working through a B-movie creative process. A lot of time and effort seems directed at the action and design. There's explosions, gunfire, and some pretty excellent gore. A small amount of survivors fight off an ever-g...

Edge of Darkness

reviewed on February 20th, 2010 03:27PM

A remake of director Martin Campbell's British television mini-series of the same name, Campbell has imported the story across the pond to Massachusetts and has enlisted down-on-his-luck screen legend, Mel Gibson. Quite an obvious choice when one ...

Youth in Revolt

reviewed on February 16th, 2010 05:29PM

It gets some credit for not wallowing in too many teen sex romp cliches. Its humor is powered mostly by quirk and wit than shock value and vulgarity. Yet, it only delivers a few genuine laughs. The embarassing moments get too embarassing resulting...

The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

reviewed on February 16th, 2010 05:28PM

Terry Gilliam is probably one of my favorite directors, but his self-indulgent directing style drags this movie down considerably. Mr. Nick is overtly an analog for the Devil. This starts a constant search for religious analog throughout the film....

The Lovely Bones

reviewed on January 11th, 2010 07:28PM

The Lovely Bones is a big heap of disappointment. What seemed like a poignant, other worldly thriller never could find its pacing or tone bouncing back and forth between genres. At one point, a murder mystery where a desperate father is trying to ...

Up in the Air

reviewed on January 11th, 2010 06:31PM

George Clooney is an old-fashioned Hollywood player. He brings an incredible amount of charisma, grace, and machismo to the screen, and hits all his beats. If the movie was to rest solely on his shoulders it would be equally good. This is one of m...

Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans

reviewed on January 11th, 2010 04:52PM

Wrongfully considered a remake of Abel Ferrar's own Bad Lieutenant, a gritty cult classic with an incredibly visceral performance from Harvey Keital, Nic Cage dials in an equally visceral performance, both depressingly honest and figuratively nake...

Sherlock Holmes

reviewed on January 2nd, 2010 03:25PM

Many people believe that Sherlock Holmes, like Batman Begins and Casino Royale before it, is a dark modern reinterpretation of a character with a long cultural history. That is not totally true. In fact, what it really has in common with Batman Be...

Gamer

reviewed on December 28th, 2009 07:47PM

I really really want to like Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, but their obsession with video games, which also had a big influence on the Crank movies, is getting tired really fast. The movie is already suffering from being a retread of Running Ma...

Zombieland

reviewed on December 28th, 2009 07:45PM

Admittedly influenced by the hit zom-com, Shaun of the Dead, Z-land brings enough yucks and yuks to keep pace, but unfortunately doesn't surpass Shaun. The movie is well cast using a number of young upstarts plus Woody Harrelson, who always excels...

Surrogates

reviewed on December 28th, 2009 07:44PM

The story has a lot of potential . Utopian world. Robots. Subtle thematic undertones that turn out to be not so subtle. The movie never reached it's full potential. It promised to be a robot action flick with a thriller pace, but the movie crawls ...

Carriers

reviewed on December 28th, 2009 07:43PM

Carriers is another in a long line of mis-marketed movies. I feel like that is a sentence used far too often nowadays. Carriers promised to be a quick-paced thriller implying that their would actually be "carriers," as in a minority group of infec...

Antichrist

reviewed on December 28th, 2009 07:43PM

There is only one way to describe this movie. FUCKED UP Willem Dafoe and Charlotte Gainsbourgh pull of very chilling performances, their characters known only as "he" and "she." They start the movie off as very normal couple. Grieving and emoti...

Paranormal Activity

reviewed on December 28th, 2009 07:42PM

This movie was part of an internet petition to get this into theaters. They needed at least a million, and got that (plus more I think) based purely on trailer footage. Whenever a inexpensive film is hesitantly backed by a studio, I usually put fa...

The Road

reviewed on December 28th, 2009 07:41PM

The catsatrophe that ends the world is never explained, but the muted colors and decaying landscape leave little to the imagination. The world is literally falling to pieces. The landscapes are so striking, not due to characteristics, but rather t...

The Messenger

reviewed on December 28th, 2009 07:09PM

A slowing movie drama, the three actors are given plenty of time and material to show off their more than substantial abilities. Both Ben Foster and Samantha Morton glide through the story with weary eyes hiding a sickening anger that explodes in ...

The Men Who Stare at Goats

reviewed on November 12th, 2009 03:42PM

http://rickshq.blogspot.com/2009/11/review-men-who-stare-at-goats.html

District 9

reviewed on September 15th, 2009 03:04PM

http://rickshq.blogspot.com/2009/08/review-district-9.html The movie plays like a documentary. It starts out as a first person perspective as a camera follows Wikus intertwined with commentary by his co-workers, loved ones, and other intellectu...

Inglourious Basterds

reviewed on September 15th, 2009 03:03PM

http://rickshq.blogspot.com/2009/08/review-inglourious-basterds.html The story itself was split into 5 chapters. The first one, "Once Upon a Time … in Nazi Occupied France," is superb. This is where Landa truly shines. Col. Landa and his men ar...

World's Greatest Dad

reviewed on September 15th, 2009 03:02PM

http://rickshq.blogspot.com/2009/09/review-worlds-greatest-dad.html Even witht the cult success of Shakes the Clown, the phrase "written and directed by Bobcat Goldthwait" still does not inspire the notion of quality. This could not be any less...

Hard Candy

reviewed on November 2nd, 2006 04:00PM

The movie depends a lot of the role reversal. The girl is the antagonist torturing the pedophile. The story was intriguing and demented when it started, but it takes a nasty turn when you realize the girls true intentions. Both characters were pre...

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cerealkiller182's Reviews (471)

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