If you’re going to bring the world to and end, or make any kind of disaster flick in general, it needs to be big, dumb and most of all, fun. The emphasis should always be on the word fun. Let that be a lesson to you Hollywood hotshots. This includes Bay, McG and Sommers...[more]...

I remember the first time I watched a Richard Curtis film. I was 14 years old and I sat down with my grandma to watch a little film called “Four Weddings and a Funeral” which then went on to receive a Best Picture nod. I have always been just as interested in who made a movie as much as the final product...[more]...

With a long history behind it, sci-fi films don’t always have to deal with alien abduction. Amongst a wide range of quality, some are silly (“Men in Black” and “The Arrival”) or have been offered up for television (the James Earl Jones starring “The UFO Incident,” Spielberg’s “Taken,” the controversial “Alien Autopsy: Fact or Fiction,” and the “X-Files,” along with both the original and current “V” miniseries...[more]...

Oh, how I love a good Christmas film and there are lots to choose from when the season roles around every year. Starting on Nov. 1 is when I typically begin letting the season’s music start jingling in my ears. When it comes to picking which ones to watch every year there are standards, the non-traditional and then there are the unintentional...[more]...

With only three directing jobs under his belt now, Jared Hess, working with his wife, screenwriter Jerusha Hess, has managed to make three very separately unique films even if instantly recognizable to the viewer. Bursting onto the scene in 2004 with the indie darling “Napoleon Dynamite” he managed to make loveable losers a household name. After that exploded he moved on to working with another friend he made along the way Jack Black and popped out “Nacho Libre.”...[more]...

I have never been a big fan of Michael Jackson. That could be considered offensive to say in a review of a film put together so soon after his death. As a child of the ‘80s however, I am fully aware of the icon the man truly is. My parents weren’t fans and neither are any of my friends from that time period. All I really have known about the man is that he is mostly referred to as “The King of Pop” and has about a “million” hit singles played regularly on the radio or at Halloween parties...[more]...

With the current releases of “Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs” and Pixar’s “Toy Story” 3-D double feature you could assume that a major studio release of yet another CG-animated film would be a bad idea. If the quality could match either of those two releases one would be wrong. That Summit Entertainment has unleashed such a gross misappropriation of expectations would be an understatement...[more]...

When it comes to famous directing siblings, perhaps the first names that spring to mind are either the kings of gross Farrelly brothers (“Dumb and Dumber,” “There’s Something About Mary,” “Stuck on You” and “Fever Pitch”) or the Academy Award winning team the Coen brothers (“Blood Simple”, “Raising Arizona,” “Fargo,” “No Country for Old Men,” and “Burn After Reading”...[more]...

In coming up with the idea for Kurt Wimmer’s latest screenplay offering, apparently he sat down for a triple feature consisting of “Law & Order,” “The Dark Knight” and any of the first five “Saw” films. But when a screenwriter’s only good movie is the Christian Bale starring “Equilibrium” maybe studios should start second guessing his writing duties...[more]...

Spike Jonze has been MIA for seven years in the movie scene. However, he has come back with a vengeance and delivered one of the most brilliant family films about being a young boy on the cusp of finally having to grow up. After author Maurice Sendak saw Jonze’s breakout film “Being John Malkovich” it was then that Sendak knew who should adapt his own children’s book and since then audiences had no idea what to expect from a live action version of “Where the Wild Things Are.”...[more]...

Vince Vaughn and Jon Favreau are great friends. This is very apparent as they have now starred in five films together since their original collaboration “Swingers” back in 1996 and its unintentional sequel “Made.” Along the way they have made a pretty good friendship with little Ralphie Parker himself (“A Christmas Story”), Peter Billingsley. He has appeared with them both in the boring-except-when-Vaughn-and-Favreau-are-on-screen-together “The Break-Up,” joined them in last year’s “Four Christmases” along with small roles in Favreau’s own “Elf” and “Iron Man” and now the trio bring us “Couples Retreat.”...[more]...

In the annals of zombie movies there’s definitely a broad share of the good, the bad and the ugly. It may not be my favorite sub-genre of horror but I do enjoy my fair share of the undead rising from death to munch on hapless passersby. Whether it be straight out horror to the occasionally played as thriller to the outright loving spoof, there’s a great many variety when it comes to these types of films...[more]...

WHIP IT...[more]...

If we are to fully believe in the hope for 3-D animation it comes directly from the hands of Pixar. While “Up” didn’t manage to satiate my belief it has now come to term with their re-release of the original “Toy Story” films. Lately there has been a glutton of 3-D films. While none in the live-action arena have given leeway in hope, the cinematic gimmick of yesteryear now has legs to stand on. This isn’t saying Pixar is the only production company capable of producing fine 3-D films in either format. Simply put, live-action films have characters and props looking like they’re placed in front of cardboard cutout sets while CG animation manages to fully immerse with added depth and clarity...[more]...

I freely admit it; I’m a big fan of director Jonathan Mostow. But sometimes you can feel a director slipping with each film and I really hope that with some more films under his belt and his name back in the writer’s credit he can get himself back on track. With his first theatrical outing he brought us a spectacular little film called “Breakdown” starring Kurt Russel and Kathleen Quinlan in a fight for survival along the highways of the back roads. This was co-written with the same writer he teamed up for to give us “U-571” (Sam Montgomery) which brought bigger stars along with it such as Matthew McConaughey, Bill Paxton, Harvey Keitel, and Jon Bon Jovi. It was a very claustrophobic and intense film that almost completely takes place under water and within in confines of a submarine yet managed to be gripping and interesting all the way through which is a big deal for a guy who has no normal interest in the war genre...[more]...

Sports are definitely something that I have very slowly become a little bit more of a fan of over the years. For a very long time the only game I was ever a fan of happened to be baseball with my favorite team being the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. I’m not sure exactly why they’re my team of choice but it could be that they’re the parent team to my local Triple A affiliate the Salt Lake Bees. I am far from what one would call a big fan and some who know me are usually very surprised that I even have a slight interest in any sports team. I even have a super-secret superhero character I made up back in the day that goes by the name “Anti-Sports Guy” so obviously I’m the last person who should like sports films...[more]...

Matt Damon and Steven Soderbergh have each made very different films over the years and Damon has now been in five of Soderbergh's. Soderbergh is more known for his bigger titles such as “Erin Brockovich,” “Traffic,” and the “Oceans” trilogy but that may be about it. While two of those five were Oscar nominated, Soderbergh is probably much more well known within the indie art house crowds. From his debut film “Sex, Lies and Videotape” which played as part of the 1989 Sundance Film Festival in my local Park City, thru films such as “Out of Sight,” “The Limey,” “Full Frontal,” “Solaris,” “Bubble,” and parts “One” and “Two” of the “Che” films along with his most recent “The Girlfriend Experience” starring adult film star Sasha Grey...[more]...

When it comes to computer-animated feature films, there are some who get it and some who do not. There also happen to be some who are stuck in the middle and have great ideas, compelling visuals but still manage to skimp on the story in favor of getting to the next action sequence. The same tends to go along with the big dumb action movies of summer. When your new computer-animated feature film feels the need to be one of those movies it deserves to be released in the dump days of September. Marketing executives also must have thought they’d struck the ultimate goldmine when a film is called “9” as they have the even more ultimate release date of 9/9/09. However, it’s a good thing the movie is as loud and obnoxious as it is to keep you awake when the screening you attend also happens to be at 9:09 p.m...[more]...

When the original “Final Destination” was released back in 2000 it had a few scenes that literally made me forget to breathe. From the opening plane crash to a character getting squashed like a bug by a bus I could sense that I had found my new favorite horror series outside of the “Scream” trilogy. The Rube Goldbergesque setups ending with a character going splat was truly horrifying yet so utterly silly that it was always hilarious...[more]...

What has two balls and sucks more sand than a David Hasselhoff wannabe? Michael Bay...[more]...