Weird is undervalued nowadays. With the homogenized ubiquity of frappuccinos and flat-front chinos, a good dose of odd is inviting, if not needed. This is what makes the inventive Martian Child so refreshing, fun and seemingly otherworldly. One of the most unique films of 2007, Martian Child envelops you with a warm and wide-eyed curiosity [...]
Beneath the innocuous moniker, “Michael Clayton” is actually a very different, interesting breed of thriller that people are either going to love, or just think it OK. (Really, it’s hard to hate any movie with George Clooney as the lead, save for “Solaris.”) The expected ‘this’ or ‘that’ reaction is due in large part to [...]
Vulgar comedy seems to be a successful ingredient to many a film lately, “Superbad” being the most outrageous example. The Farrelly brothers have included this seasoning by the truckload in their latest project, “Heartbreak Kid,” which is just about their best work yet. You set a pretty clear tone when an opening line from 80-something [...]
Debuting at the United Nations last week, “Trade” is a small film with a big mission. Kevin Kline anchors the story with his performance as Ray, a Texas policeman caught up in tracking down a network of internationals involved in the trafficking of children into sex slavery. Kline, along with German filmmaker Marco Kreuzpaintner, hope [...]
The third and presumably final chapter in one of the most successful video games-turned-motion pictures makes its bloody swan song, bringing back the exotic Milla Jovovich as the zombie zealot, Alice, on a mission to dead the undead. “Resident Evil: Extinction” is still laughably (thankfully) ridiculous, but much larger in scope and scale than its [...]
Like the sketchy take-out joint down the street that strangely serves everything from pizzas to subs to Chinese — behind bulletproof class, no less — “December Boys” is one of those films that is to be approached with caution and only out of a nagging hunger (to see Daniel Radcliffe in something other than “Harry [...]
Delivering a compelling movie that deals with the middle-east and the often-adjacent topic of terrorism is no easy feat given today’s global environment. Nevertheless, Peter Berg (actor/director) brings us “The Kingdom,” a stark, rapid-fire investigation surrounding the attack on a “green zone”-like community in Saudi Arabia, for which the FBI has arrived to root out [...]
Director David Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen come together again in “Eastern Promises,” after the successful and dark “A History of Violence.” The combination of the two seems to produce some of the most vivid, methodic and violent dramas. “Eastern Promises” falls right in line with its exceptional brutality, unabashed story telling, and Mortensen’s enveloping persona, [...]
Delivering a compelling movie that deals with the middle-east and the often-adjacent topic of terrorism is no easy feat given today’s global environment. Nevertheless, Peter Berg (actor/director) brings us “The Kingdom,” a stark, rapid-fire investigation surrounding the attack on a “green zone”-like community in Saudi Arabia, for which the FBI has arrived to root out [...]
Director David Cronenberg and Viggo Mortensen come together again in “Eastern Promises,” after the successful and dark “A History of Violence.” The combination of the two seems to produce some of the most vivid, methodic and violent dramas. “Eastern Promises” falls right in line with its exceptional brutality, unabashed story telling, and Mortensen’s enveloping persona, [...]
There has been much reporting about the return of the vigilante film genre with the recent release of Kevin Bacon’s “Death Sentence” and before that, Rosario Dawson’s “Descent.” “The Brave One” starring Jodie Foster is the next in line to go public and probably the one most will talk about. Though squarely in the vigilante [...]
Revenge thrillers always hold an inherent appeal and smell of satisfaction, because it’s oh-so fun to watch the bad guy get what he deserves. And with director James Wan of Saw at the helm, you can bet that satisfaction to be bloody, with a dash of complexity. Death Sentence, written by the same guy that [...]
Seth and Evan, high-schoolers on the verge of graduation, have a close, comfortable friendship that most teen guys usually shake off in favor of more independent, slap-on-the-back-of-the-head, buddy-ness (Dude!!!). In Superbad, this quirky, funny, fat-skinny twosome seeks to overcome their social awkwardness and finally “get with a chick” before graduation, obsessing about breasts, porn and [...]
Posturing pirates, waning witches, and plotting princes are just some of the fanciful characters that adventure through Stardust, all because of a mystical falling star. With a colorful spectrum of vivid characters, whimsical spells and iconic narrating by Sir Ian McKellan, Stardust achieves the desired stature of being a unique and epic fantasy quest — [...]
I think it’s clear by now that the once cherub-like Harry Potter has grown into an appropriately angst-ridden teen. If it wasn’t the infamous nude-horse production Equus that gave it away, then seeing Harry Potter and the Order the Phoenix should do the trick. Gone is the feathery hair, the curious voice and the look [...]
Dolls are scary. Chucky is. That weird one that wheels around in Saw is. Even Buddy Lee and his overalls seem a bit nefarious. So when you pair such a tried-and-true fear device with the writer and producer of Saw, James Wan, in Dead Silence, you would expect the result to be a respectable horror [...]
What is there not to like about the exploitative pursuit of a mythical, 25-foot “man-eating” crocodile –- yes, apparently that descriptor is actually not overused –- hidden in the remote wilderness of an Africa country, set amidst the tumultuous political strife of the region? Well, a lot, actually. Despite Primeval’s attempts to deepen the plot [...]
Despite my, at best, tepid reaction to the debut of the Fantastic Four on the big screen, I still just had to see the sequel. To be sure, nothing in the first film would have motivated me to fiddle away more of my time. But with the introduction of the Silver Surfer — who certainly [...]
Eli Roth’s second take on the Slovakian mouse trap, complete with an eBay-like competition to act out murderous fantasies on wayward backpackers (albeit originally a pretty exciting and interesting idea), falls squarely into the bucket of a money-minded sequel. The fraternal twin of the original –- women now lead the cast as opposed to guys [...]
