Just in time for the holidays and the New Year comes The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a delicate, thought-provoking film that is surely going to evoke feelings of thanks and hope. It’s not in my nature to be particularly tender, but director David Fincher’s adaptation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story will have even the most cynical [...]
If you must pick just one to see this Christmas day, Valkyrie may be the better choice since it’s a more conventional, accessible thriller. However, don’t expect Tom Cruise to redeem any industry clout in this one. Considering the star power of the man and his lead role, it’s eye-opening that the supporting cast outdoes him to such a [...]
It can’t be said enough that The Spirit is not on the same level as Sin City or 300. There are vast and deep differences beneath the surface that result in an altogether difference experience. The action and violence in first-time solo director Frank Miller’s film has more camp than a boy scout retreat, while the storyline is as frenetic, fanciful [...]
As part of the generation of raucous young WWE fans suplexing siblings in the living room, I grew to know professional wrestling pretty well. Later in life, I learned it was even crazier than I originally thought, because so much of it was for show. I won’t say that it’s fake, because that would be too flippant. [...]
Let’s be honest - Keanu Reeves headlining a remake of the 1951 sci-fi classic The Day the Earth Stood Stillcertainly doesn’t sound like the rebirth of a genre archetype. In fact, the mere idea of retreading this territory finds many a fan up in arms. Nevertheless, with its smart casting, savvy CGI and efficient pacing, Scott Derrickson’s Day finds a [...]
Clearly defined lines between good and evil are the floorplans for most dramas. Even if we don’t discover these boundaries by the end of a film, ultimately knowing these delineations help us process a story much easier. It gives us clarity and closure. But total uncertainty can also prove a cinematic comfort – that is [...]
The Punisher may be a tortured purveyor of justice and a one-man SWAT team, able to spin upside down from a chandelier while firing automatic rifles and taking out dozens of bad guys, but the man-in-black, Frank Castle, is no match for director Lexi Alexander, who has done the improbable – put a bullet right between [...]
In 1977 an unlikely leader was elected as a city supervisor in San Francisco. His name was Harvey Milk, and he was the first openly gay politician in the country’s history. Not a year after taking office, Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated inside of City Hall. During his brief time in office, Milk helped [...]
The Punisher may be a tortured purveyor of justice and a one-man SWAT team, able to spin upside down from a chandelier while firing automatic rifles and taking out dozens of bad guys, but the man-in-black, Frank Castle, is no match for director Lexi Alexander, who has done the improbable – put a bullet right between [...]
In 1977 an unlikely leader was elected as a city supervisor in San Francisco. His name was Harvey Milk, and he was the first openly gay politician in the country’s history. Not a year after taking office, Milk and Mayor George Moscone were assassinated inside of City Hall. During his brief time in office, Milk helped [...]
Jason Statham as Frank Martin is probably the coolest, sexiest chauffeur in recent history, but no amount of stubble, abs or Audi adventures can save the recent installment of Transporter 3. Maybe it was the rising gas prices that left little money to upholster much of a story or hire a decent female lead. My bet is [...]
Every now and again a movie comes along and is labeled as “critic proof”, which basically means that despite whatever critics might have to say about it, fans will still see and enjoy it regardless. The last one that I know of was Sex and the City: The Movie. Not a great film, but I doubt [...]
Analyzing Kevin Smith’s Zack and Miri Make a Porno feels remarkably similar to what it must be like to review an actual porno. The film has baseline appeal, so the only question is whether it’s really good or really bad. The film has a built-in draw since Smith mated his universe with Judd Apatow’s, creating a cast [...]
I think it’s safe to say that most expect Clint Eastwood’s Changeling to be the next Million Dollar Baby. After all, Eastwood directed both, and instead of Hilary Swank front and center, it’s now Angelina Jolie as single mother Christine Collins. Both films maintain a studied focus on the lead heroine and the events that surround her, but that’s where [...]
Post-9/11 thrillers have come and gone over the years, but none have ever really gotten the recipe right. The Kingdom is too heavy on action; Traitor tries to be too smart; and there’s just no redeeming Rendition. It’s easy to say that Ridley Scott’s Body of Lies is a bit tardy, but I’d prefer to describe the film’s entrance into this growing [...]
Shia LaBeouf is unquestionably a hot commodity nowadays, and after seeing the previews for Eagle Eye, I had grounds to expect it to be the next blockbuster thriller. My expectation seemed reasonable, since the film reunited LaBeouf and director D.J. Caruso from the respectable Disturbia, and the original idea for Eagle Eyecame from Steven Spielberg, no less. But you know [...]
Choke has got to be one of the most misshapen, lewd tales of 2008, and is aptly named since most will find it hard to swallow given its odd texture. At the same time, if chewed on and worked around properly, it’s a satisfying film with a wonderfully complex taste. Behind the sex addiction, con artistry [...]
Don Cheadle’s character, Samir Horn, is a man conflicted. He’s Middle-Eastern yet also a US citizen; he’s a concerted Muslim but also a pragmatist; he helps to further terrorist goals but works for the CIA. So when Samir turns to his girlfriend at one point in Jeffrey Nachmanoff’s directorial debut, Traitor, and says “the truth is complicated,” he’s definitely [...]
His role as faux film director Damien Cockburn in Tropic Thunder was fleeting and forgettable, but Brit funnyman Steve Coogan is the sacrilegious heart and soul of Hamlet 2, a film as offbeat, laughable and endearing as the play it portrays. As the failed actor, Dana Marschz, who resorts to teaching high school drama in Arizona, Coogan is positively hysterical, [...]
As pointed and uncomplicated as its title, Death Race is a pure sadistic smash-em-up that provides some of the most explosive, gratuitous fun at the box office this summer. Based on the 1975 original, Death Race 2000, Paul W. S. Anderson’s take on the material isn’t a remake, but a solid update to the dystopian tale of vehicular [...]
When you hit an amusement park, you can expect to encounter a wide range of rides, each with its own story and unique experience. There’s the old-fashioned mine ride, alongside the flashy adventure coaster, set next to the dark and creepy slow-goer. Some amusements are more fun than others, but the variety and excitement usually [...]
It feels completely counter-intuitive to care little about the special effects and action in The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan’s sequel to his 2005 Batman Begins. For a movie like this, you naturally expect to be engrossed by garish gadgetry, incredible stunts and seat-gripping adventure. The Dark Knight has all of this, don’t get me wrong, but even the most [...]
Even though Hellboy (Ron Perlman) and girlfriend Liz (Selma Blair) have the complementary hot and hell dynamic going for them, I’m not sure anyone can pull off superhero bonding between a red-skinned, cat-loving demon and a snarky gal that can, literally, “get fired up.” Not even Guillermo del Toro. Yet despite the prominence the gifted director gives [...]
With the battle for superhero supremacy at the box office this summer, there’s obviously going to be a film that brings up the rear. Midway through the season, we securely have that last place decided, and it is Will Smith’s Hancock. Despite Smith’s superhuman credentials, Hancock struggles to rise above messy special effects, an ill-suited director and [...]
Nowadays it’s hard to find a film that offers anything one might consider refreshing when it comes to the Iraq War. So much has been done already – and done badly – that mere mention of the subject matter is apt to draw exhausted sighs. Naturally, I approached John Cusack’s War, Inc. with the some trepidation. Written, [...]
Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy) reaches a breaking point amid his cubicle doldrums and smashes his ergonomic keyboard across a colleague’s jaw, dislodging keys, blood and teeth. As the bloodied bits slowly fly towards the screen, the keys laughably spell out “Fuck You.” It’s not a particularly poignant scene in Wanted, but it does embody the hyperbolic, [...]
With the high from Iron Man starting to wane, fans are anxiously awaiting their next fix promised by Marvel’s second summer blockbuster in as many months, The Incredible Hulk. Add to that Ang Lee’s 2003 attempt to bring the “angry man” to the big screen, widely perceived as half-baked and too mellow, and you have quite a hunger [...]
The Happening may not be a reboot of a previous storyline or character (ala The Incredible Hulk, also out this weekend), but it certainly aims to recharge M. Night Shyamalan’s career. Since the writer/director (and sometimes actor) crept into the public consciousness with the Sixth Sense back in 1999, his career hasn’t exactly gone skyward, save for the slight [...]
We’re all familiar with the saying, “Cheaters never prosper.” That’s an adage easy enough to apply to taking tests in school, but not for taking anabolic steroids. On one hand, Olympians are stripped of their medals for testing positive for performance enhancing drugs, yet on the other, one of the most well-known users of steroids [...]
Adam Sandler, certainly known for some grade-A ridiculousness and juvenile humor, has outdone himself in his latest, You Don’t Mess with the Zohan. With the typically less-than-funny Jewish-Palestinian hostility as a back story, Sandler, by way of heaps of hummus and a cantaloupe-sized crotch – which, by the way, given it’s prominence should have its own [...]
More than four years after Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha downed their last cosmo and faded into the history of successful HBO series, comes the eagerly awaited big-screen adaptation that for many will be the movie event of the year. Fans of the show will gorge themselves on two-and-half hours of designers, drama, drinks and divas, while newcomers will discover a chick flick that makes relatives of the genre seem positively masculine. Despite fashion and couture to the contrary, Sex and the City is really only about one label, love, and all the imperfections and textures that accompany this sought-after garment. Guys, proceed to hurl. Girls, proceed to swoon.
From the “inspired by true events” tagline on the poster to the documentary-like intro, Bryan Bertino’s first feature, The Strangers, contains painstaking efforts to achieve a patina of realism. The film partly succeeds, delivering a spectrum of fear that is as subtle and disquieting as hearing footsteps at your back door and as suffocating as having [...]
There’s a point in Tarsem Singh’s second feature film where crippled, thirty-something Roy Walker asks five-year-old Alexandria, “Are you trying to save my soul?” Such a weighty question put to such a naive child makes for a truly confusing, yet beautiful scene – a sequence that speaks as much to the writer-director’s talents as to his shortcomings [...]
Where has Helen Hunt been? The 44-year-old actress was a hot property during the late nineties and around the millennium, but she’s largely laid low since then. She’s now starring as the lead in Then She Found Me, which serves as a bit of a return for her to the mainstream, as well as her debut as a director. [...]
Robert Downey Jr. is definitely a wily character who has managed to leverage his frenetic genius all over Hollywood throughout recent memory (albeit in fits and starts) – a guy well-known for getting high and arrested back when such behavior was truly self-destructive as opposed to self-aggrandizing. Over the past few years, Downey has slowly molded [...]
Despite naggings to read Scott Smith’s best selling novel, “The Ruins“, I refused, being granted a reprieve when the film adaptation was announced. “I’ll just see the movie,” became my go-to defense. As you might imagine, such a shortcut resulted in only a taste of the enjoyment I might have garnered from actually reading the [...]
Neil Marshall’s 2006 horror hit, The Descent, will undoubtedly maintain its place on many a fan’s top list for years and years to come. The spelunking terror tail was so perfect and delicate in its execution that it set Marshall’s career afire and created a palpable fear of caves the same way Jaws did for open-ocean swimming. Sadly, [...]
