Knowing that one of legendary director Werner Herzog’s (“Aguirre: The Wrath of God,” “Fitzcarraldo”) favorite subjects is the futility of man to overcome nature, I went into his newest documentary “Grizzly Man” expecting a sobering story of a conservationalist do-gooder who tempted fate one too many times and ultimately lost out to nature. What struck […]
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Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride is a new stop-motion animation feature in the vein of the cult favorite Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas. Both feature a similarly conventional love story, and both are set in the reliably marketable director’s trademark fairy-tale world. The demands of the stop-motion method keep Corpse Bride at a brief 78 […]
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Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Freebird” will never be the same again. The iconic southern rock anthem has been given a ballsy, sadistic makeover in writer/director Rob Zombie’s second film “The Devil’s Rejects.” It is no longer enough for “this bird you cannot change” to merely fly free. In this violent and funny homage to B-movies, Zombie’s redneck […]
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Should it really be such a surprise to see a nature documentary like “March of the Penguins” nestled in each week’s box office reports among this summer’s blockbuster fantasy/sci-fi hits? It may have more in common with them than you think. After all, Antarctica is such an unbelievably cold and unforgiving territory that it almost […]
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I get the feeling that there are a lot of people who think that movie critics are sad little people whose only true enjoyment comes from taking the piss out of movies that are really asking for it. Michael Bay’s futuristic “The Island,” starring Ewan McGregor and Scarlett Johansson as two runaway clones, is one […]
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“Wedding Crashers” is a high-concept, totally formulaic comedy that should not work. Any script that calls for the audience to have sympathy for two slimeballs who spend all of their free time preying on women’s emotional vulnerability at weddings is asking a lot, especially when it derails into forced sappiness. But thanks to two perfectly […]
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When a movie advertised as a suspense/thriller is practically devoid of suspense and contains no thrills, it usually results in a complete failure to entertain. Recent entries in this genre that leap to mind are “Hide and Seek” and “The Grudge.” “Dark Water” is certainly missing those key elements, but because of an attention to […]
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In 1931, Variety magazine wrote of Universal Studios’ “Dracula,” “The living-dead Count Dracula who sustains life by drinking the blood of his victims, seems almost plausible.” This was written about a soon-to-be-famous Hungarian actor with hypnotic eyes and a cape. “Dracula” was hugely successful at the box office, but the film was not considered great […]
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George Romero’s “Land of the Dead” is the fourth zombie movie in the last three years to be given a mainstream release in America. But one must only look as far as the name that appears before the title to realize that this is not a calculated attempt to piggyback the genre’s newfound popularity. Instead, […]
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From Oscar-winning producer Brian Grazer, Oscar-winning director Ron Howard, and Oscar-winning writer Akiva Goldsman, of “A Beautiful Mind,” comes “Cinderella Man,” another true story of a man who overcame all odds at a time when his country needed him the most, starring Oscar-winning actor Russell Crowe and Oscar-winning actress Renee Zellweger. Some movies, by way […]
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Everybody knows how it is going to end. But what “Star Wars” fans are dying to know is precisely how it all unfolds. Or, more specifically, what terrible deeds will Anakin Skywalker carry out on his way to becoming Darth Vader? Anyone who has seen the lackluster Episodes I and II knows George Lucas must […]
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Who are we? Why are we here? What is the answer to the great question of life, the universe, and everything? And would a sperm whale suddenly called into existence in midair, miles above an alien planet, want to make friends with the quickly approaching ground? Like anyone who has [laughed out loud while reading] […]
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“Melinda and Melinda” is the thirty-third film Woody Allen has written and directed in thirty-nine years, and the first one since 1999’s underrated “Sweet and Lowdown” to not collapse completely under its author’s recently limited palette. Allen’s repertoire has become too predictable in the last four years with his DreamWorks-distributed movies, and his specialized audience […]
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Eric with KISS tribute band Dressed to Kill at the KISS Expo in KC 4/13!
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Adventure novelist Clive Cussler is suing the producers of “Sahara,” the new Matthew McConaughey action flick, because his contract says he had final script approval and, he claims, they ignored that, despite his objections to the script. “All I can say is I don’t know whose book they adapted, but it wasn’t mine,” he recently […]
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