I’ll start off this review by stating that I’m a big fan of master animé director Hayao Miyazaki. A lot of people call him the Japanese Walt Disney, but as far as I’m concerned he could make Mickey’s creator his little bitch if he ever wanted. Having said that, it’s probably easy to deduce that […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
At some point (probably around the time Star Wars made a wombo amount of money), Hollywood came to the conclusion that sci-fi movies were also exclusively action movies. While there’s nothing wrong with those two genres together, sci-fi geeks like myself have enjoyed the past summer, which gave us two different, and authentically really good […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Bandslam is a clichéd, hackneyed, overdone, montage-filled paint-by-numbers tale of teenage angst, love, lessons about life, and triumph. And yet it’s still better than G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra. As unoriginal, and at times truly awful, this film is, it’s also got a little spark which provides moments better than they have any right […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
From the quick-cut opening scenes in “The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard,” it’s obvious what director Neal Brennan has in mind. He’s hoping that the lightning-fast pace of the movie will cover up for the fact that nothing about it is neither fresh nor funny. On paper, casting Jermey Piven (the fast-talking Hollywood super agent […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Let’s get this straight right from the get-go: I had no real expectations with this film except wanting to leave without getting too bored or having the film make my eyes bleed. One out of two isn’t bad. Even with the bar set so low G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra finds a way to […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
“Dying is easy, comedy is hard.” George Bernard’s famous quote is turned upside down by Judd Apatow in his return to the director’s chair. After the success of “Knocked Up,” Apatow took some time off to produce a gaggle of films for friends and proteges. Some worked (“Saving Sarah Marshall,” “Super Bad”), and others were […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
If you had to pigeonhole it, you could certainly call “(500) Days of Summer” a romantic comedy. It’s got its fair share of romance and, at times, it can be pretty funny. But it more often than not, the movie does what other romantic comedies can never seem to do convincingly: It celebrates those special […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
“The Hurt Locker” is one of those movies where the story arc just kind of sneaks up on you when you’re not looking. It’s a lot like the situation that its principal characters find themselves in every day. Bomb defusers must always be alert. A man on a cell phone peeking out from a doorway […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
The sixth filmic adaptation of J.K. Rowling’s enormously popular book series arrives in theaters with an inordinate amount of baggage from five movies of myth-building and expectations, so it almost seems set up to fail. While “Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince” is only the second film (along with “Prisoner of Azkaban”) to deliver a […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
On the surface, Larry David (“Curb Your Enthusiasm”) would seem like the perfect candidate to step into a Woody Allen movie. After all, he’s a writer-turned-actor who specializes in neurotic behavior just like Allen. He’s also very funny and more than a little mean-spirited, so he should have suited the material in Allen’s newest Manhattan-based […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Michael Mann’s “Public Enemies” is a lovingly crafted exercise by the veteran filmmaker, whose films have covered the similarities between criminals and lawmen many times before (See “Manhunter” and “Heat”). Starring Johnny Depp as infamous Depression-era bank robber John Dillinger and Christian Bale as dogged FBI agent Melvin Purvis, the film gives the audience an […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
If sheer effort and dogged perseverance were enough to guarantee success, then Steve “Lips” Kudrow and Robb Reiner (no relation to the director of “This is Spinal Tap”) of the Canadian heavy metal band Anvil would be household names. They shared the stage in the mid-80s with Bon Jovi, Whitesnake, and the Scorpions, but somehow […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Whitney Mathews has co-hosted our video reviews several times with me and she also blogs at her namesake website www.whitneymathews.com. She saw this flick while I was at “Transformers: Revenge of theFallen,” and we’re happy to reprint it here. Here’s Whitney: My Sister’s Keeper is the latest project from Nick Cassavetes (Alpha Dog, The Notebook) […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Romantic comedies can scare critics away quicker than a mob racing out of a burning building. It’s hard to warm up to a genre that’s let you down so often and so consistently. So settling down to watch The Proposal, all I really was hoping for was to make it out of the theater with […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }
Post-modern awareness is mixed with an ancient setting in Harold Ramis’ “Year One,” but somehow most of the humor still manages to be prehistoric. If you’ve always wanted to see smart comedians revert to grade school hi-jinks for cheap laughs, then this is the movie for you. Jack Black and Michael Cera star as two […]
{ Comments on this entry are closed }