etragedy (Level 13)

I avoided watching this film for a long time because it got terrible reviews, and because I heard it was a comedic take on the material, and while not exactly a fan of the original Dark Shadows, I was an admirer of it - and the 1991 revival of the ...

Tropic Thunder might not actually be what you'd call a particularly good movie, but by the low standards of genre parodies (The ZAZ films, the National Lampoon films, and worst of all the Scary/Epic/Disaster/Date Movie films), Tropic Thunder is a masterpiece; especially given that it's written, directed and starring Ben ...

In the wake of Reservoir Dogs and El Mariachi, there were scores of takes on the crime drama: The Boondock Saints, Bottle Rocket, Croupier, 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag, Fargo, Get Shorty, Killing Zoe, Leon: The Professional, A Life Less Ordinary, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Love and ...

Was Scream 4 jumping the gun?I guess not, I mean there have been as many years between this 'reboot' of the Scream franchise as there was between the original Scream and most of the films it was an homage to.So was it jumping the shark?Well, if we go by the ...

How To Train Your Dragon has received so many accolades that there really isn't much more for me to say. It's an animated adventure about a Viking boy who befriends a dragon - the natural enemies of the Vikings - and together they save both their societies by bringing them ...

Dragon is, if nothing else, ambitious. It attempts to be a mystery-crime-thriller-martial-arts-period-piece with digital effects. And, stylistically it achieves its goal. There is a mystery, set in the world of organized crime at the dawn of the 20th Century, with outstanding fight choreography and beautiful scenery and period sets. It ...

I first read The Hobbit about 35 years ago, and ever since it has been one of my favorite books. But when I heard Peter Jackson was turning it into a live action feature film, I was a little conflicted. On the one hand, Jackson is a fantastic director who ...

You knew Tarantino was going to get around to this sooner or later. Having already given us modern pastiches of the 70s crime film, the blaxsploitation film, the chop-socky film, the grindhouse film, and the spaghetti war film, he had to get to the spaghetti western. In fact, it's kind ...

Imagine a film like Sin City or 300 that is almost entirely made up of epic digital environments. Now imagine a film like Cast Away or Moon that relies on the acting talents of a single actor for the majority of the film. Finally, imagine an epic fantasy film that's ...

One of the best Spaghetti Westerns not directed by Sergio Leone is Django. The title character, Django, is in all other ways practically interchangeable with the Clint Eastwood 'Man with No Name' character. In this, the first of what was to become a long-running series of 'Django' films, Django walks ...

Remakes in general tend to be underwhelming, and whenever you take a classic well-loved film and try to remake it, you're almost certainly doomed to fail. The best you can hope for is to make something 'as good' as the original - but you will more than likely fall short.This ...

This Corman quickie is what you expect it to be - bad. Corman even hedged his bets on this one by having the cast and crew make another film, Ski Troop Attack at the same time. While it fails to hit the same level of awesomeness that other so-bad-they're good ...

Of all the films Milos Foreman has directed, aside from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the three biographies he's done have been the best: Amadeus, The People vs. Larry Flynt, and Man on the Moon. Part of the reason is because of his style - Foreman works with such ...

I grew up on 'Detective Comics', you know, the comic from which DC Comics gets its name.That company practically invented the superhero as we know it, and has been making quality stories almost twice as long as their biggest competitor (Marvel Comics Group). Today DC Comics is owned by one ...

Ever since James Cagney got behind the wheel in The Crowd Roars, the car film has become a genre unto itself. By the 60s and 70s the genre hit an all-time high with films like Dirty Mary and Crazy Larry, Thunder Road, Vanishing Point, Bullit, Two Lane Blacktop, White Lightning, ...