User Reviews

First a bit of context. When the first trailer of G.I. Joe Retaliation was released dubstep was still actively being used in marketing. The film was originally set to be release in June of 2012 and now finds itself opening up the spring early summer gamut of blockbuster franchise films. ...

Spring Breakers is my favorite project that Harmony Korine has taken on in his career so far. While I’ve loved his work thus far idealistically, or of what I’ve already seen, this film seems like an incredibly well executed experiment with an actual sort of point to its mindlessness, or ...

O.K., for a minute I'm going to pretend like you haven't seen the 1985 film Cocoon, and give you some background, because without it this movie is gonna seem even more nonsensical than it already is. Cocoon was about a bunch of old people that found some alien cocoons on ...

Right up until the last fifteen minutes or so, The Call is a cool, plausible thriller with a Hitchcock-esque tone. It isn’t amazing or profound or even particularly original, but it was entertaining, engrossing, and believable. This makes it particularly frustrating that the filmmakers throw it all away with a ...

It’s a tragedy that Brandon Lee died. He was only getting started in his career, and having it cut short before he really began … well, it’s awful pity that we barely got a glimpse of his potential. I’ve only seen his earlier performance in Showdown in Little Tokyo where ...

Even though the title proclaims that this movie is about Thor, the fact is that he barely makes an appearance as a supporting character as this is Loki’s show. The fact is that I went in believing that this was actually an animated movie but in fact, I was duped ...

While some might decry it is not identical or that they have altered the concept of Alan Moore’s vision, I have to honestly say that I was not a particular fan of the graphic novel. But I found the movie adaptation to be immensely enjoyable as I found some of ...

Before watching Miracle Mile, the only thing I knew about it was that critics liked it, it bombed at the box office, and online reviews for it were really polarized - I mean really polarized... of the "this film is amazing", or "this film is horrendous" varieties.After having seen the ...

French director Jacques Audiard (A Prophet) counters a disjointed script with fascinating conceptual details, beautiful images and intense moments of raw acting. Rust and Bone is equally mesmerising as it is clumsy, but that it is ever touching is a result of some skillful albeit undisciplined filmmaking.The film's story belongs ...

When I was a kid, I craved something more than Scooby Doo reruns and the latest Superfriends and the answer was this show. Thundarr the Barbarian was one of the most sophisticated, adult-like cartoon series that I can remember as a kid. I always found the intro to be kinda ...

I've pretty much resigned myself to the fact that mainstream American comedies aren't for me. All I need to do is look at the highest grossing comedies of each decade... the Jerry Lewis films of the 1960s, the Porky's and Police Academy films of the 1980s, the Jim Carrey and ...

Olympus Has Fallen is the best Die Hard movie since 2007. Writers Katrin Benedikt and Creighton Rothenberger take the bones of the Die Hard scenario and mange to make a slight deconstruction of 1980's action cinema. This is all a germ of an idea within Olympus Has Fallen and the ...

Reminiscent of Inspector Closeau of the Pink Panther film series with a little bit of Dynomutt thrown in; Inspector Gadget was one of the better cartoon series that I remember fondly from my childhood. The idea that a superhero is a bit of a bumbler and idiot was something refreshing ...

Remember when I called Terms of Endearment the 'chick flickiest ever'? Yeah, well I forgot about Steel Magnolias. While men do appear in it, mostly as slightly buffoonish foils, they're mostly non-entities screen time wise. This film is all about the women - three generations of Southern women. And you ...

Another made-for-television movies that continues the trials of the Incredible Hulk. As I have mentioned before, I don’t particularly care for the Bill Bixby’s version of the character as it didn’t really feel too much like the Hulk that I was familiar with in the comic books. This Hulk was ...

I watched a few episodes of this series back in the day; mainly because there wasn’t anything better on. It’s an interesting take on conservation, environmentalism, and the need for recycling. I thought it was a fairly well done series that focused on these problems and did so in a ...

Audiences and critics tend to be pretty sharply divided on Dead Calm. Those who like the film really like it while those who don't really don't (as of this writing it has a 95% fresh rating on rottentomatoes.com while only having a 6.9 rating on imdb.com). Fans consider it to ...

Thank God that they got rid of the dog was the only thing that I could think of when seeing this series. Of course, they still had a rather annoying animal sidekick in an alien space monkey, but he was a definite improvement over Wonder Dog.Apparently, the studio also made ...

The trailers for Dead Man Down suggest is is a stylish revenge tale with Taken-esque action scenes. I think the rather underwhelming reaction to the picture has to do with the inaccurate genre the marketing placed this film in. Dead Man Down is a slow, suspenseful thriller that is firmly ...

One of the very best animation shorts that DC has produced in recent years; I have to admit that I am honestly surprised that the Spectre has remained a relatively obscure and underutilized character in the DC-verse. Or that Hollywood hasn’t jumped on the idea of a movie or series ...

Monsieur Ibrahim is a story about Momo, a Jewish Parisian boy who befriends Ibrahim, a Sufi grocer. When Momo's single father abandons him, Momo asks Ibrahim to be his father. Together the two find in each other the family they never had. Then they embark on a journey by car ...

It has gaping plot holes, no depth, dozens of cliches, a far-too-short runtime, and numerous other flaws, but I’d be lying if I said this family-oriented action adventure wasn’t entertaining.Jack the Giant-Slayer is a retelling of the classic story--A young peasant in medieval Europe travels up a beanstalk and battles ...

Hey son! Remember when we took that trip to Chernobyl and shot those Russkies? We make a great team! This is paraphrasing the father and son schmaltz that cripples the fifth Die Hard movie, an entry so poor that after twenty-five years it puts a once thrilling series on life-support.It's ...

The final film in the Bourne Triloogy has Jason Bourne's cover exposed once again when a high level Treadstone operative leaks details about the operation to the British Press. Naturally this drags Nicky and the London substation unit of the CIA back into the mix, and soon Nicky and Bourne ...

In the second installment of the Bourne trilogy, former CIA assassin Jason Bourne, is living off the grid in Goa, India, with companion Marie Kreutz, until a CIA operation in Berlin goes south and Bourne is framed for it. Now an assassin shows up to kill him in India, but ...

Doug Liman directed two of the best films of the 1990s, Swingers and Go, but both of those films were indie dramas, so in 2002 it was a bit of a risk making the jump to a big budget action thriller. Taking the risk with him was Matt Damon who ...

What attracted experienced actors Steve Carell, Steve Buscemi and Alan Arkin to such a miserable screenplay? Barely raising a laugh, the The Incredible Burt Wonderstone is frightfully dull and predictable, the work of four screenwriters and Don Scardino, an experienced TV director. The best they've been able to provide a ...

Quick, what do The Bourne Identity, The Baader Meinhof Complex and The Jackal all have in common? If you answered international terrorist Carlos 'The Jackal', you're right. But you might not know that if you never read The Bourne Identity, or only saw the Matt Damon remake.And that's one of ...

Frankly, Is Paris Burning? is an odd duck. It's an ensemble film about the French Resistance made in the US, but unlike most similar ensemble films, with a cast made up predominantly by the ethnicity depicted in the film (with the exception of Orson Welles' character), but unlike films like ...

As Marvel’s flagship character, Spider-Man suffers from having to be reinvented every few years in comics, cartoons, and even movies. Sometimes they are well done, others are lacking, and sometimes they could definitely be improved. Yet I have to say that of all of Spider-Man’s cartoon iterations, this series is ...

Profondo Rosso, or 'Deep Red', is not only Dario Argento's most highly acclaimed film, it also represents the high water mark of the giallo genre. Much like many of the Hitchcock films that inspired the genre, it's not without a plot hole here and there, but (also like a Hitchcock ...

Mini ReviewThe Bitter Buddha is a well-constructed documentary that follows a subject that is fascinating enough to drive it home even on his own. Eddie Pepitone is a man with a lot to say, and a lot of energy to say them with. A lot of people associate him with ...

I suppose my favorite thing about my viewing experience of Jack The Giant Slayer is that I saw it at the Metreon in San Francisco, CA. They apparently have the largest IMAX theater in the country, and goddamn does it live up to that, and not disappoint. Plus, 3D glasses ...

I’m always gladdened to learn when they attempt to bring minority superheroes to the big screen. And they don’t come any bigger than the King of Wakanda. For far too long, he’s been reduced to second stringer status; a guest spot in the Fantastic Four or a cameo in the ...

I stumbled across this animated short the other day which features Batman and Catwoman. It’s surprisingly watchable but considering that it’s barely over six minutes, it’s not exactly lengthy. Unlike other cartoons, this one featured absolutely no dialogue and instead favored a slow piano upbeat tempo that culminated into a ...

About the only thing that this movie had going for it was the fact that Batman and Superman finally got teamed up (in their animated incarnations) but it was rather lackluster in just about everything else. Apparently, this wasn’t actually a movie but a stitched together group of cartoon episodes ...

Filmmakers find it attractive to be ambitious. It is a luxury of cinema, often producing an epic scale or a multilayered story, reflecting numerous threads and character. However, the separation between art and mere grandiosity is the clarity of the director's intentions through the formal control of their work. How ...

As a director Steven Soderbergh has enjoyed surprising us. He is one of the most diverse filmmakers working today, having made small independent and highly experimental films, stylish and intelligent thrillers, but also less ambitious production line blockbusters. He understands the technical components of cinema as knowledgably as any filmmaker, ...

To be clear, Oz the Great and Powerful is not a prequel to the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz. It is a precursor to the book by L. Frank Baum, "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz". As a children's author Baum wrote 14 books about Oz but he never explored ...

Ariel is an interesting film. A blend of East meets West. While technically never behind the Iron Curtain, Finland always had a lot more in common with the Eastern Bloc countries than it did with Western European nations. Which is what makes Ariel's rock-and-roll listening, leather jacket wearing, Cadillac driving ...

I have to say that this movie was one of the best reboots that I have seen and probably helped save the X-Men franchise considering the bomb that they had X3: The Last Stand and the so-so X-Men Origins: Wolverine.What truly impressed me was that they chose to focus on ...

I found Jack the Giant Slayer to be a very decent movie. If you have children, this would be a movie for them to watch. I would figure the kids would enjoy seeing a giant beanstalk grow from a tiny bean as well as seeing not one giant but a ...

Who would have thought that Ben Affleck, number one cheezeball leading man of the early 2000s would turn out to be one of the most promising directors of the 2010s? In Argo, he directs and stars in a true life story about a CIA operation to extract American's from Iran ...

Pitch Perfect is a movie of moderately high peaks and treacherously low valleys. It has a lot in common with dance movies, Step Up being the main one that comes to mind. This is a movie about one of three a cappella groups at a college all doing their best ...

AboutDue to complications from polio when he was 6, Mark O'Brien (John Hawkes)is unable to move from the neck down and has to use an iron lung to breath as well as assistance from a carer (Moon Bloodgood). He decides he wants to lose his virginity and after advice from ...

Thundercats was awesome. I grew up with it, and even now, if i ever see someone wearing a shirt with that panther-in-the-circle ("Cat-symbol"?) it makes me feel so.... idk i feel like i'm in the presence of Gods, or kings. I'm reviewing the whole show here, but i decided to ...

All comedy stems from tragedy. Comedy cannot exist with a dramatic premise because drama forms the situations of reality from which a narrative can exist and develop. What is said within these situations becomes the punchline. The stronger the situations and the more involving the drama of the story, the ...

I got to see a screening of Roman Coppola’s new film: a screening that differed from my first viewing experience in several ways, though mostly for the better. For starters, it was in a theater, which allowed me to view the film without distractions, which definitely paid off in the ...

Gargoyles was one of the best animated series that I have seen in recent years. It totally blew me away when I first saw it and it consistently remained as being extremely high quality in terms of story, plot development, characters, animation, and even voice actors. Usually, I have noticed ...

After viewing Safe Haven, it almost felt like I was watching Julia Roberts in Sleeping with the Enemy. The movies were too similar. Two wives escaping the grasp of their abusive husbands and trying to start a new life in a different place. As they begin their lives, they attract ...