There’s an old saying in life that I believe was attributed to Confucius on his deathbed. It said, “Throwing a lot of spice at shit doesn’t make shit not shit.” Okay, maybe he didn’t actually say that, but he (or someone of equal magnitude) should have. Anyways, that quote is pertinent to Grown Ups because [...]

It is 1910, the last year of Count Lev Nikolayevitch (Leo) Tolstoy’s life. He is 82 years old and his writing days are behind him. His work was so popular that he gained followers — nowadays they’d be called fanboys — who were known as Tolstoyans. One of the main tenets of the Tolstoyans was [...]

Tom Cruise used to be the personification of “badass.” He struggled to become the best pilot he could be in Top Gun, he overcame the impossible in Mission: Impossible and of course, he tackled a dystopian future in Minority Report. But it seems like the action-hero has aged quite poorly and these days he’s tackling [...]

At this point I’ll consider myself a masochist. With a bad taste in my mouth from my viewing of Stoic, I continued on my Uwe Boll obsession and decided to watch his latest film The Final Storm, an apocalyptic thriller which stars Lauren Holly and Steve Bacic as a suburban couple who invite Silas (Luke [...]

“You are a man with some serious cojones,” one prisoner tells Mitch before hanging him. If I ever have the chance to meet German director Uwe Boll, I’d tell him the same thing, for it’s films like Stoic that require a lot of courage and an abundance of faith in ones trade. Stoic, which marked [...]

I think I’d make a decent superhero. I’ve got the good looks, the charm, the brains, and most importantly, the courage, that is needed to save my fellow man from whatever perils they are facing. Oh, who am I kidding? I’ve got none of those (except the good looks and perhaps an inkling of intelligence) [...]

I’m one of the few people who consider Uwe Boll an important film-maker. It may be sad but it’s true. But let me explain my reasoning. Though Mr. Boll, who finances his own cinematic exploits, has not directed a single note-worthy film (except for being notoriously bad), he shows dedication and balls. It takes a [...]

The Runaways were a peculiar phenomenon. They were less of a band than a product, and the product they sold was teen rebellion. The five-girl band was fronted by sixteen year old Cherie Currie, Joan Jett was on tousled mop and rhythm guitar, Lita Ford played lead, Sandy West was the drummer, and they had [...]

Then: The A-Team, an 80s television show good for pathetically bad stories, overall bad acting, a shitload of random explosions, gun battles in which no one gets shot, and the rise of a mohawked bad-ass Mr. T (a man, by the way, that had no right to find himself in that situation). It did, however, [...]

Frankenstein author Mary Shelley could not have foretold that her gothic tale of an errant scientist who creates a man/monster out of the limbs of dead bodies would become a harbinger of things to come with the emergence in the 21st century of the science of genetic engineering. Instead of stitching together body parts, today’s [...]

1984, and Michael Jackson’s ‘Thriller’ is sweeping the world, including in a small ramshackle village in New Zealand. There, living with his grandmother, a younger brother and several cousins, we meet Boy. He’s about nine or ten years old, I’d guess. His younger brother, Rocky, is six and thinks he has super-powers. Boy has no [...]

I’m not entirely sure how I feel about Robin Hood the latest telling of the fabled defender of the poor. On one hand, it is a nice change of pace to see the legendary archer bloodied and dirtied — no finely penciled mustaches or tailored suits (ala Errol Flynn). On the other hand, is a [...]

The Road centers on an unnamed father (Viggo Mortensen) and son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) struggling to survive in a hellish, post-apocalyptic world. Their intense journey will leave you feeling drained but ultimately satisfied. Okay, that last part made it sound like I was reviewing a porno. Emotionally drained is a better description for how the movie [...]

The antics of Russell Brand is an acquired taste. There isn’t much in ways of middle ground with him — either both his lewdness and outrageousness is funny or it’s not. The way around this love him / hate him relationship was done masterfully in Forgetting Sarah Marshall — he was relegated to a supporting [...]

One thing that a lot of people don’t know about me is that I enjoy the occasional “chick flick.” Yes, I said it (fully knowing the consequences that this may have on my manhood), at times I do like to indulge myself in one of the countless sugar-coated and seemingly implausible romantic-comedies that flood movie [...]

An eight-year old Australian girl and a mid-forties obese Jewish American man with Asperger’s Syndrome. Seems an unlikely pairing, doesn’t it? And yet Mary and Max, a stop-motion animated movie from Australia, matches the two together with no small measure of wit, and presents us with one of the most original films I’ve seen in [...]

Style over substance. That is the plaint of many a critic when they come across a film or book or any work of art they simply do not like, but which has undeniable merit, at least technically, if not in a few other measures, as well. But, the fact is that my opening words have [...]

The road to box office success for movies based off of video games is potholed and strewn with broken down, bombed out carcasses (remember BloodRayne and In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale?).That doesn’t, however, stop the mostly concept-bankrupt power brokers of Hollywood from churning them, and films based off of comic [...]