If you attended the Toronto International Film Festival or the London Film Festival last year you would have caught a viewing of the comedy-drama Everything Must Go. For those of us who didn’t attend either, this fresh trailer provides a glimpse into Nick Halsey’s really crappy situation. In a single day he’s lost his job, [...]

Not everyone may share the same opinion, but this reviewer immensely enjoyed Paul W.S. Anderson’s Death Race. It’s cinematic junk food, sure, but the big dumb fun aspect and the expert action sequences made it easy to dismiss the cold critical heart in this reviewer’s chest and forget that critics are supposed to hate exploitation [...]

Back in 1981, Peter Weir’s acclaimed motion picture Gallipoli asserted Australia’s cultural independence from Britain by portraying Aussie soldiers as heroic, anti-authoritarian and noble. Additionally, the film displayed to the world just how big a part the Aussies played in WWI and how tremendous their sacrifice was, while also damning the way the Australians were [...]

Every year Woody Allen writes and directs at least one movie (his films have a more of a foothold in European cinema nowadays). His first for 2011 is Midnight in Paris. Set in picturesque Paris, it examines the relationship dynamics of a soon-to-be married couple as they travel away from their comfort zone. Will Midnight [...]

Shot and produced by photographer Tim Hetherington and journalist Sebastian Junger, Restrepo is one of the most powerful filmic examinations of modern warfare. While embedded in Afghanistan for 15 months throughout 2007 and 2008 (on and off) for a Vanity Fair assignment, Hetherington and Junger shot approximately 150 hours of video footage which was ultimately [...]

When was the last time you remember seeing a genuinely good shark movie? Steven Spielberg’s Jaws from 1975 is likely the most popular choice, and it’s perhaps the only good shark film in existence. In subsequent years, a few subpar Jaws sequels entered cinemas along with films like Deep Blue Sea, and then a few [...]

The stereotypical Hollywood comedy formula receives a bad rap on a frequent basis, but this is only because the formula is too often implemented poorly. However, there are exceptions. If a film sticks to the status quo and does it right — hitting the expected story beats with wit and grace — the result can [...]

It is absolutely beyond this reviewer’s mental parameters as to why Wild Target endured such a ruthless critical reception during its fleeting theatrical run in 2010. Perhaps it depends on mood and expectations, but Wild Target is a wonderfully droll, effortlessly charming and spry action-comedy from the British school of black humor. Rarely less than [...]

Zack Snyder just hasn’t made the same impact on me that he apparently has on the rest of the movie going population. I enjoy his work, but it always seems like there’s something to be desired when his films finally fade to black. With Sucker Punch, Snyder isn’t really looking to change the formula his [...]

General Pang Qing Yun (Jet Li) is the sole survivor of his entire battalion; the Ching army he commanded was decimated by the Taiping rebels in Hechuan. Seeking refuge, Pang retreats to a small town and ends up spending the night with a woman named Lian (Jinglei Xu). The next morning, he awakens alone, but [...]

The first trailer of the eagerly awaited Captain America: The First Avenger has finally dropped. If you were anticipating some major action set pieces, however, you’re going to be slightly disappointed — this trailer touches more upon the how Captain America came into being than the what Captain America does to the Red Skull and [...]

Not that it matters a whole lot, but I’m going to point out the fact that I recently watched Syriana again — it’s a powerful politically-charged thriller, George Clooney drives the film with an amazing performance and the hyperlinks of the intellectual plot demand viewing with full attention. I believe for those same reasons a [...]

Anna (Christina Ricci) and Paul (Justin Long) have been together for quite some time and although Anna seems to be pulling away, Paul is still madly in love with her. When his job offers him a promotion that would require him to move, Paul intends to ask Anna to come with him and be his [...]

Ahoy Mateys! The theatrical trailer for Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides, the fourth installment of the highly prized Pirates of the Caribbean franchise, has been released into the wild. The film, starring Johnny Depp as Captain Jack Sparrow, Ian McShane as the ruthless pirate Blackbeard, Geoffrey Rush as Captain Hector Barbossa, Kevin R. [...]

Kenneth (though he prefers to be referred to as ‘Kay’) is a comical, patois-speaking white guy who sucks his thumb during deep sleep, calls his seven year old sister ‘rude girl’, and asks his pet hamster, “What’s up, blood” when entering his room. He’s also a wannabe bad boy who leaves his job and vows [...]

Riding through the sun-drenched Los Angeles, the charismatic defense attorney, Mick Haller (Matthew McConaughey), immediately presents himself as someone you’d like to know in times of trouble . . . as long as you’ve got the dough to pay upfront. He’s a courtroom monster who has no problem talking his way out of defending a [...]

“21 straight lines, five yards apart. That is a football field. But there are other lines you don’t see that run deeper and wider. All the way through the country, and aren’t part of any game.” Those are the lines that Ernie Davis is forced not to cross due to the prevailing attitude of the [...]

I once had the genius idea (or so I thought) of penning a story involving a pill that could fix all of your flaws. Bald? No problem, one pop and you’d be growing a lion’s mane. Fat? Simple, give it a couple of minutes and that beer belly would disappear completely. Poorly *ahem* “equipped”? No, [...]

In a futuristic world, an organization called The Union has created highly developed and highly priced mechanical organs. These organs can be purchased by anyone for any reason — if, however, they’re unable to pay the incredibly steep full price (usually somewhere in the hundreds of thousands of dollars), they’ve got two choices: Make monthly [...]

At times, it’s difficult to summarize your thoughts about a specific film. It isn’t because the film is necessarily so good or so bad that it’s beyond words, but because you’re unsure how to feel about said film until the credits finally roll. Biutiful is such a film. The film revolves around Uxbal, portrayed by [...]

Just judging on the fact that the story has been interpreted to be an allegory for sexual awakening, Little Red Riding Hood was just asking to be dumbed down and reimaged into a romance for teeny-boppers. So eat your heart out kids, here’s Catherine Hardwicke’s Red Riding Hood, a film that might have been decent [...]

Contrary to what Americans like to believe, the United States wasn’t built on peace and love — the fountain on which it stands will always be violence. As colonists, we deceived and slaughtered the Native people. Later, we held slaves for profit. Now, once again, we’re fighting a war based on greed. Looking back, it [...]

Sometimes movie critics will re-evaluate a film years later to determine if there was something better or worse that they missed during the first viewing. That happened to me for the horror film, The Shining (during round two, I clued in on more of the nuances and thus liked the film much more than I [...]

Try as he may, Robert Zemekis cannot find his way out of the uncanny valley — that deep gorge where his other forays into motion-capture like The Polar Express, Beowulf and A Christmas Carol have fallen. For those who are unaware of what this valley is, look at the “human” faces in any of those [...]

That fateful night in Haddonfield, Laurie Strode shot and killed Michael Myers or so she thought. As the ambulance pulled away with what was thought to be the corpse of the world’s most notorious serial killer, Michael Myers made sure everyone knew he was still alive the best way he could: By slaughtering everyone who [...]

This may be a first. Usually movies involving aliens from another planet are either of the cute M&M eating or the conquer and/or destroy Earth variety. The alien in Paul — looking and acting much like Roger from American Dad! — is of the quick witted, pot smoking, foul mouthed variety. Precisely the demeanor of [...]

Lee Chang-dong’s Poetry resembles much of what is great about the current cinema coming out of South Korea — for my money, some of the best in the world. With recent films like Oldboy, The Host, Mother and The Good, the Bad, the Weird, South Koreans have proven time after time that genre filmmaking can [...]

Over the past few years we’ve seen a lot of re-imaging of classic British novels looking to perk up the stodgy old genre with sex and gore. From the work of Seth Grahame-Smith and Ben H. Winters (Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters) to the upcoming Catherine Hardwicke Twilight-inspired Red [...]

We live in a society where there are laws that we must abide by; every citizen must live in accordance with the rights, privileges, and duties given. But there are times, I’m sure, when everyone wants to break the rules for their own good — one might have the need to perform a heist/extortion to [...]

13 years have passed since Alice first visited Wonderland. She was just a little girl back then — a mad, little girl plagued by a nightmare. Now, almost 20, Alice finds herself thrust headfirst into adulthood yet continues to have the same dream for as long as she can remember. On the verge of being [...]

“In a crazy city, if one is to survive, he’s got to be more crazy.” So starts this story set in Hong Kong where the price of an apartment overlooking the sea is somewhere around $5 Million. This movie is supposedly based on a true story, and it is in some timely aspects, as the [...]

I am developing a huge love of Korean cinema. Of course, when I say Korea, I mean South Korea (I doubt anything of value is coming out of North Korea). With me, it all started with the devastating film, Oldboy, which at the time, I counted as a one off and never really looked further [...]

Director Gore Verbinski himself has admitted that Rango was meant only as a “small” break from the widely-successful Pirates of the Caribbean series. To his surprise, however, animated filmmaking was not the piece of cake that he had expected and his short detour into the Mojave Desert was scaled into a more serious production. Fortunately, [...]

The fate of three Korean men changed the day their paths crossed on a train in Manchuria during the 1930s. A plan is put into motion to steal a map riding on that very train that leads to something extremely valuable. Chang-Yi (Byung-hun Lee), the most wanted bandit in Manchuria, is hired to steal the [...]

Ip Man is still the only martial arts film I’ve ever given a perfect score. Similar films usually throw in those silly bits of humor that come off as lame rather than actually being humorous. It probably hits its target overseas audience well, but the difference in culture probably has something to do with how [...]

The Farrelly brothers hit a high point with Dumb and Dumber (which is kind of sad since that was their debut as filmmakers), but it seems like they’ve been on a downward spiral ever since. There’s Something About Mary was probably more popular and there was a little bit of buzz surrounding Me, Myself, and [...]

It’s funny how an FBI agent goes under the guise of a fat woman (or more precisely, a Big Momma) and uses it as his modus operandi during the bigger missions. The second time doing so was inconsequential and by the end of the unendurable, unnecessary stay in Big Momma’s House 2, he gave the [...]