In Super Size Me, he risked his health to expose the fast food industry, then in Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden, Morgan Spurlock upped the ante, deciding to travel to the war-torn Middle East (armed with just a camera-crew and some defense training). Now the director takes a less harmful approach to [...]

Once a year, on the day of their university graduation, Emma and Dexter get together to celebrate the day they met. Based on the acclaimed novel by David Nicholls, One Day is a tale, spanning some 20 years, of enduring love and friendship through the best and worst of times for two people on separate [...]

If you thought the Decepticons were going to go away that easily, boy you were wrong. Paramount Pictures has finally launched the second official trailer for Transformers: Dark of the Moon and Megatron, et al appear to have found a new way to tilt the balance of power to their side. In doing so, Transformers: [...]

Although it inevitably will be lumped in with the films of the modern Grindhouse movement (Planet Terror, Death Proof, Machete), Hobo with a Shotgun really doesn’t have the aesthetic style of the films that it is mimicking. Outside of its high concept, the film owes more to Tarantino and Rodriguez’s Grindhouse double feature (or many [...]

Finally. Your craving has been satisfied and your Hogwartsian prayers have been answered. The trailer for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 has arrived and, even if I do say so myself (coming from a person who thought Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 1 was a bit of a letdown), it [...]

What is probably the final trailer for X-Men: First Class, has been made available by 20th Century Fox via Yahoo! today ahead of the film’s highly anticipated June release. This latest extended teaser drops more visuals as to the looks, powers and relationships of the mutant teams and further establishes the philosophical differences between their [...]

The concept of an Australian comedy featuring the once-in-a-lifetime pairing-up of Paul “Crocodile Dundee” Hogan and Shane “Kenny” Jacobson would appear foolproof. And while this movie doesn’t live up to all of its potential, Charlie & Boots (the sophomore effort of director Dean Murphy, who previously collaborated with Paul Hogan for 2004′s Strange Bedfellows) is [...]

The international trailer for the R-rated comedy What’s Your Number? has been made available by 20th Century Fox. In what looks like a funny, albeit a less than stellar premise, Anna Faris digs through her past boyfriends in search of Mr. Right. Her neighbor, a commitment-phobic playboy, played by Chris Evans, aids in her exploration [...]

Tyler Perry directs and produces films that guarantee money in the bank. His distributor certainly thinks so — Lionsgate studio, heard uttering the incantation, “Tyler Perry, Tyler Perry,” recently renewed their contract with him. With his films bringing in an estimated $520 million, he may well be the studio’s favorite cash cow. However, his success [...]

Making a sequel to a film is never normally a good thing — they excite all the fans of the previous film and then ultimately disappoint them with a production that is not better (and in some cases, far worse) than the original. This same argument can generally be applied to reboots (or to purists, [...]

The thing that kept coming into my mind as I watched African Cats is “Boy, I miss Meerkat Manor.” I know that Animal Planet show isn’t the first show/film to try and anthropomorphize animals or even the best one, but sitting through four seasons with those adorable rodents really embedded that formula into my brain. [...]

The London-born actor, David Niven (who is best known for his role as Phileas Fogg in Michael Anderson’s critically-acclaimed Around the World in 80 Days) was once quoted as saying, “Keep the circus going inside you, keep it going, don’t take anything too seriously, and it’ll all work out in the end.” Indeed, the circus, [...]

Born as Alisa Zinov’yevna Rosenbaum in St. Petersburg, Russia to a middle-class family, philosopher and writer, Ayn Rand, would soon see her father, a successful pharmacist, lose his business following the Bolshevik Revolution. With her family punished for past successes, Rand moved to the United States, where she’d fall in love with capitalism and ultimately, [...]

Submarine is a story for grown-ups to remind us of the angst of being a teenager. It’s set in 1980′s Wales and is relayed to us in first-person narrative by 15 year old Oliver Tate (Craig Roberts). His two main concerns are, as he tells us, losing his virginity to his standoffish girlfriend Jordana (Yasmin [...]

Pizza delivery isn’t all about getting to screw lonely housewives (Loverboy). Sometimes these front-liners can get kidnapped and forced to rob a bank as the expletive-ridden, new R-rated trailer for 30 Minutes or Less shows us. Something tells me this action-comedy directed by Ruben Fleischer (Zombieland) is going to be one to not miss this [...]

Establishing a poignant opening scene is the most important aspect of filmmaking and more often than not, otherwise talented screenwriters, directors, and editors underestimate its significance. The introduction of major characters, the picture’s setting, and putting the plot in motion are all elements that must be addressed from the start. In the case of Kelly [...]

An updated trailer for The Art of Getting By (formerly known as Homework) has been made available by Fox Searchlight Pictures. It stars Freddie Highmore as George, the misunderstood boy that has yet to be challenged, and Emma Roberts as Sally, the girl who can peel away George’s shell and force him from his apathetic [...]

Marc Levin’s 2007 documentary film, Mr. Untouchable, which gives background on notorious 1970s Harlem drug kingpin LeRoy ‘Nicky’ Barnes is a flat out great documentary. It is insightful, points out things that are wrong with many people’s ideas on reality, and does very well in backgrounding Barnes’ life and times, as well as using the [...]

The red-band trailer for the latest body swapping comedy The Change-Up has dropped. The swappers this go round are Dave, a husband and father of three, and Mitch an irresponsible, unemployed player. The producers are making it a point to let everyone know the braintrust behind Wedding Crashers and The Hangover are behind The Change-Up; [...]

Consisting of five main volumes and three supplemental books, Rick Riordan’s popular Percy Jackson series must have been an easy sell for any studio. It contains heroes, villains, monsters, wish fulfilment, and epic feats of magic and courage while also tackling popular Greek mythology. Topping this off, the whole package is reminiscent of Harry Potter. [...]

Quack. Quack. Okay, that may not be the sound a penguin makes, but you’re sure to hear something that sounds like that for the entirity of Mr. Popper’s Penguins. The English version of the international trailer has been released, offering additional glimpses of the mayhem six beaked birds can cause in a Manhattan loft. Following [...]

While the title of From Paris with Love may imply that it’s a romantic comedy featuring the Eiffel Tower, the title is in fact a James Bond homage, and the production is a hardcore, no-holds-barred action flick which arrives courtesy of Luc Besson’s production factory. For those unaware, Besson is the French filmmaker who produces [...]

Rio de Janeiro — it’s the only place in the world where a tranquil shot of birds chirping their way through the thick greenery can erupt into a grandiose tribal orchestra. Doing away with the mammoths and icecaps of his previous works, director Carlos Saldanha (the Ice Age series) places immense care in representing his [...]

Released on the anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s slaying, Robert Redford’s (Lions for Lambs, The Horse Whisperer) The Conspirator commences with a wide shot depicting a ravaged battleground: Frederick Aiken (James McAvoy) lying in a ditch alongside his comrade Nicholas Baker (Justin Long), and several hundred bloodied troopers. The shot closes in on both Union soldiers [...]

The first three Scream films are pretty vital to the horror genre. The original movie shot this extra dose of adrenaline into slasher flicks, bringing a new found interest when most were beginning to think it was a tired genre. Truth be told, it probably is (most conceptions about the horror genre being terrible are [...]

The second trailer for John Favreau’s highly anticipated adaptation of the graphic novel by Scott Mitchell Rosenberg, Cowboys & Aliens, has arrived. While it is filled to the brim with alien crafts, abductions and gun fights (Colt 6-shooters versus lasers), it still keeps how the the aliens appear masked and leaves the mysterious backstories for [...]

There are two unspoken rules to crafting a remake. First and foremost, classics are strictly prohibited. Secondly, if there are any trademark performances attached, it’s all the more reason not to continue onward. Jason Winer’s (T.V.’s Modern Family, Don’t Trust the Bitch in Apartment 23) Arthur breaks both amounting to nothing but another vehicle for [...]

Ever wonder how the apes rose up and conquered Earth? The first trailer for Rise of the Planet of the Apes lays it out for you — genetic engineering with the best of intentions gone wrong. The story may be derivative, however, the movie is sure to excel in the visual effects department (Weta Digital, [...]

Romance sells at the box office. Stephanie Meyer (the Twilight saga) knows this, Nicholas Sparks (The Notebook) knows it, and all of Hollywood knows it. 2010′s Dear John is exactly the type of romantic tearjerker to be expected from an adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks novel, and it’s awful. Look, I admit that this film [...]

Judging from this second trailer for Priest, no expense has been sparred for the action and look of this post-apocalyptic thriller loosely based on a popular Korean comic. In it, a warrior priest, acting against the Church’s wishes, tracks down a group of vampires that have kidnapped his niece. Helping with his endeavor is a [...]

Remember Judd Apatow’s 2009 project, Funny People? While a lousy and flat film, it at one stage cleverly poked fun at actors who have long renounced their dignity for the sake of a paycheck. Tooth Fairy is exactly the type of noxious family entertainment parodied in Apatow’s flick. It mixes a few recognizable faces with [...]

Love is intoxicating, especially when, as the trailer of Passion Play depicts, the object of desire is an angel. Nat, a washed-up, tired jazz musician wants to save her (and himself along the way). Happy Shannon, a ruthless gangster and Sam, the owner of the carnival where “The Bird Woman” is the star attraction, wish [...]

An updated trailer has been released for The Debt by Focus Features today. Spanning two time periods, the John Madden-directed drama revolves around three Mossad secret agents and what they did in 1966 (targeting a Nazi war criminal) and how those actions affected them today. If the trailer is any indication, The Debt looks to [...]

Almost exactly one year ago Kick-Ass, directed by upcoming X-Men: First Class filmmaker Matthew Vaughn, opened to little business and reasonable critical success. Adapted from the popular Mark Millar graphic novel, the film follows a young New York teen as he tries to become a superhero in the real world. Now enter James Gunn’s Super [...]

The “big dreams, small town, no chance” premise is a recognizable refrain in literature and motion pictures. Directed by Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant, 2010′s Cemetery Junction is yet another feature to examine this particular quandary. If Gervais and Merchant sound familiar, it’s because they are the dynamic duo responsible for the original British version [...]

Suffice it to say, expectations play a sizeable role in any viewer’s enjoyment of a film. In the case of 2009′s Ninja, it would be impossible to watch the flick with high expectations — the cover of the DVD/Blu-ray is admittedly nifty enough to gain some attention, but it is nonetheless a low-budget direct-to-DVD ninja [...]

Amidst the Arctic Circle’s barren snowcaps, Hanna (Saoirse Ronan) hunts. With nothing more than a bow-and-arrow, she kills a deer, although to her disappointment, she missed her mark — the creature’s heart. She finishes the job with a pistol — a stare down with the animal’s bloodshot eyes revealing a sense of humanity and sympathy, [...]

Temptation and fidelity: Two forces battling against each other continuously throughout the early years of a young couple’s marriage. For the first year or two, fidelity rules the roost but as the wedding anniversaries mount, temptation begins to chip away at this solid foundation. When opportunity is added to the equation, one’s character is tested [...]

Over recent years, the film noir genre has largely served as a reference point for filmmakers, who dress up their movies with snappy dialogue and/or complex, violent stories but neglect the genre’s bleakness. In this modern era, the Coen Brothers are often credited as the life support system for classic noir, but the Coens appear [...]

For a screenwriter, period pieces tend to be difficult — especially if they’re set in medieval times — dialogue being restricted to olden diction isn’t the easiest to write. However, with director David Gordon Green’s latest, which is an awkward mix of stoner comedy and medieval epic, that problem is quickly dispelled. How, you may [...]

In 2010, Clint Eastwood reached the ripe old age of 80, yet the prolific filmmaker still unabatedly continues to make motion pictures on a regular basis; accumulating a cinematic oeuvre that is as diverse as it is excellent. Written by Peter Morgan (The Queen, Frost/Nixon), 2010′s Hereafter is a supernatural drama which re-teams Eastwood with [...]

If you’ve seen Antichrist or Dogville, you know Lars von Trier is an artistic director who does not shy away from deep, dark, bleak, and generally very unsettling subject matter. The trailer for his latest, Melancholia, doesn’t say either way, but you can get a sense of what may come: Due to a freak planetary [...]

Hannibal Lecter is the perfect example of a sociopath — a man who can think up and carry out unspeakable horrors without so much as batting an eyelash. Lord Naritsugu Matsudaira, in 13 Assassins, is the perfect example of a sociopath with unlimited power and influence. He rapes, mutilates and murders with impunity. Even more [...]

Apparently in some circles (you know, the ones inhabited by “academics and brilliant minds”) there is a raging debate whether the 37 plays and 154 sonnets attributed to William Shakespeare were really written by William Shakespeare. Sounds dry, I know, but I suppose if anyone can make, what on the surface seems uninteresting interesting, Roland [...]

Hitch meets The 40 Year Old Virgin with a mix of family values? Judging from the trailer of Crazy, Stupid, Love. that may be an apt description. In it, bland and fortyish Cal Weaver (Steve Carell) finds himself recently divorced from his wife Emily (Julianne Moore) (she cheated on him) and sticking out like a [...]

Uwe Boll (which is German for “Appalling Filmmaker”) has made a living over recent years (and has angered a great deal of people) by transforming beloved video game properties into epically awful movies. As a result, the cultural landscape has become tragically cluttered with unwatchable motion pictures such as House of the Dead, BloodRayne, Alone [...]

If you’re familiar with low-budget horror flicks and/or video-game-to-movie adaptations, chances are you’ve heard of Uwe Boll. Even if you’re not familiar with Boll’s cinematic output, you’ve more than likely heard opinions on the guy’s work, and, in all likelihood, those opinions have not exactly been complimentary. If Boll’s work and name is a mystery [...]

In motion pictures, it’s a widespread belief that children are the embodiment of pure evil. Perhaps not all kids are the spawn of Satan, but horror filmmakers realize that evil disguised behind the eyes of a seemingly innocent child is an effective way of amplifying the scare factor. Into this genre now steps 2009′s Orphan. [...]

Most of those who came into contact with the 2008 Swedish masterpiece Let the Right One In were immediately captivated and hypnotized by its brilliance, especially in the wake of the insipid Twilight phenomenon. It committed an unforgivable sin, though: It was foreign and subtitle-laden, meaning the movie never existed in Hollywood’s eyes. Thus, now [...]

Even for a consistently-reliable studio like Pixar, the notion of Toy Story 3 seemed risky due to the time-honored tradition of part threes being unnecessary and below-par. The Godfather: Part III, Lethal Weapon 3, Batman Forever, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines, Alien 3, Jurassic Park III and Superman III are a few examples of [...]

The premise behind 2010′s Furry Vengeance — a live-action cartoon featuring woodland mammals — is tolerable. However, the film is rendered insufferable due to its soulless, mean-spirited, moronic script, the repetitive, obnoxiously unfunny slapstick comedy, and the ill-conceived attempts to inject this cinematic stool sample with an environmental message. It is a film with no [...]

One must admit, it takes serious guts to entitle a film The Losers, since lame jokes are just begging to be cracked. Already, the critics who panned this appalling motion picture have utilized the obvious, “The losers are in fact the audience” in addition to the also obvious, “What were you expecting? It’s called The [...]

Much like Duncan Jones’ freshman endeavor, Moon, a film that was eclipsed (pun intended) at first, but which then skyrocketed to unprecedented levels of success during award season, Source Code is a cerebral thriller that takes an unorthodox approach to popcorn cinema. The similarities don’t end there, however; although both films were penned by different [...]

2009′s The Loved Ones is a delirious Australian mash-up of various movies, including Carrie, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and Prom Night. Several critics have also dubbed the film as “Pretty in Pink meets Wolf Creek“, and that’s another fairly accurate analogy of this frightening yet resonant exercise in genre dramatics — it represents an [...]

Why do so many documentary filmmakers decide to make films about relatives or people they know? The obvious answer is the ease of getting information. But that does not explain why they choose the subjects they choose. Andrew Neel’s portrait of his grandmother, Alice Neel, at least has the benefit of being a profile of [...]

Why, oh why, do people move into those big Victorian-style homes; you know, the ones with too many rooms and too few lights to illuminate them? It can’t be for the coziness and charm! You’d think by now people would know that 90% of those houses, according to the Horror Convention Law, are conduits for [...]

At first glance, Tomorrow, When the War Began — the filmic adaptation of the hugely popular teen fiction novel by John Marsden — appears to be a cheap Australian amalgam of Red Dawn and The Breakfast Club. Despite these superficial observations, this directorial debut for Stuart Beattie is a thrilling character-driven action-adventure film, and a [...]

There are at least 100 Christmas movies in circulation (go ahead and count them, I’ll wait). I’m guessing maybe a dozen or so movies with a Thanksgiving theme. Easter movies? I can’t think of a single one (those made for television specials like Yogi the Easter Bear don’t count). With such a gaping void ripe [...]

The four “boys” from The Hangover are back in full party force in The Hangover Part II. What can you expect from them this time around? Well from the trailer which dropped late last night, a big helping of the same insane antics that got them in trouble the first time, is what. The minor [...]

The Horseman is an Australian addition to the long line of “vigilante dad” films that stretch back to Ingmar Bergman’s The Virgin Spring, in which a father — normally either a widower or a divorcee — is made a tad nutty by grief, and begins ruthlessly slaughtering those responsible for a crime against a loved [...]