A late-2010 picture delivered by the DreamWorks animation factory, Megamind can best be described as Pixar’s The Incredibles meets Despicable Me. See, Megamind is a clever dissection of superhero movie conventions which functions as a character study of the supervillain. In the realm of superhero movies, there is always one given: The hero always wins. [...]

“Vintage Woody Allen” would be the most appropriate label for 2009′s Whatever Works, because that’s never been truer. Woody initially wrote this film back in 1977 as a vehicle for Zero Mostel, but the screenplay was set aside when Mostel inconsiderably died before the film could be made. However when Woody’s one-movie-a-year output was placed [...]

The premise for 2008′s Kung Fu Panda was conceptualized by a DreamWorks Animation executive, Michael Lachance, and has been around since the early ’90s. When it finally released, the production (directed by John Wayne Stevenson and Mark Osborne) slowly became a financial and critical success for the studio. In fact, the story of Po (voiced [...]

The wolfpack is back in Todd Phillips’ sequel to his 2009 smash-hit The Hangover. Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis, and Ed Helms all reprise their iconic roles as Phil, Alan, and Stu. This time in The Hangover Part 2, however, the team assembles in Thailand for Stu’s wedding. But when he, already on poor terms with [...]

The second and longer trailer for the horror movie Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark has been made available by Miramax. A remake of a movie of the same name (and one that gave me nightmares as a child) centers around a family that has moved into a big creepy 19th-century mansion (red flag #1). [...]

The darkly funny and heartwarming trailer for 50/50 has been made available by Summit Entertainment today. Based off of screenwriter Will Reiser’s real-life experience with cancer, the film centers around a young man named Adam and how he, and his friends and family cope with an abbreviated Five Stages Of Grief — shock, denial, resistance [...]

While there have been some great films of the alien invasion genre, many of the biggest have been the most lackluster — from the mediocre Independence Day to the horrid Battle: Los Angeles. Instead, the best invasion films that come to mind are usually those that depict isolated incidents in small towns or at remote [...]

Disney has released another teaser trailer for The Muppets. Like the previous trailer which was shown just Monday, the antics on the screen don’t appear to have anything to do with the actual film itself (which has the Muppets regrouping to stop a greedy oil tycoon from leveling their theater). After an explosion which has [...]

You can’t keep a good penguin down (especially one that saved the Emperor penguin population and made Warner Bros. Pictures a lot of money in the process). In Happy Feet Two the savior in Happy Feet, Mumbles, is all grown up with a wife and son. The issue at hand this time around isn’t that [...]

You can’t claim that you didn’t see this coming after the surprising success that was Piranha 3D. I’m talking about Shark Night 3D. The first trailer has surfaced and it smells of fantastic grade-B, party-gone-wrong cheese (it’s what made the 80s so memorable). Seven college kids set upon a house on a small lake island [...]

Fa la lalalala fa lala la laaa — the smurfy blue creatures from our 19080s Saturday morning cartoons are coming to the big screen in The Smurfs. In a 3D (2D too) offering from Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation, Papa Smurf, Smurfette, Grouchy Smurf, Jokey Smurf and a bunch of other adjective named Smurfs [...]

Some may say the better days of horror pioneer John Carpenter (Halloween) are behind him. From the domestic trailer for The Ward it’s hard to say whether he’s returned to form or not (early festival reviews are a mixed bag) but it is good to at least see him in the director’s chair again, back [...]

20th century author and poet, Raymond Carver, is oftentimes recognized for his impact on short story writing. In the 1980s, when the medium first began to falter, short stories had become a tough sell for publications because of their briefness, however, that did not stop the author, who had admitted to being “inclined to brevity [...]

To begin this review, let’s get one thing straight: despite the misleading name, Titanic II is not an official sequel to James Cameron’s big-budget retelling of the Titanic disaster. Nevertheless, a film entitled Titanic II is sure to seem like a bad joke, even after watching the official trailer or spying the DVD cover at [...]

Church versus church. Pastor versus pastor. A member of the congregation holds the truth that could topple their empires. Based on the book of the same name (written by the stylized mind of Larry Beinhart), Salvation Boulevard exposes, while poking fun at, the goings-ons of evangelical megachurches. But, as the trailer for the movie released [...]

Gimmick films always start at a disadvantage, and as such it’s not surprising that most films which are completely one shot (no editing) or try to be completely real-time (or, at the least, cheat to appear so) often fail. The most notable film to attempt this, Hitchock’s Rope, actually wasn’t one shot (due to a [...]

I didn’t think it could happen, but fond childhood memories washed over me after watching the teaser trailer for The Muppets! Kermit, Miss Piggy, Fozzie Bear, Animal and others are back for another adventure which is sure to be comically interesting (Jason Segel and Nicholas Stoller wrote the screenplay). Word is the puppet-marionette creations of [...]

You aren’t going to get the full effect here, but a new trailer for Transformers: Dark of the Moon is now showing in 3D. To really enjoy it, you’ll have to see it during a viewing of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides (which you should be going out to watch any way.) This [...]

Most won’t admit it but women can be every bit as rude, crude and lewd as a man. Hell, get a girl to a male revue and put a few drinks in her and she’ll prove women can be even nastier than a guy. So with that notion and the fact girls are catty as [...]

When you have lousy luck with the ladies, who do you seek advice from? A brother? A best friend? Griffin Keyes, the zookeeper at Franklin Park Zoo gets his tutelage from the animals he cares for. In the trailer for Zookeeper, he can be seen basking in those “making an ass of himself” moments which [...]

The much talked about trailer for The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn has arrived. In it (although this teaser trailer doesn’t divulge much), the young reporter finds himself — and his trusty dog Snowy — embroiled in a mystery involving ancestral and pirate lore while on the trail of sunken treasure. In the [...]

In 1953, Morris Engel made a film called Little Fugitive. It was about a boy who thought he had killed his older brother and ran off to Coney Island to live on his own. It’s a charming piece (even though Engel was more interested in capturing the realism of this little boy in this big [...]

There are many people who love the movie Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, although seeing the awfulness that was The Country Bears and knowing that The Haunted Mansion was soon to follow, the film just seemed like a similar ploy for Disney to pillage their old tourist attractions and try [...]

There is a reason most Americans stay well clear of the deep South: They don’t like outsiders. In the trailer for Straw Dogs, L.A. screenwriter David Sumner and his wife Amy find out the hard way that good ‘ole boys ain’t always so good. It is a damn good way, however, to discover what you’re [...]

The latest trailer for Cars 2 has arrived. In the Disney•Pixar follow-up to the oft-criticized Cars, Lightning McQueen and his cadre of friends from Radiator Springs travel the globe to compete in the first-ever World Grand Prix to determine the world’s fastest car. This time, however, it isn’t all about the egotistical McQueen getting a [...]

We’ve all experienced what it is like to work for an asshole boss. Nick (Jason Bateman) has to deal with an egomaniacal Kevin Spacey, Dale (Charlie Day) is getting sexually harassed by Jennifer Aniston and Kurt (Jason Sudeikis) is plagued with an idiotic, non-pc Colin Farrell. As quitting isn’t a viable option, the trio hatch [...]

Looks like some teenagers have snubbed death once again, and he (assuming the reaper is actually male) wants to collect what is rightfully his. Don’t expect too much from the first trailer for Final Destination 5 — it doesn’t offer up much else other than to let you know some guys in a room have [...]

Emily Giffin’s Something Borrowed is quintessential “chick lit,” a highly marketable genre of fiction that prides itself in depicting modern womanhood in a (mostly) humorous manner. And because it was an international bestseller with a built in demographic, a film adaptation was inevitable (although I thought it would have arrived sooner). Something Borrowed, director Luke [...]

If there is one thing compelling about the trailer of Retreat it’s that Jamie Bell looks like he makes a great psycho. Otherwise, the movie appears to be like any other run-of-the mill “take a helpless stranger in only to be terrorized by said helpless stranger” flick. Hopefully there is something more to the movie [...]

Since I have never read a Thor comic book (don’t intend to either), nor do I have much insight into the Norse mythology from which he spawned, I really had no idea as to what kind of story to expect from the heavily hyped Thor (the trailers weren’t much help). But thanks in part to [...]

A cold-blooded assassin never looked so damn good. And that’s because she’s Zoe Saldana — a hitwoman by trade and murderess of those responsible for her parents death at night. The new 2:20 trailer for Colombiana shows a lot of promise (which should be no surprise as Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen, the brainiacs [...]

A second trailer for the grittier and bloodier reboot of Conan the Barbarian has been released by Lionsgate today. It appears to be a closer depiction to what Robert E. Howard wrote, but it still seems to be missing what I want from my Conan movie — the indiscriminate bedding of scantily-clad women, the drinking [...]

The second theatrical trailer for the Green Lantern has been available today by Warner Bros. Pictures. I’m still scratching my head as to why a B-list comic character has been made into a such a high profile movie but from what is shown here my interest has been re-piqued (the first trailer was a complete [...]

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li is not only a compelling contender for the worst film of 2009, but it’s also a contender for the worst film of all time! This second attempt at a screen adaptation of the revered Capcom video game series is unbelievably awful in every aspect. Generic action sequences, atrocious acting, [...]

Why can’t men resist a beautiful woman? As seen in trailer for the upcoming thriller The Ledge Liv Tyler (the aforementioned woman) is at the crux of a love triangle between her God-fearing husband, Patrick Wilson, and her agnostic boss, Charlie Hunnam. It gets to an ugly head which ultimately results with Hunnam on the [...]

Something is amiss at the Farrow household. What it is, the creepy teaser trailer for Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s Intruders doesn’t definitively show us. What it does shed light on is the daughter is in tune with it somehow and it ain’t friendly. With any luck this movie will add some good frights to the Halloween [...]

Legend has it that there’s a telepathic connection between twins, so when in Julia’s Eyes the titular Julia experiences a choking sensation, she knows something’s wrong with her sister Sara. She’s right — Sara is dead, hanged from a rope in her basement. The signs all point to suicide, at least as far as the [...]

An adaptation of Tiziano Sclavi’s Italian horror comic series and a spinoff of Michele Soavi’s horror-romance Cemetery Man, Kevin Munroe’s Dylan Dog: Dead of Night is no stranger to obscure source material. Bringing former Man of Steel, Brandon Routh, back into a leading role, the film (penned by Thomas Dean Donnelley and Joshua Oppenheimer), is [...]