In the past few weeks, New York City and the United States experienced a grueling, sweltering heat wave that swept over the East Coast after parching the rest of the country. This writer spent most of it indoors, in close proximity to a rumbling air conditioner — when I did go out, it was to [...]

At fortysomething, Cal Weaver (Steve Carell) is living the American Dream. He has a nice house, a decent job, two loveable kids, and unlike most people, he’s married to his high school sweetheart, Emily (Julianne Moore). But that white picket fence is only as strong as those who built it, and in Weaver’s case, this [...]

Anyone who has read my review for 2010′s misfire, Jonah Hex, knows that I love genre-mashing. I adore it especially if it’s something being meshed with a Western. Now imagine my glee when I heard Cowboys & Aliens being announced. Then came out that Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Sam Rockwell, Olivia Wilde, and Paul Dano [...]

Last summer, Will Gluck’s Easy A was one of my biggest surprises of the year. When I saw the trailer, I didn’t realize that it would be a whip-smart satire of high school and high school films. Gluck’s newest film, Friends with Benefits, may not rise to the heights of his debut, but it shows [...]

Sometimes the little guy gets the last laugh. Most times they don’t. With Tower Heist we can at least laugh as the little guy tries to get even with the powerful. After a Bernie Madoff type of scam sucks the pensions of hundreds of working stiffs dry, they aim to get even. Their plan? Since [...]

Behind every presidential hopeful, there is a driven man (or woman) who, believing in the cause whole heartedly, is busting their ass in the trenches — doing everything and anything to win. More often than not, there is also a secret stashed away that, if reported on, would ruin the chances of winning the presidency. [...]

No Jay or Silent Bob here. Red State breaks away from Kevin Smith’s comfort zone, representing his first foray into the horror genre. The hook? Extreme Christian fundamentalism in the heartland of America. Three teens find themselves captive of a Waco-like cult intent on changing the world they live in any way necessary. It’s not [...]

A second trailer for Happy Feet Two has been made available by Warner Bros, giving us more of the same — singing and dancing penguins. Animation-wise the movie gets high marks but from a watchabilty standpoint, this one looks like a bitterer pill to swallow than its predecessor. Children, however, will gobble this up like [...]

Written and directed by David Michôd (making his feature-length debut), Animal Kingdom persuasively demonstrates that plenty of life still remains in the contemporary Australian film industry. Fundamentally the Australian Goodfellas in the suburbs of Melbourne, it ostensibly looks as if Animal Kingdom was specifically produced to capitalize on the recent success of the acclaimed TV [...]

Anyone who has gone to high school in the U.S. remembers those lectures about the American Dream, but never has someone mentioned Captain America, a man who epitomizes it. Created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby in 1941, Captain America became the comic-book world’s most nationalistic superhero. And though the serial was meant as a [...]

The appetite for driving fast in movies will never be satisfied. Drive Angry 3D and Transporter 3 are two recenter(?) movies with a theme that is conducive to lots of car chases and crashes. FilmDistrict, at Comic-Con, unveiled a trailer for their entrant into the genre: Drive. Basically, they replaced a man who delivers things [...]

If you ask me, I think what made the first Paranormal Activity special has left already left the series. Paramount thinks otherwise as the first taste of Paranormal Activity 3 has come online. This time around, it focuses on the beginning — when Katie and Kristi first summoned the demon to this world to wreak [...]

Two days ago it was the teaser trailer for The Dark Knight Rises. Today Columbia Pictures and Marvel Studios released the anticipated teaser trailer for The Amazing Spider-Man. It’s hard to imagine the highly successful franchise getting a reboot already, but it is and this version, on the surface, looks to have a darker theme [...]

Prior to my screening of Stephen J. Anderson and Don Hall’s Winnie the Pooh, an adaptation of the beloved A.A. Milne and Ernest Shepard books, a military recruitment ad (complete with tattooed musclemen who, cradling monstrous rifles, ran through enemy-fire, barking orders) terrified the young audience made up of rampageous toddlers that parents had brought [...]

Only in the movies. Only in the movies will an unemployed stammering fool be found dating a supermodel (Transformers: Dark of the Moon). Only in the movies will an underemployed fat guy be found dating a model and ultimately have two beautiful women fawning for him. This particular movie is Zookeeper. The fat guy is [...]

The teaser trailer for The Dark Knight Rises, the final installment of Christopher Nolan’s telling of the Batman story, is here. Finally. Even though this sneak peak doesn’t give away much, it still does just enough to get the adrenaline pumping. Watch below and crave for more. The Dark Knight Rises stars Christian Bale, Joseph [...]

They say war is hell, and this age-old cliché has been exemplified in pretty much every war picture to date. 2008′s Outpost is a film which literalizes this adage, incorporating the horrors of war into a traditional horror picture. Every now and again, a small-time, low-budget horror film comes out of nowhere to catch genre [...]

I like music documentaries, despite not being much of a virtuoso (though I’ve tried my hand at guitar — needless to say, it’s still sitting in the same corner it’s been in for the past three months). But what attracts me to the genre are the artists themselves; as a semi-struggling screenwriter who is still [...]

Finales of this magnitude usually come about once every few years for television shows, but very rarely for feature films. However, this is most certainly the case for the epic conclusion to the Harry Potter series, filled with equal parts fan-servicing closure and genuinely emotive scenes for those less devout followers like myself. Personally, Harry [...]

Replacing Kurt Russell with Mary Elizabeth Winstead? That’s gotta be counted as a strike against the remake of The Thing. Then again, maybe she has an inner Sigourney Weaver she can channel. From the first theatrical trailer which has debuted today, we can’t be sure. Unfortunately, there aren’t any instances of her directly confronting the [...]

Talk about culture shock. Imagine waking up decades into the future on a foreign planet surrounded by hostile green aliens. I’d prefer not to, but that’s how John Carter finds himself. Aside from that, we don’t get much else from the teaser trailer of John Carter. From a cinematic standpoint, however, the picture definitely appears [...]

Ever go to the grocery store and, while standing at the checkout, glanced at the tabloid papers? With Rumor Patrol, People, and Life & Times all detailing the juicy details of Lindsey Lohan or Britney Spears’ latest mental breakdown (using a combination of badly Photoshopped pictures, corny puns and headlines reading, “Drugs, Booze, and Floral [...]

The umpteenth Adam Sandler comedy to be directed by Dennis Dugan, 2011′s Just Go with It is a semi-remake of the 1969 screwball comedy Cactus Flower, which was based on a 1965 Broadway production that itself was adapted from a French play. Now that’s a mouthful. Despite all this, Just Go with It more overtly [...]

Besides a nuclear disaster, one of the biggest fears any government can have is the outbreak of a fast spreading, lethal virus. And it is this premise that the upcoming thriller Contagion delivers on. How does the populace react as more and more people fall victim? How will the government handle the growing fear (both [...]

There is a new threat for the infamous English detective Sherlock Holmes in Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. His name is Professor Moriarty. Holme’s intellectual equal, Moriarty has hatched a grand scheme with the sole purpose of shifting the balance of world power. Holmes, with a tag along fortune teller named Sim and his [...]

Admit it, you, just like 87.7% of the civilized world, think all rednecks look and behave like those in Deliverance and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre . It’s a tough stereotype to dispel, so why not use it to one’s advantage? After all, it’s one that, in the right hands, can be molded into comedic gold. [...]

A follow-up international trailer for The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn has been made available by Paramount Pictures. Expanding greatly on the first trailer, this one delves further into the mystery surrounding the Unicorn and those that wish to wrest its answers and bounty from the hands of the boy reporter. The film [...]

And you thought your family was a dysfunctional mess. Take a look at the Burnett family. They’re majorly screwed up and while everyone in the clan has their respective quirk, the trailer for The Family Tree makes it appear that the mother is the cause of the bulk of the familial issues. But after mom [...]

In Seth Gordon’s (Freakonomics, The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters) Horrible Bosses, you’ll meet the tool (Colin Farrell), the psycho (Kevin Spacey), and the man-eater (Jennifer Aniston), three higher-ups that make their employee’s lives a living hell. First in line is Bobby Pellitt, the son of Jack Pellitt (Donald Sutherland) and the heir [...]

Independent films rarely take on science fiction. Reason is because sci-fi films usually require lots of money for sets and effects (movies with angsty conversations about your family, on the other hand, are relatively cheap and easy to make). When the genre is tackled, however, I have often enjoyed the results mostly because they tend [...]

From the producers of Grown Ups and Just Go With. I’m not so sure that is a badge of honor to wear. Anyways, Sandler and the Happy Madison team have concocted Jack and Jill, a film that gives an audience twice the Adam Sandler in one sitting. One as his boyish self and one . [...]

Fans of watching young kids die in bizarre fashion unite — the latest trailer for Final Destination 5 is here. While it too highlights several of the unorthodox methods by which one can die (LASIK, acupuncture), it differentiates itself from the previous trailer by showcasing more of the bridge collapse (which surprising is very well [...]

The Ledge was screened in New York during a stand-off between supporters and opponents of gay marriage; some journalists even believed that the city, which was one vote away from legalizing marriage equality, was on the heels on “anarchism.” Luckily, it never came that far. Coincidentally, the film, Matthew Chapman’s directorial debut (he also pens [...]

The “mad scientist” in The Skin I Live In is a well-to-do plastic surgeon. His all consuming passion is the creation of an impervious, synthetic skin, which, if he had 12 years ago, would have saved his wife who was horrifically burned in a car crash. With his goal within grasp, the good doctor requires [...]

The UK’s answer to America’s Get Smart has gotten himself a sequel. I’m talking about Johnny English and the film, for a which a new trailer has been made available, is Johnny English Reborn. Mr. English returns, after years of perfecting his technique, to MI-7 to thwart an attempt on the Chinese Premier’s life. Rowan [...]

We’ve seen a so-so theatrical trailer and a so-so bloodier red-band trailer; today Lionsgate delivers a new UK trailer for Conan the Barbarian. This one provides more of the backstory as to how Conan became the barbarian that he is — his village is destroyed and his family is murdered at the hands of Khalar [...]

Garfield: A Tail of Two Kitties. It gave me an allergic reaction. I suppose if I had cared anything for the original live-action Garfield (based on Jim Davis’ once-popular comic strip, from 2004), I would have liked this one better. Suffice it to say, however, if you have children, there are certainly worse movies you [...]

Most scripts are divided into three acts: The setup, which introduces characters, plot-points, and locales; the confrontation, where both the antagonist and protagonist’s strengths and weaknesses are further examined — complicating the problem at hand — and finally; the resolution, which concludes the aforementioned conflicts. Larry Crowne, a love-story between an ex-Navy serviceman and his [...]

Generally, writers try to change the world. We think of ourselves as omnipotent while stroking prickly beards, sipping on aged wine and puffing down on fine cigars. This will be my magnus opus, we think to ourselves. Though, as luck would have it, many of these ideas go up in smoke (the others are publically [...]