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 [...]

The jury is still out for me because I can’t quite make up my mind, but it may be that The Human Centipede (First Sequence) will go down in my book as the most disturbing movie I’ve ever seen. Director Tom Six boldly goes with his bio-horror feature — deemed “100% Medically Accurate” — where [...]

Spring break: Sun, water, ear-splitting hip hop music, booze-swilling horny guys, brazen bikini babes — and millions of razor-sharp teeth. Welcome to Lake Victoria, the fictional locale of Piranha 3D, the remake of Joe Dante’s 1978 movie of the same name. The film’s “coed rowdy-party” setting isn’t one you usually see in the work of [...]

As I watched Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore, a few questions came to mind. Will the children who comprise the film’s target audience understand the allusions to James Bond, Austin Powers, The Terminator, and Silence of the Lambs? Will the unfortunate adults in the audience for whom these allusions are no doubt [...]

A story about infidelity, prostitution, racketeering, and murder set in the swinging, “free love” decade of the 70′s is one that can make for a deliciously trashy melodrama. But that didn’t happen in Taylor Hackford’s, Love Ranch, a bio-pic about the violence that erupts from the marital breakdown of Joe and Sally Conforte, the married [...]

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 [...]

Given the recent headlines concerning the extramarital escapades of Tiger Woods and Jesse James, the premise of Atom Egoyan’s erotically-charged film Chloe reminds us of something that should come as no surprise to anybody — a cell phone is not a cheating spouse’s best friend. When the specter of possible infidelity looms over a couple [...]

I know that remakes or jumper-cable reboots are a necessary, and inevitable evil in the movie business, but I do get so tired of these disproportionately disappointing efforts. Regardless, I do admit I was looking forward to this remake of A Nightmare on Elm Street but only because of the casting of Jackie Earle Haley, [...]

Vacations are supposed to be a time for fun and relaxation. Unfortunately, that’s not the case for four close couples who travel to the Bahamas for their second marital retreat in Tyler Perry’s Why Did I Get Married Too? — the follow-up to his hit 2007 film of the same name. Just as in the [...]

The opening shot of a Boston ferry emerging from an impenetrable veil of fog as it makes it way toward a hostile, gothic-looking island proves to be an apt visual metaphor for what transpires in Shutter Island. From the moment the ferry appears and we hear the first strains of music, the audience is cued [...]

Ethical vampires practicing abstinence from human blood isn’t a premise I easily buy into. My attitude may be an unfortunate side effect from the entertaining, if silly Twilight films. But I can put aside my skepticism for a story with intriguing ideas and parallels to our own real-world challenges. On first impression, Daybreakers appears to [...]

At the start, the title character of Lee Daniel’s Precious: Based on a Novel by Sapphireintroduces herself to the audience: “My name is Clareece Precious Jones. I want to be on the cover of a magazine. I wish I had a light-skinned boyfriend with good hair. But first I want to be in one of [...]

Blood. Sex. Demons. Director / writer Christopher Di Nunzio mixes these ingredients together and cooks up a curious blend of gangster film and supernatural horror in his first feature-length film, Livestock. If you are a horror fan with a healthy appetite for blood and gore, you just might enjoy Di Nunzio’s effort. It’s chicks’ night [...]

Somebody up there likes me, and so I light a candle at the altar of the movie gods in thanks for delivering to this scare-starved horror buff a horror film worthy of the name. Written, produced, and directed by Oren Peli on a micro budget of $15,000, Paranormal Activity reinforces what The Blair Witch Project [...]

2009 may well be remembered as the year of the remake or reinterpretation of classic B-film slasher movies. Sorority Row — an update of The House on Sorority Row — continues this trend. Regrettably, it appears new ideas may be a little thin on the ground. It’s disappointing because the genre is in serious need [...]

Recycling, regretfully, seems to be the name of the game in Hollywood these days. On the horror front, we’ve been treated to remakes of The Last House on the Left, My Bloody Valentine, and Friday the 13th. In the musical realm, Fame will soon be released. And in the drama/thriller department, we now have a [...]

In Zack Snyder’s brilliant film version of Watchmen, it isn’t business as usual for a group of rag-tag costumed do-gooders living, working, and laying low in the alternate world of a Nixon-era 1985, a time when masked crime fighters have been outlawed. In much the same way as Chris Nolan did for Batman in the [...]

Watching a Tyler Perry movie is like wandering around in a fog of cinematic confusion. Invariably the question arises, “Just what kind of movie am I watching?” A melodrama? A comedy? A morality tale? A message movie? A Sunday morning sermon? All five in one? Radical shifts in genre, tone and mood incline me to [...]

It’s a bad sign when the predominant reactions to a horror movie are sarcastic shout outs and hysterical laughter. Contrary to expectations, The Unborn delivers the unintentional laughs but not the scares. It’s beginning to look like horror movies aren’t supposed to be scary anymore. Strange things are happening to teenager Casey Beldon (Odette Yustman). [...]

I realize I’m aging myself here, but I was a teenager in the late 1970′s and as such I wasn’t paying too close attention to what was happening on the political scene at the time. I was much too caught up with the illicit thrill of cutting classes, shopping, and disco dancing. So when David [...]

What do you do for a popular, once bankable action hero whose star has plummeted and whose current films bypass theatrical release and go straight to video? Why, you resurrect him of course. And thankfully that’s just what director Mabrouk El Mechri has done in his new film, JCVD. Fans of “The “Muscles from Brussels” [...]

If a “Ten Commandments” existed for horror films, then the first commandment would no doubt be, “Thou Shalt Be Scary”. It becomes clear from what transpires in the 15 minutes-or-so opening sequence that The Haunting of Molly Hartley breaks that commandment. From that point on, it’s downhill all the way. This movie is the latest [...]

Hope. Survival. Retribution. Happy endings. Years ago, these were the standard outcomes in the horror genre. Nowadays, we jaded human beings like things a bit edgier — and more unpredictable. James Watkins’ new movie, Eden Lake keeps to this new tradition. A movie about a romantic weekend gone horribly awry, the film’s title is a [...]

The prospect of suddenly going blind is enough to fill most people with dread. And going blind is exactly what happens to the people of an unnamed city, perhaps even the entire world, in Blindness, the new film by Fernando Meirelles based on Jose Saramago’s excellent novel of the same name. Blindness is a powerful [...]

The conservatives in Hollywood have risen to take a comedic swipe at liberal sentiments in general and the redoubtable, fault-finding, à¼ber -liberal Michael Moore in particular in the An American Carol, starring Kevin P. Farley, brother of the late comedic actor Chris Farley, as documentary filmmaker Michael Malone, Moore’s fictional counterpart. An American Carol is [...]