There’s nothing that makes a grown man cry like a good sports movie. It might be the love of the competition or a nostalgic recapturing of the dreams most young boys have of being a giant sports star with ultimate glory in sight. Boxing films, in particular, have been some of the most successfully tear-jerking [...]

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 [...]

It is no secret that the last decade has not been kind to the great filmmaker, Woody Allen. Whether is it a loss of touch or focus, one could argue that Allen hasn’t made a particularly good film since 1989′s Crimes and Misdemeanors — while he has had minor successes in the past decade, there [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

George Clooney is maybe the most interesting movie star working today. Unlike many of the top-Hollywood talent, Clooney has a complete hand in all of his projects and seems to stay away from the obvious A-list blockbusters. His newest film, The American (directed by Control filmmaker Anton Corbijn) has certainly been marketed as a ‘George [...]

I don’t cry at movies. I mean, I’m not some unemotional or unattached person — many movies have touched me profoundly. But I have trained myself not to cry at movies. Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father made it real tough. For anyone who has read or heard anything about this [...]

George A. Romero not only created the modern zombie horror genre, but he is still considered by many as the master of genre — even with mostly unsuccessful films like Land of the Dead and Diary of the Dead. Personally, I can’t call myself a huge Romero fan, but I am a horror film connoisseur [...]

Noah Baumbach’s newest film, Greenberg, is a lot like his older work — character pieces centered around upper-middle class intellectual white people and their problems. As unappealing as that may sound, I’ve been a fan of Baumbach and his great direction of characters that a normal audience probably cannot relate to or wouldn’t associate with. [...]

Steve Carell has had quite a year. He’s already had a hit earlier in the year with Date Night, and a summer-smash followup with his role as Gru in the animated feature Despicable Me. He has also been fodder for entertainment websites for his announcement that he is leaving his hit television show The Office [...]

Youth in Revolt is a film I regrettably missed while it was in theaters, but for a film that I had some interest in, it came and went quickly. Despite this, I have heard many positive things from people who I trust, so I am definitely glad it has hit DVD and Blu-Ray. Overall, the [...]