Hollywood loves to make high school sex comedies based (loosely) on classic works of literature. Clueless was adapted from Austen‘s “Emma”, and 10 Things I Hate About You is a retelling of Shakespeare‘s “The Taming of the Shrew”. When these sort of movies happen, we can only hope that the writers involved keep the original [...]
Read More Amanda Bynes, comedy, Easy A, Emma Stone, Patricia Clarkson, PG-13, romance, Stanley Tucci, Thomas Haden Church, willWritten by M. Night Shyamalan, Devil is a film about a mixed crowd of angry everyday people who get stuck in an elevator. Catch is, one of them is the devil. The film had an interesting premise but the amateur script immediately struck me as something that Shyamalan wrote in the course of a few [...]
Read More Devil, DVD, Geoffrey Arend, horror, Jeremy, M Night Shyamalan, Mystery, PG-13, thrillerSo, there I am, quietly minding my own business, providing the kind of customer service to the clientele that has my fellow employees looking upon me as some sort of titan of the industry, when I am approached by the Overseer of the Newsletter. “We need you to write a review of the Will Ferrell [...]
Read More action, blu-ray, comedy, crime, DVD, Eva Mendes, J.D., Mark Wahlberg, Michael Keaton, PG-13, Samuel L. Jackson, Steve Coogan, The Other Guys, The Rock, Will FerrellI was all set to hate this big-screen version of The A-Team the moment I learned Liam Neeson had been cast as Colonel ‘Hannibal’ Smith, the role made so memorable by a cigar-chomping George Peppard in the same-named 80′s TV show. Turns out that, for its first two acts, at least, this is a not [...]
Read More action, adventure, blu-ray, Bradley Cooper, David, DVD, Gerald McRaney, Jessica Biel, Joe Carnahan, Liam Neeson, Patrick Wilson, PG-13, Sharlto Copley, The A-Team, thrillerChristopher Nolan seems to be fond of magic tricks. Sure, he made a whole movie about them (The Prestige), but in his broader career he appears to relish the idea that film itself can be a playful illusion to rival any magician’s sleight-of-hand. I think his newest, the much-discussed, lauded and/or overrated Inception, is as [...]
Read More action, blu-ray, Christopher Nolan, Cillian Murphy, crime, DVD, Ellen Page, Inception, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mystery, PG-13, willThe star-crossed exploits of Bella Swan and Edward Cullen continue in Eclipse, the third installment of the teen-friendly vampire franchise that makes itself infinitely more tolerable than its predecessors by dialing down the angst and ramping up the action.
Read More blu-ray, Bryce Dallas Howard, David, David Slade, drama, DVD, Fantasy, Kristen Stewart, PG-13, Robert Pattinson, romance, Twilight Saga: EclipseCouch-jumping theatrics aside, Tom Cruise is still a movie star, and also the main reason to see Knight and Day, a breezy, Hitchcockian action comedy co-starring Cameron Diaz that nails the action stuff but veers a little off course when it comes to the comedy.
Read More action, adventure, Cameron Diaz, comedy, David, James Mangold, Jordi Molla, Knight and Day, Marc Blucas, Paul Dano, Peter Sarsgaard, PG-13, Tom CruiseEat Pray Love was okay. It seems like it could have been a lot better, somehow. Perhaps if the main character, Liz, had been played by someone else. Perhaps if the movie had gotten direction from someone other than Ryan Murphy. Something just fell a little flat in the cinematic retelling of the story in [...]
Read More Billy Crudup, drama, DVD, Eat Pray Love, James Franco, Javier Bardem, joyce, Julia Roberts, PG-13, Richard Jenkins, romance, Ryan Murphy, Viola DavisScott Pilgrim vs. The World has all the ingredients to be one of the great cult favorites: it’s unique, funny, didn’t perform well at the box office, and a large percentage of the people who watch it probably won’t see the appeal. Oh, and most importantly, it’s set in Canada. It’s the third film directed [...]
Read More action, adventure, comedy, DVD, Edgar Wright, Michael Cera, PG-13, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, willIf Nicholas Sparks had written The Sixth Sense, the result probably would have looked something like Charlie St. Cloud, a rather weak attempt to shift High School Musical heartthrob Zac Efron even farther away from his Disney image.
Read More Ben Sherwood, Burr Steers, Charlie St Cloud, David, DVD, Nicholas Sparks, PG-13, Ray Liotta, Zac Efron