Review: Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol

As much as I enjoyed Matt Damon’s “The Bourne Identity,” the one black mark on the film for me is that it ushered in this era of the prolific use of an unsteady camera in action sequences.  And as well as it worked in that film (and in other subsequent films), like any good thing in Hollywood it’s use has gone from moderate to the obscene (see Michael Bay’s Transformers).   So what is most refreshing about Brad Bird’s “Mission Impossible:...

Read More

Review: The Change-Up

The Change-Up is a textbook example of good cast / bad movie.  There are so many places where this film goes wrong that it’s hard to find a good place to begin the critique.  If I had to pin it on one thing I would say that Ryan Reynolds and Jason Bateman are two very funny actors, but are way too similar in their respective styles to sell the brand of comedy that director David Dobkin is trying to sell for nearly two hours (30 minutes...

Read More

Review: Immortals

Let me start by saying that I am a huge fan of "300," "Gladiator," the original "Clash of the Titans," and most other films (not named "Troy") in this genre that are loosely based on Greek and Roman history/mythology.   With that being said, after watching “Immortals” I have to say that I am incredibly lukewarm about this film.  It has taken me a while to put my finger on why this narrative failed to entertain me, but at the...

Read More

Review: Johnny English Reborn

My claim to shame is that I am one of the few people to have watched the original "Johnny English" in the cinema though it wasn’t by choice.  Under the duress of direct questioning you might get me to admit that there were a few funny (albeit completely asinine) scenes between Rowan Atkinson’s Johnny English and Ben Miller’s Bough.  Fast forward to the present day: when the opportunity to watch "Johnny English Reborn" free...

Read More

Review: Paranormal Activity 3

There are some things that never get old – like pizza and Seinfeld reruns, and then there are some things that just won’t go away – like American Pie sequels and Occupy Wall Street protestors.  Well, despite the hype, I am sad to report that "Paranormal Activity 3" moves the incredibly profitable franchise further from the former and dangerously close to the latter.  This is a no easy fete when you consider that this is the same genre...

Read More

Review: Scream 4

I was walking out of a grocery store the other day when I saw, tucked away in the corner of the parking lot, a hunter green 1993 Mazda MX-6 – the make, model, and color of my youth.  I hadn’t seen one in years so a flood of great memories flooded my mind.  A funny thing happened as I walked across the lot. The longer I looked at the car under the unforgiving midday sunlight, the more I wondered what it was about the car that I thought...

Read More

Review: Bad Teacher

Bad Teacher was a movie set up for me to hate.  I am not a Cameron Diaz fan, and not a fan of Justin Timberlake either.  I am a fan of Jason Segel but he doesn’t play as much of a role in the film as the trailers for its theatrical release would have had you believe.  With all this being said, I actually enjoyed this movie a lot.  It is not because the script was incredibly well written or because the cinematography...

Read More

Review: Moneyball

I had fairly low expectations for Moneyball when the trailer was first released.  The buzz on the film was that the source material – Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game by Michael Lewis – would not lend itself to compelling theater and that the only reason this film was greenlit was because it became Brad Pitt’s pet project. As an avid baseball fan with a recollection of the season that the film centers on, I found the...

Read More

Review: What's Your Number?

What’s Your Number? is a predictable mix of sarcasm, physical comedy, and awkward nudity that has become the staple of romantic comedies for mature (and immature) audiences.  Yet despite the fact that you know exactly where Anna Faris’ character is going to be when things fade to black and the closing credits start to roll, the movie is an entertaining romp through the personal past of Faris’ Ally Darling.  Faris...

Read More

Review: The Ides of March

With a cast that includes Paul Giamatti, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Marisa Tomei, George Clooney, and current it-boy Ryan Gosling, it isn’t hard to figure out why the buzz for Clooney’s latest directorial effort was so positive.  But I have to go against the grain here and echo what Shakespeare (or not if you believe the nonsense in Emmerich’s forthcoming film) once wrote in Julius Caesar,  “beware the Ides of March.”  It may...

Read More

Review: X-Men: First Class

I was a fan of comics as a kid – definitely DC over Marvel.  I would save all the coins I could find until I reached seventy-five cents and then I would harass my mom into stopping at the local comic book shop on the way back from the supermarket.  Some forty-five minutes later, I would have whichever issue of Superman featured the slickest artwork that month.  So whenever a film comes out based on a hero straight out of the...

Read More

Review: Limitless

In watching the film "Limitless," the first thing I found is that the title in no way reflects the quality of the film, because while the premise of the movie is interesting, the plot itself is little more than a glorified drug caper movie.  Bradley Cooper plays a run-of-the-mill underachieving writer who is suffering with a bout of chronic apathy masquerading as writer's block.  When he is presented the opportunity to take an experimental...

Read More

Review: Our Idiot Brother

If you have been following my reviews recently then you may have noticed that the quality of movies that I’ve been subjecting myself to has been trending downward – most likely the result of a dearth of quality options - although bad decision making cannot be completely dismissed. Regardless, this thinning of the marketplace is not unusual as August gives way to September, but occasionally a diamond can be unearthed from the rough. Well, said...

Read More