Review: Jurassic World

Starring Chris Pratt, Bryce Dallas Howard, Jake Johnson

Thursday, March 29, 2012

April Movie Guide

AMERICAN REUNION - April 6th Starring: Jason Biggs, Alyson Hannigan, Chris Klein, Seann William Scott, et al. Official Synopsis: In the comedy American Reunion, all the American Pie characters we met a little more than a decade ago are returning to East Great Falls for their high-school reunion. In one long-overdue weekend, they will discover what has changed, who hasn’t and that time and distance can’t break the bonds of friendship. It...

Review: Jack and Jill

There are a lot of people who are too young to remember Mike Tyson as something more than an awkward caricature that randomly shows up on Funny or Die and the Hangover movies.  He was once a fierce athlete with a singular focus of inflicting damage.  As the pre-eminent pugilist of his generation, Tyson’s fights were must-see events.  After a plethora of personal troubles that culminated in a three-year stint in prison, Tyson returned...

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

Review: Young Adult

Most films that are character driven have a seminal moment for the protagonist in which the proverbial light goes on upstairs and everything changes.  Flaws get ironed out, burned bridges get rebuilt, and life gets that much better.  Jason Reitman films don’t fall into that category.  He, the director of Up in the Air fame, has no problem starting a film off in a dark place and constricting all movement to within that space. ...

Sunday, March 25, 2012

Review: The Hunger Games

Let me start by saying that I didn’t read Suzanne Collins' books; I wasn’t one of the people in the cinema who cheered when they showed a teaser for the next Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2; and I wasn’t one of the few who openly sobbed when one of the more likeable characters in the film died.  So now that I have identified myself as a male over the age of eighteen – and thus provided a context for this review – I can tell you that...

Friday, March 23, 2012

Review: My Week with Marilyn

When an actor receives critical acclaim for portraying a public figure in a biopic or film based upon true events, I wonder if such praise is really warranted as a number of questions spring to mind.  Should that performance be considered acting or impersonation?  Is there a difference between the two and/or should there be a distinction?  For instance, Jay Pharoah does amazing impersonations of Will Smith and Denzel Washington,...

Monday, March 19, 2012

Review: The Muppets (2011)

My girlfriend and I watched The Muppets with my niece (7 years old) and my nephew (5 years old).  Of the four of us, I can firmly state that I enjoyed it the least.  You have to keep in mind however that I am the person who on my first day as an intern at The Walt Disney Company told everyone in the group that I don’t like animated movies.  So you can imagine that I might be biased against movies featuring puppets (original Yoda...

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Review: Jeff, Who Lives at Home

I am going to cut to the chase in regards to my review of Jeff, Who Lives at Home.  Either it was a horrible piece of filmmaking or I absolutely did not get it.  If you’re a betting person, put your money down on the latter, because from start to finish this movie feels like a very poor man’s Our Idiot Brother sans any laughs whatsoever.  And as I was watching the film, eagerly anticipating a wit-inspired chuckle here or a gut-buster...

Friday, March 16, 2012

Review: 21 Jump Street (2012)

I think we all get the drill when it comes to movies based on old television shows that have long since disappeared from syndication.  They usually aren’t done very well as they rely far too much on nostalgia as opposed to things like a solid plot and good acting (i.e. Bewitched, Miami Vice, Lost in Space).  And when they try to take a dramatic television show and transform it into a comedy, well…its usually twice as bad (Dukes of Hazzard). ...

Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Review: Fright Night (2011)

While watching Fright Night (2011), a punch line comes to mind that was uttered by Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, while he was speaking with Jon Bon Jovi about his participation in the movie Vampire: Los Muertos.  Specifically, he said to Bon Jovi: “Finally, a role that requires you to suck!”  That one line perfectly captures how I feel about Colin Farrell’s turn as a blood sucking fiend from beyond in a film that can best be described...

Monday, March 12, 2012

Review: Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes - released back in 2009 - is a fun take on Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s famed sleuth. Holmes is portrayed brilliantly by Robert Downey Jr. as an enigmatic savant who shares an antagonistic brotherly camaraderie with Jude Law’s Watson.  The film does a nice job of teasing the emergence of Moriarty by slowly revealing him as a shadowy figure tacitly pulling the proverbial marionette strings from behind a curtain...

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Review: The Rum Diary

The Rum Diary – the opening credits flash, the plot advances, the scene fades to black, and then the closing credit roll.  I am guessing that for most people, the movie will soon after be completely forgotten.  It is unfortunate, because director Bruce Robinson puts forth a movie that is very stylized in its depiction of 1960’s San Juan with Johnny Depp running point man for the narrative as a burned out journalist who takes a dead end...

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Review: Project X

As I sit at the keyboard, I have officially published thirty-nine movie reviews on this blog.  When I finish this write up about producer Todd Phillips’ Project X, that number will remain at thirty-nine, because what I watched today can only in the loosest sense be referred to as something that vaguely resembles a film.  Full disclaimer – I am not in the target demographic for Project X.  This much is obvious.  The question...

 
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