Review: The Five-Year Engagement

Sometimes things are all perfectly lined up.  Sometimes a project seemingly has everything going for it and just by looking at the collection of talent on paper you know it is going to do well.  And sometimes despite all these things, the movie does not come together as planned.  I think the latter sums up what happened with The Five-Year Engagement, which had a great producer, a good director, and a strong cast, yet opened in...

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Review: Colombiana

Colombiana had been sitting on my iPad for a couple of weeks, mostly because I had passed it over for some other poor choices (The Sitter, The Darkest Hour), but also because I didn’t feel compelled to make time to watch it.  The trailers for the film portray it as incredibly straight forward – a revenge movie with a female lead and lots of action sans the stylistic sophistication or the twists and turns of a Kill Bill.  The movie though...

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Review: The Darkest Hour

I have been pretty open about proclaiming Jack and Jill the worst movie of 2011.  I am obviously not alone in this assessment, as about a month ago, that Adam Sandler movie became the first movie to ever sweep the Razzies – setting a new standard for filmmaking.  For those of you who don’t know, the Razzies represent the polar opposite of the excellence that the Oscars try to recognize.  However, I now feel the exact same way I...

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Review: The Sitter

Who didn’t love Elisabeth Shue back in the eighties when she was the quintessential girl-next-door playing opposite Ralph Macchio in the true Karate Kid movie or subbing for Claudia Wells as Jennifer in the 2nd and 3rd installments of the Back to the Future Trilogy.  She didn’t quite reach Meg Ryan’s status as America’s Sweetheart, but I think for a lot of people, her performance in Adventures in Babysitting did a lot to nudge her...

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May 2012 Movie Guide

THE AVENGERS - May 4th Starring: Robert Downey Jr., Chris Hemsworth, Chris Evans, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner Official Synopsis: Marvel Studios presents the Super Hero team up of a lifetime, featuring Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Thor, Captain America, Hawkeye and Black Widow. When an unexpected enemy emerges that threatens global safety and security, Nick Fury finds himself in need of a team to pull the world back from the brink of disaster....

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Review: Attack the Block

Attack the Block is one of those movies that smells vaguely like a cult classic, because it is definitely not mainstream; it dabbles in both the horror and sci-fi genre; and because it possesses a British sensibility (for some this is an automatic indicator of cinematic credibility).  I am going to skip any dissection of the cast in this film - because I came away from the film feeling ambivalent toward the whole lot - and instead am going...

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Review: American Reunion

If you’re on the wrong side of thirty then you are probably old enough to remember one of my favorite Christmas classics – A Very Brady Christmas.  Go ahead; read it again.  It is not a typo.  I loved the heck out of that made for TV movie; and not because it was particularly well written - because it wasn’t - and not because it was telegenic art – because it most certainly was not.  The reason I enjoyed it so much was because it...

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Review: Dream House

The low-lying fruit in Hollywood is the horror genre.  How else can you explain 42 sequels to Saw and 30 incarnations of Final Destination.  Okay, so there aren’t that many; it only feels that way.  But really, horror films are incredibly polarizing.   You rarely find anyone who is ambivalent.  People tend to be on one side of the aisle or the other.  Those, who are on the side that does not mind cheap scares...

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Review: The Three Musketeers (2011)

The thing that always bothered me most about The Three Musketeers is that the plot always involved D’Artagnian – thus rendering the trio a quartet.  Not a particularly important point, but I wanted to get that off my chest.  But I digress.  For Hollywood, the Three Musketeers is like that ex-girlfriend you always go back to when your current paramour tells you to hit the bricks.  Every time the creative powers that be run out...

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Review: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

I grew up watching Roger Moore, tolerated Timothy Dalton, and was disappointed by Pierce Brosnan, but of all the different incarnations of James Bond that I have seen, Daniel Craig stands out as the best.  So it was with much interest that I sat down to watch The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011) even though I had stayed away from the novel or the original film.  I had wanted to it during its theatrical run, but the release was...

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