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DVD Review: The Princess and the Frog
The first traditionally animated feature film from Disney since 2002's Home on the Range (and more importantly to little girls, the first to feature a new Disney princess since 1998's Mulan), The Princess and the Frog is a well crafted return to this cherished form of animation. While the film has its flaws and isn't playing on the same level of Beauty and the Beast or Sleeping Beauty, it's a step above more recent Disney 'toons like Hercules or Tarzan.
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Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Review: Scott Pilgrim vs. the World
I never read Bryan Lee O'Malley's six Scott Pilgrim graphic novels about a twentysomething slacker/hipster. Wasn't my scene, didn't care for it. So, going in to see Edgar Wright's Scott Pilgrim vs. the World movie I was fresh -- and feeling a little too old and outside of the target demographic. I knew a little about it but considering that the majority of my online peers seem to be on the first name basis with the director, travelled to the set and had been gushing about what they saw for months, I was one of the few people that I feel was left in the dark about what kind of movie Scott Pilgrim would be.
Add a comment (2)Wednesday, July 7, 2010
Review: Despicable Me
In a time where every studio is developing their own number of 3D animated movies, Despicable Me turns out to be one of the better ones. It walks to a different beat from the Pixar and DreamWorks Animation films but doesn't reach into truly great territory like Toy Story 3 does. But, as a summertime family movie, it's good entertainment for little kids and grown adults.
Add a comment (0)Thursday, June 17, 2010
Review: Toy Story 3
Woody and Buzz are back, and so are most of their formed plastic friends in Pixar's Toy Story 3. If this is to be the end of their adventures together (and no one said that it is, I'm just thinking that waiting a decade between sequel instalments isn't helping anyone think of Toy Story 4) then it's a brilliant way to end the series and ride off into the CG sunset.
Add a comment (8)Review: Jonah Hex
Where did the trouble begin for the Jonah Hex movie? Was it the long, meandering road it took through development hell? Was it the rush to get the movie greenlighted after Josh Brolin agreed to headline it? Was it when Warner Bros. decided that it needed a summer comic book movie in its summer 2010 slot? Or maybe it began when director Jimmy Hayward realized that he was in over his head?
Add a comment (6)Thursday, May 6, 2010
Review: Iron Man 2
One of the best things about the Iron Man movie universe is that its hero, the flamboyant billionaire tech genius Tony Stark, is out about being a superhero. When the majority of do-gooders that dress up to fight crime conceal their true identity behind a mask, Tony's out there cashing in on his identity as Iron Man to the benefit of his company's stock price, attendance to his newly relaunched Stark Expo and to the enthusiastic public who have turned him into something like a rock star. With that kind of hubris on display, it's easy to see why director Jon Favreau and actor-turned-screenwriter Justin Theroux decide to crash Tony's ego back down to earth in Iron Man 2.
Add a comment (3)Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Review: Oceans
The second film from Disneynature, Oceans explores the realm that covers and touches three-quarters of our planet. Visually entertaining and made to showcase many of the different creatures that call the aquatic realm their home, it’s a film that never manages to truly ascend to a greater height than any similar program you might watch on a cable learning channel and that makes it a slight disappointment.
Add a comment (0)Friday, March 26, 2010
Review: How to Train Your Dragon
For all of their careful planning and expense the animated movies released by major studios often still rely on the safe road to tell their stories. How to Train Your Dragon won't be remembered for stepping off that path and venturing too deep into the dark woods that line the storytelling road but it does manage to take a few steps closer to the edge. What you are getting is an entertaining retelling of the outsider hero character facing adversity and overcoming the obstacles placed in front of him -- but with great animation, good character voices and some emotional moments that will entertain younger and older audience members.
Add a comment (0)Monday, March 22, 2010
DVD Review: The Princess and the Frog
The first traditionally animated feature film from Disney since 2002's Home on the Range (and more importantly to little girls, the first to feature a new Disney princess since 1998's Mulan), The Princess and the Frog is a well crafted return to this cherished form of animation. While the film has its flaws and isn't playing on the same level of Beauty and the Beast or Sleeping Beauty, it's a step above more recent Disney 'toons like Hercules or Tarzan.
Add a comment (2)Friday, March 12, 2010
Review: Green Zone
With ads showing Matt Damon running around with an automatic rifle, Green Zone appears to be a more military version of the last two Jason Bourne movies. The thing of it is, Green Zone has the elements of The Bourne Supremacy and The Bourne Ultimatum we liked, including the often distracting shakeycam tendency Paul Greengrass likes to use, but it can't decide if it wants to go full tilt and be an all-out action movie or a political thriller. The result is that the picture ends up being neither.
Add a comment (0)Friday, February 19, 2010
Review: Shutter Island
Pushed back from release last October by Paramount, to what many consider one of the dead times of the calendar year, Shutter Island is a film that shouldn't slip by. Masterfully directed by Martin Scorsese, who captures great performances by Leonardo DiCaprio, co-star Mark Ruffalo and a wide supporting cast of commendable actors, Shutter Island is something of a throwback to the days of Alfred Hitchcock's thrillers of lost identity, character twists and paranoia. But for audiences that have been exposed to just about every conceivable plot twist imaginable, Shutter Island manages to find a new direction to take as its complex and nearly incomprehensible storyline draws toward its conclusion.
Add a comment (0)Thursday, September 24, 2009
Review: Surrogates
It's funny but Surrogates deserves the title I, Robot more than the Will Smith movie that came out in 2004. First and foremost, was Will ever a robot in his movie? Hell no but in Surrogates Bruce Willis can claim full metal jacket status. Secondly, James Cromwell, the actor that played the guy that made the robots in I, Robot, well, he’s the maker of the robots in Surrogates. It's like the people that made Surrogates saw I, Robot and said to themselves, "Hey, that’s a neat idea. Why don’t we do something like that too?"
Add a comment (7)Thursday, September 10, 2009
Review: Whiteout
There comes a moment in Dominic Sena's Whiteout where our heroine Marshal Carrie Stetko (played by the usually British Kate Beckinsale) is about to face something horrific but it doesn’t come from a faceless killer’s snow axe or from the possibility of freezing to death in the Antarctic winter. The scene takes place in a doctor’s office and the horror of the situation comes from Stetko facing the aftermath of being exposed to sub-zero weather. I won’t spoil it further but let me add just this final note: what should have been a scene that left the audience squirming in silent horror turned into an unintentional funny moment where the people in my theatre (myself included) openly laughed at the absurdity of a poorly chosen line of dialogue. It’s these kinds of stupid moments that reduce Whiteout to being a sub-par thriller, one that had the potential to be better than it is.
Add a comment (3)Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Review: Batman - Arkham Asylum is one of the year's best games
If you have thought that the day would never come that someone could pull off a superb original video game that was based on a beloved comic book character let me introduce you to Batman: Arkham Asylum (Xbox 360, PS3). Ladies and gentlemen, here is the game that we’ve all been waiting to play since we could grasp that game controller between our meatware.
Add a comment (3)Sunday, March 8, 2009
Exclusive: The pilot for the new V series reviewed
I was one of the kids from the original Star Wars generation when pop culture entertainment suddenly became obsessed with space ships, alien worlds and robots. If you didn’t live around the late 1970s to early 1980s it’s hard to illustrate just how big shows like the original Star Wars, Superman, Close Encounters and even the dodgier ones like Battlestar Galactica were to kids from that time. We ate it up the way that today’s teen girls and single moms looking for Mr. Right write the surname “Cullen” after “Mrs.” and their first name on the inside front covers of their Twilight books.
Add a comment (0)Wednesday, March 4, 2009
Review: Watchmen
How do you film the unfilmable comic book? That’s been a question on the minds of fans of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ Watchmen, the comic book/graphic novel/whatever you want to call it, for two decades. Scores of filmmakers have attempted to scale that beast of a mountain and have failed to reach the peak until director Zack Snyder came along. Buoyed on the success of turning Frank Miller’s 300 into a hit film, Snyder asked for and received the movie project that is to comic books what William Shakespeare is to English literature. Every sneak peek at the film, from early looks at the costumes to that first trailer that came with The Dark Knight, have indicated that Snyder was making a Watchmen movie that was going to capture the source material faithfully. And he has but it comes with a cost.
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Getting Buzz
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9
Confessions of a movie website owner
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7
It's Ok to laugh at M. Night's Escalation
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4
Official Trailer: The Walking Dead
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3
The Star Trek: The Next Generation that almost was
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2
Christina Hendricks, London Fog and Photoshop: not the threesome you had in mind
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2
Exclusive: Terra Nova pilot script reviewed
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2
Neil Gaiman's Sandman getting second shot as a TV series
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1
Spec'd: Predators
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1
Half-Life game creators only want themselves to make the movie
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1
The Expendables secures a second weekend at #1