In a sea of sameness, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World emerges as a fine work of originality and energy. It merges everything that twenty-to-early-thirty-something men have ever loved in life: video games, crazy action, humor, and the pursuit of women. While the core story is hardly anything special, director Edgar… Continue reading
The Other Guys has, arguably, the funniest first thirty minutes of any film this year. Had the rest of the film been as consistently funny, I may have needed oxygen. The problem: the following hour isn’t nearly as funny, or even as clever. The screenplay doesn’t have enough gas, resorting… Continue reading
Who is Salt? The trailers have been posing this question for months, and it’s not likely you’re going to leave with a whole lot of defined answers. Salt is a gloriously preposterous espionage action/thriller, owing its very existence to the Bond and Bourne franchises. As directed by Philip Noyce, working… Continue reading
Inception is a colossal piece of work, not only as a storytelling marvel, but also as a technical achievement. It’s so rare these days that we, the moviegoers, get to experience something wholly original. Much like he did with 2000’s Memento, writer/director Christopher Nolan has taken it upon himself to… Continue reading
Cyrus is the classic case of a comedy that never really takes off. It presents an initially intriguing situation and characters, but winds up depending on the awkwardness of it all and never really takes the next step. It’s a shame, because the cast is excellent and the performances from… Continue reading
Disclaimer: I don’t know the first thing about the source material. Not that it matters. I can imagine any fan of the series, Avatar: The Last Airbender, sitting in the theater, slack-jawed, at this dreary, joyless, and boring effort from M. Night Shyamalan. Where’s the fun? We’re talking about characters… Continue reading
It’s hard to escape the feeling that the script for Grown Ups was left in someone’s desk drawer for about the past fifteen years. We’re talking about a script that contains not one, but multiple O.J. Simpson jokes. Given the cast, made up mostly of 90’s SNL veterans, one would… Continue reading
Toy Story 3 is a masterpiece, not to mention probably the greatest movie ever made with a title that ends in “3.” This series has always stood for never losing the kid within us all, but here the Pixar team has outdone themselves with adventure, comedy, and a sentimentality that… Continue reading
“I hate human beings.” – Dr. Heiter Every once in a while an idea for a film comes along that is so repulsive that morbid curiosity takes over. Tom Six’s The Human Centipede is a perfect example. The film has made waves in the horror circuit, if only for its… Continue reading
Now you’re messing with my childhood! That was my initial response to the news of a Karate Kid remake. While I hardly hold the 1984 original on the same pedestal as many others my age, I regard it as one of the finest “underdog” movies ever. It was formula (though… Continue reading