The underdog sports film is the most dependable of all. Whether based on true events or simply a tale of a ragtag team who wins the big game, the genre seemingly has crowds standing an applauding no matter how clichéd and tired it gets. Basketball has been the sports flavor… Continue reading
Ah, good old January. The holidays are over, it’s cold outside, and the holiday/Oscar cinematic rejects slog their way into theaters. Such a specimen is Grandma’s Boy, a film that would have been infinitely better off as a short subject high school project. But, the film is a product of… Continue reading
Surely you are all familiar with the “name the actor” game. It is that game people play under their breath in the theater during a movie when an actor they know shows up on screen and they feel it necessary to blurt out that name in either a loud whisper… Continue reading
Johnny Slade’s Greatest Hits is a thoroughly entertaining mob satire that is joyously campy. That’s welcome in my book since we have had some fairly rotten entries into this genre over the past few years. The story is one that could have run dry and overstayed its welcome in a… Continue reading
Just Friends is the first film in recent memory where literally every scene ends with someone sustaining an injury that, if it wasn’t just a movie, would land them in the hospital for weeks, maybe months. The film is loaded with slapstick and a surprisingly mean demeanor, but it’s edgy… Continue reading
And now for something different. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is a marriage of old film noir elements with more modern black comedy techniques, and the result is an occasionally funny and entertaining film that ultimately tries too hard and cannot maintain the breakneck pace that the first act antes up.… Continue reading
Zathura will undoubtedly be compared to 1995’s Jumanji, and for good reason, at least topically. Both stories concern a board game with magical powers and an undeniable gift for dropping unsuspecting youths in a land of very good special effects. But what Zathura has, and what ultimately makes it a… Continue reading
Chicken Little is Disney’s first in-house computer animated release since their split with Pixar (and the demise of their 2-D department), and if this is what we are to expect in the future I will set my expectations appropriately lower next time around. It’s not that Chicken Little is bad,… Continue reading
The running gag in The Weather Man is that quite often Chicago weatherman Dave Spritz (Cage) gets pelted with some type of food product, whether it is a burrito or a Frosty or a Slurpee. Spritz theorizes that it’s because the public views him as a clown, but I theorize… Continue reading
There is something undeniably endearing about stop-motion animation. The process is lengthy and painstaking, but produces such unique results. The characters move in their own begrudging way, and in the case of Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit, you can even see the fingerprints of the filmmakers in… Continue reading