American Gangster is a formidable piece of work, not to mention director Ridley Scott’s finest effort since 2001’s Black Hawk Down. It personifies the genre that many feared extinct in this era of CGI – the gritty cops and gangsters thriller. Stuck in development hell since 2004 and even dropped… Continue reading
The Kingdom is a contemporary example of what a serious war action/drama used to be, even just a decade ago. Here we stand in a war that has already lasted longer than all of World War II and Hollywood’s method for handling the material is to shoot for the jugular,… Continue reading
The Bourne Ultimatum feels like the final chapter in a deluxe trilogy, and hopefully the series will take the high road and let things be. The franchise, first helmed by Doug Lyman with 2002’s The Bourne Identity, has really come out of left field and proven to be one of… Continue reading
I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry is the kind of comedy that tries to toe two lines and stumbles on both. It spends its first half gleefully mocking homosexuals and everything about them, then does an about-face and turns into a tolerance sermon as the two main characters slowly… Continue reading
As I do my best to rewind and remember 2003’s Bruce Almighty I do not recall leaving the theater and spouting something to the tune of, “man, this movie needs a sequel!” But, of course, that film raked in $242 million domestically. Now, four years later (one year shy of… Continue reading
Writer/Director Judd Apatow may just save the R-rated comedy yet. Between this and The 40-Year-Old Virgin he has proven himself to be the go-to guy for uproarious, thought provoking comedies with real characters. Even more dazzling is the fact he can achieve such emotion without sacrificing the kind of lewd… Continue reading
Spies often make for subjects of great films, but how often do we really think about them in the real world? Billy Ray’s Breach explores the tailing and arrest of Robert Hanssen (Cooper), now classified as the biggest spy and traitor in American history. A loving, church-going family man on… Continue reading
Movies like Because I Said So make even the most hardened film critics question what they are doing with their lives. I had that thought roll through my head at least a half dozen times as I witnessed this disaster. Not since Domino have I out-and-out detested a film this… Continue reading
Director Joe Carnahan made one heck of a big studio splash with 2002’s Narc, one of the most under-appreciated gritty cop flicks of the past twenty years. With Narc he displayed a knack for pacing, atmosphere (you could practically taste the grunge of the Detroit back alleys), and dizzying, enthralling… Continue reading
The Good Shepherd is the kind of film that a director, in this case Robert De Niro, makes more for themselves than an audience. De Niro is endlessly fascinated with the birth and evolution of the Central Intelligence Agency, but his film is such a mind-numbing bore that it is… Continue reading