The year was 2008.  I was working at the Virgin Megastore and me and a few of my friends had just had our minds blown by a film called Rambo.  While I was well acquainted with the series, I was unprepared for just how much ass Sylvester Stallone could still kick in his 60s.  I [...]

The Scott Pilgrim series was something I had heard a lot about before I eventually decided to check it out for myself.  It was first recommended by my friend Joe.  Everything Joe ever recommends turns out to be over hyped, for the simple reason that HE over hypes it.  There were ninjas and early 90s [...]

Lots of film-makers are credited with building unique worlds. Peter Jackson, Wes Anderson, Christopher Nolan; they all receive acclaim for building these unique places that are recognizable but different from the world that you or I inhabit.  Another film-maker who does this but gets significantly less recognition for it is Adam McKay. Originally his sense [...]

Sigh… so Eclipse (or as they’re pretentiously referring to it The Twilight Saga: Eclipse) has set some sort of box office record for mid-week openings.  If this was something solely confined to tweens, like Hannah Montana, maybe I wouldn’t be so disheartened by it.  But this is a huge culture-spanning thing.  They’re not even good [...]

After making his third film The Sixth Sense, M. Night Shyamalan quickly developed a reputation as a master storyteller with a penchant for delivering the unexpected in his twist endings.  He followed The Sixth Sense with the unconventional superhero film Unbreakable and the alien suspense thriller Signs.  After that, Shyamalan’s career itself had an unexpected [...]

Friends are good to have.  While this sentiment may seem trite, the movie Grown Ups does go a long way towards proving it.  Namely, it proves that if your friend is Adam Sandler you will never go broke.  Just ask Rob Schneider.  This movie is just loaded with Sandler’s buddies from Saturday Night Live.  In [...]

James Mangold has had an interesting directorial career.  He’s worked in such wildly disparate genres as police drama (Cop Land), asylum movie (Girl, Interrupted), high concept romantic comedy (Kate & Leopold), horror (Identity), biopic (Walk the Line), and western (3:10 to Yuma).  All these films have been more or less well-received (and won Angelina Jolie [...]

Do you remember when going to the movies was fun?  There was a time when movies did not all strive to be the grittiest most realistic depiction of violence on the block.  There was a time when action movies were not somber affairs like the Bourne movies or boring lessons in bad history like Ridley Scott’s recent [...]

“To a new world of gods and monsters…” — Dr. Septimus Pretorius in Bride of Frankenstein As it happens I was watching a program on the Science Channel last night that detailed scientists’ endeavor to artificially create life.  They did it.  It’s out there.  It’s only bacterial now but technological evolution moves at unimaginable speeds.  [...]

Over the last few years, Judd Apatow has been giving us hard-R-rated comedies that actually have a heart behind them so we can relate to the characters as we laugh uproariously at their zany antics.  He has made shitloads of money doing this.  Now he’s big time and can do pretty much whatever he pleases [...]