Heavy is the head that seeks the Harry Potter crown. So it is for the cumbersomely titled Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief. With visions of franchise-driven dollar signs dancing in his head Chris Columbus, director of the first two Potter films, attempts to bring another popular “kid lit” fantasy epic to the […]
Universal Studios attempts, yet again, to resurrect its legendary Universal Monsters franchise with The Wolfman. While the studio struck gold with The Mummy franchise, it had more in common with Indiana Jones than it ever did with 1932’s The Mummy. And don’t even get me started on Van Helsing. This time out Benicio Del Toro […]
An all star cast joins forces to celebrate love in the new Garry Marshall film Valentine’s Day. It’s a cast so star-studded, it has to be listed alphabetically to sooth competing egos: Jessica Alba, Jessica Biel, Bradley Cooper, Patrick Dempsey, Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Topher Grace, Anne Hathaway, Ashton Kutcher, Queen Latifah, Taylor Lautner, George […]
What John Grisham is to legal thrillers, Nicholas Sparks has become to chaste romantic weepies about star-crossed lovers. The latest film based on his work is Dear John. Starring Amanda Seyfried as Savannah and Channing Tatum as the eponymous John. The two meet while she is on Spring Break at the beach and he is […]
In the 1988 cinematic masterpiece They Live, Roddy Piper uttered the classic line, “I’ve come to chew bubblegum and kick ass…and I’m all out of bubblegum.” So it is with John Travolta’s latest From Paris with Love only instead of bubblegum, Travolta has come to chew scenery…and there’s plenty of it. He plays Charlie Wax, […]
Mel Gibson returns to acting with his first role since 2003’s The Singing Detective in the new action-thriller Edge of Darkness. He stars as Tommy Craven, a by-the-book Boston police detective whose activist daughter (Bojana Novakovic) is gunned down on his front doorstep. While prevailing wisdom is that she is an innocent bystander with her […]
“Hey kids! Let’s put on a show!” Throughout the late ‘30s and early ‘40s Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland starred in a series of films that immortalized that line; a line that also serves as a plot synopsis. Babes in Arms, Babes on Broadway, Girl Crazy, Strike up the Band all fit this mold. Now, […]
Based on a novel of the same name, A Single Man stars Colin Firth as George, a middle-aged homosexual English professor. Set in 1963, the film takes place over the course of one day as George attempts to go about his daily routine while still struggling with the grief of losing his partner Jim (Matthew […]
Based on the runaway bestselling novel, The Lovely Bones tells the story of Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan), a 14-year old girl murdered in the early ‘70s. Susie narrates her story from beyond the grave, not as a ghost story per se, but as an ethereal onlooker; trapped between this life and the next in a […]
Denzel Washington’s latest film The Book of Eli provides me with yet another opportunity to use the phrase “post-apocalyptic”. (It seems like recently I’ve used it so frequently I’d be well served to give the phrase its own shortcut key.) It’s been thirty years since “the flash”, presumably a nuclear war of some kind though […]
