For the first time since last fall, contemporary comedies are finally ratcheting it up. If this is your genre, you should have a busy spring. March features a few, with “21 Jump Street” the most notable, but April has a different comedy (and truthfully a different style of comedy) opening every weekend.

The spring usually brings us one or two great family movies every year. Last March, “Rango” premiered; a few days ago, it won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Will “The Lorax” or “The Pirates! Band of Misfits” from stop-motion masters Aardman Animation be in for a year-long Oscar campaign? Also, a fairy tale [...]

An action triple-header comes in January this year, with a few more offerings in February. George Lucas is responsible for 1/3 of the films on this list and half of them will be presented in 3D. Highlights include a rare winter offering from an acclaimed director in Steven Soderbergh’s “Haywire,” the fourth “Underworld” film and [...]

Winter comedy and romance revolves around Valentine’s Day, so things don’t get promising for the genre until February. The types of comedies offered in the early going this year are surprisingly diverse including a couple niche market family comedies, a couple action comedies, a Nicholas Sparks-inspired romance and an Apatow-produced comedy.

The winter months are the slowest time of year for family films, which beats me. “Gnomeo & Juliet” was the first big animated/family film of 2011 and it finished 2011 with the second-highest domestic gross of any movie that came out in January or February. The offerings aren’t all that strong for 2012, but don’t [...]

Winter is a well-known time of year for studio dumps, for action films that wouldn’t make anything almost any other time of year, for Liam Neeson revenge trillers and phoned-in Nicolas Cage performances. With a lack of dramatic offerings and horror films, I’ve combined them together with thrillers to give you nine films that will [...]

I load up on two things come the holiday season: turkey, award-contending dramas and brisket. Okay … three things. 3/4 of the year I devote my time almost exclusively to films I hope will merely entertain me. From end of November through part of February, I try and make sure I’m getting in my regular [...]

The good news (or bad depending on your tastes) is no romance this holiday season is coming with a hard Christmas angle. My list of five films (no. five is debatably in this category) contains a Shakespearean fantasy, a musical/dance film, an off-beat gay romance mixed with a conman comedy, a rom-com set during the [...]

The action slate for the Holidays this year has only one sequel (“Harry Potter”) unless you could a sequel to a film made 28 years ago. That would be “Tron: Legacy,” perhaps the most intriguing film on this list (and the most daring). The other films are all originals in some way or another, but [...]

I generally like to end these previews with comedy since there’s usually more comedies than any other genre each season. Laughter has a high place at the movies and that will never change. There’s no better way to feel you got your money’s worth in these days of high ticket prices than to at least [...]

It’s no secret: summer is action movie season. Studios usually place all their action films in summer (and now spring) so that the dramas can begin to stroll in in the fall. Well, that doesn’t mean there aren’t some action films (and some thrillers) out there worth seeing. In fact, sometimes these are the best [...]

If autumn has a favorite genre, it’s horror. Blockbuster action flicks have cooled down post-summer, dramas are a bit too far from Oscar-recognition time and comedies are spotty at best. Yet September/October is the time of year horror movies call home. At least one if not two horror films have great success at this time [...]

Our fall preview begins with the dramas. The fall is a peculiar time for drama. Most major/buzzworthy dramas debut at festivals in the fall and get released to the general public during the holiday season, but many Oscar gems have come from October and early November. And then there are the stinkers. Not every film [...]

Not really sure what all this “The Last Airbender” business is about? Neither am I — and neither is anyone born before 1990. Join me as a fumble my way through flash websites, Wikipedia and more in attempt to learn something about one of this summer’s biggest fantasy films. I’ve scrummaged through the elemental nations, [...]

At last, I’ve finished the Summer Movie Preview and what better way to end than with action, the genre summer movies are founded upon. There’s something about sun and stuff blowing sky high that just works like peanut butter and jelly. This summer has a lot of action to offer spanning different sub-genres from fantasy [...]