Any good film, book, essay or song has a grabber that catches your attention and hooks you through the rest of that work. “Speed” is a two-hour grabber. It is the consummate thrill-a- minute movie, the kind where all sins of bad acting and preposterous events are forgiven because the action and suspense are like […]

Lance Clayton’s (Wiiliams) son Kyle (Sabara) is a perverted and disrespectful jackass. He’s obsessed with pornography, despises music and movies entirely, is flunking his classes and most of all, he hates his dad. Lance is a failed writer trying to keep his job as a high school poetry teacher and his co-worker girlfriend. But all […]

Somewhere in the four-plus hours of film that New Zealand director Andrew Dominik shot for “The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford” has to be a cut fully capable of winning an Oscar for Best Picture. This version, however, is not it, but it’s beautifully filmed and supported by incredible acting. Length […]

Every comic-book fan has a fantasy lodged in the back of his or her head about what it would be like to be a superhero. “Kick-Ass” is the story of said average person and plays out that fantasy scenario under the most realistic conditions possible. How would being a superhero actually work in modern day? […]

Terrific, campy movie musicals don’t come around very often. How many films have been able to emulate the success of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show?” How many have even tried? “Reefer Madness” is about the closest any film has come to capturing the bizarre spirit of that cult classic. A film version of the Off-Broadway […]

Renowned guitarist Slash helps open Sacha Gervasi’s documentary on the band Anvil saying they helped inspire the metal movement in ’80s rock, but he also ends it by noting that despite Anvil never achieving the fame expected of them, that they’ve stayed together — which a lot of bands can’t say they have. That’s the […]

The Charles Dickens classic “Great Expectations” could not have been in better hands than David Lean’s. Though his later works would be the ones to earn him accolades, this film is just as special. Few directors can make a film feel grandiose while still paying close attention to the details like Lean. “Great Expectations” is […]

After “Jaws” launched him toward eternal fame in 1975, Steven Spielberg’s follow-up film would tackle a bigger cultural phenomenon: UFOs. “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” was only the beginning of the director/producer’s love affair with the possibility of life on other planets and the first to capture the magnitude of what first contact would […]

The plight of the nerd has taken many forms in film and television over the years, but none so genuine as “Revenge of the Nerds.” Amidst all the sex and party-obsessed college stereotyping and seemingly unrealistic projection of the high school nerds vs. jocks concept onto the college scene, these nerds are pretty likable characters […]

A thriller on the Trans-Siberian railway is not an everyday film premise and that is in part what makes “Transsiberian” interesting. It’s not typical in any way unless you count the connection between murder and trains. That, and its cast is quality without seeking out big- hitting names and its director, Brad Anderson (“The Machinist”) […]

Squarely on the shoulders of Al Pacino rests “Scent of a Woman,” a film of unlikely friendship and moral education spanning an epic 187 minutes. It is film built on memorable quotes and moments from Oscar-winning “One Flew Over the Cukoo’s Nest” adapter Bo Goldman as well as one unforgettable performance.

As a movie-lover, I had to see what all the fuss was about, so I watched “Twilight” despite minimal knowledge of Stephenie Meyer’s books. I didn’t like it, but felt it could be done better, so with Catherine Hardwicke switched out for Chris Weitz, I decided to see if the franchise could back-up its hundreds […]

There’s exploiting the criminal justice system and then there’s Clyde Shelton’s (Gerard Butler) exploiting of the criminal justice system, which involves killing everyone connected to it. Right and wrong is hardly black and white in any good movie and in “Law Abiding Citizen” it’s hardly a hundred shades of gray. Shelton is a man who […]

A good special-effects era mythology movie is bound to happen at some point, but we’re definitely still waiting. “Clash of the Titans” is merely a modern incarnation of the original that in the age of CGI monsters and impressive fight sequences plops lazily in the category of status quo, something its 1981 cult predecessor was […]

Admitably, there’s something innately satisfying about watching the hypothetical demise of the entire planet by means of natural disaster/earth crust displacement. There might even be something profound science fiction-wise lurking about in the concept of the Mayan apocalypse and the end of the world as we know it. For better or worse, “2012” is a […]