Many people questioned acclaimed director Martin Scorsese choosing to helm a pure genre film in the psychological thriller “Shutter Island,” but the marriage of one of the masters of crime drama and a Dennis Lehane (“Mystic River,” “Gone Baby Gone”) novel is as close to an ideal match as it sounds. Although Scorsese is capable […]

There comes a point in the repetitive nature of films where the phrase “run-of-the-mill” just won’t do. In the case of the remake of the train hijack/ransom heist thriller “The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3,” the mill has been running so much that maybe the more adequate phrase should be the past tense “ran.” […]

It’s been awhile since we’ve seen a good cat-and-mouse thriller done old school, and that’s exactly what “Public Enemies” is. Merely trade in your usual summer crime movie full of thieves in ski masks wielding uzis for ones wearing suits and fedoras armed with tommy guns and suddenly you’re getting entertained Great Depression-style. “Public Enemies” […]

David Lynch’s “Mulholland Dr.” is like one of those video games that the programmers make so amazing yet so impossibly difficult that in order to be fully satisfied you’re forced to buy one of those walkthrough game guides. The film might be a masterpiece, but it’s a Rubix cube of surrealism that prefers to leave […]

Here’s a link to my Funny People review, another DVD released today If we learned anything from the film adaptation of “The Da Vinci Code,” it’s that Dan Brown’s best-selling religion-centered mystery novels don’t translate into great films. Entertaining, sure, but great, no. The dialogue gets bogged down with historical explanation and the characters get […]

You can’t really classify “Donnie Darko.” It’s not really a horror film though many parts are told that way. It’s not really science-fiction although it is focused on time travel. It’s also not really a drama because it has several humorous parts. All that considered, it’s not surprising that the film fell under the radar […]

Murder mysteries don’t often indulge their audience’s intellectual capacity. They generally believe they can get by on suspense, intrigue and our inherent and insatiable need to find out ‘whodunit.’ But “Se7en” is a philosophical thriller that addresses a much bigger part of our nature – the age old question of whether or not humans are […]

Most investigative thrillers focus on detectives digging around for the answers, but “State of Play” opts to center around the desperate, miserable and dying newspaper industry. Simply put, the forces and pressures motivating a reporter are not like that on a detective, which makes for a much more unique plot with characters an audience can […]

“The Bank Job” is fun, so much fun that you kinda have to stare awkwardly at its “based on a true story” tagline. Did a bank robbery where the press was blacked out really happen? Was it really set up as a government operation to retrieve critical blackmail photos of Princess Margaret? Speculation aside, “The […]

In a post-9/11 era, moviegoers are no longer fazed by the idea that the government can utilize technology to the fullest extent in tracking and monitoring citizens. We also understand that this (debatably) infringes upon our civil liberties. Since then, dozens of films have warned us of the dangerous extent that technology can take us […]