The Last Airbender arrives in movie theaters everywhere this week. After the creative and financial failures of his last couple of movies, M. Night Shyamalan has been given an even bigger budget to gamble on, at least using an established children’s property rather than his own concepts. Working with a cast of – … Continue reading
The paperback edition of The Strain is currently being stacked onto bookshelves as I type this sentence – its official release is tomorrow but I just came from a bookstore which is already selling it. I thought this would be a great time to reprint this review, which I originally posted as part of … Continue reading
At one point in the new big-budget romantic comedy Knight And Day starring Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz, one of the two leads turns to the other and, by way of reassurance, claims, “I’m pretty good at what I do.” It’s a line of dialogue that fits the story at hand, but also … Continue reading
You’ll probably make fun of me for admitting it, but I’m a big Adam Sandler fan. Doesn’t bother me if my opinions are judged differently because of it. I like what I like. I have my reasons. I mentioned a bunch of them here, a couple years ago. I’ll mention one more before this … Continue reading
The patchwork of entertainment news we get clobbered by most days is an eerie reminder of how little has changed since Bill Hicks prowled comedy stages, serving as a lonely voice of sanity out amongst the wilderness of institutionalized idiocy. I’ve written about Bill Hicks once before. I had seen David Letterman’s tribute to Hicks, … Continue reading
How many movies are there in the world? How many movies have been made since the invention of cinema, way back in those last years of the nineteenth century? These questions are just about impossible to answer, so how about this one: How many movies can one person see in a lifetime? And if that … Continue reading
City Island is a small movie about real people. Imagine that! No explosions, no talking animals, no drag queens talking about shopping, no British kids flying around on broomsticks, no overpaid Scientologists, and as far as I could tell, no computer animation. Nope, it’s just a story about a small Italian family and … Continue reading
It’s about time. I mean, really. We are all of us trapped in a weird moment right now, a cultural moment that isn’t remotely friendly to the red-blooded American male. We’re being battered by Sex And The City and Twilight, by American Idol and Glee, by Lady Gaga and Katy Perry and the Black-Eyed … Continue reading
The Hit is a British gangster film from 1984, an early effort from Stephen Frears (The Grifters, Dirty Pretty Things) who has a diverse filmmaking resume but is arguably at his best with unsparing crime movies like this one. And the British gangster film tradition is a particularly unsparing one. From Get Carter (1971) to … Continue reading
First of all, “Spaghetti” is in quotes up there because Sergio Leone reportedly never liked the term “Spaghetti Westerns.” I may have to use the term because that’s how the genre is commonly known, but if Sergio didn’t dig the nomenclature then I don’t either. Respect. Anyway. Last week, The Onion’s … Continue reading