Milli Godzilli. Godzilla takes a bite out of The Big Apple. And Ferris Bueller is there to stop him. After Japan’s Toho Company killed off its greatest property in 1995’s GODZILLA VS. DESTOROYAH, TriStar Pictures sought to fill the vacuum with its own American Godzilla that would blow the Japanese version out of the water, by utilizing state-of-the-art CGI visual … Read More
JOBS
Dude, Where’s My Computer? An uninspiring movie about an inspiring innovator, JOBS is a schmaltzy biopic of Apple Computer’s pioneering founder and edge-of-science-fiction visionary, Steven Paul Jobs (1955-2011). JOBS (written by Matt Whiteley and directed by Joshua Michael Stern) turns the life of this driven inventor madman thinking machine into a soppy three-act melodrama that hits all the requisite Hollywood … Read More
TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON
Big things breaking bigger things. I’m sure the budget of TRANSFORMERS: DARK OF THE MOON could wipe out Liberia’s deficit, so why can’t they afford passable look-alikes for Kennedy and Obama? And while they’re at it, how about a more adept graphic designer, so that when we see a picture of Obama and LeBeouf together, it DOESN’T look Photoshopped?! Director … Read More
UNSTOPPABLE
Train-ing Day. “In training they just give you an ‘F.’ Out here you get killed!” — Denzel in UNSTOPPABLE. Didn’t Denzel say that in his Oscar-winning TRAINING DAY? Same thing applies here in UNSTOPPABLE, a kinetic, racing steel headrush about an out-of-control, unmanned freight train a half-mile long, loaded with explosives, headed for the city of Pennsylvania. And only Denzel … Read More
CHAPLIN
The Man, The Myth, the Trousers. Robert Downey Jr. runs around like a madman, knocks things over and falls down a lot. (Cocaine’s a helluva drug.) And in CHAPLIN, he gets to do all that without being arrested… Baron Dickie Attenborough‘s CHAPLIN is a towering tribute to one of the pioneers of the motion picture industry – Charlie Chaplin, not … Read More
TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN
The PC-vs-Mac wars escalate. Well, what did you expect? If there is such a thing as “too many effects,” this movie has too many effects for TEN movies. Effects effects effects, for the love of God, effects. Just for the sake of effects. And then for the love of God, more effects. Stir. Vomit. Michael Bay directs TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF … Read More
LIONS FOR LAMBS
Roaring Thunder for Republican Muttonheads. Lest we forget: Robert Redford once brought down Satan Nixon in ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN; in LIONS FOR LAMBS, he goes for the neck-wattle of Demon W. Bush. Razor-sharp writing, controlled direction, magnificent performances, LIONS FOR LAMBS is a wake up call to America – wake up and smell the lunatic euphemisms the Republican administration … Read More
TRANSFORMERS
More Than Meets The Eye-Strain. The CGI prowess in the movie TRANSFORMERS almost makes us forget that this film is for people who still play with action figures. Directed by Michael Bay and his motion-sickness cameras, this overwrought production revolves around the All Spark, a mechanical-mystical cube that has knotted the steel knickers of two races of giant robots engaged … Read More
ALL THE KING’S MEN 2006
…couldn’t put this movie together again. At least Sean Penn doesn’t use ALL THE KING’S MEN as another vehicle to showcase his talent for crying on cue. With a down-home accent that needs subtitles more desperately than Mel Gibson’s ocker in MAD MAX needed overdubbing, Penn plays Louisiana politician Willie Stark, a rambunctious gadfly who attempts to usurp power from … Read More
DAVE
Electile Dysfunction. Rooted solidly in the “We Can Dream, Can’t We?” mold, DAVE follows the adventures of a stand-in for the American President who tries to rectify the administration’s shortcomings while “in office” – a grander fantasy than any cobbling from J.R.R. Tolkein. Despite the hypocrisy in trying to retain democracy’s visage by inserting a lookalike into the Presidential post without … Read More