From Paris with Love
A beautiful movie in terms of cinematography, the shots shown in between the explosions and gunfire are absolutely gorgeous but sadly the rest of this movie falls short of setting the bar on anything. If there was a cookie cutter method to creating action movie, From Paris With Love is the result of it. All it seems to take is a shallow story, a super-human badass , a semi-normal sidekick... [Read more]
The Book of Eli
When you go in to see The Book of Eli you probably will do so with an empty slate, unless you have dug up the plot and secrets from an online source or big mouthed friend. The trailers don’t give us much, we just know there is a book and Denzel Washington cutting down bad guys on a barren landscape. The draw for this movie as opposed to my article on A-list actors not filling seats, is... [Read more]
Daybreakers
It always feels good to see writers shoot for a different twist to the over-saturated vampire genre. 2009 while being a positive year for movies in general, was also a bad year for monster movies as the popularity of the Twilight series spawned a ton of badly written scripts in the form of would-be vampire flicks. As a fan myself of the classic novels and the movies that followed –... [Read more]
Blood and Bone
Straight to DVD action movies all have a common theme that the people who rent/purchase them accept over the outsiders that scoff at them. The theme that I am referring to is the “action over everything else” mainstay. Steven Seagal and Jean Claude Van Damme made a mint from these films in the early 90s and a small but dedicated fan-base (myself included) continue to support them.... [Read more]
Avatar – 3D IMAX
If the visuals don’t hook you then the battle sequences will. Wow, where to start – the anticipation for James Cameron’s Avatar was for a lack of a better word, uncomfortable since the day I was treated to 15 minutes of teaser footage at the local AMC. The 15 minutes of eye candy solidified my interest in the movie and as the nay-sayers multiplied, I stood my ground in knowing... [Read more]
Ninja Assassin
Do you like Ninjas? Do you like kickass choreography, ninja magic and shredded karateka performing the stunts in concert? Then you just might like Ninja Assassin, the latest kickback to the 80s after skinny jeans, embarrassing spandex clothing and forgettable music… okay I kid, I kid. Ninja Assassin reminded me of the old Sho Kosugi movies like Pray for Death, Nine Deaths of a Ninja and... [Read more]
Black Dynamite
“But Black Dynamite I sell drugs in the community!” Dynamite! Dynamite! Before I get into this review of possibly the greatest spoof to cross the silver screen in the last decade or two, I feel that I should explain blaxploitation. After watching Black Dynamite and hurting myself beyond hope with laughter, I thought about why it is that I found the movie hilarious and why younger,... [Read more]
Astro Boy (2009)
I’m probably in the minority of reviewers who watched and loved the original black and white cartoon Astro Boy yet found this CGI movie to be quite good. David Bowers, the Director of Flushed Away brings us an adaptation of the original Manga Tetsuwan Atomu (The Mighty Atom), later transferred to the American screen under the name Astro Boy. For lovers of anime, Ozamu Tezuka’s Astro... [Read more]
Zombieland
Welcome to Zombieland, a light serving of black comedy about the world being overrun by, you guessed it, zombies. Without boring us with an explanation as to why… check 28 Days Later and Dawn of The Dead for explanation, we are made to follow a young college student (Jesse Eisenberg) on his journey to Columbus, Ohio in hopes of finding his parents. Columbus (each character is named... [Read more]
Surrogates
Although it felt immensely parallel to Mark Neveldine’s Gamer, Surrogates explores the scarier side of avatar life when people opt for living through robots instead of their own bodies. With the charisma and macho swagger that Bruce Willis brings to the screen and the talents of Ving Rhames, James Cromwell and Boris Kodjoe, what really ended up disappointing me was the unimpressive... [Read more]
Gamer
What’s cool about Gamer is that it holds elements that are true to the Sims, MMORPG, Second Life experience. Every FPS player, MMO dabbler and anonymous degenerate can feel at home in the world of Ken Castle (Michael C. Hall). We are given the ultra-futuristic computer experience where the 3rd dimension pushes into the 4th and polygons are replaced by real, living, breathing human beings.... [Read more]
Inglourious Basterds
It starts out in the beautiful fields of a French landscape, with the usage of a gritty type of film and natural sounds. To begin a movie like this was reminiscent of Ridley Scott’s Gladiator and the flashback to Maximus and his family within the fields prior to his capture, breaking and enslavement. The inevitable calm before the storm. Although I knew the storm was coming, I didn’t... [Read more]
