“NO! You must not read from the book!” The setting: a family vacation cabin deep in the woods. The setup: Mia (Jane Levy) is a junkie trying to get clean with the help of family and friends. The twist: the missing squatters who broke into the cabin were possibly into witchcraft, and they left something […]
Guess there’s some life left in G.I. Joe after all. After yet another betrayal (sensing a pattern here), the covert operations team codenamed G.I. Joe is all but wiped out. Their enemy, COBRA, has launched a new plan to subvert freedom (check) and conquer the world (check). Roadblock (Dwayne Johnson), Flint (D.J. Cotrona) and Lady […]
A clever prequel that enchants without offending. Small time carnival con-man and magician Oz (James Franco) dreams of greatness but has a small-time mentality (not to mention a weakness for pretty faces). When circumstances force him into a hot air balloon that gets sucked up by a tornado, he is transported to a magical land […]
After a solid, edge-of-your-seat beginning, the ending reeks either of studio interference or amateur writing. Jordan (Halle Berry) is a 911 operator at “the hive,” a nickname given to the Los Angeles police dispatch facility that coordinates all emergency services for the area. When a teenager calls in to report an attempted break-in, Jordan does […]
Instead of a celebration of classic horror films and the imagination of Tim Burton, Frankenweenie is more a reminder of why “the good old days” seemed a lot better back then. In the town of New Holland (looking eerily like the sanitized suburb from Edward Scissorhands), a young boy named Victor (voice of Charlie Tahan) […]
This film’s biggest problem is the title; it’s wrong. It is a period of civil war. The sixteenth President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln (Daniel Day-Lewis), is under pressure to end the American conflict. His desire to pass a 13th amendment to the US Constitution and abolish slavery for all time can’t be won […]
Think Army of Darkness rather than Van Helsing, an R-rated version of the famous Brothers Grimm tale that’s a bit of ridiculous fun. After being led by their father into the woods as children, Hansel and Gretel discover a house made of candy and cake owned by a witch. After foiling the witch’s plan to […]
Almost forty years after the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Leatherface returns (no surprise there) but it’s not a reboot (surprise!) After a quick recap of the original story, the local sheriff (Thom Barry) fails to keep of bunch of local rednecks from taking the law into their own hands. The only survivor of their wrath […]
Denzel Washington’s one-note character is a prisoner of a one-thought plot. Meet Whip Whitaker (Denzel Washington), a second-generation flyboy who spends more time in a bottle than he does asleep, but only barely. After a fateful night of boozing and bedding his unnecessarily naked stewardess Katerina (Nadine Velazquez), he casually does a line of cocaine […]
