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Movie Review: I, Frankenstein
In the long history of horror fiction, few characters are as iconic and well-known as the Frankenstein monster. Mary Shelley’s creation has appeared hundreds of times across different media, and his name and image are instantly recognizable the world over. While the most famous cinematic depiction of the creature is, of course, Boris Karloff in James Whale’s Frankenstein (1931), many o...[Read More]
Movie Review: That Awkward Moment
Romantic comedies aren’t for everyone, but I’ll admit that they are for me. There, I’ve said it. Even your garden-variety now-only-five-bucks-on-the-end cap-at-Target flicks born from a script that’s been recycled dozens of times call to me. There’s just something comfortable about the genre. You know what’s coming. There’s a love story. There’s a wr...[Read More]
Pre-Code Hollywood 2: Music, Comedy, Action and Adventure
Pre-Code Hollywood studios spent millions transitioning their medium to sound and other new technologies that brought about major advances in photography, lighting, and set design. But there were still five million unemployed people in the United States and many more just getting by. The studios were losing money, many of them going bankrupt. By 1930 the breadlines were longer than the ticket line...[Read More]
Pre-Code Hollywood: Gangsters, Monsters, and Dames
I must have been about 12 years old when I first saw Tarzan and His Mate. I loved the Tarzan movies. Tarzan was the undisputed King of the Jungle and was the greatest, Cheetah was man’s best friend, Boy was annoying, and Jane was the Queen of the Jungle and a young male’s introduction to the allure of the female. The uncensored version, with a naked Jane silhouetted while changing clothes in a bac...[Read More]
Trailer Trashin’: Sam Rockwell and Olivia Wilde Live It Up in Better Living Through Chemistry
Hello again, dear readers. It’s the last week of January, and that means that we’re almost halfway through the early-year movie doldrums. This week’s installment of Trailer Trashin’ takes a look at this spring’s upcoming comedy-drama Better Living Through Chemistry. Premise: Straight-laced pharmacist Douglas Varney’s (Sam Rockwell) uneventful life spirals out of...[Read More]
Movie Review: Gimme Shelter
The story, Gimme Shelter centers on Agnes “Apple” Bailey played by Vanessa Hudgens. The film is based on the true-life story of a sixteen year old living with her drug addict/prostitute mother June Bailey (Rosario Dawson). Apple grows up never knowing her father, moving from foster home to foster home, in and out of the system, dependent upon a mother that cannot keep it together. She holds onto h...[Read More]
Trailer Trashin’: Nick Frost Gets His Groove Back in Cuban Fury
Let me start by apologizing for my longer-than-expected absence, dear readers. I’ve been very busy lately, and there’s been a serious lack of trailers which I felt compelled to write about. But I’m finally back, and this week I’m revisiting the upcoming British comedy Cuban Fury. Premise: Former teen salsa champion Bruce Garrett (Nick Frost) is now a sad-sack engineer. But ...[Read More]
Movie Review: Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit
Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit is a re-boot of the character that Tom Clancy created back in 1984 in his book The Hunt for Red October. Several novel and movie sequels later we are re-introduced to Jack Ryan (Chris Pine) thru this film. His origins are updated to fit with contemporary American history. We meet Jack as post-grad student in London studying Economics. He abruptly opts to join the USMC, du...[Read More]
Movie Review: The Legend of Hercules
The Legend of Hercules is a dreadful origin film about the titular hero from Greek myth. Here, the fabled strong-man (played by Kellan Lutz) must overcome great adversity to accept who he is and what he must do to survive so that can become the hero he is destined to be. Hercules’ birth starts out, indirectly, from the desire of his mother-to-be, Queen Alcmene (Roxanne McKee), who dreams of living...[Read More]
Trailer Trashin’: Johnny Depp Goes into the Machine in Transcendence
Happy New Year, dear readers! For all of you who celebrate Christmas, I hope you had a good one, and it’s at last time for us to ring in 2014. This slightly belated first Trailer Trashin’ column of the year takes a look at another of my anticipated films of this year, Transcendence. Premise: Dr. Will Caster (Johnny Depp) is the foremost researcher in the field of artificial intelligenc...[Read More]
Movie Review: Grudge Match
While the movies have brought us many great sports films over the decades, boxing seems to hold a special place in film history, and has brought us some of the true classics of cinema history. And even as boxing has become less popular among the general American public, Hollywood’s love affair with pugilism has kept going strong. The twenty-first century has already brought us such acclaimed...[Read More]
Movie Review: The Wolf of Wall Street
Leonardo DiCaprio is electric in The Wolf of Wall Street, Martin Scorsese’s epic tale of excess and greed that just falls short of being a masterpiece. The actor plays Jordan Belfort as the viewer follows him through his decadent rise to the top of the Wall Street game. The Wolf of Wall Street is admittedly slight on the rags part of Jordan’s story. After a brief stint as an errand boy with a coup...[Read More]