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Zombieland: Double Tap Review – Not Quite Tapped Out Yet

Deirdre Crimmins — Fri, 18 Oct 2019 12:00:48 +0000

Ten years and sixteen days after the first Zombieland was released, we finally get to see what those crazy living humans have been up to all these years. Zombieland: Double Tap is a fun enough visit with familiar characters, though not nearly as much fun as the first film. Picking up essentially ten years after...

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The Art of Self-Defense Review: The Karate Thirtysomething Adult

Jason Gorber — Fri, 12 Jul 2019 12:00:09 +0000

On paper, Riley Stearns’ quirky, sinister dark comedy The Art of Self-Defense hits all its marks. It’s a bleak yet at times delightfully silly twist on rom-com tropes, with some kung-fu shenanigans thrown in for color. While the end result doesn’t quite land its punch, there’s still enough fun in the execution to make the...

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‘Cafe Society’ Review: Another Year, Another Woody Allen Movie

Philip Brown — Wed, 27 Jul 2016 19:00:53 +0000

The presence of a new Woody Allen movie is a way of confirming the passage of time more reliable than your hair and/or waistline. They come annually, whether we like it or not. Sometimes it’s hard to tell if Woody Allen himself likes it or not. It seems like a compulsion at this point, like...

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‘Now You See Me 2’ Review: Magic for (and by) Dummies

Philip Brown — Wed, 08 Jun 2016 19:00:32 +0000

It would be hard to defend ‘Now You See Me’ as a good movie. The ridiculous magic heist fantasy was far too silly and stupid (willfully and otherwise) for that. However, it was a fun movie often as amusing when it went wildly wrong as when it delivered genuine thrills and laughs. When I admit...

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‘Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice’ Review: Well, At Least It Looks Pretty

Philip Brown — Thu, 24 Mar 2016 04:00:19 +0000

After three years of studio hype and internet hate, ‘Batman v. Superman’ is finally here. Predictably, the first wave of reviews have been overwhelmingly harsh. However, for the most part, that reaction has been a little overblown. ‘Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice’ (just rolls off the tongue, don’t it?) is neither as good as...

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‘The End of the Tour’ Review: Why Not to Meet Your Heroes

Philip Brown — Thu, 27 Aug 2015 19:00:55 +0000

It’s amazing how well some seemingly uncinematic ideas can work as films. Take ‘The End of the Tour’. Based on an abandoned magazine interview that David Lipsky conducted with author David Foster Wallace (which was later published as a book), it’s a very Linklater-ian tale of two men seemingly talking about nothing. And yet within...

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‘American Ultra’ Review: The Stoner Supremacy

Philip Brown — Thu, 20 Aug 2015 19:00:07 +0000

The challenge in creating a cross-genre mashup is delivering a movie that manages to satisfy while going out of its way not to fall back on certain genre expectations. ‘American Ultra’ teeters on that very thin line throughout and comes out the other side reasonably unscathed. You can’t say the movie is perfect, but nor...

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The Trailer Park: Spectre of the Fun

M. Enois Duarte — Thu, 06 Aug 2015 16:00:29 +0000

This week’s collection of movie trailers center around the wonderful theme of espionage, including a mercenary who can’t his mouth shut, a sleeper agent from the most unlikely of places, and the legend that all spies aspire to be. ‘Deadpool’ Poor Ryan Reynolds. Has anyone had as much bad luck appearing in a comic book...

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‘The Double’ Review: Eisenberg Uncertainty Principle

Philip Brown — Thu, 19 Jun 2014 16:00:12 +0000

Richard Ayoade’s ‘The Double’ is based on a classic Fyodor Dostoevsky novel about existential angst and suicidal tendencies, but it’s also a hilariously quirky comedy. That combination shouldn’t be possible, or at least should lead to an ill-conceived mess, yet somehow Ayoade pulls it off in his continued quest to become to most underrated director...

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‘Rio 2’ Review: Bird-Brained Family Entertainment

Philip Brown — Fri, 11 Apr 2014 14:00:39 +0000

In the grand scheme of animated family comedies, ‘Rio’ fell right in the middle of mediocrity. The movie had cute animals, celebrity voices and a message about individuality. It was everything that we’ve come to expect with the genre but absolutely nothing new, special or different tossed in. However, simply by virtue of being adequate,...

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Now Playing: ‘See’ Worthy

Bryan Kluger — Fri, 31 May 2013 15:00:07 +0000

Mixing parts of ‘The Illusionist’, ‘The Prestige’ and a healthy dose of ‘Ocean’s Eleven’, director Louis Leterrier’s ‘Now You See Me’ is a heist movie involving four magicians. The illusions in the film are over-the-top but incredible, and despite the film’s flaws, its super fast pace helps its problems vanish from memory. With an all-star...

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The Trailer Park: Parlor Tricks & Bank Heists

M. Enois Duarte — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 20:00:34 +0000

Is it safe to suggest that magicians and illusionists are making a comeback? Probably not, but today’s trailers feature a pair of films that seem to think otherwise. ‘The Incredible Burt Wonderstone’ As always, Steve Carell promises laughs by playing a loser without a clue. Yet the movie itself doesn’t look all that amusing, even...

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