Great horror films are rare these days, and ghost stories are even rarer. The most memorable ghost story in recent years is The Orphanage by director J.A. Bayona and writer Sergio G. Sánchez, who were also the director and writer of last year’s The Impossible. It’s hard to get chills just right in a movie, […]
A noted paranormal investigation couple come to the rescue of a family whose new home transforms from dream to nightmare in the new horror film The Conjuring. In 1971, the Perron family scraped together everything they had to buy their first home in a beautifully wooded area of Rhode Island. This family of seven, including five daughters, […]
Rarely do I wish that a rumored casting decision favored the other person than the actor in the finished production. The Indiana Jones films would be quite different if Tom Selleck had put on the famous fedora. Even worse, Eric Stoltz was on his way to assuming the role of Marty McFly in the Back […]
Channing Tatum as a would-be Secret Service agent and Jamie Foxx as the President in need of protection star in the new action film White House Down. This action thriller starts off a bit story-heavy by introducing us to John Cale (Tatum), a U.S. Capitol cop trying to make the leap over to the Secret […]
Brad Pitt looks to save his family and, reluctantly, the rest of humanity from a new pathogen that turns the infected into bloodthirsty zombies in World War Z. Speaking of reluctance, I’ve never been a big fan of zombie films. I’ve generally found them to be as mindless as the zombies themselves. There have been […]
Zombies are all the rage these days thanks to the success of the TV series The Walking Dead, which follows a long line of other zombie films, TV shows, comic books and books. It all goes back to Night of the Living Dead, but there have been all kinds of interpretations that lead to unique […]
A freshly-recruited agent from a top-flight private intelligence company goes deep undercover to infiltrate an eco-terrorist group in The East. Relative newcomer Brit Marling, last seen as the daughter in Arbitrage and also the recent The Company You Keep, stars as an undercover agent named Sarah who is assigned by her boss (Patricia Clarkson) to gain the trust […]
There are a few people whom I would kill if given an opportunity, but I’ll keep that to myself just in case the events of The Purge come to pass in another decade. Set in a dystopian future where America treats crime in an entirely different method, this movie tries hard to establish a premise […]
The new film Now You See Me starts off with a wonderful opening scene involving some great examples of the craft in a real-world setting. We meet four solo — but very talented — magicians who each use magic for their own personal gain until, one day, they’re compelled to come together for the biggest feat of […]
As a huge fan of magic, I couldn’t wait for Now You See Me after I saw the trailer. Here was an attempt to use magic in a heist film to pull off the robberies. If it worked, it would be brilliant. If it failed, it would fail brilliantly. Unfortunately, things are never quite as […]
Car chases and other stunts have always been one of the most exciting elements of motion pictures. From the moment that cars were available, filmmakers included them in their plots. This led to memorable scenes in films as varied as The French Connection, Back to the Future and Thelma & Louise. The series that began […]
The potential long-term consequences of the choices we make come under the microscope in Derek Cianfrance‘s latest film, The Place Beyond the Pines. Luke Glanton (Ryan Gosling), a struggling motorcycle stunt rider, finds out that a past lover (Eve Mendes) has a baby boy that he fathered the year before. He decides that he has to […]