By Chad Jarrah

This movie had so many things going against it when I first popped the tape into the VCR, that it couldn’t be any good. The first of these problems was exactly that: I had to pop a tape into a VCR. I had not used a VCR in so long, that when I did, it felt old and clumsy. A bad omen for the prospects of this film. There were other reasons why I had to hate it. One, my two year old nephew was scribbling on my notes for a significant part of the movie. Two, watching this movie meant that there was two hours of time where I couldn’t feed my relentless online gambling addiction. Three, I was being forced to watch this film against my will. A few months earlier, I had made my brother-in-law watch a movie and managed to successfully dodge his reprisal thus far. Now he was returning the favor. The guilt trip lasted three days until I eventually gave in.

continue reading "Things to do in Denver When You’re Dead (1995) Review"

By Jake Dee

Director: Tony Goldwyn
Starring: Zach Braff, Jacinda Barrett
Released: 2006

Zach Braff is a mystery to me. Not so much the person, but his success really. Or should I say fortune? You can’t say he’s good looking can you? (Ladies back me up here). It’s not like he’s just another slab of eye candy that stars in pictures as way to attract ticket sales from young girls, is he? I mean, the guy looks like the mutant love child of Ray Romano and David Brenner, does he not?!? Can you honestly distinguish talent in Braff when he merely plays a wacky TV character in a market saturated with shows filled you guessed it…wacky TV characters? (But do I own Garden State? Never mind!)

continue reading "The Last Kiss Review"

By Corisa Moreno

Ouch! Ouch! Please stop beating me over the head with your secondary plot of pseudo-moral judgment calls. You are going to fracture my skull. You see, fracture means to crack or break something, not to make a movie about a murderer and a prosecutor that we really don’t care about.

Plot overview: Anthony Hopkins’ character, Ted Crawford, shoots his unfaithful wife, gets arrested and then begins to act like a bumbling old fool in order to pull off his oh-so-clever scheme. The assistant district attorney, Willy Beachum (Ryan Gosling) is a young hot shot who just landed a job at a big corporate firm. He gets Crawford’s case in his last week of work at the humble DA’s office. Should he stay at his low paying but righteous job or should he go make corporate bank? It is a hard, difficult and painfully soul-searching quest that Willy has embarked on. But ultimately, he needs to find that dang murder weapon.

continue reading "Fracture (2007) Review"

By Christopher Bucher

I can’t really complain, can I? The film’s title promised something, and delivered!

Many people, including myself, left the theater wanting the soundtrack to the film. Sarcastically so, because it was two and a half hours of the same four songs. Silent Hill anyone? Remember the air raid sound? The alarmingly scary noise that let you know that hell was on it’s way. Well, the sound is apparent in this film, and if you saw Silent Hill, you’d be on the edge of your seat.

continue reading "There Will Be Blood Review"

By Paul Bennett, A.K.A. Cralion

Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo 2008 wasn’t disappointing! It was as entertaining as the three that preceded it, and just as full of murder and mayhem. It isn’t recommended for children under age 13, or for the squeamish if blood, guts and gore aren’t your fare. However, for the teenagers of the 70’s, and to the geriatric set watching an aged Rambo hot-foot-it through the jungle gave much needed life to some of their pacemaker driven hearts. I dare say he rivaled the speed of Superman and the Flashes as he raced to outrun a bomb blast…that he caused!

continue reading "Rambo (2008) Review"

By Jake Dee

Director: Neil LaBute

Starring: Nicolas Cage, Ellen Burstyn

Released: 2006

Nic Cage is one of the few bankable stars left in Hollywood. Demanding a whopping $20 million per picture (sometimes in excess of), his films can still generate quite a box office stir. He fills seats as they say, and as reward for it, studios spit piles of money at him. Not every film of his hits, mind you, but by and large he does pretty well. I can’t figure it out really, the guy has played about three variations of the same role for the last decade plus. Slight variations at that! Ever since he panned Oscar gold in 1996 for his work as a suicidal drunk in Leaving Las Vegas, we’ve seen him play tepid roles in flicks like Face/Off, Con Air, City of Angels, 8MM, Snake Eyes, etc. etc. Then, by the turn of the century, Cage made an interesting departure in off beat films like Adaptation, Matchstick Men, even the Weather Man, to a degree. But alas, the real Nic Cage stood up in 2006, first with Ghost Rider and never more apparent than in Neil LaBute’s remake of The Wicker Man.

continue reading "The Wicker Man (2006) Review"

By Jim McFadden

For everyone who thought a thriller based on the pagan rituals practiced on remote Scottish islands would be interesting, The Wicker Man is an 88 minute rebuttal. Or, if you managed to get your hands on the “essential” UK Director’s cut, a 100 minute rebuttal. Either way, I think when the film’s over, you’ll be a believer.

Although this movie was remade starring Nicholas Cage, I decided to review the original because, well, it doesn’t star Nicholas Cage.

continue reading "The Wicker Man (1973) Review"

By Corisa Moreno

You know that feeling you get when time drags on and on and on and it’s still not 3:10? Well, add a choppy narrative, a ridiculous line of dialogue and top it with unbelievable action. And I don’t mean unbelievable as in the ‘I never saw that coming’ or ‘wow, that was so cool’ kind of action but rather in the ‘are you kidding me even the actors are wondering what is going on’ kind of way.

continue reading "3:10 to Yuma (2007) Review"

By Margaret Andrews

This movie is like It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World, only with more neo-Nazis and half the star power. A cast of crazy characters vie for the same destination in a race against time and each other, and for what? Money, of course.

continue reading "Smokin’ Aces Review"

By Alex Del Negro
(Editor’s Note: This review does not contain adult material, and no showgirls were harmed in the writing of it)

A note before I begin this review of Showgirls: I did not finish Showgirls.

Some may consider it unethical of me to review a film I never actually watched in its entirety. Some might think that I wasn’t giving the film a fair chance to redeem itself. Some may even believe, owing to my inability to make it through a horrendous and otherwise independently verifiably terrible film (Showgirls tied Battlefield: Earth in the number of Razzie Awards it won), that my review should henceforward be considered flawed and inaccurate in its entirety.

Some people are idiots.

continue reading "Showgirls Review"

By Edward Staiger

Directed by Mark Robson

Starring Patty Duke, Barbara Parkins, Sharon Tate, Susan Hayward

Going out on a limb can kill you. That’s exactly what happened to Patty Duke when destiny called and she agreed to star in what was then considered perhaps the hottest film project of the year. 20th Century Fox was bringing to the screen Jacqueline Susann’s racy runaway bestseller Valley of the Dolls, and even though always-ailing Judy Garland had already been dropped from the picture and replaced with less-illustrious but robust Oscar-winner Susan Hayward (I Want to Live, 1958), and even though Duke wasn’t the first actress to be considered for the plum role of Neely O’Hara, a singer-actress hooked by fame and barbiturates (at the same time), she was game. She was eager. Eager as a hurricane. Like Neely O’Hara, Duke was also dancing with her own (and much-publicized) demons - drugs, alcohol, plus, as an extra kick, a diagnosis of manic-depression waiting in the wings. As a child (prodigy), she’d already won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar portraying the young Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker (1962), but that limb she went out on called Valley of the Dolls also had buds - the limb broke, her film career was nipped in the bud. Nevertheless, in this ill-fated venture in which everyone involved also falls flat on their faces but which became a box office sensation, Patty Duke delivers what must be the most hysterically intense performance in film history/histrionics.

continue reading "Valley Of The Dolls (1967) Review"

By Nancy Johnson
When your husband says to you, “I’ve been watching you sleep at night”, run… girl run! Run oh dang too late! Anthony Hopkins had a major ‘fracture’ in his head and let me tell you I am scared and his piercing blue eyes are as cold as his wife’s dead body.

continue reading "Fracture Review"

By Chad Jarrah

Changing Lanes: One wrong turn deserves another. That’s what the tagline reads to this so-called thriller starring Ben Affleck and Samuel L. Jackson. I personally believe ‘One irrational and ridiculously exaggerated response to a disappointing series of events deserves another’ is a more appropriate hook for this painful waste of good film.

continue reading "Changing Lanes Review (2002)"

By David GrantIf you are looking for a mind bending movie this is not what you want to see. Two women (Cameron Diaz and Kate Winslet) switch houses (one in L.A., the other outside of London) and hilarity ensues. That is if your definition of hilarity is an improbable story line and Jude Law.

continue reading "The Holiday Review"

By Alex Del Negro

“Ghost Rider” serves as a perfect example of why we should not fear the devil. I, of course, already do not fear the devil, but then again I might be alone in this regard considering that not everyone has benefited from an early childhood exorcism program offered out of their local Y.M.C.A. Regardless, if there is one thing to be learned from both my kindergarten correspondence course and this film, it is this:

The devil is a terrible businessman.

continue reading "Ghost Rider Review"