Marvel Studios continues to create ambitious, successful superhero movies with Iron Man 3 – the best of Tony Stark’s solo adventures to date. This time out, Stark is suffering post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of having his world upended in The Avengers – leaving him vulnerable both physically and emotionally. While Iron Man 3 […]
Category: Movie Reviews
Pain and Gain! Who knew Michael Bay could do a dark, quirky movie? Michelle’s Review
What happened to Mark Wahlberg? First Ted and now Pain and Gain it seems like he has completely embraced every comedic stereotype some people have of him and have used it to great effect. This is one of those rare movies where it is impossible to create a trailer that does it dark, twisted, and […]
Pain & Gain: Mostly Pain; Not Much Gain!
Although Pain & Gain is based on a true story (the opening narration goes, ‘unfortunately, this is a true story’), Bay treats it as though it was some weird The Three Stooges Go on a Crime Spree filtered through a heightened color palette.
Oblivion – It’s the End of the World As We Know It!
Joseph Kosinski’s Oblivion is a big movie that takes some familiar ideas and combines and reshapes them in interesting ways. It is a film with breathtaking visuals, epic themes and intimate moments in combination with some unique action sequences. It is also a film that requires its audience to pay attention – at, more so […]
Trance: Tense, Trippy Heist/Psychological Thriller Hybrid!
Danny Boyle’s unsuccessful films are more interesting than most directors’ good ones. Trance – a genre-bending heist/psychological thriller hybrid – is not one of his unsuccessful movies.
Evil Dead 2013 – Rare remake that works! Michelle’s Review
Evil Dead is one of those mythical cult films that everyone talks about in hushed awe, but it somehow escaped me. After finally watching it on Netflix, I have to say – I was not impressed. I walked into this remake with very low expectations and was surprised by how much I liked this movie. […]
Evil Dead – Pretty Groovy!
Remakes tend to be awful – not always, but most of the time – and yet, hope lives eternal. Evil Dead not only had the stamp of approval from the original film’s creators, they also produced it – so there was some cause for hope. Of course, it also followed Joss Whedon’s Cabin in the […]
Jurassic Park 3D is a Great Ride!
Jurassic Park is a film that was just made for 3D – even though it wasn’t actually made for 3D.
G.I. Joe: Retaliation is Infinitely Superior to Rise of the Cobra!
G.I. Joe: Rise of the Cobra was one of the worst films of 2009 so almost anything would have been an improvement. G.I. Joe: Retaliation may have been constrained by plot devices set up in the first film – a Cobra operative in the White House, for example – but it plays off them with […]
The Host is cold, antiseptic, and unintentionally funny. Michelle’s Review
While I was never a fan of Stephenie Meyer Twilight Saga, I have to say I admire any author who manages to come out of nowhere and take over the book world. Her follow-up to Twilight was the quiet, self-reflective The Host. It has all the same trappings of her first series – an annoying […]
The not so good Oz The Great and Powerful – Michelle’s Review
I’m not going to go on and on about how much I love The Wizard of Oz. All right thinking people love the 1939. After the huge Broadway success of Wicked there was bound to be a modern film version that minds that well. At one point there were several different studio versions of a […]