I had another venture out to Las Vegas this week for an industry convention and I’ve been there so many times that most of its defacto charms no longer have any impact on me. One thing that has changed over the years is that now there are many major movie theaters. Back when I first […]

A young viking befriends an injured dragon to the dismay of most of his village in How to Train Your Dragon. Animated films are often a challenge for many adults — especially those without children. Some are clearly meant for a younger audience, while others offer a much wider appeal. When I saw the previews for this […]

This past weekend I saw the latest Ben Stiller movie; Greenberg. It’s a Noah Baumbach film which is a key point as Baumbach-written movies are a love-them/hate-them sort of affair. The story apparently came from wife Jennifer Jason Leigh who also has a role in the film (and who wears the most unattractive glasses I’ve […]

This past week I got around to seeing Tim Burton‘s incarnation of Alice in Wonderland. As a child I’d read the stories and found them a bit lacking. Maybe it was the female heroine. Maybe it was the goofy characters but I mainly felt they just weren’t very interesting stories. More to the point I […]

My best friend suggested we see something other than the big movie of the week and so we headed off to see The Ghost Writer. The reviews were all pretty glowing and it sounded like a curiously delicious film. The Ghost Writer stars Ewan McGregor as a successful (but unknown) ghost writer who’s given a […]

I’ve had mixed feelings about Martin Scorsese‘s films. Most recently we were offered The Departed and while much of it was clearly brilliant the plot had holes big enough to fly an airship through them. Seeing previews of Shutter Island made me think quite a bit about his past efforts and how many of them […]

As the blizzard of 2010 approached us I decided to go check out the new movie Frozen. It’s a lower-budget independent film that reminded me at once of Open Water—a no-frills movie shot almost entirely in a single oddly claustrophobic set with people you’ve never seen before. Let me say that I’ve enjoyed similar films […]

This past week I caught my first official film of the 2010 season and it was quite memorable. The film, A Town Called Panic, is quite a strangle experience but well worth the risk. I’ve come to realize that there’s no way to adequately explain the film as it all sounds absolutely ludicrous on the […]

This week found me stuffing in another 2009 film in Clint Eastwood‘s latest film Invictus. The movie focuses on a specific segment of Nelson Mandela‘s early Presidency in which he enlists the aid of the national rugby team to help cure the ills of his fragile country. Mandela, played exceptionally by Morgan Freeman (as if […]

I saw George Clooney‘s latest this past weekend—Up in the Air. The movie’s about a consultant who gets paid to fire people for companies that don’t want to do the dirty work themselves. It was a bittersweet experience to say the least. My job ended in July and I haven’t found anything myself yet so […]

I have to be honest and say that everything I saw about Avatar before it came out made me think it’d be a complete letdown if not a total disaster. The only hope I had was that it was being handled by James Cameron. Cameron has been through such concerns before. People may not recall, […]

Finally got around to seeing Fantastic Mr. Fox. This is the stop-action movie adaptation of the popular book by Roald Dahl. It’s impossible to see the movie and not compare it with the more famous Wallace and Gromit as it shares the same style, look, and feel. I should also mention that, try as I […]