Cinemascoping

If director Jason Reitman wants you to take anything away from his new film Men, Women and Children, it’s the knowledge that the internet is a very bad thing, I mean a REALLY bad thing, an awful, irredeemable BAD THING! This Pandora’s Box of the 21st century is responsible for all of our societal ills […]

Being harshly critical of a movie like Charlie Martin Smith’s A Dolphin Tale 2 is akin to kicking a puppy that’s been chewing on your shoes in the teeth.  Yes, corrective measures should be taken with the dog but that sort of overkill is criminal.  Giving a lukewarm review to this harmless film won’t land […]

On the surface, John Erik Dowdle’s As Above, So Below appears to be a typical horror movie populated with stereotypes stuck in an all-too familiar situation.  However, it quickly becomes apparent that what with its uncommonly intelligent script and its precise, economic execution that this low-budget fright film is a cut above the typical genre […]

More times than not, there’s a recurring problem where most faith-based movies are concerned – they’re often less-than subtle in delivering their message, which is ironic because for the most part they’re preaching to the choir.  Such is the case with Thomas Carter’s When the Game Stands Tall, a fact-based film based on the book […]

Classic Pick of the Week – The Magnificent Ambersons  (1942) Orson Welles was more than up to the task of following up Citizen Kane (1941) as he planned to make a sweeping, familial saga set at the turn of the century by adapting Booth Tarkington’s novel The Magnificent Ambersons.  Unfortunately, the studio heads at RKO […]

R.J. Cutler’s If I Stay is pitched squarely to teenage girls, of which I am not, who are susceptible to melodramatic plots and doomed love stories.  Though I fall firmly out of this demographic, that’s not to say that I couldn’t enjoy or become engaged with a film dealing with a bright young woman on […]

As the old saying goes, timing is everything and Philip Noyce’s adaptation of Lois Lowry’s novel The Giver is suffering from being a bit too late to the party where big screen versions of young adult literature is concerned.  This is ironic and unfortunate as the novel, which has become a middle school staple since […]

It’s been a rough year where deaths in the world of film are concerned. While we acknowledge their passing and recognize the inherent misfortune that accompanies these events, we only begin to recognize the importance of these losses, from an artistic point of view, when we see them at work. Such is the case with […]