500 Days of Summer

Within Marc Webb’s film, 500 Days of Summer, I experienced a mixture of emotions–but none of them were negative. Traveling through the highs and lows of two twenty-somethings treading through what may or may not beRead Full Review

Funny People

There’s a rather interesting dynamic within Funny People, Judd Apatow’s latest comedy. The film delivers on its promise, and it is choc-filled with many, many funny people whether they’re playing themselves or not. But the film’sRead Full Review

The Hurt Locker

War is a drug. So says a quote which scrolls before Kathryn Bigelow’s latest film, The Hurt Locker. For just over two hours, the film will go on to explain that statement in grave, sometimes dangerousRead Full Review

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Can I correctly comment on Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince without ever reading any of the books and ignoring all except one of the films (Sorcerer’s Stone)? Probably not, but I’m going to anyway. With aRead Full Review

BRÜNO

I don’t believe I’ve ever seen an R-rated film get away with as much as the film Brüno has just gotten away with. When you consider that this same director-star tandem had earlier collaborated on the equally-abrasive Borat inRead Full Review

Moon

Duncan Jones may be the next big name in films, and I’m not just biased because his father is Ziggy Stardust. His first feature, Moon is a film which is nearly impossible to pull off, and evenRead Full Review

Whatever Works

Within the span of Woody Allen’s long and prolific career, he has surely recycled some themes about love and life. He has some very devout opinions about the way humanity carries itself and those strongRead Full Review

Public Enemies

Public Enemies may be one of the most revolutionary gangster films ever made. Or it may not be. I don’t think the film, or its filmmakers, care either way. Michael Mann, the best stylist behind theRead Full Review

Away We Go

After the enormous success of American Beauty, filmmaker Sam Mendes has been biding his time on melodramatic froth and getting Kate Winslet pregnant. Road To Perdition was a beautifully-lit father-and-son drama; Jarhead was a poor man’s Three Kings; and Revolutionary Road was, thoughRead Full Review

The Hangover

It has seemed that the dynamo mystique of Las Vegas has grown over the last few years. Many commercials barrage our screen with that all-too-familiar phrase: “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas”. All that said,Read Full Review

Anvil: The Story of Anvil

They say that comedy comes from tragedy. One of the funniest films that I’ve ever seen, This Is Spinal Tap, follows this theory, as we watch a has-been 80’s hair band trying to stay alive inRead Full Review

Up

Every once in a while, there comes a film so beautifully made and told in such a heartfelt fashion that it will lead even the most emotionally-reserved toward their catharsis. Up, the new film from theRead Full Review

The Soloist

Steve Lopez has been a respected staff writer for the Los Angeles Times newspaper since 2001, and the most memorable thing he ever uncovered during his work there was revealing the stunning life of NathanielRead Full Review

Adventureland

Greg Motolla’s Superbad was an immensely popular coming-of-age story about two unpopular teenagers trying to get laid during one crazy night. The film was penned by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg and contained some of the mostRead Full Review

Monsters vs. Aliens

It looks like 3-D films have come back with a vengeance. Close to all major animated releases now are being optioned as 3-D pictures (and lets not forget IMAX, as well). Sure, these films dueRead Full Review

Duplicity

When you make a film as good as Michael Clayton, the expectation for your follow-up is obviously going to be very high. Tony Gilroy had been kicking around Hollywood for years as a scriptwriter, which isRead Full Review

Sunshine Cleaning

Sunshine Cleaning has been heavily touted in its previews as “from the producers of ‘Little Miss Sunshine’”. It’s usually the phrase in the largest font on the poster. When you have a film starring Amy Adams,Read Full Review

I Love You, Man

For almost a century, the romantic comedy film has followed the same formula successfully. One person finds another person, at first they may not seem like the right match, but through a series of chanceRead Full Review

Two Lovers

You’d think something along the lines of “Joaquin Phoenix’s final performance” would have a bit of esteem to it, but you wouldn’t know because Phoenix has gone out of his way to throw his reputationRead Full Review

The Class

Like the last few winners of the coveted Cannes Film Festival Palme D’or award, The Class is a film that is exceedingly difficult to describe plot-wise. It’s particularly interested in a French class in an inner-city ParisianRead Full Review

Watchmen

I believe what we have in Watchmen is the first “superhero film” that truly transcends the genre. At one time a fascinating visual experience, and at other times a mind-bending metaphor for the self-destructive gene of humanRead Full Review

Coraline

I grew up within a generation that owes a great deal of its culture to the film The Nightmare Before Christmas. Without that film, there would be no emo, and goth would have never become asRead Full Review

Last Chance Harvey

When you think of that great crop of method actors that came out during the late 60’s and early 70’s, our minds directly go to Jack Nicholson, Al Pacino, Robert DeNiro, and occasionally we thinkRead Full Review

The Wrestler

A lot of people think that wrestling is fake. The soap opera between the good guys and bad guys are very fake, and so is a majority of the choke holds and punches. But whenRead Full Review

Bride Wars

Think of the plot of Bride Wars: two women who are best friends become mortal enemies as they both get in the way of the other’s perfect wedding. Think about how dull that sounds on paper.Read Full Review

The Reader

It’s an old Hollywood theory that if you make a film dealing with the Holocaust and release it during Christmas time you’re sure to cash in on gushing critical fervor, and subsequently awards will flowRead Full Review

Gran Torino

If anybody can play tough at the age of 78, it’s Clint Eastwood. The man has spent the last forty years spreading out squint-inducing intimidation and that has made him a living legend in moreRead Full Review

Doubt

There are few acting talents in American cinema as titanic as either Meryl Streep or Philip Seymour Hoffman, so to have the two going toe-to-toe within Doubt is a cinephile’s dream. The film was written and directedRead Full Review

Slumdog Millionaire

Danny Boyle has made a career out of making films that are based purely on energy. Trainspotting perfectly captured the heroin-induced, techno-blasting lifestyles of a group of Scottish junkies. 28 Days Later was a film which used it’s grittyRead Full Review

Australia

Lo and behold the most grandiose film of the year, Australia. It’s been seven years since the last time we saw Baz Luhrman behind the camera. He’s the man behind such sensory assaults as Romeo + Juliet and MoulinRead Full Review

Frost/Nixon

Frost/Nixon is not the first film to showcase the most infamous president in American history, but its probably the best. Nixon is such a mystical figure in political folklore, as well as a physical representation ofRead Full Review

Milk

The passing of Prop. 8 in California. The loss of Brokeback Mountain at the Oscars to the trivial Crash. All symbols that even in today’s seemingly advanced society, there is still severe prejudice against the homosexual community. MoreRead Full Review

I’ve Loved You So Long

When we think of the great premiere films from directors, our minds automatically go to Citizen Kane for Orson Welles, Blood Simple for the Coen Brothers, and most recently Michael Clayton for Tony Gilroy. You can add I’ve Loved You SoRead Full Review

Synecdoche, New York

Everything that I’ve admired about films penned by Charlie Kaufman is the limitless creativity and fearlessness in which the strangeness is unleashed. After Being John Malkovich, Adaptation., and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I figured that thereRead Full Review

Happy-Go-Lucky

Certain actors would have to spend years to pull off the balancing act that Sally Hawkins performs in Mike Leigh’s new film, Happy-Go-Lucky. It is a work of delight, charisma, and poignancy all wrapped up intoRead Full Review

Role Models

Role Models is a nifty little comedy. It holds a formulaic plot, but not the kind that makes you gag, but the kind that draws attention to the plot and not the formula. Despite popular belief,Read Full Review

Changeling

The story of Christine Collins is the kind that is tailor-made for a filmmaker for Clint Eastwood. Powerful, long-winded, and profound, Changeling is not a huge stretch, thematically or stylistically, from the last couple of films EastwoodRead Full Review

Zack and Miri Make a Porno

Kevin Smith is a genius when it comes to writing smart, irreverent, and most of all hilarious dialogue. His films Dogma, Chasing Amy, and Clerksare brilliant exercises in the extremity of what “dirty words” are. Not only that,Read Full Review

Rachel Getting Married

Jonathan Demme is an Oscar-winning filmmaker who has made such seminal films as Melvin and Howard and The Silence of the Lambs. The last few years of his career have been plagued by unneeded remakes (The Manchurian Candidate, TheRead Full Review

W.

The administration of George W. Bush has been one of the most shameful in American history. It has everything: deceit, violence, religious fanaticism, essentially anything except for infidelity (And the Republicans call Democrats heathens justRead Full Review

Flash of Genius

I don’t really know how much significance the intermittent windshield wiper has had on our lives, but both the film Flash of Genius, and the film’s subject Dr. Robert Kearns, feel that it has had tremendousRead Full Review

Blindness

Fernando Meirelles’ new film Blindness was chosen to open up this year’s Cannes Film Festival, which is a great honor in the film world. It was universally panned by all the critics there, and passed off asRead Full Review

Religulous

Bill Maher is not someone who is confused about his ideals. He has spent a career in stand-up comedy, and most recently, hosting his HBO show ‘Real Time with Bill Maher’, blasting everything he couldRead Full Review

Choke

What is Choke? It’s hard to say, really. It’s hardly a comprehensible film, nor is it an adequately told story. The only way I can hope to describe it, is to say that it is anRead Full Review

The Duchess

We look upon the 18th Century lifestyle with such romanticism, and envision it as a period of grace and beauty. But as films such as The Duchessremind us, it was also a time of unbridled tyrannicalRead Full Review

Miracle at St. Anna

Spike Lee is one of the seminal talents in cinema, but his reputation is usually tainted by thoughts that he is a “paranoid Black man”–which no doubt he occasionally lives up to, himself. The shameRead Full Review

The Lucky Ones

Certainly I believe Neil Burger when he says that the script of The Lucky Ones–which he co-wrote–is not meant to be an homage to the classic film The Best Years of Our Lives. Of coarse, it’s nearlyRead Full Review

Righteous Kill

The other day I watched the film Heat for the first time in a long time. It was famous when it came out for being the first film ever to have all-star actors Al Pacino and RobertRead Full Review