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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The short story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, is a good story, not a great one. It’s a charming tale about a man born 5’8”, with the mind and bodyRead Full Review

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

Within Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, we see a prime of example of a film that wants to have its cake and eat it too. The film urges the audience to believe that these characters areRead Full Review

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Less than eight months ago, the Coen brothers were being hailed as cinematic geniuses while they’re harrowing film No Country For Old Men won four Academy Awards, including those for Best Picture and Best Director(s). So, howRead Full Review

Ninety-nine percent of all movies have a pretty clear distinction between who is good and who is bad. Within the first fifteen minutes, usually, we know who we want to root for, and who weRead Full Review

It’s not that far out of the realm of reality that something along the lines as a sequel to William Shakespeare’s Hamlet could actually be created, but we must ask that question that we do with anyRead Full Review

Both Penelope Cruz and Sir Ben Kingsley had films released earlier this summer which had me somewhat intrigued (Kingsley with The Wackness; Cruz with Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona). Both films were more than underwhelming experiences, thoughRead Full Review

With his massive success as a movie star, it’s easy to overlook Ben Stiller’s incredible talent as a filmmaker. He made the Gen-X classic Reality Bites in 1994, the overwhelmingly underrated The Cable Guy, a 1996 dark comedyRead Full Review

You can make the case that Woody Allen was the greatest filmmaker of the seventies or the eighties if the criteria was consistently great work, but since then it’s been mostly hit or miss. BasicallyRead Full Review

The stoner flick is a funny genre. Technically, the original Harold & Kumar film was a film about two young men and an adventurous night, but it’s considered a stoner film. The Big Lebowski is a hilarious take onRead Full Review

Being born in 1989, there’s seldom a time when I get to see a movie that is nostalgic for a time that I actually remember. Luckily for me, The Wackness is just that kind of movie. ARead Full Review