Coming of age stories often come in two forms. Some explore the expansion and depth of a life just begun. Films like “My Life as a Dog” follow young adolescents as they blossom into a proto-sexual adulthood. The other type of coming of age story deals with the fleeting nature of life. In films like […]
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The Contrarian’s take on the Star Wars saga, out now on Blu-ray, with many changes by George Lucas.
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This review originally appeared on KTKA-TV and KSNT-TV, Kansas First News. Your ability to accept or not accept convenient plot devices and the ultimate sports movie formula will absolutely color your opinion of “Warrior.” A high-school teacher facing foreclosure on his family home and a haunted Iraq vet enter the same mixed martial arts tournament, […]
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“Drive” is probably gonna piss off a lot of casual movie-goers.
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With most films about sickness or contamination, the virus is employed as a socio-political metaphor either for other more emotionally charged illnesses such as HIV or for the fear and distrust surrounding cultural, ethnic or racial lines. In his new film “Contagion,” director Steven Soderbergh understands that a global epidemic is scary enough on its […]
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This review originally appeared on KTKA-TV and KSNT-TV, Kansas First News. An expanded review appears below. Here’s a scary fact about how easily disease can spread: The average person touches their face 3,000 times in a day. If the new global pandemic thriller “Contagion” was directed by anybody else, it would have had an enormous […]
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“Brendan has done the impossible! What’s happened is a miracle!” – fight announcer In 1985’s simplistic action fantasy “Rambo: First Blood Part II,” Sylvester Stallone plays a mentally scarred Vietnam veteran who gets released from prison to head an improbable top-secret government mission to rescue American POWs that were left behind. In other words, he […]
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It’s that time of the year again! The days are getting shorter, the kids are back in school, and the sweltering heat is starting to de-swelter. Could it be? YES! Fantastic Fest 2011 kicks off in less than three weeks! From Thursday, 9/22 through Thursday, 9/29, true genre movie lovers will gather primarily at the […]
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This review originally appeared in video format on KTKA-ABC, and KSNT-NBC: Kansas First News. Two movies, new out on DVD and Blu-ray now, examine violence in very different ways. Last year’s Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language film, “In a Better World,” directed by Susanne Bier, tells the present-day story of a doctor (Mikael Persbrandt) […]
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This review originally appeared on KTKA-TV and KSNT-TV, Kansas First News. Helen Mirren headlines an excellent ensemble cast in “The Debt,” a remake of a 2007 Israeli thriller about three Mossad agents hunting for a Nazi war criminal in East Berlin in 1965. Those same agents, played by different actors in 1997 Tel Aviv, deal with […]
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Some movies get rushed through production and hit theaters mere weeks after the final frame of film is shot. Others, for a variety of reasons, go through multiple edits and end up sitting on the shelf for years. A Good Old Fashioned Orgy (which was filmed back in the Spring of 2008) is the latter. […]
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This review originally appeared on KTKA and KSNT, Kansas First News. Here is a look at two movies new out on DVD and Blu-ray. Is it possible that two movies with similar titles could be any farther apart thematically than these two? “Priest,” starring Paul Bettany as a vampire hunter in an apocalyptic CGI-ed future, is […]
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As a mediocre to dismal summer for films marked by remakes, reboots, and revisits comes to a close, “The Debt,” a movie chock full of the familiar – international espionage, maniacal Nazis, and beautiful counteragents – arrives in theaters. Can three Israeli operatives stationed in East Germany to hunt a notorious war criminal save the […]
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“The Devil’s Double” takes a healthy production budget and a compelling true story complete with a character in impossible psyche-ravaging situations, and manages to turn a sure win into a dud. Based on the life of Latif Yahia, the double for Saddam Hussein’s psychopathic son Uday, “The Devil’s Double” should have been a fascinating character […]
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This review originally appeared in video format on KTKA-ABC, and KSNT-NBC: Kansas First News. This week, two movies that mix supernatural elements with comedy and drama are out on Blu-ray and DVD. First up is “Dylan Dog: Dead of Night,” starring Brandon Routh—who you may remember as Superman from Bryan Singer’s underrated “Superman Returns”—playing a […]
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