Natalie Portman stars in V for Vendetta, cast in a role unlike what I typically expect from her, a dialogue driven action movie with a serious tone to it. This movie even got me thinking a little bit about mankind’s intolerance of other man and how far society has to go to protect itself. I enjoy movies of this nature, you know the kind taking place in a not to distance future and not so distant problems, but a drastically different way of life. Something these movies always have in common is the civil rights ...

Synopsis

The concept of JAG is pretty simple, I mean, it’s A Few Good Men on the small screen, using sets and footage from other recent armed forces films and hopefully enough pretty people that viewers will enjoy it. However, that wasn’t the case initially, but JAG is one of those shows that helps prove how sometimes you’ve got to give enough time for people to catch onto it before it takes hold.

From week to week in Season One, the creators kept trying to find a female offic...

Synopsis

Back when it first aired on Comedy Central in a previous incarnation as a television series, Strangers With Candy was an interesting enough premise. Take a menopausally challenged, recently released prisoner named Jerri Blank (Amy Sedaris, Elf) who decides to return home for the first time in over three decades to try and get a new start and throw her into high school. Now, not knowing how good or bad the show did, it must have had some sort of following, because there’s a movie out ...

(Portions of this review have been pulled from the original one-disc version of Ronin, which can also be found in the reviews portion of the site)Synopsis

I think the only thing I remember about Ronin initially was that Robert DeNiro (Heat) was involved in some scandal involving a French "house of ill-repute" or something along those lines. But when Ronin was released, people quickly forgot about that mess, as what came from it was an action film that put a little more e...

Synopsis

With Casino Royale now out in theaters and being shown to a mostly positive audience, let’s all take a step back and remember that James Bond just celebrated an anniversary in 2002 with the release of Die Another Day. The film was the twentieth in the Bond legacy, and Brosnan’s fifth (and last) in the role. How does it stack up?

Directed by Lee Tamahori (Once Were Warriors), the film puts Bond in North Korea, attempting to procure some diamonds from a young Korean Col...

Opening

I knew that when they announced Guitar Hero 2 many moons ago, I would be running not walking to my local EB Games and procuring the game ahead of time. I mean what was there to not love about the first one, hard rocking music, every air guitarist's dream and addictive gameplay. I am happy to report that the second is more of the same; there are new songs, new levels of difficulty, and the same great gameplay albeit with a few new quirks. However, don't let that little flaw deter...

If the exploitation film is the dark underbelly of mainstream cinema, then the rape revenge movie is the dark underbelly (or one of those dark underbellies) of the exploitation film. It is a form that has more exemplars than many would like to think, and has extended its tendrils into the mainstream, whether that be in the form of made-for-TV movies or theatrical ones. Carol Clover, in her excellent study Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film sees a direct link between the most notorious o...

No monster movie is bigger than King Kong. AFI members recently considered King Kong to be the most influential film ever. The original King Kong has inspired more filmmakers, actors, and technicians than any film in Hollywood’s history. The score is considered the first modern film score. For the first time the music is timed to accent certain aspects of the action. Willis O’Brien practically invented movie special f/x with his revolutionary stop motion technique seen earlier on The Lost World. One of those filmma...

Synopsis

John Steinbeck, looking and sounding remarkably like James Ellroy, and coming across as surprisingly two-fisted given the overall tone of the movie, introduces a quintet of stories by O. Henry. “The Cop and the Anthem” features Charles Laughton as a dignified bum trying unsuccessfully to get himself arrested so he can spend the winter in a nice, warm prison (Marilyn Monroe is one of the top-billed, but she has only one brief scene here). “The Clarion Call” has Dale Robertson as a detective w...

I’ll come right out and say it. I don’t see what the big deal is with actor Owen Wilson. Sure he was funny in Wedding Crashers, but he always seems to play that super annoying character in his films that you just want to hate, but seemingly can’t sometimes feel sorry for. Such is the case in his recent 2006 affair with Kate Hudson and Matt Dillon entitled You, Me and Dupree.

Carl (Matt Dillon) and Molly (Kate Hudson) have just gotten married in the beautiful Hawaii islands. Dupree (Owen Wilso...