If you’ve seen the 2006 surprise hit 300, you’ve basically seen 300: Rise of an Empire. This time, however, it’s not Greek King Leonidas (Gerard Butler) who is sacrificing everything for Sparta against the evil Persian god-king Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro) but Greek battle commander Themistokles (Sullivan Stapleton) sacrificing everything against, yes, Xerxes and the invading Persians. 300: Rise of an Empire basically takes place concurrently with the original 300 movie, where early in the film…Read More
Review: Olympus Has Fallen
The previews looked cool. I mean, it’s an audacious concept to have terrorists storm the White House and take the President of the United States hostage. What could go wrong with a fast-paced action movie that has that as the main plot device? The answer is everything. In fact, Olympus Has Fallen has no redeeming qualities at all. From acting to dialog, set pieces to special effects, exterior shots to the pace of edits, just…Read More
Best and Worst Films of 2010
According to Movieweb, there were 651 films released in 2010 and no, I didn’t see them all. In fact, there are some movies still on my to-watch list that I know will affect this article (including The Fighter and The Kids are All Right), but I hope to see them soon and add some additional commentary at that point. For now, however, I figure I saw maybe 100-150 new films this year, both clunkers and superb…Read More
Review: How to Train your Dragon
How to Train your Dragon, the latest film from Dreamworks Animation, tells the story of Hiccup (Jay Baruchel), a young Viking and the only son of village chief, blacksmith and single dad Stoick The Vast (Gerard Butler). Hiccup is a disappointment to his father because he’s a klutz and not interested in slaying the dragons that constantly attack their village and steal their livestock. Hiccup is also attracted to Astrid (America Ferrera) but, a tough Viking…Read More
The Worst Films of 2009
2009 was a big year: I started out as a film fan who went to the theater maybe once every 2-3 weeks and otherwise lazily waited until movies made it onto the premium cable channels before I saw them. Not a lack of motivation, just a busy life. Early in 2009 I started to write a series of columns for Linux Journal on how to create a Twitter queueing system and my example subject was…Read More
Review: Law Abiding Citizen
It’s not hard to find someone with a cynical view of lawyers, especially trial lawyers, many of whom are more interested in their own careers and in winning cases than they are in seeing that justice is served. It’s an old story that’s been told again and again in the cinema. Law Abiding Citizen is the latest in the bad lawyer genre, with Jamie Foxx as career focused attorney Nick Rice who accepts a plea bargain…Read More
Review: Gamer
This is a guest review by my friend Tom Frey… Gamer is a new low for the tech trashing genre My wife Deb and I are always up for a good sci-fi action film and the new Gamer movie seemed to fits in most of the categories of a movie we’d enjoy. Before a movie starts, quite often the previews will tip you off as to what kind of film you are about to see. Deb picked…Read More
Review: The Ugly Truth
Here’s a funny setup for a movie: take a beautiful control-freak of a woman and make her producer of a morning show at a small TV station. Then take a scroungy but devilishly handsome guy and have him be the crude-talking cynical relationship expert who says it like he sees it, good or bad. Now, let’s make this funny by having her produce his show, even as she finds him a boor and hates what…Read More