Usually, the least that can be said for a Tim Burton film is that he chose style over substance. Even when that style is the same derivative nonsense he’s been pushing for well over a decade, he has that on his side. [...]

I took a lot of flak for liking The Avengers - apparently I didn’t like it enough. It seems odd to me. I gave it a positive review, even a vague recommendation; but for some reason my inability to overcome the logic [...]

My anticipation for The Avengers was low. I know this puts me in a minority, but given the uneven quality of the films that made up its predecessors, I don’t feel I can be blamed for meeting this film with slight trepidation. [...]

It is possible to make a pretty engaging or at least curiously interesting narrative using historical figures, even if the basic premise is viciously ridiculous. For instance, I am really looking forward the upcoming film Abraham Lincoln Vampire Hunter, even though [...]

There is something to be said for a film that addresses controversial topics with nothing but righteous, indignant candor. Sometimes toeing a line or trying to be thoughtful of other people’s feelings just gets in the way of getting across [...]

I make no apologies for my love of John Hillcoat. While this doesn’t really come up when talking about his under-seen, under-appreciated outback Western The Proposition, it does come up pretty often when I talk about The Road. Hillcoat is [...]

Were it not for certain professional and ethical concerns, I would probably write the words “hell yes” all in caps with a few exclamation points and call this review finished. Honestly, it is a difficult task to tell someone, articulately, [...]

Sometimes I distress over the trends of modern movies. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the emphasis on novel new filmmaking technologies, experimental narrative techniques, and a kind of added dose of reality. I’m a fan of more truth in cinema, and [...]

It’s a rare film that manages to successfully interweave two contradictory genres in a way that compromises neither. Often times, aspects of one genre will cause the contrary aspects of the other genre to blunt, making one side of the [...]

If there were ever a market for Cliff Notes versions of movies, Wrath of the Titans would serve as a pretty good template. This is a film that – at only about an hour and a half long – feels as [...]