Wes Craven’s Scream franchise has long been thought of as a series of films that parody their traditional predecessors. The first (1996) examines the various horror-movie rules and regulations that allow virgins to live, sexually experienced teenagers to die, and the sin of declaring “I’ll be right back.” Scream 2 (1997) parodies the formula for sequels while […]
Somewhere this concept made sense: “A man inherits six penguins which suddenly make him less of a megalomaniac and more of an understanding, compassionate, philanthropic human being.” At around the some time, Satan approached Jim Carrey and asked him to make due on that whole “successful career” thing by tap-dancing with six CGI’d penguins to the tune of Vanilla Ice’s […]
Remember when the troika of Poison Ivy (Uma Thurman), Mr. Freeze (Arnold Schwarzenegger), and Bane (Jeep Swenson) led their villainous charge across the screen in Batman and Robin, the final installment in the Batman franchise that was rebirthed in the 80s and mercifully executed in the 90s? Me neither. However, the blame shouldn’t fall on the thin […]
As CBS has officially replaced the walking still that is Charlie Sheen with Ashton Kutcher on their hit series Two and a Half Men, it seems that the stream-of-consciousness chapter that was Sheen’s relevance can come to a close. Granted, there will be inevitable tweets and Youtube videos featuring the irate Sheen continuing his obloquy against Chuck […]
(image via AllMoviePhoto.com) On the weekend that Osama bin Laden was killed by US Navy Seal Team Six, Fast Five roared into American movie theatres to collect $86 million from US consumers. At the big, nameless cineplex in my neighborhood, Fast Five played on three screens that weekend. Next to one of those massive auditoriums, The Conspirator […]
Fans are fans. They will do what fans do. They will gush. (Sometimes they will grumble.) Critics are critics. They will do what critics do. They will criticize. (Sometimes they will praise.) All of which is to say that whatever you’ve heard about Scream 4 is absolutely true. It’s doesn’t matter what you’ve heard, it’s true. It’s […]
Pardon the superlative, but one of the most overlooked movies of the past ten years has to be Wonder Boys, a film directed by Curtis Hanson that follows Grady Tripp (Michael Douglas), an English Professor who deals with a crumbling marriage of his own undoing, a long-term affair that has been impregnated with, well, pregnancy, the visit of […]
While this spring is riddled with the resonance of winter, summer can always be looked forward to, where eventually the threats of storm warnings and advisors will die away. And summer will soon bring the perfunctory celluloid sales pitches, striving to draw each of us to the biggest “blockbuster” or “action-packed thrill ride of the year,” replete […]
Recent movie titles have often pared out any mystery and cut straight to the point. Perhaps this is an additional sign of our shortening attention spans brought on by using too much Google or dismissal of lengthy articles and passages in favor of sound bites and tidbits. Regardless of the reasons why films like Fighting, Taken, Unknown, […]
It seems a bit futile to discuss a Martin Lawrence film in the Gladiators forum because logically, it will just be relegated to a worm working its way from a feline bowel to a desert of clumping crystals, but there’s something to be said for the third incarnation of a character who was hardly funny the first […]