In 10 Words or Less
A man on a m-f'ing mission

The Movie
Anyone who has seen me write (or has seen my office) can attest to the fact that I am a multitasker. You won't normally find me focused on just one activity, as normally I'll have a hockey game on one screen, music playing, Food Network or some other TV wallpaper playing and a blank sheet waiting to be filled. So it was not strange for this to be the setting as I started in on my first viewing of Django Unchained. However, the hockey and the music and the TV melted...Read the entire review

In 10 Words or Less
Some people never change

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: Aubrey Plaza
Likes: Megacasts, Chris Pratt
Dislikes: High School
Hates: Reunions

The Movie
I didn't attend my 10-year high-school reunion. To be honest, I don't think there even was one. We didn't have the most tight-knit community, and though I maintain some connection with some of my former classmates via Facebook, I am not exactly dying to see how most of the people I went to high school with are doing. I didn't have a bad experience, but college was much better, and I have far better friendships with the people I met there. So when I see movies like Gross Pointe Blank or 10 Years, it's a bit like watching a foreign fi...Read the entire review

The TV Series:

Another year, another Mad Men clone. The lavish Starz production Magic City might substitute a Miami Beach resort hotel in 1959 for a Manhattan ad agency in the mid-'60s, but there's no question that it owes a big debt to what Don Draper and company paved the way for. On its own terms, however, it's mildly interesting enough to stand on its own. Although the torrid drama lacks the complexity of Mad Men or Boardwalk Empire, the show's luxe production values and accent on sex and violence place it miles ahead of forgettable fluff like Pan-Am and The Playboy Club.

As Magic City unfolds, it's New Years Eve 1958 and Miami business magnate Ike Evans (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) presides over the...Read the entire review

As the opening credits roll for Jamie Linden's 10 Years, the cast list unfurled is a little mindboggling: Channing Tatum, Rosario Dawson, Chris Pratt, Justin Long, Ari Graynor, Kate Mara, Anthony Mackie, Max Minghella, Aubrey Plaza, Ron Livingston, Oscar Isaac, Brian Geraghty, on and on. It's a big cast, full of outsized personalities and pre-existing personas, and one that first-time director Linden could lose control of fairly easily. To his credit, he doesn't; 10 Years isn't exactly a groundbreaking piece of work, but it moves crisply, garners light laughs, and juggles its likable characters well.

A kind of Altman in miniature, Linden's screenplay concerns a ten-year high school reunion at which old wounds are reopened, old secrets are told, relationships ar...Read the entire review

There were a whole lot of gnashed teeth when Frank Darabont was fired as showrunner of The Walking Dead. AMC had already suffered through embarrassing and all-too-public battles with the talent behind Mad Men and Breaking Bad, and to shitcan someone of Darabont's stature after he'd led The Walking Dead to be one of the most-watched series on television...? I was appalled for

<...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=56540 Mon, 13 Aug 2012 18:30:38 PDT Recommended The Movie: One year after the shock ending of Halloween 4: The Return Of Michael Myers, we learn that Michael is still alive and up to his old tricks. As October 31st rolls around once again, we see that Jamie (Danielle Harris, reprising her role from the last film) is doing some time in the mental ward of an Illinois children's hospital. None other than Dr. Loomis (Donald Pleasance again) is the man in charge of her treatment, though Jaime's step-sister, Rachel (Ellie Cornell, also reprising her role from the last movie) and her friend Tina (Wendy Kaplan) help out where they can. Jamie hasn't uttered a single word to anyone since the events that finished up the last chapter in the series, so no one is aware that she's somehow developed a mental bond to her uncle Michael. Having recently come out of a coma, Michael's intent on finishing what he tried to accomplish last time...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=56542 Sun, 12 Aug 2012 17:42:12 PDT Recommended Ten years have passed since the Halloween night that he came back, and with that decade of distance, Michael Myers might as well be the boogeyman. He's a distant memory to the folks of Haddonfield: horribly Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=57218 Wed, 25 Jul 2012 12:33:48 PDT Recommended Former mental patient Ken Boyd (Kevin Corrigan) doesn't have much going on in his life. He lives with his increasingly grumpy mother (Karen Black), works a minimum-wage job at an ice cream parlor with his dorky friend Irv (Leo Fitzpatrick), and suffers the occasional traumatic flashback to the high school incident that got him committed in the first place. Ken likes to draw, expressing some of his anger on the page, but sometimes, the only thing that will really clear up memories of a bully is a good old-fashioned hatchet murder. One by one, Ken's teenage tormenters start dropping like flies, and Sheriff Fuller (Barry Bostwick) is basically clueless, but the appearance of Ken's 10-year-old daughter Amy (Ariel Gade) turns revenge into a more complicated prospect. Some Guy Who Kills People isn't a particularly flashy movie: although blood spills by the gallon and it looks great for a low-budget ...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=55953 Wed, 18 Jul 2012 04:49:21 PDT Recommended THE PROGRAM By the title alone "Some Guy Who Kills People" is either going to raise eyebrows or induce eye rolls. For me the eye rolling was quickly replaced by a very intrigued eyebrow upon seeing a lead billing by Kevin Corrigan. The film has a very simple premise: a burnt-out ice cream shop employee finally snaps, years after a horrific night of torture by his high school basketball team and an ensuing stay in the local mental hospital. Where "Some Guy Who Kills People" quickly diverges from the straight-to-DVD set-up is by attempting the tall order of using the horror as a relatively minor catalyst for some decidedly dark comedy and genuine introspection into the mind of a tormented mind pushed too far, not to mention the sudden inclusion of some father-daughter bonding. It's far from original, but the film almost pulls it off...key word: almost. Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=55590 Wed, 20 Jun 2012 19:29:46 PDT Recommended In 10 Words or Less A fantastic voice cast sells a decent concept Reviewer's Bias* Loves: Paget Brewster, animation Likes: Curtis Armstrong, Dave Foley Dislikes: A-holes Hates: That Elise's dad isn't named Steven The Show This is going to sound like an epic stretch, but stick with me: The Hub is quickly becoming the Pixar of television networks. (For those not in the loop, The Hub is a relatively new kids cable channel from Discovery and Hasbro.) Now, that's not to say that the quality of The Hub's programming is massively impressive (in fact, some of it is pretty bad) but rather that while the channel focuses on children, it doesn't forget that there will probably be some adults in the room as well and tha...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=54925 Thu, 31 May 2012 15:45:03 PDT Recommended With the horror genre collapsing under the weight of endless zombie and found-footage films, low-budget and first-time filmmakers have had to turn to a new genre in hopes of striking a direct-to-video fortune. Enter the thriller, which uses the same set of tools (a single location, some fake blood, a couple of recognizable faces), but might stand out a bit more in a less crowded field. Today's entry is The Aggression Scale, a decent home invasion story that gets more credit for having some crazy ideas than it does for taking advantage of them. For a second, it seems as if Lloyd (Dana Ashbrook) is the man on the "aggression scale," defined by the opening titles as "a psychological test measuring the frequency of overt aggressive behaviors that may result in physical or mental injury to others." Lloyd is first seen driving around with a shotgun and a Polaroid camera taking out a number of people...Read the entire review ]]> Theatrical http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=54120 Thu, 12 Jan 2012 14:09:35 PST Skip It About midway through Xavier Gens's The Divide, there comes a scene where one character, bound to a wheelchair, is moved into a small room. The character who moves him has just helped cut off the bound gentleman's finger. He parks the wheelchair, squats in front of it, and defecates. "Now you don't have to be in here alone," he snorts--not even a good line--and slams the door behind him. Hey, look, it's only the second week of January, and we've already hit the cinematic low point of 2012. There's more fun where that came from, though; Gens not only offers up that pleasant little encounter, but plentiful gore, a brutal rape, bodies chopped up with an axe, a character who menstruates graphically in front of several others, and more oozing sores than you can shake a stick...Read the entire review ]]> Theatrical http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=52822 Sun, 16 Oct 2011 13:23:30 PDT Highly Recommended Reviewed at the 2011 New York Film Festival Roger Corman, 85 years old, is currently credited on imdb with producing 395 films--three of which are currently in post-production. This is not the filmography of a man who is in it for a buck, or he'd have retired long ago. He is in it because he loves the movies, the sheer act of making one. That love is present and palpable in the worst of his no-budget turkeys; it's there in the madcap opening sequence of the new documentary Corman's World: Exploits of a Hollywood Rebel, in which director Alex Stapleton is all but drunk on those movies, on those goofy images of monsters and mayhem and babes and boobs. Corman wasn't a serious filmmaker, but Corman's WorldRead the entire review ]]> Theatrical http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=52825 Thu, 13 Oct 2011 18:15:30 PDT Recommended Texas Killing Fields is the feature directorial debut of Ami Canaan Mann, who is the daughter of Michael Mann (Heat, Collateral). Normally, one might bury that lede, lest the charges of nepotism overshadow the result of her efforts, but the promotional materials have all but made that the banner headline, so what the hell. In all fairness, her old man's influence isn't hard to spot; the picture's got wall-to-wall music, up-close digital photography, and a stripped-down, no-nonsense storytelling style. What she doesn't yet have is the ability to shape those elements into a tight, coherent package. That'll come, ...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=50872 Mon, 12 Sep 2011 04:50:45 PDT Recommended Spartacus:Gods of the Arena is asix episode long prequel series to the hittelevision series Spartacus: Blood and Sand. Both series werecreated bySteven S. DeKnight (who also serves as one of the series writers). Theproduction was planned due to the unforeseen illness of Andy Whitfield(who wasthe leading star of the series). As of the time of this writing, it hasbeenannounced that he has passed away of lymphoma at the very young age of39. Fanswill undoubtedly miss him and his family will miss him even more. Thereis noeasy ...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=50628 Wed, 13 Jul 2011 06:09:11 PDT Rent It THE FILM Movies based on video games always face an impossible challenge of adaptation, especially anything pulled from the 1990s, when gaming was just starting to showing interest in expansive narratives and complex characterizations. "Tekken" is a failure on many levels, but it does make a plucky attempt to replicate the flippy-floppy nature of the fighting elements, creating a limb-snapping effort of escapism surrounded by bland writing and sleepy performances. In the future, Earth will be ruled by corporations who've divided up the planet into eight sections, with America controlled by Heihchi Mishima (Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, "Mortal Kombat") and his Tekken Corporation. Young Jin (Jon Foo) lives in the dangerous ghettos of Tekken City, scraping together a living as a courier, trying to protect his mother and martial arts teacher, Jun (Tamlyn Tomita). Losing Jun to a s...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=49153 Tue, 07 Jun 2011 05:04:31 PDT Recommended THE MOVIE: When Josh Radnor's Happythankyoumoreplease starting making the festival rounds last year, the comparisons to Garden State were inescapable--sitcom leading man goes the indie-flick route, writing and directing said flick to boot (Radnor's inescapable physical resemblance to Zach Braff did little to squelch the comparisons). The results will presumably irritate most of those who found Garden State hateable, for many of the same reasons. However, I am not part of that camp; my cool card may get swiped, but I stand by my initial impression of Braff's film as a smoothly-made, enjoyably twee picture with a healthy dose of legitimate pathos. Happythankyoumoreplease, a kind of a hipster riff on Chaplin's The Kid, isn't quite as consistently successful. But it has its mo...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=48292 Fri, 13 May 2011 04:36:22 PDT Rent It THE FILM Red-hot noir meets a college lecture in "The Big Bang," a distinctive spin on detective dealings that bravely assumes audiences might be more interested in the nuances of physics than any sort of narrative momentum. Energetically acted and scripted with faint pizzazz, the feature simply runs too hot and cold to convince. The movie's originality is stimulating, but it often cuts into the basic necessities of the mystery genre, pausing the action to tend to monologues concerning time and space. Dames, diamonds, and science -- they don't exactly form an exhilarating motion picture. A wiseacre private detective, Ned Cruz (Antonio Banderas) has fallen on hard times, growing tired of the chase. Into his life comes a hulking Russian boxer named Anton (Robert Maillet), looking for a mysterious woman who romanced him via letters during his stint in prison, resulting i...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=48241 Thu, 05 May 2011 18:35:49 PDT Rent It THE FILM It appears writer/director Michael Goldbach really enjoyed Richard Kelly's 2001 mind-bender, "Donnie Darko." In fact, he liked it so much, he went out and made a copy for himself, dialing down the sci-fi complexity, but retaining the apocalyptic teen angst routine, performed by a cast of frantic actors who always look bewildered. I can't blame them, for "Daydream Nation" is an impenetrable, seemingly unfinished saga of love, rage, drugs, and sinister activities, thrown up on the screen all at once. "Donnie Darko" it's most certainly not, though it finds a few appealing moments underneath the deflating sense of chaos Goldbach is incapable of aiming. Moving to a troubled small town with her father, Caroline Wexler (Kat Dennings) is a lippy brat fully aware of her toxic personality, thrust into a judgmental high school community. To entertain herself, Caroline sed...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=47772 Wed, 06 Apr 2011 16:34:00 PDT Rent It The Movie: The latest collaboration between the SyFy Channel and legendary B-movie movie mogul Roger Corman, Dinoshark was first shown on the cable channel a few months back and now lives again thanks to the magic of home video. When the film begins we learn how a thawing glacier unleashes a few prehistoric creatures known as Dinosharks who have been frozen in said glacier for countless centuries. A few years later, these baby Dinosharks are now full grown man-eating monsters heading south through the Pacific Ocean towards Mexico. Arriving in Mexico around the same time is a tough guy named Trace McGraw (Eric Balfour) who has taken a job working on his friend's boat. Expecting to arrive and live the good life, enjoying the scenery and all that Mexico has to offer, McGraw is in pretty good spirits initially - but his outlook soon sours when he witnesses the death of two work...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=47052 Sat, 05 Mar 2011 08:18:41 PST Recommended The Movie: "Half-shark. Half-octopus. All killer." I've seen more than my share of Syfy original movies, whichmeans I've sat through a lot of crap. Soit was wild very low expectations that I popped in their latest mutantmonsterflick, Sharktopus, into my player to give it a look-see. To my astonishment the movie wasn'twretched. As a matter of fact, it wasreally enjoyable. The movie is a throwback to producer Roger Corman's early films: cheap, quick, and fun. It's amovie that gives viewers some cheap thrills and then quickly endsbefore itoverstays its welcome. Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=47221 Mon, 14 Feb 2011 12:04:24 PST Rent It The Movie: Directed by Declan O'Brien, probably best known for Wrong Turn 3: Left For Dead, 2010's Sharktopus is another in the seemingly endless line of SyFy Channel originals in which two different beasties are sort of mixed together into one formidable creature. In this case, as the title implies, it's a shark-octopus combo and it wrecks havoc just as you'd want it to. When the movie beings we learn that the United States military has been tinkering with biology in order to create something to help them win the war against the drug smugglers that are coming into the country from south of the border. Their idea is to create a sharktopus that they can control with a fancy remote, which seems like a great plan until this creature escapes and swims up and down the Mexican coast line eating people and trashing anything that gets in its way - oh, and the remote breaks. <...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=46653 Fri, 04 Feb 2011 17:45:28 PST Recommended Hey there! Meet Jennifer Hills (Camille Keaton), a young, chipper writer from New York City who's had a few things published in women's magazines but is ready to strike out on her own as a novelist. Jennifer's writing her own story, really: girl in her twenties, life, love, discovering herself...it's a whole thing. To really be able to focus on her first book, Jen leaves the big [click on the thumbnail to enlarge] Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=46654 Mon, 31 Jan 2011 20:59:13 PST Recommended This woman has just cut, chopped, broken, and burned five men beyond recognition...but no jury in America would ever convict her! Of course, that tagline's more than thirty years old now. The torture and torment that this Jennifer Hills (Sarah Butler) inflicts on the men who so savagely attacked her is a hell of a lot more depraved than that. I mean, cameras were rolling on the original I Spit on Your Grave all the way back in 1976, so Camille Keaton didn't have eight Saw movies and several decades worth of slashers to mine for Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=47515 Mon, 24 Jan 2011 21:13:41 PST Recommended The original Swedish adaptation of Let the Right One In is quiet, nuanced, and deeply poetic -- words not altogether used that often to describe [click on the thumbnail to enlarge] ...Read the entire review ]]> DVD Video http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=46252 Sat, 08 Jan 2011 13:50:46 PST Rent It The Film: Marcos Efron's And Soon the Darkness remakes a '70s thriller of the same name, a calculated slow-burn that uses its surroundings and performances to create closed-in tension in an "exotic" locale. Efron nails those attributes down with his take; he transplants the setting from France to the lush Argentinean landscape filled with flourishing greenery and sun-bathed roads, while finding appealing it-actresses in Amber Heard and Odette Yustman to frolic in bikinis and ride their bikes as classic tourist-chick types. What he neglects is the burn to his slow-burn, leaving this drawn-out thriller -- more interested in its picturesque photography and catching femme focuses -- to blandly pedal through an egregious amount of tongue-tied build-...Read the entire review ]]> Blu-ray http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=47481 Fri, 07 Jan 2011 15:47:25 PST Rent It The Movie: Sometimes when you see a film that has some familiar names in it and watch it come and go quickly in theaters, you have to wonder what exactly happened to the film for it to be ignored (or even scorned) as it was. And Stone has an Oscar winner and Oscar nominee as half of a decent cast, and the film was in theaters for a proverbial cup of coffee before disappearing, so what exactly happened (if anything) to cause all of this? Written by Angus MacLachlan (Junebug) and directed by John Curran (The Painted Veil), Stone is the nickname of Gerald Creeson (Edward Norton, Pride and Glory), who is in prison for arson and has served eight years and is looking toward...Read the entire review ]]> Theatrical http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=43464 Wed, 28 Apr 2010 08:06:45 PDT Recommended Reviewed at the 2010 Tribeca Film Festival Sometimes small films can have unexpected heroes. For my money, one of the most valuable players in the indie comedy Meet Monica Velour is the graphic designer (or designers) who worked up its opening credit sequence. It gives us a kind of quickie history of the title character, a superstar of the Nina Hartley-Annie Sprinkle order, who headlined skin flicks during the "golden age of porn" in the late 1970s and early 1980s. But these folks don't just find someone with the look of the period, and think up some funny porn titles; they work up posters for titles like "Hooked on Hookers," "New Wave Nookie," "M*U*F*F," and "Pork 'N Mindy" that look absolute...Read the entire review ]]>