Christina Ricci sure has had an interesting career. She was eleven when she made her mark in The Addams Family, fourteen for Casper & Now and Then. She was a star in the 90s, with roles in The Ice Storm, Fear and Loathing, & Sleepy Hollow. She slowed down in the 2000s, but perhaps did her best work: Monster, Black Snake Moan, Bel Ami. And now here she is in Around the Block. Everyone knows Christina, she's likeable, she's not a bad actress, she just suffers from a very strange problem; she looks too young. She's in her mid-thirties now but she could still pass for a teena...Read the entire review

We've all heard the stories about Roswell, New Mexico and its infamous UFO crash site, as well as Area 51, the shadowy government facility where the body was taken. These, in turn, give way to plenty of stories about government agents, from Mulder and Scully to the Men in Black, who investigate these phenomena, and are of course supposed to keep their findings secret. At a glance, Mirage Men sounds as if it will be another investigation into the tantalizing secrets about our universe the government keeps locked up in a lab somewhere. Instead, it covers a related but potentially even more intriguing topic: the spread of fictional data about UFOs and extra-terrestrials by government agents and officials, in order to cover up more earthbound business being conducted by the military.

Co-directed by John Lundberg (with Roland Denning and Kypros Kyprianou) and written by Mark Pilkington based on t...Read the entire review

It's the middle of the night when Jerry Lee (Stephen Dorff) bursts into the hotel room he calls home and rousts his brother Frank (Emile Hirsch) out of bed in a sweaty, terrified panic. Jerry insists they leave town immediately, so Frank gets dressed and begins driving to the city limits, while extracting the story from his brother. On his way home following a fight with his girlfriend in which she set his pants on fire, Jerry accidentally hit a kid on a bicycle, who died on impact. Wracked with guilt, Jerry then drives off without Frank at their next pit stop, burns the car, and goes to a park to commit suicide. Instead, he chickens out and shoots himself in his amputated leg and winds up hospitalized. With Frank nursing his own wounds from a passionate relationship with Annie (Dakota Fanning), the two brothers contemplate what the future could possibly hold for two brothers who can't seem to keep the...Read the entire review

In 10 Words or Less
Another late-career dud from Stan the Man

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: Stan Lee, animation
Likes: Most of the cast
Dislikes: Cliched superhero action
Hates: Cheesy dialogue

The Movie
Stan Lee is one of my favorite people on the planet Earth. I had the great fortune to sit down with the comic-book legend a few years back, and it remains one of the most memorable interviews of my career, as there are few people who are as interesting to hear speak. Co-creator to many of the biggest comic characters in the world, he could easily be retired, enjoying his golden years, but he just keeps on working and, most famously, promotin...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Written and directed by filmmaker Randy Moore, Escape From Tomorrow follows Jim (Roy Abramsohn) as he brings his wife Emily (Elena Schuber), daughter Sara (Katelynn Rodriguez), and son Elliot (Jack Dalton) to Disney World (though the name is bleeped out) for a vacation. The fact that he's lost his job remains unbeknownst to them and he intends to keep it that way. He wants this vacation to be fun so he keeps his mouth shut. Upon their arrival, what should be a good, wholesome time takes an interesting turn when Jim develops an unhealthy interest in two teenage French tourists, Isabelle (Annet Mahendru) and Sophie (Danielle Safady), both of whom would look to be underage. So taken is he with these young ladies that he starts making divergent plans in which he and his kids just so happen to be going to a ride near wherever it is that they might be hanging out. His family se...Read the entire review

Note:
In the latest of an apparently continuing series, my wife Nicole returns to offer her thoughts on another show I'm not likely to ever watch.

In 10 Words or Less
Ten thousand dollars, two days and a whole new world.

Reviewer's Bias*
Loves: Food Network, Robert Irvine, reality tv
Likes: Tom Bury and Taniya Nayak
Dislikes: Nicole Facciuto, Lynn Kegan, horrible food
Hates: Whiny business owners

The Story So Far...
Since its inception in 2011, Restaurant: Impossible has combined the do-it-yourself approach of fixing broken down restaurants with the Dr. Phil tactics of restoring failing relationships with the business. Each season, various establishments are ...Read the entire review

A pleasant, amiable little preteen comedy...and as close to a Sopranos reunion as you're going to get now. Gaiam and Mar Vista Entertainment have released Nicky Deuce, the 2013 cable-made family comedy originally aired on Nickelodeon, and starring iCarly's Noah Munck, along with Steven R. Schirripa, Rita Moreno, Vincent Curatola, Tony Sirico, Michael Imperioli, and a special appearance by James Gandolfini. Based on a book written by Schirripa and Charles Fleming, Nicky Deuce may actually get a few more chuckles from knowing parents who can appreciate the sly mob-movie humor here, while kids should enjoy the sunny atmosphere of fun and slapstick in this genial family flick. A few tiny extras are included with this sharp widescreen transfer.

Smart, shy teen Nicholas Borelli II (Noah Munck) has little to look forward to this summer other than watching movies sta...Read the entire review

Of any scientific documentary program in the last decade, it's doubtful that any have impacted popular culture as much as "Mythbusters." It's a simple premise: take urban legends, long-standing beliefs, or some long-standing cinematic cliches (specific and non-specific), and apply some critical thinking to find out whether or not the popular belief holds up under the scrutiny of science. Led by special-effects experts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman, "Mythbusters" quickly turned into one of the Discovery Channel's biggest and longest-running success stories.

"Mythbusters": Collection 7 is a jumble of slightly random but not completely shuffled episodes from the end of the 7th and beginning of the 8th season of the show, which aired at the end of 2009 and beginni...Read the entire review

Adventures of a Teenage Dragonslayer:
Movies can be either art, or entertainment, yet from the best of both we should expect to learn a little about our lives. For this movie, though, I've mainly been left with questions: What's up with the false advertising? And why do I continue to watch super-cheap young adult fantasy movies? I guess I'll always want to recapture the magical mystery of the real, original Dragonslayer, though I think I'm doomed to failure, as with this Dove Family approved movie, which might actually please non-discriminating seven-year-olds, but which has very little in the way of dragon adventure.

Arthur, (Hunter Allan) Shane (Eric Lutes) and Natalie (Abigail Victor) are pre-teen middle school kids obsessed with a 'Magic' style card game called 'Elixir Quest.' Crawling around in the sewers, w...Read the entire review

So you're a small video distributor looking to cash in on the impending frenzy surrounding the upcoming "Pirates of the Caribbean" sequel. More specifically, you're Gaiam, a company specializing in exercise videos looking to branch out with other fare. What do you do? Looks like you nab a pirate-related movie that's taken in more superficial changes than Ashlee Simpson, slap a low price sticker on it, and hope for some quickie returns, that's what.

The movie they nabbed is "The Pirates of Tortuga: Under the Black Flag," a cartoon that began in Germany as the 2001 release "Die Abrafaxe - Unter Schwarzer Flagge," then took on an English redub and ran on Cartoon Network as "Under the Black Flag: The Abrafaxe." ("Abrafaxe" refers to the heroes of a long-running German comic book "Mosiak;" being virtually unknown in the West, it's understandable why the name was dropped from the title.) The movie lan...Read the entire review