16 Blocks
June 24, 2006
Bruce Willis essays yet another burnt out cop in 16 Blocks (2006) playing detective Jack Mosley. He’s world-weary and has definitely seen better days. Willis has had a lot of practice playing this kind of role and slips into it effortlessly in the way...
Mr. and Mrs. Smith: Unrated
June 6, 2006
Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2005) is one of those critic-proof movies. It’s a big, loud action movie starring two of the biggest movie stars on the planet – Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie. Both, incidentally, were in need of a box office hit as Pitt was coming...
When a Stranger Calls
May 18, 2006
When a Stranger Calls (2006) is an unnecessary contemporary remake of a memorable little B-horror movie based on an urban legend known as “The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs.” It starred Carol Kane and came out in 1979. It was a modest hit and the...
Enemy of the State: Unrated Extended Edition
May 16, 2006
Back when Enemy of the State came out in 1998, some of the events depicted and some of the technology that was used seemed unthinkable. After all, one of the main plot points is the United States government trying to pass legislation that would allow...
Ronin: Collector’s Edition
May 12, 2006
Most big budget spy movies are often cartoonish action films with an emphasis on spectacle (explosions, gunfights and car chases) and very little intelligence or interesting characters. Aside from the smart, visceral Jason Bourne films, the only mainstream...
Mission: Impossible
May 5, 2006
A lot was riding on Mission: Impossible (1996) for Tom Cruise. Not only was it the first film he produced (in addition to starring), it was also his first attempt to kick start his own franchise of movies. And what better way to do this than resurrecting...
Elevator to the Gallows
April 19, 2006
After his stint working as Jacques Cousteau’s camera operator, Louis Malle tried to make an autobiographical film but found that no producers were interested in it. A friend of his had read a book called Elevator to the Gallows and suggested that it...
The Twelve Chairs
April 18, 2006
Born in 1926 in Brooklyn, New York, Mel Brooks got his start as a stand-up comedian working the resorts circuit in the Catskills. A few years later, he was working as a television writer on various shows for Sid Caesar alongside future comedy legends,...
Cry_Wolf
April 18, 2006
It’s stalk and slash time again as Z-list nobodies get butchered in this tired campus murder spree. Imagine for a second that Scream never happened. That teen horror remained stuck in the 80’s and consisted of a bunch of kids getting picked...
The Complete Mr. Arkadin
April 12, 2006
By 1955, Orson Welles’ Hollywood career was over having burned his final bridges with Tinseltown over The Lady From Shanghai (1947). He would direct Touch of Evil (1958) for Universal a few years later but only at Charlton Heston’s behest. Mr. Arkadin...
