Perhaps the universal identification with George A. Romero's basic career conceit that we should never trust our neighbor or even our loved ones have made his films easier to remake but it's happened again: Just as Zack Snyder did with his excellent Dawn of the Dead, Breck Eisner has taken ...Read more

Kevin Smith recently made headlines for being kicked off a Southwest Airlines flight because he was reportedly too hefty to fit in one seat. Having met Smith not that long ago, I was surprised that he had put on that much weight since I last saw him to the point ...Read more

What do Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman, Paul Newman in The Color of Money, or even Kate Winslet in The Reader have in common? They all won Oscars for performances that very few people would call their absolute best. They could probably be called "career achievement" Oscars or ...Read more

Jon Amiel's Creation must have looked great on paper: Excellent actor Paul Bettany and Academy Award-winning co-star Jennifer Connelly in the story of a revolutionary thought that still creates controversy all these decades later. When Charles Darwin fully developed the concepts of natural selection and evolution, it forever changed a ...Read more

Martin Scorsese's Shutter Island is a dizzying trip through a cinematic funhouse managed by one of the best filmmakers of all time fully employing his most talented collaborators. One of the most technically accomplished films of the last several years, Shutter Island is a riveting thriller, the kind that gets ...Read more

With the brilliant Shutter Island opening tomorrow (come back for a review then), many critics have looked back over the four-decade career of arguably the best living filmmaker, Martin Scorsese. Who are we to stay out of the discussion? More than nearly any of his peers, it's actually difficult to ...Read more

Magnolia Pictures and Shorts International continue their wonderful annual tradition of taking the ten films nominated for the Oscar for Short Film: Live Action & Animation and presenting them in a pair of theatrical releases (visit the program’s website here: http://www.shortshd.com/theoscarshorts/). The lineup is about to open at the Landmark ...Read more

The long-delayed remake of The Wolfman has elements that work – a strong supporting cast, a few striking visual compositions, at least one must-see sequence – but it just misses its mark as a complete film, ultimately coming off not nearly as compelling or entertaining as many hoped it would ...Read more

The horribly-titled Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief follows in the footsteps of years of films trying to become the next Harry Potter franchise and, comparably, makes out much better than disasters like Eragon or The Seeker: The Dark is Rising, but that's faint praise indeed. There are ...Read more

Garry Marshall's Valentine's Day could have worked one of two ways. The comedy director could have fully embraced the ridiculousness of his everything-and-the-candy-heart structure and winkingly acknowledged one of the most cliché-laden scripts of all time. If the film had embraced the ridiculousness of it all and overplayed the romance, ...Read more