Kung-Fu Panda wasn't a bad movie. Not in the slightest. There were some great vocal performances, fun action, and cool animation, but, we'll admit, it wasn't the animated sequel news we've been waiting for. In our world where the next 10 chapters of Shrek have already called dibs on their ...Read more

The Hound is a busy dog – this week he’s pouring over his vast collection of Paul Newman movies and reacquainting himself with the work of one of cinema’s greatest actors – so he doesn’t always have the time to write 2,500-word opuses on the latest two-disc special edition or ...Read more

 Flash of Genius is an incredibly frustrating film, a movie with a great central performance, excellent design, and an entire team whose heart is in the right place, but it's also a movie with a screenplay that never gets to the true heart of this fascinating story. One of the ...Read more

 For the first time since Pollock, Ed Harris steps behind the camera again to direct an old-fashioned Western in the mold of 3:10 to Yuma and Open Range. With Appaloosa, Harris is clearly shooting for the timeless quality of the genre, the one that makes it feel like this film ...Read more

 You know Bill Maher was sitting in his massive home theater watching movies like Sicko and Super Size Me and thinking, "I could totally do that." To prove it, Maher teamed with Borat director Larry Charles to make Religulous, a pseudo-comedy-documentary that purports to be one man's search for faith ...Read more

 As someone who grew up idolizing the movies of John Hughes and kind of wanting to be Lloyd Dobler, I definitely long for more movies like The Breakfast Club and Say Anything. It’s not just nostalgia. It’s that, except for the rare Superbad, modern teen movies suck. After being relatively ...Read more

 "It's like The Departed with Arabs instead of the Irish mob!" That might sound simplistic, but it's a shockingly apt way to describe Body of Lies, Ridley Scott's moderately successful journey into the labyrinthine world of intelligence operations in the Middle East. Once again, Leonardo DiCaprio plays the poor, sure-to-be-tortured ...Read more

  We realize that Bond, James Bond wasn't the first spy in the history of fiction - heck, James Fenimore Cooper's novel The Spy came out in 1821 - however, Commander Bond still remains at as the reigning alpha super-spy of the modern world. Yes, we're aware of the works ...Read more

  Gil Kenan's Monster House was a pleasantly surprising shout-out to the kind of kids’ adventure movies they don't make that often any more. The film was clearly the product of a man raised on movies like The Goonies, Explorers, and Monster Squad. Kenan's highly anticipated follow-up, City of Ember, also ...Read more

  What is a wedding? Unless there's a shotgun, mail order bride or a prearrangement going on, it's usually a celebration of love. Now, imagine a woman who thinks she has fallen so far out of humanity that she states in an AA meeting that she believes she is unworthy of ...Read more

Every year around Halloween, movie fans around the world turn away from Oscar nominees and Judd Apatow comedies and begin browsing video stores for something really, honest-to-God scary. And that's not an easy task. While horror movies, on a whole, have a big fan-following thanks to their visceral thrills and ...Read more

Loyal readers of this blog will no doubt remember the Hound’s list of Ten Truly Underrated Horror Films. That list got us thinking here at the MovieRetriever.com offices (which we do from time to time – contrary to what some of you may think) about films that get maybe ...Read more

 Go to an underage drinking party in any college town across the country and you'll see basically the same thing - horny, drunk kids acting like idiots. From coast to coast and keg to keg, the parties are nearly identical, only the names, faces, and levels of alcohol poisoning change. ...Read more

 Isn't it amazing how we can easily spend 20 hours or more of our lives playing great video games, but 90 minutes of the same franchise in movie form can be nearly unbearable? Quick - you've got two hours to kill, will you watch movies like Doom, Resident Evil, or ...Read more

 What is Oliver Stone's W.? The previews made it seem like it would be a satirical slice of presidential life. How else to explain the use of "What a Wonderful World" over footage of the nightmare of the last eight years? But the final product itself is more (and kind ...Read more

“The one constant through all the years…has been baseball. America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers. It has been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time. This field, this game: it's a part of our past…. It reminds us of all ...Read more

Holiday weekends are always big for movie-going. Families spend Thanksgiving evening going to see Harry Potter (well, they were going to), Christmas Day perusing the Oscar hopefuls, Memorial Day helping people like Michael Bay break the bank, and the Fourth of July worshipping at the altar of Will Smith. But, ...Read more

  How do so many talented people go so far awry? Edward Norton is usually very smart about the projects he picks (even The Incredible Hulk was a smart movie and the failure of it was not his fault) and Colin Farrell has shown signs of life in the past with ...Read more

  My mother once asked me if I was a "generally happy" person. I'm still not sure of the answer, but I'm fascinated by the question. What does that mean? Who is without sadness at times? And who can say for sure if the balance makes one "generally happy" or "generally ...Read more

  The best Clint Eastwood films typically deal with people caught in complex, morally gray situations. The heroes of Unforgiven, Mystic River, and Million Dollar Baby are all faced with tough decisions and questions without easy answers. The man who made his legacy playing violent heroes in spaghetti westerns understands that ...Read more

 We received a pained phone call from our theatrical critic this week, asking (as polite as he could) whether we wanted him to pay out of his own pocket to see Saw V. You see, certain movies tend not to hold critic screenings before they're released and, generally, those ...Read more

This weekend, High School Musical 3: Senior Year made over $42 million at the box office, shattering the record for highest grossing movie musical ever and surprising absolutely NO ONE under the age of 15. Maybe it’s a generational thing, maybe we’ve missed the Disney Corporation’s subliminal mind rays ...Read more

 Critics constantly overuse phrases like "gut-wrenching" and "heartbreaking" when it comes to writing about emotionally devastating films, almost to the point where those words don't even mean much anymore. They certainly only begin to capture what you feel when you’re stuck trying to review a movie that honestly did leave ...Read more

Chances are - unless you live in a fundamentalist, anti-technology commune in Utah or unless all your friends are vigilant about keeping a swear jar - someone you know is a fan of Kevin Smith. Even if you missed the original indie firestorm created by Smith's low-budget debut, Clerks, ...Read more

 What the hell happened to Guy Ritchie? Sure, it's easy to point a finger at Madonna (and the cynical side of me thinks that all the press lately surrounding their miserable marriage is just publicity for Guy's new movie), but it's truly shocking how drastically this once uber-promising writer/director has ...Read more

 Sometimes movies seem to come out of the personality of the stars at the center of the film. It can be something as simple as how John Wayne's movies seemed to be written around The Duke's persona or the fact that a lot of Al Pacino flicks seem to have ...Read more

 Lance Hammer's highly acclaimed Ballast is a painful, depressing experience. In fact, some could easily argue that it borders on audience torture. Ballast is not only bereft of a single laugh, there's not even a crack of a smile. It's about people who are no longer physically able to look ...Read more

 Hollywood doesn't really understand what scares you anymore. I honestly don't believe anyone over the age of fifteen is scared by the Saw movies. They're action movies or, more accurately, exercises in the twisted human desire to watch people get tortured. The fact is that most modern horror movies aren't ...Read more

 It seemed inevitable that the Judd Apatow-verse and the View Askew-verse headed by Kevin Smith would eventually merge. Smith himself has even credited Knocked Up with showing him not just that Seth Rogen was MADE to star in a film co-starring Jason Mewes but that the ceiling on his brand ...Read more

Halloween is a great time to curl up and watch a scary movie or two with someone you love, or perhaps even by yourself. But, we wouldn’t recommend going solo – who are you going to send to the kitchen to get more popcorn? – after all, there could be ...Read more