It wouldn’t be summer without a new Pirates of the Caribbean movie, or at least that’s what Disney would like us to think. Personally, I could have done without the fourth and latest installment, On Stranger Tides.
Pirates of the Caribbean: . . .
Ever since the Bromance genre became popular, I’ve been wondering why there wasn’t an equivalent for women. Sure, there’s Sex and the City which is more about friendship than the title suggests. And there are movies like Baby Mama . . .
Like a lot of children, I went through a phase during which I desperately wanted to run a zoo. My mother tried to tell me that to get there I’d spend years cleaning up after lions, but I could not be deterred. At least not until something else . . .
For some reason, I have a vivid memory of a Saturday afternoon spent on the couch with my family watching Arthur (1981), starring Dudley Moore and Liza Minnelli, on cable. It’s hard to say whether I was more excited or nervous about the release . . .
Mick Haller (Matthew McConaughey) is The Lincoln Lawyer, a flashy Los Angeles defense attorney who runs his practice out of his Lincoln town car, driven by chauffer Earl (Laurence Mason). After he is passed the case of Louis Roulet (Ryan Phillippe) . . .
In previous reviews I have explained my love of terrible movies. Sometimes nothing is more fun than watching a bad romantic comedy or a poorly written action movie. Other times, however, a bad movie is just a bad movie and there is nothing really enjoyable . . .
On a rainy Friday afternoon, I had some decisions to think about as I headed to see The Adjustment Bureau. Settling into my theater seat, I turned to my friend and said, “Great; I’m weighing my options and now I get to think about how all . . .
A Renaissance tragedy about two teenagers who, in a matter of days, fall in love, marry, are torn apart by their feuding families, and die is not a likely source text for an animated children’s movie. Yet, somehow, the writers behind Gnomeo & . . .
The whole potluck roommate situation is a college freshman’s nightmare waiting to happen. The idea that you will be sharing a space that will serve as your dining room, study, bedroom, and living room with someone you’ve never met before might . . .
Natalie Portman is on a roll. In the last two months, she’s starred in Black Swan, for which earned a Golden Globe, was featured on the cover of Vogue, announced her engagement and pregnancy, and is earning advanced praise for her performance in . . .
I wonder if anyone had actually seen Country Strong before all the Oscar buzz started. Or is playing a troubled singer all it really takes? Country Strong stars Gwyneth Paltrow as Kelly Canter, a country star fresh out of rehab and trying to make a . . .
It never ceases to amaze me when an outstanding cast manages to create a hum-drum movie. Such is the case with The Tourist, starring Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie. The movie follows Elsie Ward (Jolie), a mysterious woman under surveillance by Scotland . . .
It’s the beginning of the end for the Harry Potter films and I’m already starting to look into some Post-Harry Potter Stress Disorder counseling. It’s hard to be upset over it ending, though, when the films are looking so good. The second . . .
Sometimes when I get déjà vu at the movies, I’m okay with it. I’ve previously made it clear that I’m often not bothered by the conventionality of romantic comedies or thrillers if they’re still entertaining, or are creative in other ways. . . .
When I saw the previews for Let Me In, the American remake of the Swedish film Let the Right One In (Låt den rätte komma), I was curious to see how the dark, sad vampire movie set in the suburbs of Stockholm would translate . . .
I remember when I first set up my Facebook account. The site was still pretty new. It was before the newsfeed, before the “like” button, and before site creator Mark Zuckerberg was under pretty continual scrutiny for privacy and property debates. . . .
When I studied Latin, one of the first phrases I had to translate was from Virgil, “fama volat” or “rumor flies.” As a teenage girl in 21st century America, it was one of the most useful quotations I learned. English literature was . . .
When I go to the movies, whether it’s to a silly romantic comedy or to a serious drama or to an art film, and so on, I hope that the experience will at least partially allow me to get away from every day life for an hour or two. I don’t think this . . .
Sometimes when I finish reading a short story, I’m left wondering about the lives of the characters. If the story ends abruptly, I have many questions about what happens next. The Switch, an adaptation of “Baster,” a short story by Jeffrey . . .
When Scott Pilgrim vs. The World opened fifth at the box office, people in the film industry started asking what went wrong. The obvious answer is that it opened against a crew of action stars in The Expendables and Julia Roberts . . .
It seems completely unbelievable to me that Steve Carell could have two movies out this summer, a huge profile in The New Yorker, Date Night recently out on DVD, and still think that his departure from The Office next year . . .
Finally, I saw a movie for big kids this summer that I was really impressed with. After months of anticipation, watching Inception was one of the best experiences I’ve had at the theater in quite a while.
Perhaps an especially heightened psychological . . .
It seems that the only really good movies I’ve seen this summer (at least so far) are animated. The latest summer blockbuster I saw was Despicable Me, the new feature from Dreamworks starring Steve Carell.
In Despicable Me, in an accent he . . .
It’s been fifteen years since the original Toy Story came out and eleven years since Toy Story 2. I have a six year-old sister at home, so the Toy Story movies never really stopped being watched at our house and Marissa’s . . .
I grew up watching classic sci-fi B movies with my dad. To me, being old enough to watch The X-Files was a big deal. So, when I saw the trailers for Splice, which was so clearly drawing on Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and a long tradition of “creature . . .