Making a movie out of a popular book is hard enough. Having the condense several hundred pages of text into a coherent two hour film can be quite a daunting task. The list of great books being made into mediocre films is long indeed. Even more difficult I would imagine is taking a very popular short illustrated children’s book and fleshing it out into a full length motion picture, while keeping true to the spirit of the book. Well that is just what director Spike Jonze has accomplished with the subject of today’s review. Where the Wild Things Are. Read the full story

I was somewhat surprised to see the movie Halo Legends in my docket for upcoming review.  As a long-time Sony and Nintendo gamer, I had never played any version of Halo, and saw no need to, based on my age-related dislike of first person shooter games.  Really, my complete knowledge of Halo could be summed up as there was a green armored guy named Master Chief, and you use him to shoot lots of aliens.

 As a general rule of thumb, movies based on video games tend to well, lets say, not quite meet expectations.  Although there are exceptions to the rule (like Pokémon, or Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within), for each good movie there is three or four bad ones (like Street Fighter or Super Mario Brothers). Read the full story

Being one of the few people I know who is not a huge Star Wars fan, only seeing the original trilogy and The Phantom Menace, I was pretty bewildered when I heard that not only was there an animated film that was made to fit within the new trilogy, but there was an entire television series that predated the film… And this isn’t even that series! This is a new unrelated series that takes places throughout the Star Wars chronology at different times. Confused? Let’s see if it’s worth figuring out.

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My first brush with Greek mythology happened early on in my life, during the summer of 1981, with the theatrical release of Clash of the Titans.  Although I was a mere 7 years of age, I remember the experience fondly and all the countless hours of enjoyment the movie’s action figures gave me as I bashed them around in my Little Tikes green turtle sandbox.  Now, almost 30 years later, a new generation of fans will be able to not only experience the mythological adventure in an all-new take on the story (this April’s Clash of the Titans CGI spectacular featuring Sam Worthington and Liam Neeson), but also they will be able to re-live the original film in all its splendor with a new digitally remastered presentation on the Blu-ray format.  But before we start talking about how it looks and sounds on its new Blu-ray release, I wanted to spend a few moments reflecting on the film itself and whether or not my recent viewing was as memorable and magical as it was when I was a little tike. Read the full story

Being a science fiction fan, it is sort of odd that I had never seen any shows in the Stargate pantheon. Although I had seen the tail end of the odd show every now and then, I had not actually seen the original movie with Kurt Russell, nor seen any of the TV shows. This is even more surprising when an ad at the beginning of the Blu-ray highlights that Stargate SG-1 had been on TV for ten seasons! Read the full story

For reviewing Ben 10: Alien Swarm I enlisted the official kids of this movie reviewer.  Although I normally am very comfortable in critically watching youth-oriented fare, my complete ignorance of Ben 10 necessitated I call in the backup team. Read the full story

I seem to be seeing more and more films both in the theater and on Blu-ray that have one thing very much in common, good premises and poor execution from the printed page to screen. One has to wonder whether there is a shortage of talented screenwriters in Hollywood or just too many lazy ones or studios who are more interested in churning out films for the sake of profit rather then spending the money to do things right. I was reminded of this with all of the snafus around the forthcoming Spiderman 4 feature. I guess the bean counters at Sony learned nothing from Spiderman 3. Unfortunately, the subject of today’s review, while long on promise as well as premise, comes up a bit short in the execution department as well. Read the full story

It was with some trepidation that I accepted the responsibility to write a review of the new Star Trek movie.  My experience has been that no film or TV franchise has engendered such a rabid and invested following, with aficionados debating plot and character points like aged Talmudic Scholars.  Therefore, no matter what my review stated, it would attract criticism like a Golden Corral attracts seniors.

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It had all the right ingredients; a script by Monty Python’s Terry Jones, The Muppet’s creator Jim Henson in the director’s chair, a soundtrack by David Bowie and produced by George Lucas as well. Released in 1986, Labyrinth failed to find an audience in theaters, but did it deserve better? Read the full story

District 9 was not a film I had the chance to see in the theater. However, it had a really interesting premise, that of an alien spaceship hovering motionless over Johannesburg, South Africa of all places, for months and the inhabitants of the ship finally removed and placed into what can only be described as a ghetto, away from the human population and forced to submit to humiliating treatment and scientific experimentation. Knowing that it was produced by Peter Jackson, I was expecting a good film with excellent video and audio presentations. Were my expectations met? Read on! Read the full story

I guess you could say that I am a relative newcomer to the world of Harry Potter at least in regards as the books are concerned. My wife loved the books and had read them before the movies started to arrive but I did not. I went into each of the early films without any knowledge of the plots other than that Harry was a wizard. That was about it. The films were well done and were easy to get into even without any prior knowledge from the books. Perhaps that was even better as I had no clue what was coming next. Read the full story

Premiering at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2008, Eden Log was met with mixed reviews as the directorial debut of co-writer Frank Vestiel. The film is dubbed as a futuristic science fiction film and is shot entirely with hand-held cameras. Originally distributed by Bac Films in France, Magnolia Pictures decided to give this French language film a release in North American release. I hadn’t heard much else about this film so naturally I was quite eager to check it out. Read the full story

When people think of Godzilla, they think of a scary monster of epic proportions, when I think of 1998’s Godzilla, my memory triggers similar thoughts. Godzilla is a terribly made (to the point of it being scary) film of epic proportions (AKA a running time of 139 minutes which is scary as well). Read the full story

One must wonder when enough is enough when it comes to movie franchises like the Terminator series. Despite the most ardent of fans, the general public eventually becomes tired of all move franchises. That was even the case with the Star Trek movie franchise. Even a fine final film with the Next Generation cast went nowhere as did the Enterprise TV series despite the last two seasons which were excellent. Read the full story

There are times when a concept that sounds good on paper fails to live up to expectations once it appears on the big screen. Aliens in the Attic is just such one of those concepts. Looked cute on the trailer but as a film… Here is the full review. Read the full story

I am not ashamed to admit that G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra was my most eagerly anticipated title on the Blu-ray format of 2009.  So anxious was I that I even took the day off from my day job to kick back and fall in love all over again with my favorite thrill ride of the summer.  I normally reserve judgment for the end of my reviews, but a few adjectives came to mind immediately after watching this Blu-ray presentation of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra such as amazing, magnificent, mind-blowing, stunning, breathtaking, bombastic and most importantly, beautiful.  Yes, I am still talking about G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.  If you wanted a Blu-ray in 2009 to show off your home theater setup, then you found it here.  G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra is the reason God created Blu-ray. Read the full story

As I am sure anyone could glean from my prior review of the Star Trek films on Blu-ray, I am a real Star Trek fan, although I won’t go so far as to consider myself a Trekker or Trekkie or whatever the current nomenclature is these days. However, I am old enough to have watched all 3 seasons of the original series that ran on TV in the 1960’s and then again in syndication and loved when the first few films made it to the big screen. Read the full story