Into the Blu

I can’t say that I am fan of the HBO series Sex and the City. Perhaps it is a chick thing but I just don’t get it. The women, for the most part, are attractive enough, especially the scintillating Kim Cattrall, but I find their characters on the whole, uninteresting. While my wife is a fan of the series, she was less than thrilled with the first film, which was a just a a longer and more expensive version of one of the HBO episodes and didn’t exactly meet with much critical success. However, given that the film was a commercial success and further that Hollywood being Hollywood, can’t leave well enough alone, a sequel was inevitable and has now arrived on Blu-ray. Continue Reading

One evening  I came across Undisputed III in a video store and passed by it quickly for it simply didn’t look like anything that interested me, the sticker on the front cover boasts about an award the film won for best fight choreography and the fact that it’s a second direct-to-video sequel of a mediocre  2002 Wesley Snipes flick. Having to review it definitely is interesting for it allows me to figure out if I should judge a book by its cover… Was I wrong to judge?

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Making a very popular book into a film is more often times than not, a very tricky business. An author may devote several pages to rather minute detail that is important to the story that just can’t be translated to the screen very easily. The same is true for some plot twists which have to be dropped due to time constraints that just don’t exist with the printed page. However, when the subtle details and minor plot lines are dropped, the flow of the story and our understanding of the characters is often changed, more often than not, to the detriment to our enjoyment of the film. Continue Reading

There is something strangely appealing about teen horror movies, though I am unsure if this appeal is from nostalgia for my teen years, or an admiration for the humorous and creative ways the movie characters die.

Regardless, when watching a teen horror movie, I expect to laugh out loud, remark on the stupidity of at least one of the lead characters, be disgusted by at least one “gut explosion”, and enjoy the requisite topless scene.  On all counts, “The Final Destination” did not disappoint. Continue Reading

What were they thinking? That was the phrase that was running through my head as I was watching the subject of today’s review, Four Christmases. Every now and then a film comes out that has a great cast but is so bad that you have to wonder why the cast members and in particular, the stars, didn’t walk away as soon as they read the script. Four Christmases is just one of those films. Continue Reading

The Cell 2 is the direct to video sequel of the 2000 film of the same name. While the plot somewhat mirrors the original the characters and ideas are mostly fresh. I must admit; while the original film failed to deliver in the overall sense of the word I always had a thing for the unique plot. Some of the visuals in the aforementioned film have really stuck in my mind and the concept as well. While ultimately I found the film to be a disappointment I look forward to seeing the sequel albeit a direct to video I find myself questioning its production value. But I have been surprised before, and I hope that The Cell 2 can deliver where the original failed, already I can guess it will trump the original as the lack of Jennifer Lopez’s name on the credits! Continue Reading

In the last few years, there have been several films featuring a common theme. It goes something like this. An adult is unhappy about their life and longs to be young again when times were good, usually when they were in high school. I guess many out there loved their high school years. I for one have enjoyed my adulthood much more than high school and would never want to go back. In any event, the next thing you know, this person wakes up and they are teenagers again and by the end of the film, realize that their lives as adults were not so bad after all. It seems that many of these films involve women, with 13 Going on 30 being the film that comes to mind first. I have found many of these films to be rather lame, perhaps because I don’t look back on my high school years all that fondly. Well, we have another entry into this genre, 17 Again, this time with a male as the lead character, with, regrettably, the same old lame plot. Continue Reading

I must say, Brendan Fraser has come a long way from Friends, at least insofar as his career in cinema is concerned. He has become somewhat the action film star, with his starring role in the three very successful Mummy films as well as The Journey to the Center of the Earth. While he is certainly no Harrison Ford in terms of either catalog depth or overall on screen persona, he has certainly developed quite a nice little niche, at least in regards to light, humorous action adventure films. Inkheart just happens to be another one of those types of films. Continue Reading