Back in July 2008, I remember reading the movie listings for Philadelphia-area movie theaters. There's absolutely no reason this memory should be emblazoned in my mind, save for one strange fact — multiple theaters in the greater Bucks-Montgomery County nexus were holding opening night 12:01 AM showings of Meet Dave,…
Why McG's new romcom is secretly a Star Trek movie
Today is Valentine's Day, a holiday which commemorates the armistice between global cacao manufacturers and the prophylactic industry after their centuries-long shadow war. To capitalize on this day of demure remembrance, the popcorn-industrial complex has released This Means War, a new motion picture event by director …
The exact formula for writing Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chip-Wrecked
For today's installment of Crackpot Movie Review, we've recruited the expertise of Professor Horus X. Lomax, Vice-Director of Cultural Preservation at the Svalbard Dross Vault, the sister organization of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault in Spitsbergen, Norway. Today's topic: the soul-rending arithmetic of the third Alvin …
11-11-11 is crapola-crapola-crapola
Yesterday — at 1:10 PM on November 11, 2011 — I saw director Darren Lynn Bousman's (Saws II through IV, Repo! The Genetic Opera) new supernatural horror flick 11-11-11.
Puss, Boots, BDSM, and the Plutonic Ideal
The new Dreamworks Shrek spin-off Puss in Boots is about a cat and a hat and is really kind of meritless, unless you're a member of fursuit fandom who can only appreciate Salma Hayek when she's a sultry tabby.
Is Shark Night 3D the culmination of all human aesthetic thought?…
Tragedy, comedy, irony, post-irony, paint-by-numbers Hollywood, post-celebrity, lurid, ascetic, penis, vagina, bull shark, tiger shark. Shark Night 3D is all of these.
Spy Kids 4 is the 21st century equivalent of The Children's Crusade
Despite my elementary school diploma, I loved Spy Kids: All the Time in the World. Why? It's a chilling examination of an alternate reality in which children have become fellow travelers in global espionage, a parallel universe where Langley is run like Willy Wonka's candy-colored calorie mill. Like Ender's Game mixed…
Sweet Edsel Jesus, there's a Pope Car in Cars 2
Cars 2 has the body of burnished Pixar purdiness, a chassis built of the bleached bones of Geoffrey the Giraffe, and an engine kissed by the Cylon god. In Cars 2, God isn't the cosmic clockmaker; he's the cosmic carburetor.
Why Hop is the unofficial sequel to X-Men 3
Hop has the veneer of a subpar kids' flick, but it's actually a stealth sequel to the total clusterfuck that was X-Men: The Last Stand. This secularized-Easter-cum-talking-creature feature tells the lost history of Cyclops, who supposedly died offscreen in X3.
Gulliver's Travels will make you seasick in the cineplex
Gulliver's Travels is neither a movie nor an adaptation of Jonathan Swift's fantasy yarn. Rather, it's a cultural artifact of American pop circa 2010, an immediately dated voyage through the seas of our own cinematic feculence.
