Tag: Film

Movie Review: Death Sentence

IMDB, Death Sentence“Death Sentence” on IMDB

Thriller, 105 Minutes, 2007

The poster says “from the author of ‘Death Wish'” and you should probably take note of that because for all intents and purposes this a remake of that classic.  Not in the details, mind you, but in the broad strokes this is soooooo “Death Wish” [IMDB].

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Movie Review: Blades of Glory

IMDB, Blades of Glory“Blades of Glory” on IMDB

Comedy, 93 Minutes, 2007

I’m really surprised that this one slipped through the cracks for so long.  I do remember when it was being released and remember that “not good enough to pay theater prices for” feeling but then I completely lost track of it.

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Movie Review: All Superheroes Must Die

IMDB, All Superheroes Must Die“All Superheroes Must Die” on IMDB

Thriller, 78 Minutes, 2011

We’re going to give this one a lot of leeway for the sheer audacity of attempting to produce a superhero flick with a budget in the dozens of dollars.  Instead of, like everybody else, producing a shitty, derivative zombie movie these guys at least tried something different.  They get credit up front for that no matter what.

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Movie Review: Pitch Perfect

IMDB, Pitch Perfect“Pitch Perfect” on IMDB

Comedy/Musical, 112 Minutes, 2012

My 10-year old daughter begged to watch this movie about a cappella singing.  Why not?  The movie lets us know that a cappella singing is the coolest God-damndest thing in the entire world!  If you could smoosh extreme cliff-diving, lion-taming and sex into one glistening ball of awesome you might approach how cool a cappella singing is.  For my part I immediately shoved the movie into the corner of my brain where anything I’ve ever seen about “Glee” goes to wither and die painfully.

Why did I end up liking it so much?

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Movie Review: Escape from Planet Earth

IMDB, Escape from Planer Earth“Escape from Planet Earth” on IMDB

Family, 89 Minutes, 2013

It’s a digitally animated family film!  It has famous people (a few former A-listers and a solid set of B-listers)!  There are multiple cute side-kicky characters!  It has references to pop culture!  It has a heartwarming message!  It’s really nothing special.

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Movie Review: Taken 2

IMDB, Taken 2“Taken 2” on IMDB

Thriller, 92 Minutes, 2012

The original “Taken” [IMDB] was something of an oddity among action movies.  In a genre split between biceps and explosions or massive conspiracies and lone-wolf operatives it was a simpler, smaller more intimate movie. Yes, Liam Neeson’s [IMDB] Bryan Mills commanded resources and skills out of scope for most but the story was universal: somebody took his daughter and he was going to get her back.  I enjoyed it immensely.

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Movie Review: Lockout

IMDB, Lockout“Lockout” on IMDB

Sci-fi/Action, 95 Minutes, 2012

To simplify things right off the bat: this is “Escape from New York” [IMDB] in space.  Instead of an abandoned metropolis we’ve got a giant space prison.  Instead of Snake Plissken we get Snow.  Instead of Donald Pleasence [IMDB] as the president we get Maggie Grace [IMDB] as the president’s daughter (so that we can insert romantic tension).

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Movie Review: Piranhaconda

IMDB, Piranhaconda“Piranhaconda” on IMDB

Horror?, 87 Minutes, 2012

The SyFy channel continues its unspoken mission to destroy the art of filmmaking.  They’ve seen the future and it’s a giant machine that takes two things, smooshes them together and makes them worse than they ever could be alone.

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