Burton Did a Bad, Bad Thing

by Ryan Syrek

Dark Shadows

Seriously? This is what it’s come to? Johnny Depp, that delightfully oddball talent who once worked with John Waters and Jim Jarmusch, has reached the point in his career where he’s in movies that climax with a witch barfing on him. For real?

After Alice in Wonderland saw director and apparently terrible friend, Tim Burton, reanimate the corpse of Depp using CGI to puppeteer his body into the...

Yo Ho No

by Ryan Syrek

The Pirates! Band of Misfits

It’s hard not to mention Chicken Run without wanting to make a joke about Mel Gibson voicing a rooster. And while that may be the lasting thought from the 2000 movie, the fact remains that it was an affable claymation adventure from Aardman Animations that holds up well when compared with the relentless CGI dreck that has infested theaters over the last decade plus. So when The Pirates! Band of...

Like a Joss

by Ryan Syrek

The Avengers

This was going to be a rabid, frothing defense of the superhero genre, complete with impassioned pleas that appealed to cinematic intellectuals who are apt to dismiss such films. But Tom Hiddleston, who ironically plays the evil Loki in The Avengers, got there first…and he straight-up crushed it. Damn you, Loki! Does your villainy know no end?!

In his unreasonably eloquent opinion piece in...

In Need of Altar-ations

by Ryan Syrek

The Five-Year Engagement

Complaining about the length of a film can be a cop-out, a lazy way to avoid dissecting actual content in favor of basically whining about how valuable your free time is. But jokes about The Five-Year Engagement being long enough to legally make its audience common-law married aside, the duration of this and other Judd Apatow–produced movies has become a discussion point of substantial merit.

Anatomically Correct

by Ryan Syrek

Bully

There is a conversation about bullying that is desperately needed in this country. Unfortunately, Bully seemingly isn’t interested in being part of it. Director Lee Hirsch’s film, although clearly well-intentioned, preaches to the choir with pedestrian truisms that tug on heart strings but ultimately add nothing of substance to a potentially important dialogue.

Sure, it’s impossible not to be...

The Perils of Motherhood

by Justin Senkbile

This may sound like a joke to anyone who's seen Mommie Dearest (and believes what they've seen), but legendary hanger-hater Joan Crawford won her Oscar for playing a woman who surely has to be among the saintliest of silver screen single mothers.

In Mildred Pierce (1945), Crawford plays the titular heroine, a California divorcee struggling to make ends meet and raise a couple of daughters....

Kung Ow Kickin’

by Ryan Syrek

The Raid: Redemption

Sometimes, life is simple. If you don’t like beef, don’t order a rib-eye. If you don’t like stale, recycled jokes, don’t watch CBS sitcoms. If you don’t like action movies, avoid The Raid: Redemption like a television-phobic vegan would avoid the stuff mentioned above.

Writer/director Gareth Evans, who admittedly did much more to earn the latter half of his hyphened title than the former,...