Riding Public Transformation

by Ryan Syrek

The We and the I

Hear ye, hear ye! Writer/director Michel Gondry’s brief stint in pop culture prison for having heinously directed Seth “The Marijuana Manchild” Rogen as a superhero in The Green Hornet is officially over! He has been pardoned, on the grounds that his latest film, The We and the I, is one of the most wholly honest, conceptually sincere pieces of entertainment to deal with teenage Americans in...

Vin Diesel Can Fly

by Ryan Syrek

Fast & Furious 6

New rules for the fifth Fast and Furious sequel:

Rule number 1 – Everybody gets a harpoon gun. Yes, everybody.

Rule number 2 – If you are bald, you must spend 90% of your time brooding with your arms crossed.

Rule number 3 – Writer Chris Morgan and director Justin Lin have officially petitioned science to move the law of gravity back to a theory and will ignore said law until the appeal...

Fade to Blackout

by Ryan Syrek

The Hangover Part III

The Hangover Part III is so jaw-droppingly terrible, America deserves an explanation. Not because this series has become some nation-defining work of art, but because it sure feels like writer/director Todd Phillips just told everyone who likes his films to go “make sexytime” to  themselves in the most unpleasant of orifices. It isn’t merely unfunny, as unfunny would have been a heaven-sent...

Kobayashi Magoo

by Ryan Syrek

Star Trek Into Darkness

If modern nerd culture has a “patient zero,” it was Mr. Trekkie (or Miss Trekker, if you’re nasty). Their legendary attention to detail is exceeded only by their willingness to speak Klingon in the most intimate of settings. And they’re really, really going to hate Star Trek Into Darkness.

Director JJ Abram’s 2009 reboot got a surprising free pass from the community despite a...

No Bull! Shh…

by Ryan Syrek

Blancanieves

A silent film reimagining Snow White shot in black and white and set in Spain, in which the heroine is a bullfighter, is not an easy sell. Who knows what lengths writer/director Pablo Berger had to go through to secure financing for this gothic reworking of a famous fairy tale, set in 1920s Seville. But whatever he did was worth it. Blancanieves is what The Artist wants to be when The Artist...

Twisty Pig Tale

by Ryan Syrek

Upstream Color

Writer/director Shane Carruth’s 2004 film, Primer, isn’t just a great time-travel movie; it’s one of the best science fiction films in the history of ever. But, hey, no pressure on the follow-up or anything, Shane. For nearly a decade, cinemaphiles waited for omni-hyphenated actor-editor-musician-producer to create something else, anything else. And just when all hope seemed lost, here comes...

Puttin’ on the Fitz’

by Ryan Syrek

The Great Gatsby

If “director Baz Luhrmann” and “restraint” have ever appeared in the same sentence together, they were the word-bread creating a sandwich around the phrase “has absolutely no.” Considering that the gaudy Jay Gatsby is basically Luhrmann’s spirit animal, the union made sense, even if the alleged $200 million budget for a 3D version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel set to music selected by...