DVD Discovery: Magic Act

by Justin Senkbile

DVD Discovery: The Disappearance of Alice Creed

You know the feeling you get at the peak of a suspenseful scene? At the breathless moment where you’re waiting for the inevitable gunshot, the doom-laden footsteps or the damning, climactic line of dialogue? That simultaneously delightful and miserable squirminess? Well if you’re into that — and who isn’t, at least a little? — writer/director J Blakeson’s The Disappearance of Alice...

Give Him a Hand

by Ben Coffman

127 Hours

Those multi-tools sure do come in handy, don’t they? Okay, I swear that’s my last hand-related pun in reviewing Danny Boyle’s newest film 127 Hours. Boyle, the genius director who has brought us films as diverse as Trainspotting, 28 Days Later and 2008’s hugely popular Slumdog Millionaire, has again changed genres like some people change their shirts. This time, he’s appealing to the...

Under the Influence

by Justin Senkbile

Love and Other Drugs

As its title states, love is just one of many brain-altering ingredients present in director Edward Zwick’s Love and Other Drugs. The film is set in the world of pharmaceutical sales in the mid-’90s, so besides a little pot and plenty of beer, we’re also among Prozac, Zoloft and the debut of Viagra.

Jamie Randall (Jake Gyllenhaal) has never cared about much, so nothing much has ever really...

Burn Noticed

by Ryan Syrek

Fair Game

Forget Congressional censure and domestic or international courts of law, the Bush administration will apparently burn for their sins beneath the withering lights of largely ignored, star-driven movies. Score one for justice! If we can’t expect the guy who directed Swingers (Doug Liman) to preserve our democracy, who will stand as the last defender of this once great republic?

As Matt...

Waiting is the Hardest Part 1

by Ryan Syrek

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1

I narrowly dodged that Hogwart’s-bound train. By the time JK Rowling’s bespectacled wand slinger rose to prominence stateside in 1999, I was of legal age to get Harry Pott-ed and would only have considered following the literary series if name-dropping Dumbledore magically manifested female phone numbers.

And yet, with a childhood peppered by a Star Wars obsession and a current downstairs...

Bzzzoring

by Ben Coffman

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

The first movie in Stieg Larsson’s “Millennium Trilogy” was a mystery thriller with great characters, good action and shadowy undertones. The second was an action flick that abandoned character building in favor of sex and violence—and plenty of it. And the final film, The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest (released an impossibly short few months after the middle film), has abandoned...

Taste Invaders

by Justin Senkbile

Skyline

Here you have it, dear readers: Skyline is the worst film I’ve seen in 2010.

Directed by a pair of special-effects gurus who call themselves The Brothers Strause (siblings Colin and Greg), the movie is more or less what you’d expect from guys who’ve worked their way up the ladder making computer explosions and a handful of Nickelback videos. From its evasive publicity campaign, one...