With a few modifications to the original 1982 Arnold Schwarzenegger epic—Conan (Jason Momoa) is now blood-thirsty from his birth on the battlefield—Marcus Nispel’s reincarnation welcomes gore, actualizing all horrific means of butchery. Conan’s quest for revenge begins as a child when megalomaniac Khalar Zym (Stephen Lang), seeking a missing bit of a magical mask, slaughters […]
Empire 8 Park Lane
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Fright Night a bloody delight
Craig Gillespie’s Fright Night is that rarest of Hollywood beasts: a remake that brings fresh life and energy to an old idea. It helps that the original 1985 film has a lower profile than many of the horror flicks from that era. It also helps that Gillespie (Lars and the Real Girl) understands character and […]
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30 Minutes or Less kind of meh
Pizza delivery boy Jesse Eisenberg gets conned into a convoluted get-rich-quick scheme; the brainchild of Danny McBride and Nick Swardson to finance their tanning salon/prostitute ring. Trapped in a bomb-vest with a 10-hour expiration choice, Eisenberg’s character has to rob a hundred grand from a bank to pay off a hit man or explode. As […]
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Disappointing The Help
In early-’60s Mississippi, aspiring journalist Skeeter (Emma Stone) decides to write a book based on the experiences of the black maids in her hometown of Jackson, women who keep house and raise white children for minimum wage but aren’t allowed to use their employers’ bathrooms. Great idea! Someone should really make a movie about that. […]
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Final Destination 5 is what you think it is
Another spectacular disaster, another batch of blandly beautiful survivors, another series of bloody accidents orchestrated by Death to reclaim its escaped prey. Only the specifics change in this film series, which kicks off its fifth edition with a bridge collapse that kills all but a handful of ill-fated office workers. Much like the Saw films, […]
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Rise of the Planet of the Apes entertains
Your complete appreciation of the entertaining new Planet of the Apes prequel could hinge on your comfort with CGI in close-up. I was never sold on the motion-capture rendering of actor Andy Serkis as the primary primate, Caesar. Roddy McDowell in a rubber mask from 43 years ago—or even Tim Roth in Tim Burton’s Ape […]
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The Change-Up a cringeworthy bro-mance
Ryan Reynolds (a promiscuous stoner douchebag-with-a-heart-of-gold) and his BFF since grade school, a much older-looking Jason Bateman (a family man with an insatiable appetite for success) star in David Dobkin’s (Wedding Crashers) latest bro-mantic comedy. The premise is as simple as it is stupid: the dudes get drunk, piss in a fountain and voila, switch […]
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Kitschy Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
In present day Shanghai, Nina (Bingbing Li) visits her comatose laotong (sworn sister) Sophia (Gianna Jun) in hospital. She reads Sophia’s unpublished manuscript, a parallel story of two other laotong, Snow Flower and Lily (Jun and Li) living in 1820s Hunan Province. The elaborate costumes are the most compelling part of the movie, which has […]
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Cowboys & Aliens drags
Jon Favreau’s Cowboys & Aliens is what you expect: a sci-fi action movie set in a lawless world of saloons and guns. An amnesiac cowboy wearing a digitized wristband that shoots stuff (Daniel Craig) ambles about wreaking havoc, killing some nasty looking aliens who’ve taken people hostage. The town’s head honcho (Harrison Ford), a mysterious […]
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No Smurf-in’ good
Director Raja Gosnell takes Smurfs where they shouldn’t go: out of Smurf Village (an alternate universe that “knows no sadness”) and through a blue moon-induced portal to modern day Manhattan. Hiding from evil wizard Gargamel (Hank Azaria with a prosthetic shnoz)—who’s on a mission to extract the Smurfs’ happiness to become invincible—a band of Smurfs […]
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Predictable Friends With Benefits
Just when you thought Hollywood was going to break some rules and get all polyamorous, it cranks out another predictable, if R-rated, romcom. Two hotties—an “emotionally damaged” recruiter, Jamie (Mila Kunis), and “emotionally unavailable” GQ recruit, Dylan (Justin Timberlake)—become best buds who just want a li’l hanky-panky on the side, sans relationship. Complications ensue (kinda) […]
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Captain America: The First Avenger worthy of the stars
It’s no small feat to make a movie about a patriotic weakling transformed into a chiselled slab of prime soldier meat—outfitted in a stars-and-stripes uniform, no less—without succumbing to jingoistic excess. Yet the makers of Captain America somehow do just that, softening the corny edges of the comic book story with several well-placed winks at […]