On the page, Charlie Countryman -- initially known by the irritating title The Necessary Death of Charlie Countryman -- could be an insufferable bit of self-important nonsense; yet another movie about finding yourself and first love and all of those things that are personally important but are generally only blown up for the big screen through metaphor and exaggeration. The film also has the great misfortune of starring actor Shia LaBeouf, once a promising future star, now an internet joke thanks to his similarly insufferable and self-important nonsense about what it means to create. However, the finished film, thanks to compelling direction by Fredrik Bond and a number of excellent performances by LaBeouf's co-stars, is hypnotic and somewhat moving, offering the kind of unified tone and vision that so many movies lack.

Charlie (LaBeouf) is devastated when his father (Vincent D'Onof...Read the entire review

The Movie:

With the 2012 theatrical release of Senna has brought several different projects surrounding Europe's Formula 1 racing to light, and last year's Rush brought a big studio effort to the big screen. However, both of those projects had a slightly narrow focus of time when it came to looking at Formula 1 or the drivers that were the subjects of the movies, whether the former was on Ayrton Senna in the 1980s and ‘90s or the latter on the friendly rivalry between James Hunt and Niki Lauda in the mid-‘70s. This is where 1 comes in, attempting to fill the gaps between those and then some.

Michele Farinola, Nigel Sinclair and Glen Zipper, three of the producers behind the Oscar-winning documentary Read the entire review

The title might be "Run", but the word they want you to know is parkour, which the back cover defines as "always moving forward despite obstacles within the environment." I've known the word only from that sample clip from "The Office" that comes on whenever I bring up the Hulu Plus app on my TV to remind myself why I don't subscribe to it, which defines parkour as "getting from point A to point B as creatively as possible." Anyways, there haven't been a lot of movies that focus on parkour (which despite its popularity, my word processor doesn't seem to recognize as a word), so "Run" attempts to fill that niche.

Our story begins in Detroit, where Danny (William Moseley, Peter from the Narnia series) uses his unique skills (climbing through windows and leaping fr...Read the entire review

With the home video release of Undisputed II, two action careers were launched, and remain tied together almost a decade later: those of actor Scott Adkins, who played the villainous convict Boyka, and director Isaac Florentine, who took a cheap cash-in sequel to a theatrical feature and made a minor action gem. By the time Undisputed III rolled around, film fans had caught up with them, and that film became a cult hit. The pair's other major venture, the 2009 feature Ninja, was not as well-regarded, even by Adkins and Florentine themselves. Now, while Undisputed IV percolates, the pair have set about trying to right the Ninja ship with a sequel that doubles down on action.

Although the film actually doesn't make any direct reference to the events of the first Ninja, allowing newcomers to view it as its own beast, Adkins again plays Casey, an Amer...Read the entire review

In 10 Words or Less
Some very funny people, a somewhat spooky story

The Movie
Thomas Lennon and Robert Ben Garant are, as a team, an enigma. Having come up with The State, and having brought us some very weird, very great series like Reno 911! and Viva Variety, they should be pigeon-holed creators of alt-comedy oddness. But then, as writers, they have been responsible for $1.5 billion in ticket sales for their mainstream comedies, driven largely by their very popular Night at the Museum franchise. Obviously, despite their unusual senses of humor, the...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE:
When the history of his career is written, James Franco will either be known as a jack of all trades (and, perhaps, master of none) or a true example of a post-modern renaissance man. No other actor with his matinee idol good looks has parlayed his particular slacker/stoner/star vibe into a legitimate career as a writer/director/performer/author/activist/thinker and artist, dabbling in everything from short fiction to theater, film both mainstream and experimental, and roles both traditional and slightly out of the ordinary. He is just as comfortable mocking his own "is he gay?" aura on Comedy Central as he is dishing out the hissable villain dialogue alongside Jason Statham in the recent thriller Homefront.

From his days as a James Dean wannabe to his work on Freaks and Geeks and his mainstream breakthrough as Spider-man's pal/eventual enemy Harry Osborn, he's de...Read the entire review

The Film:

The Film:

The Movie:

It's right there in the first moment of As I Lay Dying. Half of the screen is black and the other half is occupied by the face of Addie Bundren (played by Beth Grant, who memorably was concerned about Sparkle Motion devotion in Donnie Darko). Addie stares right at the audience and unleashes a snippet of some real poetic Faulkner talk: "My father used to say that the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time." It might as well be a line in the sand: if this is too pretentious or arty or poetic for you, then give up now. Soon, actor-cowriter-director James Franco will be throwing a steady stream of split-screens at you, accompanied by a mish-mash of voice-overs and characters breaking the fourth wall by talking straight ...Read the entire review

The Movie:

With this being the year of the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination, one can imagine that there will be a flood of remembrances and tributes in book, video or in the case of Parkland, celluloid and video. And while Parkland is not an ‘According to Hoyle' tribute, it certainly looks at things from a different perspective that many people would not have considered otherwise.

Peter Landesman (Trade) adapted Vincent Bugliosi's book "Four Days in November" into a screenplay which he also directed. Rather than spend a chunk of time looking at how Jackie Kennedy dealt with the assassination, the film spends approximately four days in Dallas, and sees Kennedy and the associated secret service come and go. We see the doctor who first responded to Kennedy at the hospital, Jim Carrico (Zac Efron...Read the entire review

(Because in Search of…'s format remained unchanged as did the general quality of the show itself, this review is identical to my simultaneous reviews of the program's other five seasons save for the list of each season's episodes. The reader is nonetheless obligated to read all six reviews. Or else.)

"Lost civilizations. Extraterrestrials. Myths and monsters. Missing Persons. Magic and witchcraft. Unexplained phenomenon. in Search of… cameras are travelling the world seeking out these great mysteries. This program was the result of the work of scientists, researchers, and a group of highly skilled technicians." - Host Leonard Nimoy

Often when old TV shows are released to DVD there's a strong desire on the part of those who watched it when it was new to revisit it, followed by great disappointment that the series isn't nearly as entertaining as one imagined...Read the entire review

(Because in Search of…'s format remained unchanged as did the general quality of the show itself, this review is identical to my simultaneous reviews of the program's other five seasons save for the list of each season's episodes. The reader is nonetheless obligated to read all six reviews. Or else.)

"Lost civilizations. Extraterrestrials. Myths and monsters. Missing Persons. Magic and witchcraft. Unexplained phenomenon. in Search of… cameras are travelling the world seeking out these great mysteries. This program was the result of the work of scientists, researchers, and a group of highly skilled technicians." - Host Leonard Nimoy

Often when old TV shows are released to DVD there's a strong desire on the part of those who watched it when it was new to revisit it, followed by great disappointment that the series isn't nearly as entertaining as one imagined...Read the entire review

(Because in Search of…'s format remained unchanged as did the general quality of the show itself, this review is identical to my simultaneous reviews of the program's other five seasons save for the list of each season's episodes. The reader is nonetheless obligated to read all six reviews. Or else.)

"Lost civilizations. Extraterrestrials. Myths and monsters. Missing Persons. Magic and witchcraft. Unexplained phenomenon. in Search of… cameras are travelling the world seeking out these great mysteries. This program was the result of the work of scientists, researchers, and a group of highly skilled technicians." - Host Leonard Nimoy

Often when old TV shows are released to DVD there's a strong desire on the part of those who watched it when it was new to revisit it, followed by great disappointment that the series isn't nearly as entertaining as one imagined...Read the entire review

The Movie:

Directed by Ariel Vroman in 2012, The Iceman attempts to cover the life and times of infamous contract killer Richard Kuklinski, a man reportedly responsible for over one hundred killings between 1948 and 1986. Inspired by a book written about Kuklinski and by the HBO documentaries The Iceman Tapes, the feature crams a whole lot of living into an hour and forty five minute long feature. As such, it definitely skips over some parts of Kuklinski's life and leaves out large chunks of his story. However, this is a feature film and not a documentary series and evaluated on its own merits as entertainment, The Iceman turns out to be a pretty solid true crime thriller.

When the movie begins in the 1960s, a strong, silent type named Richard Kuklinski (Michael Shannon) has just convinced a pretty young woman Deborah (Winona Ryder) to meet him for coffee. The...Read the entire review