3D doesn’t add much to the experience of the original Jurassic Park movie, but I loved it as a kid and wanted to see it in theaters again… What Works:…Turns out, the real draw is seeing that T-Rex wreaking havoc on the big screen nearly twenty years later. In the 90’s, nobody could craft a suspense sequence…
Category: Mindless Mondays
Movie Review: The Host
Stephanie Myers (the Twilight author) strikes again. One of her books is the basis for this poorly received sci-fi film except that a lot of the same legions that stormed the theaters for Twilight didn’t show up to see this movie. That’s what really matters since nobody would much care what a critic thought of…
Movie Review: “G.I. Joe: Retardation”
I didn’t expect much from G.I. Joe: Retaliation…and it sure didn’t deliver much. I hated the first movie, and, if anything, this one is even worse. Joseph Gordon-Levitt doesn’t reprise his villainous role, and Channing Tatum is in it for a total of ten minutes. [They supposedly held the movie’s release by a year so…
TV Review: Season Premieres of “Mad Men” and “Vice”
Mad Men…This episode starts off deliberately disorienting, throwing us for a minute as we try to figure out exactly what’s changed for all the characters since we last saw them more than a year ago. Time has certainly passed for our core group (only Don and Pete look exactly the same) but not much internally. Don…
TV Review: “Hannibal” #hannibal Season Premiere (Bonus Review of “The New Normal” Finale)
Hannibal…I was as skeptical about this show as I am any obvious cash-grab or “adaptation” of already popular characters (a la Bates Motel, A&E’s new show following America’s other most notable serial killer), but Hannibal is a bit different for two reasons: 1. The source material has already been shamelessly exploited by Thomas Harris, the…
TV Review: Justified’s Season Finale
Justified commenced their 4th season tonight and it was a satisfying but unspectacular event. [Some Spoilers Ahead] I’m a huge fan of the show’s first two seasons (both of which deserve solid A’s), but wasn’t so big on the uneven, scattershot 3rd season that, at times, resembled a Road Runner cartoon with too many villains…
TV Review: All Seasons of “Spartacus”
If there’s one show I never expected to watch (let alone like) it’s Starz’s Spartacus. At the time this show premiered I thought it was just a 300 knock-off made to capitalize on a movie that I didn’t really like, and that it would be a pale shadow of HBO’s Rome (which is widely assumed…
Marathon Viewings of “Banshee,” “Californication,” “Hunted,” “Magic City,” “Torchwood,” “Camelot,” and “Boss”
Last week, something unprecedented happened: A cable company actually delivered a service that they didn’t have to. Comcast (and their OnDemand channel Xfinity) opened all premium cable channels to non-subscribers so that people could perform marathon viewings of, say, Dexter or Spartacus (review of it later today). There were even some basic cable and broadcast…
TV Reviews: The Walking Dead #thewalkingdead
Tonight was a battle royale between not just The Governor and Rick, but between two ultra-nerd heavyweight shows: The Walking Dead and Game of Thrones (both of which have a rabid fan base that will tear the head off a man that says they’re not just as good as Mad Men or Breaking Bad). Game of Thrones…
Movie Review: Spring Breakers
This is otherwise known as the movie where Disney “angels” (Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgins) fall. They, along with two anonymous and interchangeable white girls go on a drug and booze fueled Spring Break with a few of them (but not Gomez) participating in a robbery to get down there. The label of “Disney girls…
Movie Review: The Croods
This movie is exactly what you would expect. It won’t surprise or challenge you in any way, and nothing rocks the boat as it sails toward a big family-first finish that packs a message. And yet, I enjoyed it. Your kids will love it, and I’d much rather sit through this than the last Ice…
Movie Reviews: Admission
This movie opened and died in theaters this weekend, and I can’t really say people that chose to skip it were missing a lot. However, it’s a likable, solidly B-grade dramedy that won’t leave you feeling too ripped off if you’re one of the few who stumbled into a theater before it’s gone in two weeks….
TV Reviews: Al Pacino as “Phil Specter”
I was a big fan of the previous Al Pacino/HBO biopic pairing, You Don’t Know Jack, which taught me more about the life of the infamous Dr. Jack Kevorkian than a thousand features on CNN could. BUT, sadly, lightening doesn’t strike in this for instance. This “biopic” deals exclusively with the infamous record-producer/weirdo’s court case…