I'm an avid watcher of films and I just love discussing and sharing them with the world. I enjoy horror, sci-fi and mostly any genre under the sun, plus I have a slight obsession with Blu-ray's and the whole high definition craze.
It's never a good sign when a studio randomly decides to shift a straight-to-DVD film to wide release, without a single bit of promotion. That's what happened to the latest Bruce Willis action film The Cold Light of Day, which also stars Henry "Superman" Cavill.
Comedians have always been known to be very talented and able to wear multiple hats in the production of a film or show, but it hasn't really took off until Louis C.K. started changing the landscape of delivering entertainment with his TV show and various online ways of watching his content. Since then other comedians like Mike Birbiglia have decided to step up and even direct their own films, as well as star in them.
Teen-pop musicals are a big deal right now, with films like Step Up continuing to pump out entries. The latest one to break the mold and earn some dough is Pitch Perfect, starring the now popular Anna Kendrick and Rebel Wilson. The film was smartly marketed, which resulted in a casual roll-out to more and more theaters, eventually stealing some thunder from other more known titles.
Oliver Stone's Savages is a recycled popcorn flick straight from the 90s. The performances help prove that point, aside from Benicio Del Toro's creepy, yet effective transformation as Lado. The stylized action and heavy editing can't save this one from showing its true heart, which isn't beating and is very ugly.
Tyler Perry's Madea's Witness Protection is typical Perry fluff, but entertaining none-the-less. It's not his strongest Madea film, but it certainly isn't his worst. I'd peg it somewhere in the middle, but I'm one of those rare birds that finds the character fascinating for some odd reason.
Director Paul W.S. Anderson's latest 3D Resident Evil entry in the long-lasting series simply might be the worse. Resident Evil: Retribution takes the expanded budget and bigger scope and does virtually nothing with it, simply rehashing old and dead characters from previous films to help further the now pathetic story of Alice and her daily habits of killing zombies and zombie-like creatures that were mutated by Umbrella Corp.
Jay Roach's The Campaign can be funny at times, but it's mostly an exercise of patience as two usually funny men scrape the bottom of the barrel for some truly unfunny jokes. Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis have both been in much better films.
Sometimes studio dramas are tough sells, case in point being the romantic drama The Words. The star power was there and the story looked engaging enough to grab casual movie-goers, yet the film failed to perform at the box office, despite its mixed reviews and generally mediocre word-of-mouth.
Dax Shepard certainly has his own brand of cool and his own idea of what comedy is. His latest directorial effort Hit & Run (co-directed with David Palmer) tries to play freely and wildly, but doesn't quite pan out. It's mostly harmless and sort of entertaining because of Tom Arnold's freak-outs and Bradley Cooper's weird hair, but not once does the film's core characters, played by Dax Shepard and Kristen Bell, give you anything to root for.
I absolutely love independent horror. Nothing excites me more than a newly released Ti West film, because he's one of the best genre directors working in the field today. Horror has taken an interesting turn as of late, relying more on the VOD crowd to help push a film through its limited theatrical run. Horror has also focused more on ghosts and POV-shot films in the current years, thanks to the Paranormal Activity push.