The FilmJabber Movie Blog

The more I think about it, Life of Pi was a stupid movie. Sure, it looked great and was downright dazzling on the big screen, but watch it on a television and it’s a film about a CGI tiger that fluctuates between having terrific and mediocre special effects. The story is sort of dull, the ending anticlimactic and the whole religion piece doesn’t make any sense. Thankfully, there’s Kon-Tiki.

Read FilmJabber’s full Kon-Tiki movie review.

So this little film called Star Trek Into Darkness is now in theaters, and it features among other things a scary performance by baddie Benedict Cumberbatch, lots of entertaining action scenes and the most horrendously bad ending in the entire franchise. Whether you can forgive the movie for its final 20 soul-sucking minutes will determine whether you’ll give Star Trek a positive or negative grade.

Read the rest of the Star Trek Into Darkness movie review.

Leatherface is back, and oh boy. Texas Chainsaw 3D is the worst kind of horror movie: a movie so bad it goes beyond being funny bad back to just being bad.  At least the filmmakers were clever enough to do something new and remove "massacre" from the title.

Read FilmJabber’s full Texas Chainsaw 3D movie review.

Well, that happened. A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III is a less-than-winning drama-comedy starring Charlie Sheen as a successful graphic designer whose life crumbles apart when the love of his life (Katheryn Winnick) leaves him. Thanks to a few too many Brandy Alexanders and an active imagination, Charles Swan descends into a series of "fantasy-inspired reflections on his colorful past."

Read FilmJabber’s full A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III movie review.

The traditional love story/social drama gets upended Baz Luhrmann style, with flashy special effects, dancing, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jay Z music. This isn’t your grandma’s The Great Gatsby, but that’s okay. Especially since I don’t remember grandma’s version to begin with, if I ever saw it in the first place.

Read FilmJabber’s full The Great Gatsby movie review.

Ender’s Game is one of my favorite books of all time. Ender’s Game is being turned into a movie. That is all.

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And people said Iron Man 2 was stupid. Robert Downey Jr. is back in the first post-Avengers Marvel film, and boy is it a cluttered mess. Featuring a bland villain, a nonsensical plot and major tonal imbalance, Iron Man 3 has plenty of laughs but very few thrills. But hey, at least Robert Downey Jr. is in it.

Read FilmJabber’s full Iron Man 3 movie review.

Who else thinks World War Z is going to be a flat-out disaster? Yeah, I didn’t think I was alone.

Vanity Fair just released a preview of their June 2013 exclusive with Brad Pitt, which provides more detail into what we already knew: the production has been a big, bloated mess. While there is a part of me that is morbidly curious to see the movie – and I hope, hope, hope that I am wrong and that the movie will be a fun thrill ride – this seemed like the best opportunity to outline why World War Z is prone to be a big, awful flop.

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How do I start this review? How do I write the rest of it? The subject is Silver Linings Playbook, but not the movie. This review is about the DVD, and DVD reviews can only go so far. I’ve never been interested in going on and on about how good the video quality or audio clarity is, because after all, 99% of people don’t give a damn, especially when the movie is a drama-comedy.

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“I am Locutus of Borg. Resistance is futile.”

These are the defining words spoken in one of the best story arcs of Star Trek: The Next Generation, now embodied in high definition. The Best of Both Worlds is now on Blu-ray, and not only does the two-episode “movie” look fantastic, it still holds up extremely well.

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Michael Bay returns to his roots, sort of, with Pain & Gain, a low budget crime comedy-thriller starring Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, Anthony Mackie and Tony Shalhoub. Please note that "low budget" for Michael Bay means $25 million.

Read FilmJabber’s full Pain & Gain movie review.

From the writer/director of Shotgun Stories and Take Shelter comes Mud, which stars Matthew McConaughey as a wanted fugitive who is befriended by two teenage boys who agree to help him elude a group of bounty hunters and reunite him with his on-and-off girlfriend while evading poisonous snakes and angry parents. Mud is Jeff Nichols’ most accessible and entertaining movie to date, but it’s also the least memorable.

Read FilmJabber’s full Mud movie review.