Movie Reviews

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.

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.

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.

Read the full article »

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.

Movies about losers tend to fall into one of two categories.  Either the characters are "lovable losers" who are able to elicit the viewer’s sympathy and desire to see the characters grow and change for the better; or the characters are so frustrating to watch that you want to grab them by the shoulders and shake them, yelling for them to snap out of it.  Unfortunately, Arthur Newman falls into that latter category.

Read FilmJabber’s full Arthur Newman movie review.

Snatch without the edge, Angel’s Share is a sort-of-heartwarming British crime drama-comedy that is well done but largely unremarkable. Now playing in limited American theaters, Angel’s Share evaporates from memory like so much whiskey.

Read FilmJabber’s full Angels’ Share movie review.

Naomi Watts cries, screams and whimpers in The Impossible, a foolishly titled movie about a very serious incident involving Thailand, the year 2004 and a tsunami that killed hundreds of thousands of people. At times powerful, at other times drawn out and melodramatic, The Impossible is an engaging if overeager drama.

Read FilmJabber’s full The Impossible movie review.