Bullet to the Head
[ Hits:75 ]
Review: Bullet to the Head is a long-awaited match-up of Hollywood veterans, Walter Hill and Sylvester Stallone. Walter Hill directed Arnold Schwarzenegger in Red Heat and Bruce Willis in Last Man Standing, so it was only fitting that he complete The Expendables 2 triumvirate with Sylvester Stallone in Bullet to the Head.
Stallone's had a good run of form rebooting Rocky and Rambo, with a tongue-in-cheek tribute to action men with The Expendables, which is about to become a trilogy. The Italian Stallio...
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How I Spent My Summer Vacation
[ Hits:365 ]
Review: How I Spent My Summer Vacation, originally Get the Gringo, stars Mel Gibson in what has been described as an unofficial sequel to Payback. Love or hate the man, he's still got loads of moxie and star power. He may be a washed up celebrity in real-life, but Gibson is still a live-wire on screen and shows he's still got it in what should have been his acting comeback.
A nameless Gibson manages to find himself in a corrupt yet liberal prison village, after getting nabbed by Mexican border patrol a...
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Drive
[ Hits:627 ]
Review: Driver (played by Ryan Gosling in super-intense mode) enters an elevator with the nice girl who lives down the hall. As he walks in he notices a big guy in the elevator who looked as if he was about to get off on their floor, before he saw that Driver and the girl were getting into the elevator. Driver takes note of this as he walks into the elevator, and keeps the thug in his periphery as the elevator descends. Then, in a fairytale sweep guaranteed to melt cinemagoers’ hearts, he swivel...
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SUPER
[ Hits:475 ]
Review: Rainn Wilson is Frank, an ordinary guy with no superpowers who decides to kick crime in the ass. Sounds a lot like Defendor and Kick-Ass right? If this movie were a person, it'd be Kevin Bacon, which isn't surprising because there's only one degree of separation. You could say it's the Taxi Driver of superhero movies... just don't call it another Kick-Ass, mmmkay.
Frank (Wilson), a burger flipper, whose smoking hot wife (Tyler) and commitment to justice are the only two things going for him... ...
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London Boulevard
[ Hits:786 ]
Review: London Boulevard is the sort of movie you'd expect from a director like Guy Ritchie. It feels like it was written with Ritchie in mind - given the setting, characters and dialogue. Problem is... the element of romance and the overall lack of action. Guy Ritchie is more about intense, slick and violent British gangster movies, although the way Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey Jr. has been going... he seems to be embracing a different sort of romance, playing up the relationship between Holmes a...
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Paradise Stop
[ Hits:919 ]
Review: Paradise Stop is a fun movie from the same team that brought us the hilarious South African comedy, White Wedding. This time, acting duo, Rapulana Seiphemo and Kenneth Nkosi, have banded with writer-director Jann Turner again to form the core unit behind Paradise Stop a crime comedy caper set against the backdrop of a truck stop in a sleepy little Limpopo town in South Africa. Paradise Stop, a truck stop on the northern border linking cargo-carrying 16-wheelers from South Africa to Zimbabwe is t...
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The Lincoln Lawyer
[ Hits:1021 ]
Review: Matthew McConaughey wants to be taken seriously. The Lincoln Lawyer can be viewed as his return to serious acting after a scourge of romantic comedy lead roles. After starring opposite Kate Hudson in the smash hit, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, it seemed that McConaughey was destined to be that guy - even trying to turn their good chemistry into a recurring partnership with Fool's Gold. This after proving his worth in films like U571, Sahara, Contact, EdTV and A Time to Kill. Thing is... McConau...
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Determinism
[ Hits:1378 ]
Review: Determinism (determinismthemovie.com) is the second feature-length film of identical twin brothers, Sanjit and Ranju Majumdar. The brothers were born in Queens, after their parents immigrated from South Asia, and they started making films in high school at the age of 16. After their first film, An Optimistic Perspective, premiered at the Lake Placid Film Festival in 2004, it wasn't long before they started work on their second, Determinism. The gritty, film noir-inspired, guerilla style crime st...
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The Next Three Days
[ Hits:1071 ]
Review: Breaking out of prison is never easy, unless you're one of the Beagle boys or a young Sean Connery. It's a meticulous process of timing, planning, training, testing and presence of mind as demonstrated by Wentworth Miller in Prison Break. He was motivated by his brother's wrongful imprisonment, determined to reverse the cogs of justice and work the system in his favour. Full body tattoos are one way of getting your brother out of the clinker, but there's another way... a more sensible blueprint ...
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The Town
[ Hits:938 ]
Review: Since Hollywoodland, he's has been on the comeback trail. Although, it's not that difficult when you're following up roles as a blind superhero in Daredevil and Jennifer Lopez's play thing in Gigli. This is the life of Ben Affleck, whose career has been peppered with the good, the bad and the ugly. These days, it's as if Affleck has sprouted a halo and angel wings because he can do no wrong! Probably just jinxed him, but Affleck has turned on the talent instead of the schmarmy charms echoing a s...
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The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest
[ Hits:796 ]
Review: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest is the third chapter in the Millennium series: after The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and The Girl Who Played with Fire. Stieg Larsson's adapted film trilogy has held a good consistency under Yellow Bird Productions with each part filmed within the same year much like a mini-series. The difference being that this series has been blocked off in sections denoting each book and the saga of Lisbeth Salander has been cemented by a career-defining performance by No...
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The Girl Who Played with Fire
[ 2009 ] [ Hits:874 ]
Review: The Girl Who Played with Fire is the second chapter in the infamous Millennium series: after The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and serves as a bridge to The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest. Stieg Larsson's trilogy has received considerable publicity given the nature of the crime novel and speculation over Larsson's death shortly after delivering the manuscripts for publication. The Swedish film adaptations were well-received and have finally been given an international reception, bolstered by th...
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The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans
[ 2009 ] [ Hits:758 ]
Review: It's really difficult to comment on Werner Herzog's latest offering, The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans. First off, the title should alert you to the fact that this is a send up of the cop crime genre, which is not to be confused with Abel Ferrara's Bad Lieutenant (1992) starring Harvey Keitel. Both focus on a bad cop with a drug addiction, are based on the same script but are made with different intentions. Herzog has made a name for himself as a daring and unorthodox director with fi...
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The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day
[ Hits:651 ]
Review: The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day features the same cast and the same writer-director that made The Boondock Saints famous. It would seem natural for the progression to mirror the original cult classic, however that is not the case in this sequel. Instead of counterbalancing the Saints with an agent like Smecker (Dafoe), Duffy decides to incorporate a Jodie Foster type character with a Southern drawl called Bloom (Benz). While Julie Benz (Dexter) is a stunning redhead with a bit of spunk, i...
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Public Enemies
[ 2009 ] [ Hits:844 ]
Review: Public Enemy was one of the film's that ironically cemented Jimmy Cagney in the old Hollywood. His performance as Tom Powers was extraordinary and marked the rise of the crime genre and of the legend of Cagney. This is what Public Enemies is missing... a powerhouse performance that delivers substance, backbone and true gangster grit beyond the rattle of the tommy gun. While Public Enemies is competent, solid, action-packed entertainment with a fine cast, based on an intriguing true story with to...
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American Gangster
[ 2007 ] [ Hits:881 ]
Review: Ridley Scott introduces American Gangster, an epic American crime film based on a true story. Detective Richie Richards (Crowe) makes in-roads into Frank Lucas’s (Washington) heroin empire in Manhattan. Drug abuse is rife during America’s involvement in Vietnam, and Lucas smuggles narcotics from Thailand only to establish a monopoly with ‘Blue Magic’ a purer, cheaper alternative for U.S. junkies during the 1970s. Scott is supported by Academy Award winners, Denzel Washington and Russell...
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Before the Devil Knows You're Dead
[ 2007 ] [ Hits:452 ]
Review: Before The Devil Knows You’re Dead is a powerful crime thriller that brings “the family” closer to home as two brothers plan a heist on their parent’s jewellery store, which goes horribly wrong. Instead of the mob, it’s the immediate family that does the job. Sidney Lumet directs a film that loosely mimics Kubrick’s The Killing in terms of narrative and plot. Philip Seymour Hoffman delivers a sterling performance, which was bundled together with The Savages to earn him an Oscar nomin...
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Kings of South Beach
[ 2007 ] [ Hits:900 ]
Review: Kings of South Beach comes to you from the writings of Nicholas Pileggi, author of Wise Guy (Goodfellas) and Casino, two books that became Martin Scorsese crime epics. He writes the script for Kings of South Beach a decade later, which is based on a true story. This made for television feature may not have the big budget flair of The Departed, but manages to entertain nevertheless. Donnie Wahlberg teams up with experienced TV maverick, Jason Gedrick in something of a buddy movie. These boys are ...
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Max Payne
[ 2008 ] [ Hits:701 ]
Review: Max Payne gets its long-awaited adaptation into film. Anyone that has played Max Payne will agree that Max Payne (2008) captured the atmosphere from the game. The subways, dark alleys and dark light are Max’s world, and translate well on the big screen. However, the story and characters could have been lifted from a script for another film. Max Payne is void of key Payne elements, which would align the adaptation to the video game. The movie adaptation substitutes pain killers for a top secret...
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Burn After Reading
[ 2008 ] [ Hits:853 ]
Review: Burn After Reading is a Coen Brothers film riddled with a host of regulars including: George Clooney (Oh Brother, Where Art Thou), Frances McDormand (Fargo) and J.K. Simmons (The Ladykillers). Burn After Reading tells the story of two gym employees, who discover a CD with information about the CIA’s operations. Linda (McDormand) wants several cosmetic surgery procedures done, and Chad just wants a “prize” for recovering the invaluable information on the disc. This comes after Osbourne (Mal...
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