Film Reviews

[rating=8.00] According to some computer engineers and futurists, humanity is mere decades away from what many feel could be our greatest achievement: artificial intelligence. The concept of true AI elicits a wide-array of thoughts and opinions from the scientific community. Some, like Stephen Hawking, feel that AI has the potential to become the biggest threat […]

[rating=8.00] Early on in Going Clear, HBO’s shocking exposé on the hidden truths of Scientology, it’s posited that to work through Dianetics—“church” founder L. Ron Hubbard’s seminal work and cornerstone of the group’s philosophy—is to work through the mind of Hubbard himself. The line itself feels almost throw away at first; a simple observation serving […]

[rating=5.00] If there’s any system in America that deserves to be taken down by the sword of comedic insight, it’s the prison system. America, land of the free, boasts the highest number of citizens incarcerated in the developed world, and that number is growing all the time. With a system as blood-thirsty as the American […]

As the sun set in Austin, Texas last evening, another successful SXSW came to a close. The streets geared up for a final night of revelry before the boring nature of reality descended once more and we all woke up, hung over and exhausted from our week-and-a-half long bacchanal. While Neil Ferguson lurked the clubs […]

[rating=8.00] Looking at the slate for the coming year in movies, there are a lot of things to be excited about. 2015 is shaping up to be an incredible year for movie fans. The Avengers: Age of Ultron is right around the corner; Star Wars: The Force Awakens sits as a beacon guiding us towards […]

The historic Lobero theater in Santa Barbara was buzzing with excitement on during the world premiere of the rock documentary about the unlikely rise of the band Kansas to superstardom in the film – Kansas: Miracles Out of Nowhere.  Three members of the band, Phil Ehart (drums), Richard Williams (guitar) and Robby Steinhardt (violin) were […]

[rating=1.00] The whole phenomenon surrounding the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy has always  baffled me. I’ve seen it billed as “housewife porn,” a sort of refuge of sexual imagination and fantasy for the otherwise vanilla middle-American. I suppose that makes sense, given our attitudes regarding sex and sexuality in our country. We tend to repress […]

[rating=6.00] There’s a prevailing sense among many armchair critics and internet commenters that a movie—or really, anything—needs to be wholly original in order to be considered a valid entry into the world of art or entertainment. This isn’t necessarily a bad stance to take; as moviegoers, it’s nice to see things we’ve never seen before. […]

Hacking thriller ‘Blackhat’ may not be entirely terrible, but it’s certainly not worth the ten-buck admission

‘Unbroken’ is a decent way to kill a couple Christmas Day hours, but with its tentative and flat approach to its mesmerizing subject matter, the film won’t linger in your mind until the new year.

[rating=8.00] As we move through the stages of our lives, each and every one of us carries our own personal baggage – the weight of our sins and our misgivings, learning as we do that the burdens of our pasts are ours and ours alone. At the end of the day, no one can pick […]

Whereas the ‘Lord of the Rings’ trilogy introduced a new generation to the wonders of fantasy, ‘The Hobbit’, as a whole, feels like exists only to capture the dollar of a demographic.

[rating=4.00] Look, Hollywood, can we talk? This is getting to be ri-goddamn-diculous. This trend of splitting the final entry of a beloved franchise into two movies is a dangerous pit, and you’ve fallen into it. It was sort of understandable with Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Coming in almost 900 pages, the book certainly […]

[rating=5.00] A lot has changed in the last 20 years — looking back on it now, the 90’s feel almost quaint. It was a time when the internet was a novelty (a fad, they said, on par with the HAM radio phase of the 70’s), the economy was booming, a robust middle class served as […]

[rating=6.00] After I attend a movie screening, I typically like to sit and marinate for a few days before I crack open the laptop and sit down to write a review. I’m sure some critics like to rush home and get it all out in a quick burst so they can, if nothing else, stop […]

[rating=7.00] I’ve got a friend who argues that superheroes are one of the few common bounds that connects the young and the old. I can’t really disagree with that. The eight-year-old little girl and the 80-year-old man can find a lot of common ground, as far as interests go, with the increasingly growing world of […]

[rating=10.00] As moviegoers, we’ve been burned so many times by buzz that many of us are left jaded and wary of the pre-release hype machine. It’s hard, really, to take these things seriously anymore. Personally, I add to this mix my natural inclination towards cynical skepticism about anything that anyone tells me is a definite […]

[rating=7.00] The revenge thriller is, by nature, a limited genre. Sure, you can play with tropes and flip the script as much as you like; in the end, though, your basic structure is still going to come down to “You wronged me; I make it right.” After seeing it a thousand times, the story itself […]

[rating=9.00] Written and Directed by: David Ayer Starring: Brad Pitt, Shia LaBeouf, Logan Lerman It’s easy for us, as civilians, to regard a returning solider as a hero. From the comfort of our couch, it seems like such a simple equation. “That guy,” we tell ourselves “is a hero.” We aren’t wrong, of course, in our […]

[rating=2.00] At some point in the future, some bright eyed and rosy-cheeked young film scholar will sit at his computer and write a paper on the current period of cinematic history. By that time, I’m sure, the era we’re living through will have become known as “the shared universe period” and much ink (digital or […]