Movie Reviews - Page 5

Nine years after the original ‘Sin City,’ a sequel that no one has recently asked for will be in your local movie theater come Friday. The name of this sequel is ‘Sin City: A Dame to Kill For,’ which consists of four intertwining stories set against a stylized backdrop and, hey, it’s August … what are you really looking for right now, anyway? As a service to you, we answer every question that you could possibly have about ‘Sin City: A Dame to Kill For.’

While Stallone may be perfectly comfortable selling himself out, his accomplices on this latest jokey saga seem to have tackled their ludicrous material with varying degrees of seriousness – and as this ranked rundown details, also with varying degrees of embarrassment. Ahead, of the established stars, we rank from least to most who we feel the most embarrassed for that he (all hes!) is in 'The Expendables 3.'

‘Let’s Be Cops,’ a new movie about two grown men -- played by Jake Johnson and Damon Wayans Jr. -- who pretend to be police officers, did not screen early for critics. On a rainy Tuesday night, I paid $14 for a ticket for ‘Let’s Be Cops’ at my local movie theater, to watch the film amongst around 30 other people who thought this would be a satisfactory night of entertainment. While watching I kept a running diary of my experience. Watching ‘Let’s Be Cops’ is a miserable experience. Anyway, here’s how that all went…

Because of Comic-Con and because Paramount did not screen ‘Hercules’ before I left for Comic-Con, I have been living a life that was free of The Rock-as-Hercules. That is, until Tuesday morning when I bought a ticket to see ‘Hercules’ at a movie...

‘Guardians of the Galaxy’ is the weirdest and funniest of the Marvel movies to date as we follow a ragtag group of strangers (to each other and, most likely, to most audience members) led by Chris Pratt’s Peter Quill (aka Star-Lord, a name he desperately wants to be called). Will you like ‘Guardians of the Galaxy’? It depends!

This week, Scarlett Johansson (‘We Bought a Zoo’) stars as a character named Lucy in a movie called ‘Lucy.’ The advertising campaign makes Luc Besson’s new film look like a mainstream action film – and there is action! – but it’s not quite what you might think it will be.

Did you hear the one about getting married and having a family? When you get married and have children, you no longer get to have sex. This basic knowledge has become such a tired movie cliche and yet entire films continue to be built around it, including 'Sex Tape,' the new film that reunites 'Bad Teacher' director Jake Kasdan with his stars Cameron Diaz and Jason Segel -- a combination that should make for easy entertainment, but instead lends itself to exasperated groans.

Every film is a cultural artifact. As singular works of art, movies are their own self-contained contributions to popular culture, but their often essential inclusion of things like music, fashion, and slang within their own narratives puts them into a unique space – art wrapped around art, culture enveloped in culture. It’s why even bad period-set films are so fun to watch, as seeing canny cultural representations is almost always amusing, if not a bit intriguing. Blame it on nostalgia, shared memory, or even a good old-fashioned affection for otherwise forgotten pop culture snippets, but movies that work hard to accurately depict a time period or an era always have an extra it of built-in entertainment.

A movie like ‘Transformers: Age of Extinction’ exists only to make money. And it did make money -- a lot of money. And there are a lot of movies that fit into this supposed “blockbuster” (or, if at Blockbuster, the “box office buster”) category. These movie don’t have to be good. People just see them. That’s why it is really notable when one of these movies is as good as ‘Dawn of the Planet of the Apes' is.

Melissa McCarthy (‘White Oleander’) stars in this holiday weekend’s new release, ‘Tammy,’ opening on Wednesday. Who is this Tammy we speak of? Is ‘Tammy’ more of a drama than it is a comedy? As a service to all of humankind, we answer every question that you could possibly have about Tammy (the character) and ‘Tammy’ (the movie).