James Rocchi

When 'Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief' came out in 2010, it looked suspiciously as if the would-be franchise, based on Rick Riordan's best-selling teen adventure books, was going to get 'Golden Compass'-ed -- stopped after one installment and left to languish. But the first adventures of title hero Percy Jackson (Logan Lerman) -- born to a mortal mother and the Greek God Poseidon made $226 m

As basically a three-word genre mash-up -- monsters vs. robots -- the announcement that Warner Brothers and Legendary Pictures were making 'Pacific Rim' didn't really need to offer much more than just that siren-song simple idea. But it did, promising a big canvas for a big talent, the director Guillermo del Toro. Del Toro isn't a household name -- unless you live in Austin -- but he's the outsize

New DVD releases, Blu-ray and streaming this week: goofy glee club action in 'Pitch Perfect,' kid-friendly fun in 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days,' Colin Farrell in the 'Total Recall' remake and more zombie-killing in 'Resident Evil: Retribution.' ...

New on DVD, Blu-ray and streaming this week: 'Bourne' is back, 'Ice Age: Continental Drift' tries to keep a franchise warm, plus the raucous comedy of Seth MacFarlane's 'Ted' and Christopher Nolan's first film 'Following' gets the Criterion treatment....

I watched the romantic comedy 'Playing for Keeps' a while ago, starring Gerard Butler as an ex-soccer star adrift professionally and romantically, and the less said about that, the better. Soccer is a tough sport to capture on-screen, and an even tougher one to make Americans care about in large numbers -- I know that many of my friends care about the sport with a true fervor, to be sure, but they're islands in a sea of NFL games and NBA hubub, and the eternal MLB schedule.

New on DVD, Blu-ray and streaming this week, one of the biggest movies of 2012; one of the best movies of 2012; a strange, strong drama; and an old favorite on Blu-ray.

Brad Pitt and director Andrew Dominik's 'Killing them Softly' opens this weekend, and it's a film I consider as strained as it is strong -- for every great performance there's a heavy-handed bit of symbolism, and all the subtext is pretty much text. But it -- and a recent Variety article pondering if movies are too long (and, by the way, uh, the answer is "No," thank you very much) -- sent me back to thinking about 'The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford,'  Pitt and Dominik's excellent, overlooked previous 2007 release.

New on DVD, Blu-ray and streaming this week, summertime action, a horror-comedy for kids, some bootlegging with bruising action, and creepy scares. ...

There's always the very good question of what, exactly, to watch on Thanksgiving when you're relaxing at home and -- not to put too fine a point on it -- jammed to satiety with food. In the past, I've recommended all-American epics like 'A Bridge Too Far' or Mann's 'Last of the Mohicans,' but this year, I thought of a near-perfect Thanksgiving film -- shot through with the American century, as su

New on DVD, Blu-ray and streaming this week, old-pro action with 'The Expendables 2,' Quentin Tarantino goes over-the-top, and some gret overlooked movies arrive on streaming.