REVIEW: Red Riding Hood [2011]

“All sorrows are less with bread” Why, in movies, does a thrown axe/sword/dagger/knife always land squarely in the back of one’s opponent as he’s about to maim? Can’t it comically thud to the ground, short the half revolution necessary to inflict injury, allowing the antagonist to look at the camera with a twinkle in his eye before clawing the heroine’s face off? I know its Hollywood and audiences have preconceptions about good versus evil and all, but realistic physics mixed with plausible probability may help something called authenticity. But what…

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REVIEW: Take Me Home Tonight [2011]

“That was a metaphor. I totally got him.” As this week’s box office shows in contrast to my huge level of enjoyment with Take Me Home Tonight, it appears director Michael Dowse has another cult classic on his hands. Already with It’s All Gone Pete Tong and a duo of Fubar films containing a pretty vocal fan following—how else would what looks like a major low-budget flick in the latter get funding for sequel Balls to the Wall—I’d have to imagine the lackluster opening of his newest won’t get him…

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REVIEW: Source Code [2011]

“I’d kiss you again” If it seems familiar, well it is. Duncan Jones’s sophomore effort, after his one man-show Moon, is eerily similar to Tony Scott’s Déjà Vu from five years ago. But while the Denzel vehicle dealt more with police work and action, Ben Ripley’s script for Source Code delves deeper into the ramifications of the science fiction at play. Using the phenomenon that the human brain keeps an image of its last eight minutes alive coupled with the fact our minds continue to fire after our bodies have…

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REVIEW: The Adjustment Bureau [2011]

“It doesn’t matter how you feel, what matters is in black and white” Do we have the capacity for free will? When you look back into the history of mankind, what really stand out are our blunders and tragedies. Nuclear power is created and we drop the bomb; diseases are discovered and cured and we manufacture biological weapons. The laundry list of things done for science, for good, for survival that end up twisting into one more way to inch closer to absolute annihilation is sickening to fathom. Maybe humanity…

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The 83rd Oscars recap through tweets …

@jaredmobarak • Oscar time … congrats to The King’s Speech … why bother with the show when everyone thinks they know the winner? The 83rd Annual Academy Awards ceremony was quite possibly its worst incarnation the past decade. And things finally seemed to be going the right way. Hugh Jackman was fun; Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin were lukewarm, but the show was fun; and Neil Patrick Harris is Neil Patrick Harris. NPH can do no wrong. Much in that vein, I thought the pairing of James Franco and Anne…

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