The best thing that can be said for “Saw V” is that it doesn’t have one of those ridiculous house-of-cards endings that plagued the previous two installments in Lionsgate’s cash cow. However, the transition from one Jigsaw to the next has proved to be quite taxing on the series’ visceral impact. Does anyone even care anymore what the movies’ victims have done to deserve their punishment? What started as a clever, if grisly, conceit has created Justice Fatigue. The movie begins with a man strapped to a table while a blade-shaped pendulum slowly descends towards his midsection. His choice: allow…
Author: David Medsker
So let’s get this straight: in late-1920s Los Angeles, the young son of a working single mother disappears. Months later the police, desperate for a good headline because they’re corrupt and lazy, tell the mother they found her child, only it’s not her child. When she tells them they made a mistake, they force her to take the child and tell her that she’s imagining things. When she refuses to let it go, they lock her away in a psycho ward. At this point, some grisly details involving another juvenile case come into light, suggesting that the missing pieces to…
Movies like “High School Musical 3: Senior Year” are a studio executive’s dream come true. They have a Q rating of approximately two bazillion within their target demographic, and because it exists in a world that bears little to no resemblance to ours, they are bulletproof from criticism. That latter point makes my job, well, pointless, really. Even if the movie consisted of one long shot of Zac Efron, the little girls would declare this to be the Best Movie Ever. So consider this review a guide for the parents of those little girls, and prepare for a shocker: the…
Not everything in “Sex Drive” works, but it’s easy to forgive the movie for its weaknesses because it’s so rare that a movie, um, goes for it the way this one does. Most teen sex comedies tease more than they put out – they’re long on the comedy and short on the sex. Not so, “Sex Drive,” which gives up the goods and then some. Indeed, this might be the raunchiest sex comedy of all time. The movie begins with scrawny virgin Ian (Josh Zuckerman) having an IM chat with a girl that’s way out of his league. (Ian told…
Here’s the thing about Oliver Stone’s movies: they are neither as good nor as bad as people make them out to be (“except for ‘U-Turn,’” my wife just added), and “W.,” Stone’s ripped-from-today’s-headlines movie about the life of George W. Bush, is no exception. It’s similar in tone to his portrayal of Richard Nixon, in that Stone offers an unflinching look at the man behind the colorful colloquialisms, yet does his best to humanize him at the same time. The problem is that no movie is going to accurately capture the essence of anyone, never mind someone as polarizing, and…
“City of Ember” feels like a live-action version of the video game “Myst,” with George Orwell at the helm. It’s a series of riddles and hiding-in-plain-sight clues, covered in a suffocating layer of totalitarianism. Pretty heavy material for a movie aimed at ‘tweens, yes, but the “Harry Potter” movies have proven that the kids can handle heavy. Besides, the movie’s adults-never-listen-to-kids angle is catnip to a teenager. The movie begins by explaining the origins of the Builders, who have created the underground city of Ember in order to preserve mankind after a natural disaster has made life on the surface…
It’s hard to get emotionally invested in one-day movies like “Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist.” There are exceptions to this, of course, and John Hughes is responsible for two of them (“The Breakfast Club,” “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”), but by and large, one day is just not enough time to get to know someone. This movie is no different, with the supporting characters being reduced to playing the Flighty Drunk, the Hot But Bitchy Ex, the Gay Friends, and the Moocher. It does manage to overcome these shortcomings by movie’s end, but just barely. It’s amusing while it’s happening, but…
Somewhere at NYU, there is someone with a plan, someone who’s bound and determined to Change The World with his or her vision, the kind of approach to moviemaking that ultimately results in the human race taking the next evolutionary step (“Pulp Fiction,” “The Matrix,” “The Usual Suspects,” “Memento,” etc.). Everyone who goes into school to be a director thinks they’re going to be that guy, of course, otherwise they wouldn’t do it. But here’s the catch: most of them don’t get there. If they’re lucky, they drum up a career shooting TV commercials, and there is nothing wrong with…
“Eagle Eye” is a college drinking game waiting to happen. Arm all of the participants with buzzers from the guessing game “Taboo,” and whenever someone sees a reference to a more popular – and far better – movie, they hit their buzzer and blurt it out, while everyone else has to take a drink. Buzz. “Phone Booth!” Drink. Buzz. “Enemy of the State!” Drink. Buzz. “Final Destination!” Chug. You see where this is going: the movie’s premise is an over-the-top mash-up of action movies from the last ten years, though its main source of inspiration is a movie made far…
Say this for “Lakeview Terrace”: it’s arguably the best Screen Gems movie in years, which is like calling it the studio’s prettiest ugly duckling. In truth, it’s a by-the-numbers stalker thriller with an enjoyable but scenery-chewing performance by Samuel L. Jackson at its center. Compare it to the other movies Screen Gems has inflicted upon an unsuspecting public, however (“The Brothers Solomon,” “Untraceable,” “The Covenant,” “When a Stranger Calls,” the “Resident Evil” movies, “The Cave,” “The Messengers” and “Ultraviolet”), and we’re talking instant classic. It’s not, of course, but next to those movies, this is practically “Citizen Kane.” Jackson is…