Author: Jason Zingale

Ask any B-movie enthusiast what film they’re most looking forward to seeing this year and you’re bound to hear a lot of jabber about a certain Samuel L. Jackson thriller called “Snakes on Plane.” But while fanboys swoon for CGI snakes and snappy, expletive-laced dialogue, writer/director James Gunn’s horror-comedy “Slither” sneaks its way into theaters with enough old-school style to knock “SoaP” supporters right off their soapbox. Featuring a cast teeming with talented up-and-comers (Nathan Fillion and Elizabeth Banks) and veteran character actors like Michael Rooker and Gregg Henry, as well as a hilarious, tongue-in-cheek script that’s funny when it…

Tennis will never be as popular as conventional American sports like baseball, basketball, or football, but the game transfers over to the world of polygons and cheat codes with a lot more ease. Perhaps it’s because the sport is relatively simple, with only a limited number of button combinations on a fairly complex controller, but I’m willing to bet that it’s the sport’s similarity to the godfather of video games – “Pong” – that makes for such a smooth transition. This, of course, doesn’t make for a successful sales pitch. Who in their right mind is going to pay money…

Nothing has changed since the first season of “24,” nothing bad anyway. The second season of Fox’s smash-hit is bigger and better, with an overworked 24 hours that will surely elevate your heart rate and a whole disc of extras that’ll keep you busy for weeks. Adding an extra disc onto the set, the second season of “24” runs seven discs long and is even more of a worthwhile buy than the first-season DVD set. After successfully stopping an assassination attempt on African-American presidential candidate David Palmer (Dennis Haysbert), Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland), a former agent of the Counter-Terrorist Unit…

How exactly do you make a comedy about depression? Well, you don’t. That hardly puts a restraint on a filmmaker’s decision to include a little bit of humor, though, especially when using it as a buffer for some pretty serious issues. Perhaps one of the best and most recent examples of this is Zach Braff’s “Garden State,” which features its share of darkly comedic moments amidst a somber backdrop of depression. In the case of Steve Buscemi’s “Lonesome Jim,” the subject matter doesn’t necessarily require any humor, but it certainly helps to keep the film’s 91-minute runtime from feeling like…

Twenty years ago, Mel Brooks had no problem convincing us of his comedic genius, though I’m not so sure you can say the same thing for him today. After his last film (“Dracula: Dead and Loving It”) sucked it up real good at the box office, the veteran writer/director disappeared from the public eye, and regrettably, so did the memory of most of his films. Cult classics like “The Producers,” “Spaceballs” and “Young Frankenstein” (two of which don’t even appear in this set) continue to be discussed today, but what of Brooks’ other films? Both “Blazing Saddles” and “History of…

Adapting classic literary works into bubbly teen comedies isn’t exactly a fresh concept, but it’s one that has worked well over the past decade. Some of the best examples include Amy Heckerling’s “Clueless” (based on Jane Austen’s “Emma”) and “10 Things I Hate About You” (from Shakespeare’s “The Taming of the Shrew”), and while the latest film to employ this tactic, “She’s the Man,” doesn’t show as much promise as the abovementioned, it’s still a nice addition to a budding genre geared towards making a quick buck off teenage girls. Supposedly based on the Shakespeare play “Twelfth Night” (only in…

First-time director Jason Reitman’s “Thank You For Smoking” restores hope in the future of cinema. It delivers everything you could hope for in a film (a talented cast, a whip-smart script, and a small budget) without even blinking. Congratulations are certainly in store for the young director – who also penned the script – but it’s hardly unexpected. Reitman is the son of one of Hollywood’s most respected director/producers, Ivan Reitman, the man behind such comedy classics as “Animal House,” “Stripes” and “Ghostbusters.” And while all of these were great films in their time, Jason’s debut feature has enough satirical…

When going to see a romantic comedy, there are a few things you can almost always expect: beautiful people, knotty relationships, and a happy ending. In fact, you can look forward to seeing all three of these in the latest Matthew McConaughey/Sarah Jessica Parker vehicle “Failure to Launch,” but here are a few things you won’t expect: Terry Bradshaw’s bare-naked ass, a mockingbird receiving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, and plenty more I-can’t-believe-that-just-happened slapstick set pieces. And while the film definitely has a silly side to it (McConaughey’s character even has a nasty run of bad luck with animals biting him), it’s hardly…

In a prologue that appears just before Laurence Dunmore’s debut film, “The Libertine,” Johnny Depp appears in full costume as John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester and introduces himself as a philandering drunkard who’s “up for it all the time.” Though crude and unexpected, his honesty is a welcome attribute that we don’t normally see in cinema. It’s a shame, then, that he had to go and tarnish that very admiration with the addition of five simple words: “You will not like me.” And you won’t; not because he’s such a disgusting person, but rather because the film frames him…

Most famous authors are best known for the very works of literature that made them a celebrity in the first place, but Tom Clancy’s fame goes much deeper. In fact, the veteran writer is probably better known for the numerous film adaptations of his stories than the novels themselves, and his name-branded jump to the video game industry is a very close second. For years, Japanese publisher Ubisoft has been developing a series of Clancy titles – like the “Ghost Recon,” “Rainbow Six” and “Splinter Cell” franchises – with an unprecedented success, and the latest addition to the family (“Ghost…