Author: Jason Zingale

It’s been six years since Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris’ directorial debut “Little Miss Sunshine” captured the attention of moviegoers everywhere, so it’s not surprising that people were beginning to worry whether the filmmaking duo might just be another one-hit wonder. The dreaded second album syndrome is something that haunts artists working in any medium, so it’s curious that Dayton and Faris decided to approach the subject head-on by making a film about that very thing. Though it’s only inevitable that “Ruby Sparks” is going to be compared to their Sundance hit, the movie is a clever but flawed Woody…

It’s been a while since Oliver Stone directed a movie that was actually worth caring about; you’d probably have to go as far back as “Nixon” to find the last instance, although I have a soft spot for “Any Given Sunday.” But while his latest effort doesn’t represent a complete return to form for the filmmaker, it’s pretty evocative of his celebrated work from the late ’80s and ’90s. Based on the Don Wilson bestselling novel of the same name, “Savages” is Stone’s best movie in years – not exactly the slam-bam action thriller that it’s being advertised as, but…

It’s incredible to think how different Seth MacFarlane’s career might have turned out had Fox not decided to bring “Family Guy” back from the dead, because after the show’s revival in 2005, MacFarlane parlayed its success into an animation empire in just a few short years. Currently dominating Fox’s Sunday night lineup with three animated series, it was only inevitable that MacFarlane would seek out a bigger challenge. But while “Ted” represents the multi-hyphenate’s first foray into live action and feature filmmaking, the movie is such a solid, confident debut that you have to wonder why it took so long…

The last thing that anyone expected from the guys behind such sci-fi fare like “Transformers,” J.J. Abrams’ “Star Trek” reboot, and the Fox series “Fringe” was a small, adult drama, but that’s exactly what they’ve delivered with “People Like Us.” Co-written by Alex Kurtzman, Roberto Orci and Jody Lambert, and marking the former’s directorial debut, the movie takes a relatively implausible premise (although it’s supposedly based on true events) and manages to make it more enjoyable than it probably deserves to be thanks to some solid performances by its cast. It’s funny to think that a movie about a talking…

There have been quite a few movies about the end of the world released over the last year, which means that either people are more miserable than I realized, or they know something that I don’t. Of course, the problem with basing a story around such a bleak topic is that it’s depressing – something that “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World” tries to avoid by injecting some humor into the proceedings. But even though it fancies itself a romantic comedy of sorts (albeit one with a dark and not so chewy center), there’s nothing very funny…

“Rock of Ages” feels like one of those movies that studio executives keep hidden in their vaults and only pull out at stag parties, a work of excess and wrongheadedness so far off the rails that to release it would be a P.R. disaster. And yet, here it is, in all its wrongheaded, excessive glory, for all the world to see. How did this movie turn out so wrong? Most importantly, how did they not know how unintentionally funny it was? From the moment that the other people on the bus started singing “Sister Christian,” they lost the audience. And…

There’s a reason why film festivals exist, because without them, we wouldn’t have the opportunity to discover hidden gems like Colin Trevorrow’s sublimely entertaining “Safety Not Guaranteed,” which otherwise might have never gotten the attention that it so rightly deserves. The movie is an amalgamation of everything that’s great about indie filmmaking – from its hugely original script to its wonderful cast of characters – but the one thing that it does better than anything else is create a cinematic experience that’s both rich in comedy and emotion. A lot of movies have tried to juggle the two in the…

There has been a lot of criticism regarding Sony’s decision to reboot the Spider-Man franchise only a decade after the first film was released, and although it may seem silly to start from square one again after Sam Raimi did such a good job establishing the web-slinger’s cinematic universe, it was time for a change. As great as Raimi’s trilogy was (and for the record, I’m one of the few people who will actually admit to liking the third installment), rebooting the series has allowed director Marc Webb, who’s just as much of an inspired but risky choice as Jon…

For all the commotion surrounding Universal and Relativity Media’s dueling Snow White movies, and the race by both studios to get their version into theaters first, it seems to have been all for naught, because the two films couldn’t be more different. Whereas Tarsem Singh’s “Mirror Mirror” was a light and comical take on the classic fairy tale, first-time director Rupert Sanders’ movie is a dark and Grimm adaptation with a few revisionist twists. Curiously enough, it’s pretty much a toss-up as to which one is the better of the two, because while “Mirror Mirror” managed to exceed its low…

When it was first announced that Universal would be making a film based on the popular Hasbro board game Battleship, you could practically hear the collective snickers across the Internet. And between that, the casting of pop star Rihanna, and the not-so-subtle similarities to another Hasbro toy movie franchise, director Peter Berg was fighting an uphill battle. But while the film does feel a little bit too much like a Michael Bay explosion-rama at times, to my surprise, it works remarkably well as a mindless piece of popcorn entertainment. It won’t wow you in any way, but “Battleship” knows that…