Author: Jason Zingale

Sacha Baron Cohen may be too famous to prey on unsuspecting victims these days now that most people are wary of being fooled by him, but dressing up in a goofy costume to lampoon despotic rulers still elicits plenty of laughs in “The Dictator.” Although it’s a scripted comedy instead of the more free-form mockumentaries that he previously made with director Larry Charles, the movie takes a pair of conventional genres – the fish-out-of-water story and the romantic comedy – and injects them with Cohen’s trademark brand of outrageous and grossly offensive humor. It’s like “Coming to America” meets “Borat,”…

Some people are going to really love director Bobcat Goldthwait’s new movie “God Bless America” – perhaps best described as what might happen if William “D-Fens” Foster and Hit-Girl were let loose into the world of Mike Judge’s “Idiocracy” – but the film’s charms were admittedly lost on me. Though the movie attempts to be a scathing commentary on the de-evolution of our society through things like reality TV, political punditry and a general lack of kindness, it never amounts to much more than a one-dimensional piece of revenge fantasy that isn’t any better than the subjects it’s satirizing. The…

If there’s one thing you should know about Morgan Spurlock, it’s that he’s a remarkable showman. While his documentaries always contain some kind of academic value, his main intention seems to be entertaining the audience, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. It’s what helped “Super Size Me” become such an immense success, and it played a big part in making “Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?” – Spurlock’s much weightier follow-up – a lot more interesting than it would have been in the hands of another filmmaker. His latest project, “The Greatest Movie Ever Sold,” doesn’t pretend…

Nicholas Stoller and Jason Segel are probably one of the more underrated writing teams working today. With comedy gems like “Forgetting Sarah Marshall” and “The Muppets” already to their names, the duo’s third project together (and Stoller’s third trip behind the camera) promised to be their funniest yet. Beginning where most romantic comedies usually end, you can’t fault “The Five-Year Engagement” for trying to deliver a fresh take on the genre, but although it boasts some really funny moments, like most Judd Apatow productions, the movie doesn’t know when enough is enough. The ensemble cast saves it from being a…

Leave it to Joss Whedon to take the horror genre and turn it on its head. The guy has been defying convention for years – from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” to “Firefly,” to “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-A-Long Blog” – and if there was any genre in need of a shake-up, it’s horror. Directed by Drew Goddard (who made a name for himself writing on TV shows like “Buffy” and “Lost,” as well as the found footage monster movie “Cloverfield”) and co-written with Whedon, “The Cabin in the Woods” is an entertaining and wholly original genre hybrid film that, although it may…

I’ve never really understood the appeal of The Three Stooges, so when it was announced that the Farrelly brothers were bringing the trio of eye-poking, dim-witted knuckleheads to the big screen, you can imagine my complete lack of excitement. And apparently, I wasn’t the only one who felt that way, because the project was stuck in Development Hell for years – with Jim Carrey, Sean Penn and Benicio del Toro originally attached to star – before the Farrellys finally got the movie off the ground. Although it would have been interesting to see what that other version might have looked…

Louis Leterrier’s 2010 remake of “Clash of the Titans” may not have been very well received by critics, but it still made a ton of money at the box office, and these days, that’s all you need to convince a studio to greenlight a sequel, even if there didn’t appear to be much interest in one. Of course, that hasn’t stopped them from making one anyway, and though “Wrath of the Titans” is leaner and more focused than its predecessor, it’s not any better where it counts. 3D enthusiasts will find some pleasure in the improved effects, but the movie…

Juan Carlos Fresnadillo’s “Intruders” is one of the most frustrating horror-thrillers in recent years, because while the initial setup boasts a lot of potential, it’s executed so poorly that the movie comes off looking more inept than it really is. Although it seemed like it might be a relatively creepy film based on the disturbing posters featuring star Clive Owen without a face, Fresnadillo crams so many different genre tropes into the story that it’s hard to figure out whether he’s trying to make a straight-up horror movie, a psychological thriller or a supernatural fairy tale. In the end, “Intruders”…

Iko Uwais is a very lucky man. Not only was he plucked from obscurity and transformed into the next great martial arts action hero, but unlike his predecessors, he’s been blessed with an incredibly talented filmmaking partner in Gareth Evans. The Welsh-born writer/director’s latest movie, “The Raid: Redemption,” has been gaining buzz since its premiere last year at the Toronto International Film Festival, and for good reason, because action movies don’t get much cooler or more exhilarating than this. Whereas Evans’ first Indonesian-language feature with Uwais (2009’s “Merantau”) boasted a few cool fight sequences but was an otherwise mediocre film,…

To review a film like “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” 30 years after the fact is not just impossible – it’s totally unnecessary. Already considered to be one of the funniest movies ever made, the British comedy troupe’s debut feature is not only their silliest work to date, but it’s also their most accessible. Many Python fanatics would probably cite “The Life of Brian” as their strongest work, or “The Meaning of Life” as the most scabrous, but there’s not a person in the world who has never heard of, let alone experienced, “Holy Grail” at least once in…