Author: Jason Zingale

Are mall cops the new penguins? Hopefully not, though it is a little strange to see two movies about the same subject matter released so closely together. Warner Bros. was no doubt peeved when they discovered that Sony’s own mall cop movie (“Paul Blart: Mall Cop”) would arrive in theaters months before theirs, but while both films share similar stories, they really couldn’t be any more different. “Paul Blart” was the kind of uninspired, slapstick comedy that we’ve all come to expect from the month of January, while “Observe and Report” is a pitch-black comedy that only gets darker and…

There’s a small corner in Hell reserved for all the live-action movies adapted from TV cartoons, so why would anyone bother trying to bring Akira Toriyama’s “Dragon Ball” to the big screen? Quite simply, because the Japanese manga turned anime is perhaps the country’s biggest pop culture phenomenon since Godzilla first wreaked havoc on Tokyo. That doesn’t mean it’s any more of a good idea than, say, “Scooby Doo” or “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” because no matter how close you stick to the source material, it’s always going to look like a cartoon starring real people. For fans of “Dragon…

Alex Proyas was once a promising filmmaker with slick genre flicks like “The Crow” and “Dark City” to his name. But over the course of the last decade, any reputation he might have earned was lost after a less-than-stellar reception to the Australian rock indie “Garage Days” and the sci-fi blockbuster “I, Robot.” Fans of the director have certainly had their patience tested during the long, five-year wait for Proyas’ next movie, and unfortunately, they might have to wait five more years before seeing anything resembling his stylish neo-noirs from the 90s. “Knowing” is like two movies crammed into one…

The idea behind writer/director John Hamburg’s “I Love You, Man” was probably spawned from the same Hollywood meeting responsible for some of the worst films of the last few years. You could even envision a bunch of fortysomething blowhards sitting around a Starbucks sipping on Chai Lattes while they discuss the buzz worthiness of the term “bromance.” But for as manufactured as the story may seem, the film rises above all that to deliver the next great R-rated comedy. It might contain more chuckles than laugh-out-loud moments, but thanks to the incredible chemistry of its two leads, “I Love You,…

There’s a long-running belief within the movie geek community that every even-numbered “Star Trek” film is good and every odd-numbered one is crap. The “Fast and the Furious” franchise seems to have spawned a similar pattern, though it operates conversely. While the first entry in the series introduced the world of underground street racing in grand fashion, and “Tokyo Drift” helped rejuvenate the series by moving the action to Japan, the film’s second installment has always been considered the black sheep of the group. With the release of “Fast & Furious,” however, the much criticized sequel is no longer on…

For all the hubbub surrounding Alan Moore and Dave Gibbon’s 1988 graphic novel, “Watchmen,” it’s really not as great as you might think. There are a lot of things to admire about the 12-issue miniseries (from its multilayered narrative to its psychologically complex characters), but the Holy Bible of comic books it is not, and that only makes reviewing the film adaptation even more difficult. One part social commentary and one part superhero satire, “Watchmen” straddles a thin line of making fun of the very genre it represents and being the punch line to the joke. This is a story…

There shouldn’t be any doubt as to whether or not a guy like Robert De Niro is a film legend, but by the end of the 1990s, the veteran actor did make some pretty interesting career moves. Clearly sick and tired of playing the hardboiled gangster-type in movies like “Goodfellas” and “Casino,” De Niro decided he’d test the waters as a comic actor. But before selling his soul to the Devil (i.e. “The Adventures of Rocky & Bullwinkle”), he made a cool little crime thriller called “Ronin.” Released in 1998 and starring an ensemble cast including the likes of Jean…

During a time when such lavish spending would be looked down upon by even the most well-to-do moviegoers, “Confessions of a Shopaholic” may have some difficulty convincing its audience to, no pun intended, buy into the story. Then again, it’s based on a pair of books that reached the height of their popularity six years ago, and the film itself was knee deep in production when the economy was at an all-time high, so it would be pointless to criticize the filmmakers for releasing the movie during the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. After all, wouldn’t shelving it…

Batman Returns,” Tim Burton’s 1992 sequel to his original film, was a huge step forward for the Batman franchise. It would seem only fitting for Burton to take the iconic superhero to even darker places in his third adventure on the big screen. Instead, “Batman Forever” takes two giant steps backward. Burton has thrown in the towel as the film’s director (though he serves as the movie’s producer) and his replacement is Joel Schumacher. Michael Keaton has vanished from behind the mask to make room for Val Kilmer. And the dark, gloomy city of Gotham has been transformed into a…

Director Troy Duffy was supposed to be the next Quentin Tarantino. He was even being groomed by former Miramax head Harvey Weinstein himself. But after spending nearly ten years trying to launch his career, the wannabe auteur had compiled only two credits to his name – the cult classic, “The Boondock Saints,” and “Overnight,” the tell-all documentary about Duffy’s meteoric rise and fall. And while the latter film may have exposed the director as the greedy scumbag that he was (the reason many have cited as to why he never really made it in the business), “The Boondock Saints” shows…