Author: Jason Zingale

Guy Ritchie’s bag of tricks may be limited, but he still makes movies that people love to watch – even if it is essentially the same story every time. It’s no surprise, then, that “RocknRolla” has been so eagerly anticipated by his fans. After the release of “Snatch” in 2000, and his marriage to Madonna that same year, Ritchie seemed to vanish from the scene almost as quickly as he arrived. Sure, there was “Swept Away,” a BMW short film starring Clive Owen, and even an attempt at making a psychological crime thriller with “Revolver,” but they were all huge…

As someone who isn’t a very big fan of horror, it may seem irrelevant to admit that Alexandre Aja is one of my favorite directors currently working in the genre. The French-born filmmaker has made some pretty memorable movies in the last few years, so it’s a bit disappointing that he’s chosen to follow up a remake (“The Hills Have Eyes”) with another remake. Based on the South Korean film “Into the Mirrors,” Aja’s latest movie may feature his visual flair, but it doesn’t contain nearly enough scares to work as a traditional horror flick. “Mirrors” is more like “The…

Jonathan Demme’s “Rachel Getting Married” might just be the most frustrating movie of the year. After kicking around in the world of documentaries for a while, the director was poised for a comeback, and the fact that he was helming a movie based on a script by Jenny Lumet (daughter of Sidney) only seemed to sweeten the pot. And then there was the Oscar buzz surrounding star Anne Hathaway, an actress completely deserving of a movie star career who, until now, had yet to be given an adult role that really tested her talents. So where did it all go…

The idea that success only comes with a sacrifice of one’s values isn’t exactly groundbreaking material, but it’s rarely been presented as humorously as in “How to Lose Friends & Alienate People,” the big screen adaptation of Toby Young’s best-selling memoir of the same name. A British journalist who came to the U.S. after being recruited by Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter, Young went on to document his five-year tenure at the magazine, exposing it for its political and superficial business tactics. The film feels like the CliffsNotes version of that experience and is about as vanilla as romantic comedies…

Just when you thought Bill Maher couldn’t get any more politically incorrect, he goes and makes a movie like “Religulous.” Despite the controversy it’s sparked, however, the documentary isn’t as un-PC as many are making it out to be. Sure, Maher skewers much of the free world on the utter ridiculousness of religion (hence the title, which is a play on the two words), but he never once suggests that God doesn’t exist. He might allude to it several times, but “Religulous” isn’t about denying God’s existence – it’s about getting the 16% minority of non-believers that Maher has aimed…

Chuck Palahniuk isn’t for everyone. His novels are dark and disturbing, and feature seedy protagonists that most people would never hang out with. Nevertheless, he remains a cult icon in the literary world, and for good reason – the guy’s got a twisted sense of humor. Choke, Palahniuk’s latest book to be given the big screen treatment, may be one of the weakest in the author’s catalog, but actor-turned-director Clark Gregg’s faithful adaptation wisely salvages everything that was great about the novel (namely the humor) while avoiding most of the bad. The end result still doesn’t hold a candle to…

It’s hard to imagine that someone as accomplished as Spike Lee could ever have a problem financing a film (especially after the critical and commercial success of “Inside Man”), but after sitting through his torturously long WWII drama, “Miracle at St. Anna,” it’s easy to see why he had as much trouble as he did. Running nearly three hours long and featuring some of the worst acting of the year, “Miracle at St. Anna” is a disastrous attempt at memorializing the black soldiers who fought in the war. If Lee injected even a tenth of the energy that went into…

The Nintendo Wii’s motion controls and Wario’s fondness for minigames seemed like a match made in heaven, so why has Mario’s garlic-loving nemesis abandoned the pick-up-and-play party genre for a return to the simpler days of side-scrollers? Quite simply, because they make for better games. “Wario Land: Shake It!” may not be the most impressive title of the fall season, but it’s definitely one of the most enjoyable, and though the Wii has gotten a bad rap lately for failing to deliver its share of quality titles, Wario’s latest adventure is a step in the right direction. The story is…

There are some movies that you go into with certain expectations, only to be disappointed, and there are others that you underestimate only to find you really enjoy. David Koepp’s “Ghost Town” falls into the latter category. It’s not that the film looked bad per se, but that between its been-there-done-that premise and the wild card casting of British comic Ricky Gervais, it was shaping up to be yet another mediocre rom-com to help pass the lull of the early fall movie season. As it happens, the supernatural comedy might just be the biggest surprise of the year, thanks in…

As a high school student with seemingly more important things to do than keeping up with current affairs, I was never aware of the 1999 Seattle riots until now. Of course, seeing as how the media-dubbed Battle in Seattle has been credited as the precursor to every anti-WTO protest since then, it was only a matter of time before someone made a film about it. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it’s a foreigner behind the camera, but while Irish actor-turned-director Stuart Townsend’s docudrama doesn’t waste any time in choosing sides, it’s still mostly unbiased in its representation of everyone involved. That may seem…