Search for 2011

Lately, comedies seem to come in two flavors: profane raunch-fests that seek to garner laughs via shock tactics and big-screen sit-coms. Despite Zooey Deschanel's repeated utterance of the word "fuck" and a dud of a threesome, Our Idiot Brother fal...

Paranormal Activity 3 is one of those obligatory sequels: films that use an existing template and attempt to populate it with different actors and new ways of scaring audiences. There are two significant problems with this approach here: the "first...

Pariah is obviously heartfelt, and is clearly a subject close to writer/director Dee Rees' heart; this is a remake/expansion upon a 2007 short film she made (with most of the same cast). The movie boasts an honest, unfettered performance by Adepero...

Paul is arguably the best science fiction comedy since Galaxy Quest. Despite being humorous in its outlook and providing numerous "Easter eggs" to fans of Star Wars, Aliens, Close Encounters, and E.T. (amongst others), this isn't a parody. Outside ...

The premise underlying Perfect Sense is too delicious to ignore and, perhaps, too monumental for any motion picture to live up to. Consider a disease that robs its victims of their senses one-by-one. There is a lull in between each escalation - lon...

Seen in IMAX 3-D. The fourth Pirates of the Caribbean movie represents a perfect encapsulation of what the summer sequel tent-pole has become: a half-baked casserole of recycled elements from past installments of the franchise tossed together wi...

When it comes to The Raid: Redemption, there are no pretentions. Pure and simple, this is about violence. As we used to say, "kickin' ass and takin' names." The body count is ridiculously high. Not three-digit high, but getting close. Yet, because ...

It is fair to argue that, at least in the case of Rampart, Woody Harrelson is better than the material in which he appears. A cop story loosely based on real-life events, Rampart is cursed with a meandering script that mines overworked tunnels and ...

The first animated film from ILM is also the first memorable motion picture of 2011. Also, in a break from Hollywood's incessant race to surcharge parents to death by releasing anything bearing the "family film" moniker in 3-D, Rango is available i...

Real Steel, despite being dubbed the "Rock-em/Sock-em Robot movie," seeks to achieve more than such a limiting nickname might imply. A fusion of three popular genres - the father/son relationship movie, the boy-and-his-dog movie, and the sports mov...