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When the original xXx was released 15 years ago, it was designed as one of several potential franchise properties for a new hot-shot action star named Vin Diesel. In its August 2002 run, the film did respectably at the box office but fell short of th...

Where's the Kryptonite? What many movie producers fail to realize is that one of the keys to making a superhero interesting is to give him an Achilles heel - Kryptonite, so to speak. And one of the big problems with XXX: State of the Union is t...

How’s this for an alternate history scenario: What if tech companies had failed to identify or address the Y2K bug prior to 12:01 on January 1, 2000? I have always thought this concept might make for a fascinating movie. Sadly, that movie is...

Two weeks ago, I wrote that, while watching Land of the Lost, I felt a sense of depression. That feeling revisited me during Year One, an inexplicably unfunny comedy made by two people who have proven they can do much better: director/co-writer Ha...

Sluggish. Torpid. Boring. Those three words (and more) can describe The Yellow Handkerchief, a stultifying road trip movie whose inept screenplay is only partially counterbalanced by a trio of nice performances. There's only so much a talented ...

At first glance, Yes Man appears to be yet another high-concept Jim Carrey comedy. After all, the premise can be summed up in a sentence: "A character played by Carrey in 'zany form' must say 'yes' to every proposal." Over the years, we have gott...

The term "Capra-corn" was coined for movies such as this one: feel-good endeavors that emphasize the better portions of human nature over the base, venal ones. With Capra, no matter how dark things got in the middle (and it's tough to get darker ...

Watching You Don't Mess with the Zohan is a little like watching an episode of the TV show of which Adam Sandler is an alum: Saturday Night Live. Zohan feels like an extended collection of skits tied together by a flimsy umbrella story. It feature...

You Don’t Nomi is a 2019 documentary that takes a fond look back at the deservedly derided Paul Vehoeven/Joe Eszterhas box office bomb, Showgirls. Although director Jeffrey McHale approaches the retrospective from a decidedly subjective poin...

As a writer by trade (at least before he started directing), David Koepp should know that a good ending is at least as important as a good beginning, if not more so.  You Should Have Left, a haunted house movie that doubles as an homage to St...