Original US release date: May 30, 2014 Production budget: $40,000,000 Worldwide gross: $87,189,756 Hot off the success of 2012's Ted and the continued popularity of "Family Guy", Seth MacFarlane was riding high and feeling confident. He was feeling confident enough to try something new: a crude, situational comedy set in the wild west. He put... Continue Reading →
This weekend, I took myself a little trip down to Greenville, South Carolina, for the third annual South Carolina Comicon. The fledgling con is growing in size rather quickly and is already attracting many thousands of people, as I witnessed, firsthand. This was my first time attending, but I'm a con veteran (it was... Continue Reading →
Life is not a Venom prequel. It's not. Stop it. There are vague similarities between the alien lifeform in this film and the Klyntarian symbiote made famous by Marvel's Spider-Man comics, but it ends there. Just because this is a Sony film and Sony also holds the rights to Spider-Man and his cast of supporting characters and... Continue Reading →
Original U.S. release date: July 28, 1959 Production budget: $3,100,000 Worldwide gross: $13, 275,000 Alfred Hitchcock is unquestionably one of the most renowned directors in all of film history, yet if one was to ask an average person on the street to name every Hitchcock film they know, most would quickly exclaim, "Psycho!" and then be... Continue Reading →
Despite my best efforts at avoiding intimate knowledge of a film before I sit down to watch it, sometimes, one can't avoid going into a screening without a preconceived notion of what to expect. I certainly had such a preconceived notion regarding The Belko Experiment. Most of it came from the fact that the screenplay... Continue Reading →
Well, here we have a big one. It seems like awareness of the new Beauty and the Beast live-action adaptation from acclaimed musical director Bill Condon has permeated every corner of our existence. From the trailer dropping and scoring a record number of views to the latest controversy surrounding LeFou's (Josh Gad) sexual orientation, the film certainly has... Continue Reading →
Original US release date: July 9, 1982 Production budget: $17,000,000 Worldwide gross: $33,000,000 I had previously seen TRON so long ago (and so infrequently - once, perhaps?) that it was all new to me, again, upon the re-watch for this column. In fact, I remembered more from the TRON world within the "Kingdom Hearts" video... Continue Reading →
Original US release date: October 11, 2013 Production budget: $55,000,000 Worldwide gross: $218,791,811 Ahhh, is there anyone more appropriate for portraying the everyman hero character than the great Tom Hanks? Years before Hanks portrayed Captain Chesley Sullenberger in 2016's Sully Hanks portrayed Richard Phillips, captain of the Maersk Alabama, which was infamously hijacked by Somali... Continue Reading →
I've been a pretty big King Kong fan for most of my adult life. The original 1933 classic was the first special-effects blockbuster that broke every established rule and opened up the world's collective mind to the potential of film as a storytelling medium. Peter Jackson's 2004 remake was a brilliant and poignant love poem... Continue Reading →
Last night, I had a dream. It was an intensely personal dream, taking the two most emotional aspects of my life, thus far - one a former job, one a woman I once knew, both things long in the past - and throwing them back into the midst of my existence, complete with their best and worst components. ... Continue Reading →
The Movie March! 