Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen plays into nearly every complaint about Hollywood that has ever been made. It is loud, a sequel, contains countless specials effects, blows a lot of things up, and uses sex appeal and violence in tandem. It embodies every cliché about the movie industry. Not that this is always a bad thing. 2007's Transformers...   ...READ REVIEW

Land of the Lost is the type of movie where the lead is the main attraction. The poster ought to place Will Ferrell's name above the title, and in a larger font, like the movie posters of old: "Cary Grant IN Arsenic and Old Lace", "Will Ferrell IN Land of the Lost." Or, better yet, go the Snakes on a Plane route, and make the title and the synopsis one and the same: Will Ferrell and a Bunch of Dinosaurs. In both cases, you know when you hear...   ...READ REVIEW

On the surface, it would seem that adventure films are a form of escapism. Plenty of them are. The ones that stay with us, however, are the ones that lasso their adventures around something; the ones that use extraordinary events to illustrate the simple truths we all experience. Pixar's latest masterpiece, Up, is such a film, and it makes its meaning plainer than most.

The premise of Up is straightforward, even by family film standards: a widower named Carl Fredricksen (voiced ...   ...READ REVIEW

Horror films are, at their core, about justice.

Stop laughing and let me explain.

The history of horror in fiction suggests that it is often a form of group catharsis. Slasher films are populated almost entirely by shallow teenagers, and audiences openly delight in watching their demise. It's an unwritten rule that the teenagers having sex or doing drugs in such films are goners, and that the most virtuous character is the most likely to survive. Watching characters die on screen for our a...   ...READ REVIEW

There's something truly remarkable about the way the Terminator franchise has evolved. From a small-budget horror film in 1984, to an epic sequel in 1991, to a clever about-face in 2003, each installment has expanded the series' mythology and meaning. Each film has outsmarted the ones before it, returning one philosophical or paradoxical volley after another with increasing elegance. Each film, that is, except this last one.

Set in the year 2018, Terminator Salvation (directed by "...   ...READ REVIEW

I saw a good deal of Star Trek: The Next Generation when I was younger, and there was always something about it that made it seem more distant and alien (if you'll excuse the pun) than other science fiction franchises. The fact that they'd abolished the concept of money probably had something to do with it, but eventually I realized what it was: teleportation. Most other sci-fi tropes felt like a believable extension of existing technology, but teleportation always seemed to be the thing ...   ...READ REVIEW