I grew up as a Star Wars fan with very little interest in Star Trek. A few years ago, J.J. Abrams' Oscar-winning revival of Star Trek, a sci-fi blockbuster masterpiece, changed all that. Not only did Abrams' vision exceed the expectations of multiple generations of Trekkies, it created a new legion of fans for the next generation. And after an awesome marketing campaign that included an extended sneak peek of the tantalizing opening sequence with select IMAX prints of The Hobbit back i... Read More »

Like many students, I was forced to read The Great Gatsby... over a decade ago. Before checking out the fifth and latest film adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, all I could remember about it were: (1) It's considered one of the best, if not the best, works of American literary fiction. (2) Some rich guy loves some rich girl in old timey days. (3) Something about a green light, but I'd forgotten the symbolism. I'm not even sure whether I read the Cliffs Notes or the actual book.... Read More »

Riding high off last year’s mega-blockbuster The Avengers, Marvel starts off the summer again with Iron Man 3, this time though back to one superhero leading the way instead of seven. While Tony Stark and Iron Man are no strangers to the summer blockbuster season (they’ve kicked them off before in 2008 and 2010), this time things are different. We are now in a post-Avengers Phase 2 type of world. The stakes are bigger and so are the bad guys. And what bigger foe for Tony and Iron M... Read More »

Michael Bay. The guy’s name incites so much eye-rolling and jawing at the mouth that you’d wonder if he was some sort of cinema pariah. Within the span of the last seven years the man went from being an action filmmaking god to someone that ruined the dreams of many a 20-somethings. Well, our national nightmare is over. Michael Bay semi-returns to form in his latest feature, Pain & Gain. Based on actual events, Pain & Gain stars Mark Wahlberg, Dwayne Johnson, and Anthony... Read More »

The one obligatory indie included on our list of most anticipated movies this year, The Place Beyond the Pines is the second major feature from writer and director Derek Cianfrance, known for guiding his previous couple of leads in the romantic drama Blue Valentine to awards recognition. His sophomore effort again features Ryan Gosling and continues to explore love and misery, but this time Cianfrance drops the romance and instead shifts his focus on another type of emotional relations... Read More »

Despite being delayed just a month before its scheduled release last summer, G.I. Joe: Retaliation managed to stay on our radars as an honorable mention for most anticipated movies of the year with some slick marketing. The surprising delays were reportedly for conversion to 3D and to shoot extra scenes with Channing Tatum. Ultimately, G.I. Joe: Retaliation, a clear demotion from G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, needed a lot more than that. Usually, big-budget sequels aim for bigger, if... Read More »

In Gears of War: Judgment, Epic Games and their newly acquired People Can Fly studio have tried to maintain the classic look and feel that made the original trilogy such a resounding success and flagship franchise for the Xbox 360, while at the same time implementing new features to keep gamers (and themselves) from getting Gears fatigue. But with the stellar Gears of War 3 having been released less than a year ago and key members of the development team dropping out towards the end of... Read More »

Here we go again. Almost an annual rite now, Hollywood tends to offer moviegoers similar films around the same time. Last year, not only did we get Mirror Mirror (UGH!) a couple months before Snow White and the Huntsman, but we also had the three-way three-month animated spooktacular of ParaNorman versus Hotel Transylvania versus Frankenweenie. This year's doppelgänger showdown is between Olympus Has Fallen and White House Down. They're both star-studded action movies involving a s... Read More »

As ridiculous as the blissfully sinful Spring Breakers trailers were, I've been ready for that jelly, so count me in to check out a couple of barely legal Disney alumnae and James Franco with a grill and dreads indulge in what looks like endless partying, bills raining, bong ripping, booger sugar bumping, and flesh flashing... otherwise known as a Tuesday night at Charlie Sheen's house. Writer/director Harmony Korine, best known for writing the controversial NC-17 movie Kids, has g... Read More »

Despite numerous hits during this console generation, the Tomb Raider franchise has begun to feel dated ever since the Uncharted series took the treasure-hunting action-adventure genre to the next level. Not to be outdone by their imitators and successors, Crystal Dynamics has once again brought back the video game industry’s most popular heroine in an effort to reboot the iconic series and help Lara Croft climb back up to the top of the genre that she helped build. But the new Lara ... Read More »

A last-minute cut from our list of honorable mentions for most anticipated movies of the year, Oz the Great and Powerful has always looked at least visually appealing throughout its marketing campaign, if not curiously intriguing. Containing plenty of allusions as an homage to the 1939 classic The Wizard of Oz, this Disney adventure is set a couple decades prior to the Dorothy & Toto tale that so many generations of audiences are already familiar with. But while the colorful film m... Read More »

When it was announced that Hollywood was going to turn the folktale "Jack and the Beanstalk" into a feature length film, like everyone else I was a bit skeptical about its success. However, once The Usual Suspects and X-Men director Bryan Singer was attached to direct the picture, I definitely was a little intrigued and even a bit hopeful that this adaptation could be something worth watching. Alas, this isn’t the case. Jack the Giant Slayer is just the latest in a string of fairy ta... Read More »

After numerous delays, the game Gearbox claims to be unrelated to the cancelled 2001 Alien: Colonial Marines on PlayStation 2 is finally here… and still manages to look like something that you would see on the PS2. All joking aside, the new Aliens: Colonial Marines isn’t that bad looking, but when stacked up against other recently released games and the original E3 2011 demo shown off by Gearbox, it probably should have shared the same fate as the previous Marines and just been can... Read More »

It’s not on our list of this year’s most anticipated movies, but Dark Skies has been on my personal radar for the last few months. From the producer of the Paranormal Activity series and Sinister, the best horror movie of 2012, Dark Skies had me ready to get my Fourth Kind freak on and self-incept some nightmares from the final frontier the way that Milla Jovovich mockumentary and ‘90s cult sci-fi thriller Fire in the Sky effed with me, but ultimately Dark Skies isn’t terrifyin... Read More »

A Good Day to Die Hard is a bad way to die... for one of the finest action film franchises of all time. Although it showcases some fierce and fiery action sequences, the fifth Die Hard feature is easily the worst of the series and only reminiscent of its predecessors. Instead of being another solid standalone standout like any of the first four Die Hard movies, A Good Day to Die Hard indicates that the franchise has sunken closer to a standard action flick with a conspicuous emphasis o... Read More »

With big budget games pulling in higher grosses than Hollywood blockbusters, gamers have been spoiled over the past few years with amazing Triple-A titles from talented developers. The Dead Space series has been one of the best examples of brilliant new ideas emerging during the current Golden Age of gaming. But has the latest sequel in the popular horror series become a perfect example of how this Golden Age is dying as games become more expensive to produce and more publishers try to... Read More »