Release Date: August 29, 2006 Everyone seems to want to make their movie that “speaks out” in some way against the government, or the establishment, or the President for that matter. The past few years have seen an onslaught of politically charged films about problems faced in our society. Most get caught up in the good versus evil, red state/blue state battle rather than dealing with the issue at hand; but a precious few have been able to rise about, giving audiences a frightening look at the reality that surrounds them in America today. American Gun is the latter – a film that deals with the issue, not the politics around the issue. Gun, the virgin directorial effort by Aric Avelino, is a sharp film that tells four distinct yet troublingly similar stories of people whose lives have been affected by guns. There is the single mom (Marcia Gay Harden), struggling to make ends meet for her and her youngest son years after her elder son shot up his high school, killing many students and teachers; the high school principal (Forrest Whitaker) who gave up a comfortable Midwestern life and moves to the inner city with hopes of helping kids stay away from violence and making a life for themselves; and the first year college student (Linda Cardellini) who works with her grandfather (Donald Sutherland) in his gun shop as she adjusts to college life and her discomfort around firearms. Each of the story lines carries with it differences, but [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Release Date: September 22, 2006 Experiencing a Michel Gondry film is like watching an adult’s life through a child’s eyes. Following in the footsteps of Eternal Sunshine of The Spotless Mind, The Science of Sleep is a kaleidoscopic journey into a dream world that only Michel Gondry could compose. Though laced with creativity and originality, the film proves to be somewhat disappointing as it just runs out of gas. After leaving his home in Mexico, St©phane (Gael Garc­a Bernal) finds himself back in France for a job interview arranged by his mother. He finds that the job does not suit his creativity in the way that his mother had described, and realizes that she was just attempting to bring him closer to her. St©phane, who takes very little control of his life, finds solace in his dreams. His subconscious seems to fix any inadequacies or uncertainties that he may encounter during his waking life. It is when St©phane loses his ability to perceive the difference between dreaming and waking life, that things starts to spiral out of control. A turning point for St©phane is when he first meets his new neighbor St©phanie (Charlotte Gainsbourg). Reluctant and shy, he lies about living in the same building as St©phanie for no apparent reason. Initially attracted to St©phanie’s best friend, St©phane finds something much deeper within his new neighbor. He appreciates her creativity and open-mindedness to his amusing and sometimes eccentric behavior. The two characters engage in a subtle romance until St©phane’s dreams [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Release Date: July 28, 2006 Returning to the location of his last successful endeavor – London, England – Woody Allen has followed the tense and dark drama of Match Point with the lighter and more comedic Scoop. Many of the same elements are present, such as Scarlett Johansson – who this time plays the lead role of Sondra Pransky – the upper class British elite and use of classical music for the score, but the effect is quite different this time. Scoop opens with a funeral service for one Joe Strombel (Ian McShane), a newspaper reporter who, we learn from his colleagues’ conversations, had quite the nose for a story. Next, we are taken to the ferry that is transporting Joe’s soul into Hades. One of the other spirits in transport is that of a young woman who believes she was poisoned. Having stumbled across the identity of the Tarot Card Killer, a serial murderer currently terrorizing prostitutes with short brunette hair in London, she was poisoned by that very killer, her boss Peter Lyman (played by Hugh Jackman). Joe decides to jump into what we presume is the river Styx and swim back to the mortal plane to give the scoop to another reporter, any reporter. The one he finds is Sondra Pransky, a young journalism student who has decided not to follow in the family tradition of dentistry and oral hygiene. He finds her while she is onstage inside a magician’s dematerialization box, having volunteered to participate in [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Release Date: September 5, 2006 There is nothing that I love more than the movie theater experience; the smell of popcorn, the overpriced sodas whose astronomical size is heightened by spending on a quarter more, and the feel of loving (or loathing) a new film with a group of strangers. But as much as I enjoy being out in the world, seeing movies as the come out, I do still have great affection for being at home and discovering a film that I would not previously have been able to enjoy. That is the beauty of the DVD, the fact that films whose theatrical release is not wide enough, or critically acclaimed enough can get a second chance, or a first chance in the case of some foreign films. It allows a person to be more well rounded in their film experience, and that is a beautiful thing. One such discovery that I made very recently was a British film that has been getting a lot of Press internationally, but not quite enough here in the states. The film, Dead Man’s Shoes is directed by native Brit Shane Meadows. It stars the very up and coming, and rightfully so, actor Paddy Considine as Richard, a disaffected soldier who has returned to his home town to seek revenge upon 6 local bullies who had terrorized his mentally handicapped younger brother, Anthony. He employs a series of scare tactics, then cuts the bullies down to size one by one in a brutally [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Release Date: August 15, 2006 There is absolutely no denying that Francis Ford Coppola is one of the greatest directors of all time. I mean, he did make The Godfather, which is heralded by many as possibly the greatest film ever made. That would make it safe to say that he is pretty good. But after making The Godfather and The Godfather II, Coppola took 5 years off from directing to make another film. That film, in this critic’s opinion, would be his crowning achievement. That film was called Apocalypse Now. Apocalypse Now is the story of rogue colonel Walter Kurtz, played by Marlin Brando, who has set himself up in the Cambodian jungle as a God among a local tribe and is a “threat” to the United States as they proceed with the war in Vietnam. The order to “Terminate with extreme prejudice” is given to Captain Willard, played by Martin Sheen, along with a small team of soldiers must travel up the Nung River to attempt to eliminate Kurtz. The film itself is a splendid affair. It defined itself as a story about the Vietnam war, but it turned out to be so much more than that. It is a film that has left a permanent mark in the minds of film fans everywhere. Who can forget how Lt. Colonel Kilgore, played by Robert Duvall, loved “the smell of napalm in the morning”? Who can forget the dark, dangerous journey that the soldiers made into the heart of [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

I have learned to never question the vision of Martin Scorsese. His newest film, The Departed, looks like it will be amazing. The cast is more loaded than Russell Crowe before one of his “incidents”. With stars such as Scorsese’s pet Leonardo DiCaprio, Matt Damon, Jack Nicholson, Mark Wahlberg and my best friend Alec Baldwin, The Departed looks to be a film that will find success both commercially and critically. Click the picture to the right to see the trailer.

Jon Voight, who most people know is the father of Angelina Jolie, has further separated himself from his daughter by publicly embarrassing his family. While being interviewed at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts Tea Party, Voight attempted to reach out to his daughter and grandchildren by wishing his grandson Maddox a happy fifth birthday. He went further to say, “You’re going to be a young man, and I send my love out to you. And send my love to…uh…Shakira…and Shahira…” Voight then asked the reporter for the name of his adoptive granddaughter Zahara, and then shouted “Shahara! Shahara!” To add insult to injury, Voight failed to mention anything concerning three month old Shiloh Nouvel.

Release Date: August 18, 2006 Matt Dillon has had moved in a very positive direction these past couple of years, especially when his role in Crash reestablished his legitimacy as a hollywood star. Dillon’s newest endeavor has attracted Oscar buzz for quite some time now as he portrays a character that many people believe to be the alter ego of writer Charles Bukowski. While Dillon’s performance was as complete and precise as anyone could ask, for anyone who is familiar with Bukowski’s work would know that Dillon would be required to portray the role of an alcoholic jerk. Factotum follows the path of Henry Chinaski (Matt Dillon), a cynical and sarcastic drunk through both professional and romantic endeavors. Henry finds himself passing through job after job and woman after woman without ever finding satisfaction, other then meeting his own expectations of disappointment. While passing through life with a nonchalant swagger, Henry documents his sorrows within a series of short stories. Matt Dillon has found great success in portraying negative characters. While his performance was dead on, the ability to play a sarcastic drunk is not one that I would qualify as a skill or trade. The film was mildly entertaining but mostly slow and drawn out. The only source of entertainment came from Henry’s cynical commentary made throughout the film. The character of Henry Chinaski, much like the film, is comparable to the black sheep uncle of a family…amusing and disappointing, but mostly just unnecessary. When it came time for [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Released in: 1974 The term film noir was coined in France in 1946 to describe a certain kind of American film which had become popular. Meaning black film in French, many of the directors of the time were not even aware that they were contributing to the phenomenon. It is still debated today what exactly film noir is: a genre, a mood, a style or something else? Whatever it is exactly, by the mid seventies the high period of film noir had long since ended. Chinatown, perhaps acclaimed director Roman Polanski‘s finest movie, was made as a tribute to the style/genre. In classifying a film as noir, film historians look for several elements, not all of which have to be evident in each film. The cynical private eye, the femme fatale and the bleak worldview that informs it are three of the most famous film noir essentials. Unlike most of the noir movies filmed during the high period, Chinatown was filmed with the specific intention of being film noir and so concentrated on and emphasized these classic components. Jack Nicholson plays Jake Gittes, a cynical wisecracking private eye with a past. A former police officer in Los Angeles, where he still works, he is hired by one Mrs. Mulwray, played by Diane Ladd, to spy on her husband and produce proof of his affair. Jake gets the proof which somehow winds up on the front page of the local newspaper. The next day, another woman, played by Faye Dunaway, shows [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Release Date: August 25, 2006 From the producers of The Rookie, comes another inspiring sports movie starring Mark Wahlberg as a Philadelphia Eagles fan, Vince Papale, who just lost his wife and his teaching job and undergoes a big career change. When his favorite team holds an open tryout to help rejuvenate talent and fans, Vince decides due to the encouragement from his friends to tryout for his favorite NFL team to find out that he makes the cut and is invited to training camp. Based on a true story, the film is set in the late 1970s, which the film does a good job of recreating with classic music, cars and vintage clothing. In many ways it reminded me of the other Disney film Miracle, which also turns a true sports story into a legend with similar action suspense and nostalgia for the game. It’s also very Rudy, so what’s not to like really? I’m not a huge Whalberg fan but he managed to not annoy me in this flick and actually surprised me with his thoughtful performance. Greg Kinnear plays the new Eagles coach, Dick Vermeil, from California determined to shake things up in the organization and to lead a winning team. He’s also a fan of Papale’s determination, heart and love of the game. Actress Elizabeth Banks from The Baxter and Wet Hot American Summer stars as a New York Giants fan and co-bartender at Papale’s Phily hangout, who eventually becomes his love interest adding a romance [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Just as Japanese movie makers were about to claim the award for supreme dominance in the realm of martial arts filmmaking, Tony Jaa, representing Thailand, may have just knocked them back down the ladder. With audiences needing more awe-inspiring action sequences, current martial arts directors have reinvented the genre to include standard fight scenes mixed in with acrobatics that open the eyes and drop the jaw. Even more impressive, as Ong Bak‘s marketing points out, is that Tony doesn’t have a stunt double or wires. When he leaps over a moving vehicle, it’s real.

Last week Snakes on a Plane was a let down in the Over/Under. This week Broken Lizard’s Beerfest was the object of Neil Miller’s compulsive need to gamble on Box Office performance…

Release Date: August 11, 2006 I have grown very tired of these movies in recent years. What movies am I referring to, you may ask? All of these teeny-bopper 16 year old girls acting like adults and dancing their way into the arms of a love they can’t have. Dirty Dancing was one of the only enjoyable films of this type, but that is almost solely due to the fact that it was the most original. And unfortunately for me, the lack of originality has been flowing more and more copiously in recent years, with releases like Save the Last Dance, Take the Lead, Drive Me Crazy, Honey, the list goes on and on. And why does Hollywood continue spewing out these haphazardly crafted regurgitations? Because the teenage girls of America, the MTV generation, just eat them up. I can’t blame them for making these flicks, but that doesn’t mean that they are making quality films. So I guess the most I could have expected out of a film like this summer’s Step Up is a little bit of humor, maybe a decent soundtrack, and a story that is, to say the least, predictable. And that is almost exactly what I got. But I had fun watching this movie, because I got the opportunity to play a little game that I like to call, “Follow the bouncing Clich©.” Let me explain… We will start with the boy, played by Channing Tatum, who is from the wrong side of the tracks. [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Release Date: July 14, 2006 There is something that is just unsettling about the thought of Danny DeVito in any state of undress. It becomes a completely more uncomfortable situation when you know that you will be seeing Danny DeVito half naked in a movie. I don’t mean any disrespect for Mr. DeVito, as he is a great actor, but he is probably one of the actors in Hollywood whose nude figure I can do without. Thankfully even though he gets a little frisky and ends up in a state of undress in the film The OH in Ohio, it didn’t spoil my appetite for the rest of the film. What is so earthshaking that it would cause DeVito, playing Cleveland’s celebrity pool guy Wayne, to disrobe and transform into Rico Suave? The answer is a frigid, sexually numb woman named Priscilla, played by the lovely Parker Posey. You see, Priscilla’s 10 year marriage to husband Jack (Paul Rudd) has been marred by the fact that she has been unable to reach the point of climax between the sheets, a fact that deteriorates her marriage and almost destroys Jack’s sense of manhood altogether. In an effort to save her marriage, Priscilla turns to a looney sex doctor (a very over-the-top Liza Minnelli) and discovers masturbation. Little does she know that she would soon become addicted to her vibrator, all but putting the final axe on her marriage. With their marriage seemingly caput, Priscilla and Jack attempt to move on and [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Release Date: August 25, 2006 I have always been skeptical of musicians that attempt to make the cross-over to making films. Some have a little bit better luck than others; for instance, Ice Cube has had a long and successful film career. Jon Bon Jovi, not so much. It is truly something that is hit or miss. So you can understand that I was both skeptical and excited when I discovered that the very talented duo of Andre 3000 and Big Boi, better known as Outkast, were making a film together. I was even more enamored when I heard that their film, titled Idlewild, would include a soundtrack completely composed by one of my favorite musical pairings of all time. But that skepticism still lingered. Set in 1920s Georgia, Idlewild tells the story of two friends as they grow up and try to survive in a world of bootlegging, womanizing, music and mobsters. Percival (Andre Benjamin) is the soft spoken, musically gifted piano player by night, mortician by day who yearns to find his destiny and take care of his aging father (Ben Vereen). Rooster (Antwan A. Patton, aka Big Boi) is the reckless, money minded character of the pair, always out to score a quick dollar or a lovely lady, all while providing for his wife and 5 kids. When the owner of the club where Percy and Rooster play their gigs is slain, Rooster is forced to take over the business and contend with a smooth, stone cold [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Release Date: August 25, 2006 Oh those poor Philadelphia Eagles fans… No championships since 1960. Needless to say I do not feel that sorry for them, as I am from Cleveland, which is far worse than any other city’s sports woes, especially know that the Red Sox have won a World Series. But if the City of Brotherly love has anything, it is a real love for their football team, and an immense amount of character, two things that are clearly exuded in Disney’s new film Invincible. Another thing that was clear to me as I screened this film was that I was in Columbus. The film is set in 1976, when coach Dick Vermeil took over the Eagles after a few abysmal seasons that made those lovable Philly fans a little less than civil. Early in the film there is a scene where they are having a press conference to announce Vermeil (played by Greg Kinnear) as the coach and they mention that he had just defeated Woody Hayes and The Ohio State Buckeyes in the Rose Bowl the previous year as the coach of the UCLA Bruins. At that moment, there at the AMC Lennox theater on the Ohio State campus, the crowd of Buckeye faithful let out a low groan in unison. But somewhere before and after that moment, there was a movie that all enjoyed, I assure you. The film stars Mark Whalberg as 30 year old Vince Papale, a down on his luck South Philly [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Release Date: August 25th, 2006 Ever wondered what would happen if drunken college kids wrote a screenplay and directed a film starring all of their friends? Well Jay Chandrasekhar and friends, also known as Broken Lizard, have captured the pure joy and hilarity that ensues while drinking with friends and brought us the freshest brewed comedy of the year. When their great grandmother asks them to return their grandfather’s ashes to the old country, Jan (Paul Soter)and Todd(Erik Stolhanske) Wolfhouse jump at the opportunity. It doesn’t hurt that the trip would take them to Germany during Oktoberfest. Jan and Todd are taken deep into Germany’s underworld to find their grandfather’s final resting place. What Jan and Todd find is a secret competition in which all of the world’s greatest beer gamers and beer drinkers compete for glory: Beerfest. Jan and Todd discover that teams from all over the world compete in Beerfest, but not the United States. They encounter even more disappointment when their cousins, who happen to be the reigning champion German drinking team, banish them from Beerfest and publicly humiliate them by exposing their family’s dishonorable past. They decide that the only way to defend the honor of their family and their country is to form a drinking team and enter Beerfest. After hitting the big-time with their second film, Supertroopers, the comedy troupe Broken Lizard set out on their third film, Club Dread, and struck out. As it goes in Hollywood though, you have a hit and [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Time again for a very fun edition of Weekly Top 5. We all have those guilty pleasure movies that bring us back to better, and maybe even somewhat humiliating times. Even though you might not remember the lines from these films verbatim (for whatever reason), it is the thought that counts. It was really hard to limit this list to only five, but it had to be done. In the spirit of this week’s release, Beerfest, I bring you the Top 5 All Time Movies Under The Influence: 5. Half-Baked (1998) Look no further than the film’s tagline : “Warning: this movie may cause the munchies, cotton mouth, and memory loss!”. Any film that has Dave Chappelle, Tommy Chong, Jerry Garcia and Snoop Dogg in it needs to be on this list. 4. Fear and Lothing in Las Vegas (1998) Based on the accounts of Hunter S. Thompson’s road trip that involved a convertible and a trunk filled with various drugs and alcohol. Johnny Depp, who plays the film’s protagonist, narrates during the film and delivers the line “we had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a saltshaker half-full of cocaine, and a whole multi colored collection of uppers, downers, laughers, screamers… Also, a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether, and two dozen amyls.” 3. Reefer Madness (1936) Originally made to be a cautionary tale of the negative effects of drug use, [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Release Date: August 8, 2006 I find it difficult sometimes to review movies on DVD. Why? Because I believe that I have ADD, that’s why. While at home I generally shift from one task to another at a whim and without regard for whether I have finished the previous task. This type of behavior makes it very difficult to focus in and analyze a film that does not capture my attention. The benefit of this is that I know when I am not interested in a film, I do not finish it. Unfortunately this only happens with DVDs, as I have never walked out of a movie in a theater. So it is safe to say that Andy Garcia’s first major release as a director, The Lost City, was at a significant disadvantage when I sat down to view it in the comforts of my living room. Just to throw salt on the already open wound, I decided to watch it with my lovely lady friend, another tough situation for a young guy like me who has always raging hormones. So it doesn’t surprise me that I did not get more than about 35 minutes into the movie before I lost interest and began other activities. And lets just say that those other activities were far more interesting than the plot of this film. Yet even though I had trouble making it through the initial screening of the film, I was still determined to give it a fair shot. I [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]

Release Date: August 25th, 2006 Oh the humanity! What a great month it has been for those of us capable of displaying such an infantile sense of humor! First we are treated to the mindless yet refined antics of Will Ferrell with Talladega Nights, then we file in with groups of our closest and most like-minded friends to behold the camp-fest that was Snakes on a Plane, and now we round out the month with the return of one of the most heralded comedic troupes of our generation: the boys of Broken Lizard. And when I say “return”, I am not inferring that they have been gone by any means, but that they have been striking out lately. 2001′s Super Troopers was an instant classic and had a viral cult following, especially once it hit DVD. We (all the college aged hooligans of America) were treated to a very quirky, unabashed look at a group of Vermont State Troopers who had nothing better to do than wreak havoc on the roads of the state that brought us Phish; and we loved it! But since then Broken Lizard (Jay Chandrasekhar, Kevin Heffernan, Steve Lemme, Paul Soter and Erik Stolhanske) have not been living up to the expectations that Super Troopers set forth with their fans; Club Dread was a mild bust, and their involvement in Dukes of Hazzard was noticeable but it didn’t save the film. So then what are fans to do? I guess the answer was that we were [Due to Content Scraping and Theft, we have been forced to try abbreviated feeds. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and woud very much appreciate you clicking through to view the full article on FilmSchoolRejects.com]