Review: The Dark Knight Rises

At long last, Christopher Nolan has delivered the final installment in his highly acclaimed, semi-realistic trilogy featuring everyone’s favorite caped crusader, The Batman.  With “The Dark Knight Rises” Nolan attempted to bring the threads woven throughout the previous two films together to craft a fitting, climactic conclusion worthy of the praise and adoration the series has garnered to date.  It is a daunting task for any film maker; one that demands at least a courteous nod of appreciation toward everyone involved in the production of this series, despite how you felt about how the movie itself turned out.  Expectations for this film were extraordinarily high, and it takes a great team of individuals with incredible spirit to rise to the challenge.  My hat goes off specifically to Tom Hardy for having the guts to follow in the footsteps of Heath Ledger’s iconic performance as The Joker.  The film itself largely sidesteps the events of the previous film to form a strong link between itself and the first chapter in the series.  Despite being a very fitting conclusion to the series as a whole, “The Dark Knight Rises” does have its shortcomings, and choosing to mostly ignore the second act in the series is only the beginning.

Review: Legacy of the Force

Betrayal (Star Wars: Legacy of the Force, Book 1)

Legacy of the Force is a nine book series set decades after the original Star Wars films.  The aim of the series is to recapture some of the magic, drama and characterization that made the original film series so memorable.  Ultimately, Legacy of the Force delivers a tale that is poorly paced but also compelling and entertaining, with a whole lot of Boba Fett thrown in for good measure.

Much like the previously published New Jedi Order, the Legacy of the Force series is a collaborative effort between multiple different authors.  Whereas The New Jedi Order had several different authors with a wide variety of literary backgrounds, Legacy of the Force is written only by three.  

Review: Killer Elite

Starring: Jason Statham, Clive Owen, Robert De Niro, and Yvonne Strahovski.  Directed by: Gary McKendry

How far would you go to save a friend, or to protect the one you love?  That is one of many questions explored in Killer Elite,  the first feature film from director Gary McKendry. 

Review: Contagion

Starring: Matt Damon, Kate Winslet, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, and Marion Cotillard.  Directed by: Steven Soderbergh

Drinking glasses.  Doorknobs.  Credit cards.  Handshakes.  The touch of a loved one.  These are but a small few of the innocent accomplices aiding a deadly virus as it begins to eradicate mankind in Steven Soderbergh’s Contagion, a film in which the simple, common act of a mother playfully feeding her child a potato chip can lead to the deaths of countless numbers of people.

Day 4: The Phantom Menace – The Game

Let’s face facts here;  Star Wars: Episode 1 – The Phantom Menace spawned an unfathomable amount of content to promote the movie.  There were soda cans.  There were fast food commercials.  There were books.  There were games.  The list goes on and on and is seemingly endless.  The unfortunate result of a mediocre film flooding the market with promotional content is that, more often than not, the promotional content is just as bad, if not worse than the movie itself.  This is the case with The Phantom Menace: The Game that was released for the original Playstation and the PC.  Players took control of various characters from the film and played through key moments of the storyline.  Trying to imagine how a version of The Phantom Menace without the subpar performances and fart jokes could possibly be worse than the film is a little difficult, but it happened.  Read on to find out how.

Review: Shark Night 3D

Starring: Sara Paxton, Katharine McPhee, Dustin Milligan, Joel David Moore, and Sinqua Walls.  Directed by: David R. Ellis

When I first heard that Shark Night 3D was being made, my initial reaction was one of great anticipation.  Last August, when Piranha 3D was released, I was taken aback (in a great way) by its flat-out CELEBRATION of its extreme R-rating.  Horror fans wanting to see a fun monster movie featuring copious amounts of gore and nudity couldn’t have possibly done better last summer.  And so, when it was revealed that Shark Night 3D was to be rated PG-13, my anticipation turned to apprehension, and I was convinced that there was NO way the film would be truly scary.  Sometimes it sucks to be right.