Click articles’ title links to read full reviews.
Movie titles are arranged in alphabetical order.
Action and Suspense Movies:
Blade Trinity Movie Review: Blade Trinity Wrestles to the End
Blade Trinity kicked off with the vampire leaders digging up Dracula, the original vampire who spawned their race. Then it’s Wesley Snipes’ return as the iconic vampire hunter – literally exploding vamps all over.
Domino Movie Review: An Acid Trip with Domino
The life experiences of Domino Harvey taught her not to invest too much emotion on any certain thing. But she couldn’t get away with it… Just like with director Tony Scott… looks like he invested too much emotion in merely creating a visual treatment for the movie, making it too loud and exaggerated.
Firewall Movie Review: Online Security and Crime
Firewall is another one for Harrison Ford’s collection of action thriller movies. From Air Force One to Clear and Present Danger, he keeps up to the genre, this time, in a modernist techno thriller. He plays the role of a computer security expert Jack Stanfield who is blackmailed into robbing the bank in exchange for the life of his family.
Fracture Movie Review: A Legal Battle of Wits
Fracture is an elegantly framed legal thriller that taxes the brain with an engaging battle of wits using the tried-and-tested formula — navigating the narrative twists in a by-the-book courtroom thriller backed up by riveting performances.
From Paris with Love DVD and Blu-ray Review: Mediocre Actioner with Flair for Bonus Goodies
From Paris with Love is all about murder and mayhem. It’s a gun-happy flick for action junkies who don’t really mind anything more than pulsating action, car chases, massive blasts, and major stunts.
From Paris with Love Movie Review: For Action Junkies with Low Expectations
From Paris with Love can serve as a form of passable entertainment for those with low expectations. It’s an over-the-top mixture of trash talk, casually racist swagger, two dimensional characters, and unoriginal action genre elements. At the least, it doesn’t pretend to be a quality movie with trying hard artsy or intellectual stuff around its shallow story and treatment.
Law Abiding Citizen Movie Review: The Law Abiding Popcorn Flick
Law Abiding Citizen is a phony social commentary that has an intriguing premise and a compromised execution. It abides by the rules of commercial filmmaking, and this becomes its major flaw.
Mission: Impossible III Movie Review: The Action Never Stops
The Mission: Impossible franchise surges into another big-budget action film for the third time. With its kinetic twist and turns, special effects, and totally unrealistic plot, there is almost no time to breathe. Yet, somehow, it manages to buy the suspense and emotional engagement with some Alias-like treatment from Director J. J. Abrams (who also did Alias and Lost).
Next Movie Review: A Sloppy Next
While suspending your disbelief with its illogical essentials, Next boasts of a high concept plot with a tricky twist ending. Yet, it goes too far behind with its really sloppy production. It could have been a promising motion picture treat with lots of possibilities, but what starts out as an intriguing premise becomes a poorly executed story that blows itself into a ludicrous ride of dodging projectiles without any clear direction.
Ninja Assassin Movie Review: Splatter On, Adrenaline Junkies’ Ninja Flick
Ninja Assassin is primarily committed to its bloodletting and cool fight scenes than to its story and characters. For those who are looking for a good story and script, it’s a big letdown. But for adrenaline junkies and all those who are into excessive CGI blood and gore, this movie is going to be fun.
Ocean’s Thirteen Movie Review: The Odds of Getting Guilty Pleasure
Watching the inventive and spontaneous bunch of professional men pulling off an impossible heist for the third time, Ocean’s Thirteen is a guilty pleasure to watch.
Ong-bak Movie Review: No Doubles, No Strings, No CGIs
Ong-bak presents the art of Muay Thai in a contemporary setting. Yet, it is very much inspired by the people’s carried on traditions and culture and their ancient fighting spirit.
Poseidon Movie Review: Dangerous Waters
Poseidon is what Titanic has already brought to the big screen. Such theme and story has definitely sailed these waters before. It’s nothing more than a formulaic sea-travel thriller with ready-made template for the filmmakers to fill.
Shoot ‘Em Up Movie Review: A Male Chauvinist Pig’s Death by a Carrot Stick
Shoot ‘Em Up could have been a fun time with its adrenaline-fueled audacity of escapist entertainment, but my appreciation was completely turned off by its grotesque disgrace to outrageously exploit all its female subjects. As a woman watching it, I couldn’t help but question how writer-director Michael Davis uses all the female characters as laughing stocks or sex objects — and nothing more. Some may find this issue trifle. But when you talk about gender sensitivity, the issue gets to boil…
Shutter Island Movie Review: A Masterful Thriller that Benefits Repeated Viewings
Shutter Island is masterfully crafted to such a high level of filmmaking that interestingly works for both the general audience and art film enthusiasts. Yet, this psychological movie is something that can clearly separate the viewers into two sides: those who like it and those who don’t. Only one thing’s for sure: after watching the film, whether the audience gets impressed by it or hates it, it doesn’t shut itself from the curious minds of the viewers.
The Departed Movie Review: Fresh and Ferocious
Director Martin Scorcese reworks a remarkably intelligent gangster story in The Departed. Based on the popular Hong Kong film Infernal Affairs about a gang member infiltrating the police force while a new police officer infiltrates the gang, this Hollywood version pulses with energy, strong dialogues and superb performances. The brilliantly written narrative is both grittingly relaxed and violently intelligent.
The Island Movie Review: Harvesting Humans in the Island
Set in the year 2019 in a hermetic complex where everyone wears white suits and their health and food intake monitored up to the tiniest details, the story follows the everyday life of Lincoln Six-Echo (Ewan McGregor) and Jordan Two-Delta (Scarlett Johansson) living in a sterile environment after a world contamination.
The Island is a derivative science-fiction thriller about the clones of humans used as spare parts (to replace defective body organs, adopt new-born babies without any biological parent running after the kid after some years (and can even have kids by using specific clones), and insure lost or malfunctioning body parts) of their sponsors (mostly supermodels, athletes, politicians and billionaires).
The Legend of Zorro Movie Review: The Dela Vega Heroes
The Legend of Zorro tones down a bit by fronting the more human issues about family relationships as compared to the visually purist, action-filled premise driving the storyline on such an action genre. And yet, this film doesn’t lose its own touch of valuable action and playful camera work. The magnificent stunts, grand production design, and outstanding cinematography keep the spectators’ eyes nailed to what happens next.
The Lookout Movie Review: A Heist Picture to Bank For
The moody and brilliantly inventive crime caper The Lookout has all the right elements of cinematic tension, engaging story, tight script, heartbreaking human insights, comic relief, and solid acting. It is a well-crafted thought piece about a young adult coping up with the consequences of his teenage aggressiveness. His personal brilliance and the greater future ahead of him vanishes forever due to his acquired physical incapacity. Perceptive and edgy as it is, the film becomes a skillful and compelling character study in the guise of a heist movie.
The Prestige Movie Review: Are You Watching Closely?
Director Christopher Nolan works on a difficult task of tackling a complicated story about two cold, central figures. The complex premise of The Prestige becomes a good escalating battle of wits presented the “Nolan way.”
Transporter 2 Movie Review: An Escapist Ride
Transporter 2 maintains the typical formula: the good guy chasing the bad guys. The B-movie plot twists are like an assemblage of action-sequel clichés carefully endorsing the car brand Audi.
V for Vendetta Movie Review: Freedom! Forever!
V for Vendetta is a daring and imaginative view of Britain as a fascist state in the 2020s. The character V (Hugo Weaving) is thrillingly a Batman, Joker, Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, and Shakespeare rolled into one.
Whiteout Movie Review: Frozen to Dullness in Antarctica
Whiteout is like the impending six months of darkness in Antarctica. Not with the chilling thrills, but with the total bore of staying inside a scientific research facility with only the endless stretches of Antarctic ice as companion. And in the most superficial sense, this movie can only be passable for the filmgoer without any other demands but seeing ice everywhere.
Horror, Mystery, and Supernatural Movies:
28 Weeks Later Movie Review: Utterly Gripping and Occasionally Unsettling
28 Weeks Later is scarier, utterly gripping, and occasionally unsettling than many horror and suspense-thriller releases during its time. It exudes that disturbing effect with its terrifying aura of doom and gloom about the gory mess of reconstructing a city ravaged by a virus. It follows through with the internal and external forces trying to control, improve, and worsen the situation. Presented with a stinging and intriguing load of subtexts and social and political commentaries, the good emotional and audio-visual treatments save the feeble plotpoints of the film.
Feast Movie Review: The Parody of a Feast
A film utilizing a B-movie treatment accompanied by some wittily nasty moments, Feast is a cheap-looking, gore-drenched, slick, brutish, and comic splatter horror flick. A thriller product of the third season of the American reality show Project Greenlight, this debut film from John Gulager is about a group of strangers locked inside a sleazy bar and are forced to fight a family of hungry monsters.
Jennifer’s Body Movie Review: Capitalizing on a High School Scare Flick
In Jennifer’s Body, Megan Fox looks high school foxy as a scarily hot horror queen in the usual teen scare flick set-up. And it could probably work best for midnight screenings and slumber parties.
Orphan Movie Review: There is Something Wrong with Esther
Orphan knows what it wants and what it’s doing. It’s generally uncomfortable and wrong. The kind of story it presents, that is. It stays faithful to every cliché of the genre. It’s reasonably, cheesily suspenseful. The scares are often generic. Yet amidst the excesses and exuberance, the film still has the power to surprise at times. It somehow plays a little beyond its sophisticated audience’s expectations.
Skeleton Key Movie Review: The Skeleton Key Unlocks a Few Scares
Set in a moss-laden, dirty, southern gothic mansion in New Orleans, the Skeleton Key unlocks some real scare as a psychological horror thriller about the young hospice caretaker Caroline (Kate Hudson) trapped in the hoodoo spells and conjurations of an enigmatic couple. A skeleton key meant to open every lock in the house plays a major role for the pre-planned victimizing of the naive Caroline who gets a dose of folk magic and injustice in such a suspense flick minus that standard Hollywood happy ending.
The Covenant Movie Review: Modern Warlocks
The Covenant conjures a sleek, but quite empty picture about four handsome high school seniors who inherited supernatural powers from the ancient pact among their families. Going by the name the Sons of Ipswich, Caleb (Steven Strait), Pogue (Taylor Kitsch), Reid (Toby Hemingway), and Tyler (Chace Crawford) are the latest descendants in a long line of New England witches sworn to a centuries-old covenant of silence. They have inherited magical powers. However, there’s an unfortunate side effect. If they overuse their powers, the young sorcerers age prematurely. The more you use your power, the faster your body deteriorates.
The Exorcism of Emily Rose Movie Review: A Courtroom Psychological Horror
Provocative and absorbing but without any pronouncements, The Exorcism of Emily Rose is a thinking person’s demon possession film.
The Shining Movie Review: Stanley Kubrick’s Horror Masterpiece Shines for Many Generations
The Shining is a masterpiece of modern horror. With its remarkable visual panache and a keen sense of irony, it is a rare, chilling, majestic piece of cinematic fright benefiting repeated viewings.
Underworld: Evolution Movie Review: Fangs, Furs, and Flashbacks
The saga about the war between the vampires and the werewolves returns in Underworld: Evolution. While its predecessor set up the exposition on the why’s and how’s about the raging battle between the vampires and the werewolves/lycans, this sequel shows a flashback intensive plotline of that same old action-movie formula.
Zodiac Film Review: A Riveting Police Procedural, Docudrama and Psycho Thriller
Zodiac is a dialogue-driven psychological thriller that spans almost three decades with its almost three-hour running time. It is an audio-visual essay with vagueness and directness at the same time.
