Roger Ebert has died. But cinema is more alive than ever...

If the film critic has any kind of noble purpose, it is to shine a light on the good and the unexpectedly great in film.  No one gets into film criticism because they hate movies.  We got into this because we love the cinema and we love the singular experience of watching great movies.  If we have any kind of noble goal, it is to highlight what we love, even if its a minority opinion and even if it opens us up to ridicule from our peers.  If we have a social good, it is in highlighting the great movies that may have slipped under the radar.  It is in highlighting the little-seen independent film that desperately needs the publicity to stand out alongside its peers. It is also in highlighting the genuine artistry found in mainstream studio pictures, especially in a time when so many film scholars are all-too willing to write off every would-be 'big movie' and thus declare that cinema is dead.  Cinema is not dead.  Cinema is as alive as it's ever been.

Scott Mendelson: On seeing Jurassic Park 20 years ago...

I'll make this simple.  My first theatrical viewing of Jurassic Park remains, without question, the best theatrical movie going experience of my life. It encapsulated pretty much everything good about the theatrical experience, including any number of elements that are perhaps non-replicable in today's film culture.  The viewing was an unexpected advance-night screening, back before every movie opened on Thursday at 12:00 am, if not 10:00 pm or earlier.  Jurassic Park had a whole slate of advance screenings on Thursday the 10th of June, starting at I believe 8:00 pm.  I had presumed I would be seeing it sometime that weekend, but my mother informed me that my dad was coming home from a business trip and he was picking me up in time for a 10:00 pm screening.  Obviously excited, I hurriedly rushed to finish the original Michael Crichton novel that I had been blazing through.  We got to the theater early enough and the auditorium, as well as the auditoriums around us, were absolutely jammed packed.  Everyone was excited to be there, but nobody really knew what they were in for.

The conformist rebellion of Spring Breakers...

There is something oddly safe and reassuring about the alleged shocking content found in Harmony Korine's Spring Breakers.  It is something so explicitly fashioned to be viewed as 'outrageous' yet its actual onscreen content would presumably only be shocking to those who are somewhat, pardon the simplification, sheltered or easily hot-n-bothered.  It contains moments of overt sexuality and moments of stark violence, but nothing that wouldn't be out of place in a more conventional action picture.  The fact that the very idea of former Disney starlets (and a current ABC Family Channel star) running around in bikinis and engaging in "Girls Gone Wild" type behavior is considered "controversial" or "outrageous" is perhaps a dangerous sign of our current puritanistic attitudes.  The film, at least from a marketing standpoint, seems intentionally designed to give an outlet for "serious" critics and/or journalists to have their cake and eat it too.

On the "morality" of cinematic action-movie massacres...

There is a moment at around the twenty minute mark of Olympus Has Fallen where a giant airplane piloted by evil North Koreans shoot down an American fighter jet which then crashes not in the water or in an empty parking lot, but smack-dab into a suburban home.  Considering the time of day the scene takes place, there's a pretty good chance whomever lived there was probably home at the time and was instantly burned to a crisp.  That moment would have jolting enough, but the attack sequence that kicks off the plot goes on for a good twenty minutes, offering countless innocent bystanders being bloodily gunned down in the streets, along with others being crushed by falling monuments and blown up by various explosions set off during the White House siege.  This isn't even counting the bazillion Secret Service agents who are slaughtered in the attack sequence, including a moment where enemy soldiers walk around the White House plugging wounded agents in the head (onscreen) for the crime of not being quite dead yet. Half of me was rather impressed by the rather horrifying onscreen body count.  Half of me was debating whether to be offended or bothered by it.

Die Hard's oddest legacy: cheap action films...

This July will be Die Hard's 25th anniversary and much has already been written about its impact in Hollywood and its place among the top American action films of its time.  What sticks out 25 years later is not just that it made stars out of its leads (Bruce Willis and Alan Rickman) or revitalized the modern-day/non-science fiction action picture on the cusp of modern special effects advances, or that its character archetypes (regular guy hero versus larger-than-life "sophisticated" villain) basically changed the face of action cinema.  What sticks out is that Die Hard is the rare movie that basically created an entire sub-genre.  Call it "Die Hard on a/Die Hard in a", but Die Hard created a blue-print for an entire generation of cheap direct-to-video or direct-to-cable action pictures.  Using the Die Hard template, anyone could make an action picture with minimal expense.

Accidental ground-breaker: Batman & Robin (1997) catches the bad guy at the half-way point...

I've made several jokes about this over the last few months, but by now when that moment comes in Star Trek Into Darkness, we'll all be quietly snickering.  You know the moment: Benedict Cumberbatch  has been captured about halfway through the movie, and he stands isolated in his glass prison.  As he stands tall, full of arrogant confidence, he'll surely taunt our heroes with some kind of allegedly profound monologue about how A) He and Kirk/Spock aren't that different, B) Starfleet is not as wonderful an institution as they think it is, and/or C) Once Kirk and/or Spock have outlived their usefulness they will be tossed away or scape-goated for the good of the Federation.  And then, right on cue, Not-Kahn will totally bust his ass out of that glass prison, kill several random guards and possibly one major character (Pike?).  Because, holy shit, he totally planned on getting caught the whole time!  Yeah, the whole 'villain gets caught halfway through but escapes and escalates his evil' was old back when it started in... Batman and Robin?

On the 10th anniversary of the Iraq invasion, why we do praise the converted over the initially right?

I think it's terrific that Republican Senator Rob Portman of Ohio has come out in support of gay marriage.  I think it's notable that he came to this conclusion after his 21-year old son came out of the closet, as the more would-be homophobes are forced to actually put a human face on the theoretical 'other' of homosexuality the faster this remaining prejudice will go away. One of the major cornerstones to doing away with institutionalized racism was the white World War II soldiers who served alongside African-American soldiers and realized that they weren't lesser creatures.  But this news story ties into something that frankly I was going to write about on Tuesday to commemorate the ten-year anniversary of the Iraq invasion.  In short, those in the mainstream media, especially in the beltway press, seem to reserve a level of respect for those who once were blind but now can see.  

Speculation: Disney's "Avengers" endgame for the current round of live-action Fairy Tale Theatre?

What do you get when combine the Wizard of Oz, Alice from Wonderland, the Beast, Sleeping Beauty, and Cinderella?  Disney has announced plans to produce a "darker" live-action reboot of Beauty and the Beast, currently titled "The Beast".  Now putting aside the alleged Guillermo del Toro Beauty and the Beast that was intended to star Emma Watson, this is yet another Disney project that basically takes one of their beloved animated films or (in the case of Oz: The Great and Powerful) a beloved family classic and make a Disney live-action franchise-starter out of it.  We've seen movement on a Kenneth Branagh-helmed Cinderella, which ironically was supposed to star Emma Watson until she dropped out over the last couple days.  Filming is underway on Robert Stromberg's Maleficent, which will star Angelina Jolie and Elle Fanning in a villain-centric retelling of Sleeping Beauty.  Disney tried to do something with Snow White before bowing out due to the two other 2012 adaptations, but it may try again.  So what is the point, in the long-run, of these fairy-tale revamps?

See it early? See it at midnight? See it on DVD? On how we see movies and how those choices affect our critical analysis.

The word leaking out from last weekend's screening of next month's Evil Dead remake is generally positive, with tepid enthusiasm blending in with absolutely insane raves and foaming-at-the-mouth excitement.  Of course, there was equal amounts of chatter that the venue for this premiere, a packed crowd of demographically perfect horror junkies on opening night of the SXSW Film Festival, had something to do with the uber-positive reception. I can't imagine a more receptive audience than the one that saw the picture in Austin last weekend and I can't imagine the frenzied anticipation and the whole 'I saw it first!' mentality didn't affect the reception. I had a chance to see Oz: The Great and Powerful at the All Media screening on Monday night but passed because I knew my kid might want to see it and I didn't want to keep her up until 10:30pm on a school night. So I waited until Friday. I bought two tickets to a 2D 7:15pm showing and picked up my kid from school acccordingly.  She liked the movie, and the packed audience went nuts for it too.  I'd be lying if the circumstances of said viewing didn't perhaps allow me to paper over the film's very obvious storytelling issues. I got to see a big event movie on opening night with a packed audience with my excited daughter in tow, which for a film nerd like myself is the very definition of having your cake and eating it too.

Dumb parent worries: Will my kid get spooked by PG-13 trailers like After Earth in front of PG-rated movies like Oz?

I made an offhand joke a couple days ago about all of the big summer release trailers being dropped online and presumably into theater this week.  I'm taking my daughter to see Oz: The Great and Powerful tonight and I'm curious to see which trailers are attached to PG-rated Disney family adventure.  Obviously The Hangover part III is probably not going to make an appearance.  But what about the more mainstream PG-13 entertainments like Iron Man 3 or After Earth?  So will the first 15-20 minutes or so of my daughter's moviegoing experience consist of a series of trailers for big summer releases that she can't see?  Will I have to explain that "No, sweetie, *this* Iron Man movie is for adults."  I've had to do that before, like when when she spotted the DVD of Snow White and the Huntsman at Best Buy, and I always feel like an idiot when doing so.  The other thought that comes to mind is a 12 year old news story, one which I gave little thought to at the time.  

Bigger isn't always better. Why Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters may represent the future of big-scale studio movies.

I wrote a few weeks ago about how something released this year or perhaps last year might be a signal for the future of the would-be blockbuster, a film whose respective success would spawn a decade or so of like-minded would-be tentpoles. What if I were to tell you that a possible template for future would-be blockbusters had already arrived this very year?  What if I were to tell you that the future of big-scale filmmaking may be none-other than Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters?  Laugh if you wish, but let's take a look at what the film represents.

Why bitchy 'fanboys' are the film fan equivalent of Bill Kristol.

I'm not going to get into the misogynistic aspect of the trolling centered around a few on-set photos of Shailene Woodley from The Amazing Spider-Man 2.  To those saying that she's not 'pretty enough' to be Mary Jane Watson, I'll simply extend a hearty 'f*ck you' and merely offer to be, wedding vows and relative current marital bliss aside, the next guy in line at the bar after you turn down her advances. But while others will justifiably focus on the offense at the trolling of a young actress having the gall to walk around without make up, I'd like to offer a bit of silver lining to this whole affair.  Now thanks to the Internet trolling, I can absolutely guarantee that not only will Shailene Woodley be insanely attractive as Mary Jane Watson in The Amazing Spider-Man, but she will also be a terrific character, in terms of acting and all of that 'less-important' stuff too.  Why do I know this?  Because the trolling fans have told me otherwise.  Trolling fans have been around for as long as I can remember.  And they have become the Bill Kristol of film fans.  They make noise, they attract attention and 'serious discussion', and they are always always wrong.

No Survivors - The utter wreckage caused by Pay It Forward...

Any number of movies can bomb critically and commercially to the extent that they harm the star or director or even the writer involved with the respective project.  But, 13.5 years later, the utter carnage reaped by Pay It Forward remains impressive and perhaps unprecedented.  Yes the movie wasn't very good and yes it didn't make very much money at the box office.  But the impressive thing about Pay It Forward, a would-be Oscar bait drama released in October of 2000, is how brutally it crushed the careers of pretty much all of its major players, inflicting wounds that have only just now started to wear off.  The film was considered a major player prior to its release. starring recent Academy Award winners Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt, and Oscar nominee (and shoulda-been winner) Haley Joel Osment. It was helmed by Mimi Leder, fresh off the blockbuster success of Deep Impact. The film was not a critical darling, getting savaged by critics to such a degree that many outright spoiled the film's kinda-sorta twist ending purely out of spite.  And it was not a box office success either, earning just $55 million worldwide off a $40 million budget.  But more importantly, the negative reaction to the film was so severe that it iced the white-hot buzz around all of its primary players.

Funny or not, The Onion's Quvenzhané Wallis tweet was effective satire that reflected back at us.

That so many were so outraged this morning is precisely the point.  Satire at its best highlights the lesser parts of society, using amplification to reflect it back at us and make us take notice of our own behavior.  Those decrying The Onion, a satirical newspaper, for running an offensive tweet about Quvenzhané Wallis are possibly missing the point.  Obviously this wasn't someone online expressing an honest opinion about how they felt about a nine year old actress celebrating her first Oscar nomination.     It wasn't Rex Reed calling Melissa McCarthy a hippo or Brett Easton Ellis whining that Kathryn Bigelow wouldn't be considered a great director if she wasn't a hot white woman who made manly war pictures (essay).  This was an intentionally offensive, knowingly disruptive statement intended to provoke outrage and offense sent out by a technically 'fictional' twitter avatar.  Sadly, it wouldn't have been as shocking if an even slightly older woman had been called a "cunt".  Because we do *that* all the time.

Rooting against action: How Die Hard 5 is like Lilo and Stitch.

There are any number of problems with A Good Day to Die Hard.  But the biggest sin is that it constructs its "story" in such a way that we end up rooting against John McClane.  No, I don't mean the film makes him a villain or anything that creative, I mean that we spend much of the film not wanting McClane to do what he does best: interfere with the carefully-laid plans of others with impromptu and kamikaze acts of violence.  The other prior Die Hard movies basically operated on a simple premise: John McClane is minding his own business when he gets reluctantly pulled into a horrible situation, a situation for which he is the only real hope to save the proverbial day.  He doesn't want to be the hero, but he damn-well is going to stick it out until the day is saved.  This time it's different.  This time John willingly inserts himself into a situation that he does not completely understand.  This time John is *correctly* viewed as an unwanted nuisance and a distraction by the other good guys who are trying to do their jobs.  For most of the film, John McClane is the problem rather than the solution.  In short, John McClane in A Good Day to Die Hard has become Stitch.

Are we laughing *with* Melissa McCarthy or *at* her?

Rex Reed lit a fire under the blogsphere last week when his negative review of Melissa McCarthy's Identity Thief referred to Ms. McCarthy as "cacophonous, tractor-sized" as well as a "female hippo". On one hand, at this point in time, getting pissed at something Rex Reed said is a lot like being outraged that Anne Coulter said something racist or that Armond White panned Toy Story 3 by comparing it unfavorably to Transformers 2. It's just what they do, and being outraged over it just gives them the attention they crave and thrive on. He also made a statement at the end of the review which stated that Ms. McCarthy is "a gimmick comedian who has devoted her short career to being obese and obnoxious". That statement gave me pause, because quite frankly, there may be some kernel of truth to it. Okay, Gilmore Girls fans like myself know that McCarthy has been in the industry for around fifteen years, so "short" is inaccurate right there.  And calling a woman a hippo makes you an asshole and possibly a misogynist.   But the rest of it, the seemingly insulting part about the root of her stardom... he may be indirectly correct.

There can only be two! A possible future where Disney and Warner Bros. dominate franchise tent-pole film making...

The news that has broken over the last couple days is not a little depressing.  While the Seven Samurai-esque Star Wars stand-alone film to be helmed by Zack Snyder was quickly denied, we have gotten word for Disney that there would indeed be stand-alone Star Wars films.  The bad news?  So far, they seem to be entirely centered around well-established characters from the original trilogy.  You want a stand-alone prequel involving Yoda?  Or how about films centered around a young Boba Fett or a young(er) Han Solo?  If so, you're going to be pretty happy over the next half-decade or so.  But if you thought that Disney was buying the Star Wars franchise to somewhat expand its universe rather than merely give us unneeded origins and/or backstories for the very characters we already know a good deal about, well this news won't make you happy.  In fact it reeks of the kind of lazy corporate thinking that gives entertainment corporations a bad name.  It's frankly the first bit of news that might make one thing that maybe Disney, which in general has been relatively good to the properties they have purchased over the years (Muppets, Marvel, etc.) might not be the perfect owner of Lucasfilm that we all thought.

What will the next wave of blockbusters bring? What 2013 release will be the next Star Wars/Batman/Harry Potter?

This is something I've touched on here and there, but here we are in 2013.  I've been waiting with baited breath for awhile to see what the 2013 movie release schedule bring.  Will he pattern I've long spoken of hold true?  Will this year determine the next decade of mainstream blockbuster filmmaking?  If history repeats itself, something out there to be released this year will change the game.  If the pattern holds will have a major smash hit that will not only make a lot of money for its studio but will also blaze a trail in terms of what the next decade of blockbusters will look like. It has happened every eleven years or so for the last few decades.  What major 2013 release will usher in the next wave of tent-poles   What will those new films look like?  Or has the game-changer already happened while we weren't paying attention?

In praise/defense of The Haunting In Connecticut.

I have nothing but envy for those critics who got more out of Mama than I did.  But I do take issue with a certain thread that pops up in many of the more positive reviews, the idea that is somehow the first mainstream horror movie in forever to actually have three-dimensional human beings at its core.  To be frank, I think the prestige associated with producer Guillermo Del Toro and star Jessica Chastain has caused certain critics not so much to overpraise the film but to assign it undue credit in terms of presenting a humanistic horror film.  Just as each new 007 film sees cries of 'most feminist Bond girl ever!', I think at least some of the praise being heaped on Mama is perhaps selective amnesia in terms of the oft-derided horror genre.  For a prime example of a horror film that exists as a character drama first and a horror film second, one need only look at a film that's receiving a somewhat under-the-radar sequel this Friday, possibly tonight in certain theaters.  I'm talking of course about The Haunting In Connecticut.

Five Sylvester Stallone films better than Bullet to the Head...

Rather than obsess over how weak and amateurish Stallone's newest action film happens to be, I thought I'd take some time to pick out some better examples of Sly's surprisingly interesting filmography.  These five films aren't so much the best or even the most underrated, but merely five films that merit discussion and are worth digging into just a little bit more than usual.  Agree?  Disagree?  You probably do, because I could have easily done such a piece on ten Stallone films worth briefly dissecting, but I imagine I can only punish my readers for so long at one time.  You'll get your chance below, but for now enjoy these mini-essays of well, uh, let's just call them five Sylvester Stallone movies that are much better than Bullet to the Head.