Since I don’t often review horror movies, let me first give you an idea of what I like and don’t like in horror flicks. If I watch a horror flick, I want to be horrified. I don’t watch them to see barely dressed teenagers, or to drink in ridiculous amounts of gore. For my tastes, a good horror movie will be scary not just the first time you see it, but also the second and third. So “jump” scares do not win points with me, even when they scare me the first time through, because I’m looking for a movie worth seeing more than once. If I want to be scared by sudden, loud noises, I’ll give my 2 year old the car keys and see how long it takes him to set off the alarm. Doesn’t cost me a dime. A good horror movie will stay with me and leave me unsettled even after the movie is done. I’m much more interested in something creepy, unsettling and disturbing than I am in something that is simply shocking or gory. In my book, great horror movies include Saw (the...

The Terminator franchise is one that I have enjoyed quite a bit. Despite the first two films being very different from each other, they were both executed wonderfully and hold up very well today. Terminator 3 had some major shortcomings but I still found some things to like. And the Sarah Connor Chronicles TV show has been a fantastic addition to the mythos. Coming into "Salvation", I wasn't sure what to expect. The visual look of the film looked appropriately bleak in trailers, but the PG-13 rating had me concerned that it would lack the violence that makes this franchise what it is. My estimates were not too far off. From the opening of the film, we're introduced to a new character, Marcus Wright. Surprisingly, he seems to have more screen time in the movie than Christian Bale does as John Connor. Although the Marcus character is interesting, the focus he stole from John Connor was a downside of the movie. This franchise has always been ab...

How in the world did I miss this movie in theaters? Goes to show that I should check the new DVD releases every week! This movie had a very narrow distribution in theaters in 2008 and that's a real shame, as fans of fantasy and sci-fi should certainly check this movie out at some point. It's not the best movie in the world, but it's not a terrible film, either. I remained interested in the film for most of it's 115min run-time and was even grabbed in a few instances by some scary or otherwise shocking moments. The script was written by Dirk Blackman and Howard McCain, who both wrote the script for "Underworld: Rise Of The Lycans", their only other writing credit. "Outlander" is also only McCain's second movie as director(though he's done a little TV as well). For fans of bloody sword fighting and battles with clanking armor, you'll get a pretty good fix in this flick. The fights are not especially well choreographed, but the...

Before reviewing this movie, I should give you a sense of where I'm coming from in relation to the Star Trek franchise. I began watching Star Trek around the second or third season of "Next Generation" and continued faithfully watching every Star Trek show and movie since, with the exception of "Enterprise". I think that the original Star Trek series and "Next Generation" were groundbreaking and changed the way we make and view science fiction television. I loved these shows and never missed an episode. Having said that, Star Trek retained a fatal flaw that ironically, given Gene Roddenberry's Darwinian views, the TV franchise never "evolved" beyond. That flaw is summed up in one phrase: "Concept over character". Although we loved the members of each crew, the real star of most episodes were the "aliens/singularities of the week". Problems were usually solved in a single episode, ...

Although I'm a big comic book fan, I'm not a mainstream Marvel fan. I pick up enough through cultural osmosis to know all the vital info, and I follow Wolverine's exploits in the Ultimate Marvel universe, so I'm no stranger to the character. But I didn't have a lot invested in this movie when I came into the theater. Mainly, I just wanted a better movie than X-men 3. I couldn't have been much happier. From the first scene, I immediately got the sense that this would not just be an action flick, but a movie with action driven by character. The film pulls from the comic book origins of Wolverine, though certainly makes modifications, to tell a highly entertaining story. We get a deeper look at Logan than we have on screen before, and the movie, while incorporating other mutants of X-men lore, isn't cluttered up with mutant cameos as X-men 3 was. Characters like Blob and Gambit, while not crucial to the story, were at least given func...