I am one of those poor, sad, desperate fools: a Star Wars fan. I've seen all the films many, many times (the prequels keep getting worse every time, though I try to pretend they don't). I own them all, some in various different formats and editions. I also own (and very much enjoy) both volumes of the original Clone Wars animated series that aired on Cartoon Network some years ago. I even, God help me,......

I can't remember a recent film that's received as much publicity leading up to its release as The Dark Knight. What with all the insane viral advertising, marketing deals with Domino's and Comcast and whoever else, and then all the press surrounding the sudden and tragic death of Heath Ledger shortly after he completed filming his role as the Joker, it's been hard to avoid hearing about the movie. Reviews of the film have been......

Like many other members of my generation, I grew up with Indiana Jones. Along with the Star Wars trilogy, the films about the dashing, whip-cracking, snake-fearing archaeologist who was named after the dog were three of my favorite movies (yes, I'm one of those poor bastards who drank all the George Lucas Kool Aid he was given and then asked for more), and I still think they're some of the greatest action movies ever made.......

I have distant and blurry—but very fond—childhood memories of the old original Speed Racer cartoon. Based on those memories, the show was about a family of people who all talked very fast (with their lips never quite matching up with the words they were saying) and drove very fast and had crazy adventures. Oh, and there was a monkey. So when I first heard the Wachowskis, of all people, were making a live-action adaptation, I......

Ryan Phillipe stars in Stop-Loss as Sergeant Brandon King, just home to Brazos, Texas from serving in Iraq. Expecting to be "gettin' out," instead he is informed that the Army has invoked the Stop-Loss provision, meaning that his contract will be involuntarily extended and he must return to Iraq. Director Kimberly Peirce will tell you that this is not an Iraq war movie, but that should be clear to anyone who views the film. Rather,......

Pop quiz: On your first day of high school, if you are a shy, gangly teenager whose only friend is a pudgy wannabe rapper, when you see some bloodthirsty upperclassmen stuffing the only kid dorkier than you into a locker, do you stand up for what's right or do you slink into the corners and thank god it's not you? In Drillbit Taylor, young Wade (Nate Hartley) chooses the noble and stupid option #1. This......

I like Jason Statham. I think he's a really talented guy. But let's face it, besides Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, he hasn't been in very many decent movies. Just look at his filmography: Transporter 2, that Uwe Boll Dungeon Siege thing, The One. Ugh. For that reason, I went into my screening of The Bank Job with pretty low expectations. And I came out pretty impressed. It's actually a really solid......

Penelope is explicitly a modern fairy tale—even to the point of opening with "Once upon a time..." and ending with "...and they lived happily ever after"—about a young woman named Penelope (Christina Ricci), who is cursed. Her family is very old and very rich, and many years ago, a male of their number thought he'd fallen in love with a washerwoman, but ultimately broke his promise to marry her. When the woman subsequently committed suicide,......

Ever since I saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind—the wildly imaginative, deeply moving, incredibly insightful sci-fi/romance/drama/comedy with Jim Carrey that came out in 2004—I've been pretty keen to see what else writer-director Michel Gondry can do. I found his next fiction feature film, The Science of Sleep, ultimately unsatisfying, but just as imaginative and affecting as ESotSM. So I was thrilled to hear about Gondry's latest project: Be Kind Rewind. This film—set over the......

So, what is Cloverfield? Probably if you've watched the ads, you've thought of Godzilla, and although it certainly has a lot in common with that series, it also has elements of The Blair Witch Project. It's a monster movie, but told in a hyper-realistic way, from the point of view of the people on the streets who are running between the toes of the monster. Critics (well, the cut-rate ones, anyway) will often compare films......

Imaginary phone call between Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman (pretend you're hearing it it in their voices): JN: Hey there, Morgan. What are you up to the next six weeks? MF: Don't have any set plans, Jack. All the voice-over work I'm doing these days is pretty flexible. To be perfectly honest with you, it's a little boring. JN: I hear ya. Diane Keaton is tied up making shit movies for the next few......

“Shit, I could write that,” said a woman at the Bridge on Monday, when told that Juno was about a teenage pregnancy. Thing is, dear reader, so could you. Not because you found yourself trying to buy a ticket for three to your junior prom, mind; but neither Juno nor this summer’s Knocked Up stray too far from the basic emotional territory set out in Nine Months, Father of the Bride Part II, and the......

Take a cursory look at the release history of Blade Runner (which originally came out in 1982) and you might begin to think that Ridley Scott has caught a George Lucas-sized case of Special Edition-itis - you know, that terrible disease that afflicts some directors and causes them to keep tweaking and re-editing and re-releasing their films in different versions, over and over and over. Wikipedia lists seven different versions of Blade Runner, for......

Although The Golden Compass is being compared to the Narnia Chronicles in some of the ads, the series that the book it's based on is a part of - Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy - is really the anti-Narnia: equal but exactly opposite to C.S. Lewis' saga of Christian allegory. Some people are saying that The Golden Compass is anti-Catholic - and they're right. The movie doesn't emphasize it as much as the book......

Love in the Time of Cholera is a good example of a bad adaptation. Garcia Marquez fans realize, I hope, that the man’s strengths don’t easily translate to film, so you shouldn’t be shocked to learn that the film Love in the Time of Cholera feels more like an adaptation of a GGM-inspired Saturday morning cartoon than of the novel itself. Cholera the film is a fairly ordinary Hollywood period piece; it’s the sort of......

When Richard Kelly's film Southland Tales was originally screened at Cannes, the buzz was extraordinarily negative. The word was that the movie was a great big mess - ridiculous and nonsensical. I didn't want to believe it. I really enjoyed Kelly's amazing indie/romance/sci-fi flick Donnie Darko. I thought maybe people were reacting to Southland Tales the way that some had reacted to The Fountain: they were confused by it because they hadn't looked hard enough......

Martin Slamon does graphic work for Phillyist, including our 31 Days of Halloween banner and our LOVE movie review rating system. Today, we're debuting his new Phillyist comic, Scribbles. .flickr-photo { border: solid 2px #000000; } .flickr-yourcomment { } .flickr-frame { text-align: left; padding: 3px; } .flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }......