There have been many films about the state of the earth and its inhabitants after an apocalypse, most of them depicting the life of a lone survivor trying to survive the harsh and anarchistic world in order to create an actin vehicle. The Mad Max movies are well known for this, but also Water World, Doomsday, The Book Of Eli and even the Matrix movies are perfect examples.

Cop Out is the first movie directed by Kevin Smith that isn't based upon a script by himself. People expecting the traditional Kevin Smith ingredients should prepare themselves for a more slapstick movie rather than a funny dialogue movie. Even most of Smith's regulars are absent here, with the exception of Jason Lee in a small role as the new husband to Bruce Willis' ex-wife. Based upon this movie it would be fair to conclude it sucks to be Ashton Kutcher.

Jeffrey Dahmer was a serial killer mostly active in the late 80s and early 90s before he got caught. He killed no less than 17 people, all men, most of the gay as Dahmer himself was too, and performed necrophilia and cannibalism. Quite the character one could base a tense and grueling movie on. Jeffrey Dahmer's story is kind of like Brokeback Slaughter if you think of it. Yet, this movie, simply titled Dahmer, is pretty boring as it tries to be a character study of Dahmer but fails to engage and like other movies about serial killers requires the viewers to have knowledge on forehand about the character because not everything was explained really clear. Where movies about fictional killers reveal too much about the killer, Dahmer actually tells us too little.

It's been a while since there was a real werewolf movie. These feral hybrid creatures have lately only functioned as opponents for vampires in the Twilight and Underworld movies. The Wolfman puts the killing machine once again front and center but sadly forgets to establish a clear protagonist which makes it a movie with no character to really care about, thus making it difficult for the viewer to actually care about the movie.

Valentine's Day seems to be more about quantity than about quality. It tries to fit as many story-lines and A-list movie stars in two hours as possible resulting in what is kind of a showcase of shorts of which most of them aren't that interesting. Which is a shame as there is some significant talent in the movie, but sadly underused. The fact that the trailer mostly consisted of listing the stars should say something about the captivating story that is clearly not to be found in this movie.

When asked if he's a vampire she responds with "They don't have a name for what he is". The subject of the question is of course the legendary Hannibal Lecter played by Anthony Hopkins in the role that made him a big star and earned him an Academy Award in what is probably one of the finest pieces of horror-movie-making ever. Although the horror label is kind of debatable, but let's not forget that Lecter is a psychopath that a one point skins a face of a guard and wears it as a disguise. You don't see that in a thriller every day.

Four guys travel back through time in a DeLorean Hot Tub to 1955 1986. Once here they have the possibility to change the future for themselves and others which can lead to disasters like people not being born but can also lead to a better future for themselves. Hot Tub Time Machine is a guy-movie about three friends and the nephew of one of them traveling back in time by accident to a time when the future was still bright for them. It is also clearly inspired by Back To The Future. Hell, it even has Crispin Glover.

In a summer full of sequels, remakes, reboots and movies based on existing properties Inception is one of the few movies that is actually truly original in every aspect. The studio took a big gamble on green-lighting this movie and it's something that I hope pays off for them in doing so because Inception is truly a gem of a movie, especially compared to movies like Step Up 3D which are released around the same time. Nolan is proving to us that he might become, or actually already is, Hollywood's next boy wonder. Now with a solid resume of good, if not brilliant, movies.

The Ghost Writer starts of with a memorable opening scene. Not because of its grandeur but rather the ominous tone it sets that will be present in the remainder of the movie. A ferry docks in the harbor and all the cars on it are getting off one by one. One big luxurious BMW is left standing. No driver anywhere in sight. The car gets towed from the ferry, the police arrive to contact the owner. Next thing we see is the body of a man washed up on shore. It doesn't take long to put one and one together though the official report is that it's probably suicide.
We know better.

Considering how Pixar made a niece out of being original during the 00's it's hard to imagine that they actually made a sequel to their first movie Toy Story. At the time it was all too logical as the original was a great success and Pixar was still a small player in the movie industry with only two hit movies under their belt. It's funny how the announcement of a sequel to Cars causes quite an up-stir nowadays when a sequel to Toy Story was produced without fans shouting out, protesting the mere idea. And good for that, because Toy Story 2 is at least as good as its predecessor if not even better proving to the world that the guys at Pixar can not only produce original movies, but very good sequels as well as they have proven once more with Toy Story 3.

You reap what you sow and old saying goes and which could be said about The Dark Knight. After bringing us a gritty, down-to-earth, origin story about Batman this movie continues on the path its predecessor started exploring. Something quite unique in the Batman universe as this is actually the first movie that really connects with the movie it follows. Not only in terms of the central plot, but also in recurring characters. For the first time a villain from a previous movie appears again as does the love-interest. The 90's Batman movies felt more or less like standalone movies, while The Dark Knight is really a next chapter to Batman Begins.

Where are the ninjas nowadays? They where everywhere in the 80's. Michael Dudikoff was the American Ninja in several movies, there were ninja turtles, and every American TV had at one point an episode with ninjas. Yes, even Michael Knight and KITT battled a group of ninjas in an episode, I kid you not.
But the 80s and early 90s went and so did the ninjas. So it feels kind of fresh again to see some kung fu fighting involving ninjas as Ninja Assassin overtly demonstrates.

In a corporate ruled America set in the near future the technology has become so advanced basically every organ in a human's body can be replaced. But of course every organ comes with a price hefty tag, but when you only have the choice of death otherwise a signature is quickly put under a contract for a so-called Artiforg with a payment plan. "You owe it to your family" a salesman at a company called The Union says to his potential customers. Organs are being sold like houses and cars, but when your payments are overdue the bank takes the house or the car back according to the voice-over of repo man Remy. But when the payments are overdue for an artificial organ, that is when he comes in.

Clash Of The Titans is the second movie in short time dealing with Greek mythology, the other being Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief and both having demigod Perseus as the main character. The tone is entirely different though, yet a lot of the same characters pop up in both movies. In both movies Hades and Medusa are the main villains and Zeus isn't really likeable either.
But where Percy Jackson was more a fun fantasy movie set in present day in the vain of the Harry Potter movies, Clash Of The Titans goes for the Lord Of The Rings feeling trying to be as epic as possible.

Here's a little quiz; If you suspect your husband is cheating on you should you

a) Try to get proof yourself and/or try to catch him in the act with his pants down (literally)?
b) Rent a private investigator to get the proof for you?
c) Rent a prostitute and give her the assignment to be a possible catch for your husband and let her report to you?

If your answer is C then Chloe is the movie demonstrating why you made the worst possible choice available.

Normally superhero origin stories aren't reserved for the 5th movie in a franchise, but with Batman Begins one of the world's most popular comic book characters finally gets his. It has been a long journey for Bruce Wayne from the colorful adventures in the sixties to the dark and gothic versions by Tim Burton only to be raped by the gay interpretation of Joel Schumacher giving Batman nipples on his suit and lots of ass and crotch shots in a neon-lit world. Director Christopher Nolan takes the character back to his humble beginnings and has become more of a character study with the theme  of "fear" rather than the summer blockbusters the previous movies were.

How much is the life of one man worth when millions are at stake? On paper pretty much, but in reality it's pretty worthless. The show 24 has shown us that over the years that to get results and save lives you have to torture people despite Geneva conventions. Audiences never publicly disagreed with Jack Bauer's method of getting results because all the guys he tortured were bad guys and the torturing would lead him to saving many innocent lives. But approving torture is a slippery slope but it's always an interesting discussion; how do you treat someone who would kill you and countless other in a blink of an eye?

Three relatively unconnected stories about cops in Brooklyn, each with their own demons or other problems. Cops in movies are rarely carefree, then again nobody is actually carefree in a movie, only sometimes when the end credits roll. An unwritten rule of movies with multiple story-lines is that the characters at least once appear in each other's story, just to show a connection and to show that they inhabit the same world. In Brooklyn's Finest everybody ends up in the same building eventually though they never end up in each other's story.

The story of a has-been country star who tries to find redemption in a doomed relationship with a much younger woman is one that has certain parallels with The Wrestler which starred Mickey Rourke. And like that movie it is carried by the performance of its star, in this case Jeff bridges as Bad Blake giving an Academy Award winning performance. But there is more and even people who are not into country music, of which there is a lot of featured here, will find the alcoholic Bad Blake's journey to hitting rock bottom interesting.

Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief is a rather lengthy title. Why they had to add "The Olympians" remains a mystery to me. It makes it sound like a band or something. But in reality there's no band to found in "Percy Jackson" as it deals with a teenager who finds out he's a demigod after his human mother had some good times with Poseidon, the Greek God of the sea and storms. So now you know who to blame Katrina on.
This revelation will lead to Percy and fellow demigod Annabeth and protector Grover who is part goat like the James McAvoy in The Chronicles of Narnia.

Ever since he broke through with the Mad Max movies Mel Gibson has been a reliable name above many good movies, mostly action oriented ones. But ever since the so-so Signs he disappeared from in front of the camera an reappeared behind it directing the religious torture-porn The Passion Of The Christ and the Maya torture-porn Apocalypto. That and appearing in tabloids due to his drunken misbehavior resulting in antisemitic rants. But now Mel is back in a role suited form him. A father searching for the killer(s) of his daughter in a surprisingly low-key performance.

Last year Pierre Morel surprised me with Taken. An action movie resembling those that have been made with the same skill back in the 80's. It was a pleasant surprise and the same team behind that movie is back with From Paris with Love. This time writer Luc Besson and director Morel have John Travolta at their service, who gives us one of his more energetic performances as CIA agent Charlie Wax. At one point after beating the shit out of a group of armed thugs with his bare hands he says to his new partner Reece (Rhys Meyers) "Now tell me that shit isn't impressive" I have to agree: despite the hyper-kinetic editing we've gotten used to by now it was one of the many moments in the movie that put a smile to my face.

There are two kinds of religious movies; one that push an agenda of religion, and one that uses faith as a plot device to tell a story. The Matrix in a way has this as Neo is some sort of Jesus whose birth and potential has been foretold. The other are movies the propaganda kind like Fireproof which tries to bring a message just on how good religion is. The first can be very movies while the latter kind mostly sucks and feel like the message is more important than the quality of the story. The Book Of Eli fits into the first category though it does have a firm religious undertone throughout the whole movie.

I'm seriously in doubt here whether I should or should not reveal who the killer is in Return to Sleepaway Camp. When reviewing a movie you should try to steer away from spoilers as much as possible but one of the biggest flaws of the movie is the killer's identity. The moment this person appears on screen I slapped myself in the face and screamed at the screen; seriously? They think they can get away with that?
Unfortunately the rest of the 65 minutes the movie lasts it tries to present another character as the potential killer at which it fails, not only because of someone else already has a sign above his/her head stating "I'm the killer", but also because this character is utterly incompetent. So incompetent he could hardly fake it.

In Machete by Robert Rodriguez Steven Seagal and Danny Trejo faceoff one on one for the third time now. Seeing them together in the trailer made me realize one thing; that the tables have turned. Trejo now stars while he has been a busy supporting character for over more than 20 years while Seagal is only playing a supporting character when he normally is the subject of his movies. The contrast between Trejo and Seagal is like black and white in terms of their career. Trejo has a regular career of steadily climbing the ladders of success in Hollywood. Starting out small and now having top-billing in a theatrical movie. Seagal on the other hand had a career that was launched. A big time producer saw his skills and decided this was the new action hero and gave him the role of Nico Toscani in Above The Law (a.k.a. Nico). From day one Seagal's name was above the movie titles he starred in.

Now Seagal is kind of unique as he really was a nobody before this first movie and had absolutely no other screen credits but he isn't the only one to have a career that was launched. But he was one of the few who actually succeeded to have success and maintain on top. Most of the time when a movie-career is launched for somebody it's a person who has been famous in another profession like sports, music or acting in a TV-show.
Here are a few examples of careers that were launched with great exposure but which failed to take off.

Some movies are game-changers, Snow White for instance which was the first feature length animated movie and paved the way for many more after that and more recently Avatar which introduced the world to a 3D experience never seen before. Toy Story was the first feature length completely computer animated movie. Now there's one released every 3 months or so even by really small companies but back then this was something unique, something nobody saw before. It even took about three years before two other movies were released; A Bug's Life and Antz. But it all started in 1995 when we were just getting used to seeing live action movies suddenly getting the cutting edge special FX which even improved every year. 1995 was the year we went to infinity and beyond...

I was at a friend when this movie came on the TV. Not having any prior knowledge of it just the mere title alone set up my expectations fairly low: a low budget disaster movie. One of those you see every now and then on TV about killer tidal waves or earthquakes and such in which a couple of completely unknowns and a has-been TV-star from the ranks of David Hasselhoff try to survive the disaster. But as soon as the cast list came on I got a little more exited. Tiffany Thiessen (Kelly from Saved by the Bell), Eric Roberts, Faye Dunaway, Bob Gunton... OK, so we're not talking George Clooney and Brad Pitt here but these are all actors with an interesting resume and who know how to chew scenery, except for Thiessen of course, but then again she is here to play it straight en deliver eye candy which she still is.

It's always funny how movies that during their release have controversy surrounding them spawn sequels which nobody is pissed off at or similar themed movies that are do not stur up some concerned parents committee. Silent Night, Deadly Night did piss people off by featuring a killer Santa resulting in it being yanked from the theaters while the sequels came with little media attention and even movies like Santa's Slay are being made and released without anybody actually protesting it. Fun fact is that Santa isn't doing the killing the movie, just someone dressing up as Santa, so don't expect any killer elves.

Funny People is the long awaited cancer-comedy, well that what it was called in its early stages and the world was preparing to be shocked and offended and laugh of course because no matter how terrible something is, there's always a joke about the subject around the corner. Well that movie never saw the day of light because Funny People is about a successful comedian who gets diagnosed with leukemia and comes to the conclusion than he has no friends or family other than people he is connected to professionally. Managers are great to get you gigs, but when it comes to a shoulder to cry on or a listening ear they just don't deliver.