Action and Adventure Movies

Pleasure in the Rubble: Why the Summer's Last, Smallest Blockbuster Was Its Best

How Does Hans Zimmer Keep His Film Scores Fresh? He Invents New Instruments

Man of Steel: Making Sense of All That Christ and Death Stuff

Warning: This discussion is thick with spoilers

What Is a Movie Critic's Job in the Summer of Comic Books? A Discussion

The Force Is Strong With This One

James Bond Celebrates 50 Years With an Art Show in Little Tokyo

By Liz Ohanesian See also: *How a Star Wars Art Show Came to Be *Elvis Mitchell Picks the 10 Best James Bond Openings *Skyfall Review: James Bond Now Has a Superhero-Style Origin Story Plasticgod's small, block-y paintings stand up on a top shelf inside Little Tokyo gallery/boutique Q Pop. There's ... More >>

Pain & Gain Review: Michael Bay Injects Absurdity Into an Already Unbelievable True Story

G.I. Joe: Retaliation's a Battle of Dumb Pleasures Versus Your Higher Brain Function

When John McClane Lost His Family, the Die Hard Movies Lost Much of John McClane

The Great Action Director Walter Hill Attempts a Comeback (and Brings Along Sylvester Stallone)

How a Star Wars Art Show Came to Be

See also: *Boba Fett as a Girl *The Creation of That Super Bowl Ad With the Imperial March Sung by Dogs The star of L.A.-based artist Lekit's Opheleia looks like she's had a brutal day. Her cheeks are sunken, her eyes dazed. Her dress falls off her shoulders, revealing an impressive tattoo collect ... More >>

Actor Edward Furlong Arrested in West Hollywood After Domestic Dispute

Actor Edward Furlong, who long ago played Arnold Schwarzenegger's side kick in Terminator 2, was arrested in West Hollywood early Sunday morning and charged with a misdemeanor count of battery, City News Service reports. Furlong was arrested on November 21 for a similar domestic violence case invol ... More >>

From Lawrence to Rambo: Your Weekly Movie To-Do List

Our weekly list of special event movies to see: Thursday, December 27 The Rambo movies weren't always standard-issue action. One need look no further for proof than First Blood, the first entry in the series--not to mention the only one directed by Ted Kotcheff, whose Wake in Fright enjoyed a deser ... More >>

Movie Violence Has Never Been Better. But Here's the Problem...

Part of the renascent body-count action industry, Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning mere existence might shock many Americans. "There are four Universal Soldier movies?" those shocked Americans would say. They might also be taken aback by the bracing violence that marks the film from stem to stern ... More >>

Skyfall Review: James Bond Now Has a Superhero-Style Origin Story

Watching All of the Wachowskis' Movies For the Sake of Watching All of the Wachowskis' Movies

At around the four-minute mark of my first viewing of the Cloud Atlas trailer, as the M83 track swelled to its bursting point and a hoverbike darted through future-Korea, I remember e-mailing and GChatting at least a dozen friends with a link to the preview and my take: "Holy Shit." Naturally, ever ... More >>

The Ethics of Superhero Gun Use: Why Indy Does It in Raiders of the Lost Ark But Batman Doesn't in Dark Knight Rises

For all his doom and gloom, Batman isn't exactly an antihero--a point that's worth bringing up right now because another, less tortured hero can currently be found on IMAX screens across Los Angeles: ... More >>

Raiders of the Lost Ark Opens in IMAX: Remember When Indiana Jones Was Awesome?

The story goes that while filming in Tunisia in the summer of 1980, Steven Spielberg avoided the dysentery that afflicted most of the cast and crew of Raiders of the Lost Ark by holing up in his hotel room with a suitcase full of SpaghettiOs. Like most studio-approved behind-the-scenes errata, that ... More >>

How is Hamlet Like Batman? Author Gregg Hurwitz Connects Comics and Shakespeare

There's a question that author Gregg Hurwitz gets asked often. Why would someone who has written scholarly papers about Shakespeare also pen thrillers? Undoubtedly, a love of the Bard of Avon and a need to write one suspenseful book after the next aren't mutually exclusive. Hurwitz has written 12 ... More >>

Total Recall Is a Retread of Blade Runner, Brazil, Minority Report...Oh, and Total Recall

By Chris Packham Total Recall, directed by Len Wiseman, aspires to be less stupid than its 1990 predecessor and kind of succeeds for the first third of the film. If you subtract all the metaphysical illusion-versus-reality nonsense, Philip K. Dick's Walter Mitty story "We Can Remember It for You W ... More >>

Dark Knight XXX Porn Sales Soar in Wake of Aurora Tragedy

Another news item from the Department of Too Soon: L.A. based porn studio Vivid announced that its The Dark Knight XXX: A Porn Parody DVD was blowing of the shelves after it began arriving at adult stores across America today. The film has been available online, and Vivid notes that it has receive ... More >>

Dark Knight Rises Review

Self-important and overstuffed, The Dark Knight Rises feels like Batman forever

IMAX or Lie-MAX? Where to Actually See The Dark Knight Rises on the Biggest Screen Possible

The good news is that we have two legit IMAX locations to choose from (three if you count the California Science Center, which specializes in nature documentaries and the like): Universal CityWalk and How Whiny is Spider-Man This Time?

According to Spider-Man movies, the greatest triumph that Spider-Man ever achieves is finding it within himself to arachnid up every day. Has any other hero ever moped so much about being gifted with superstrength, -agility, and -love interests? This from a guy who can swing on his wrists' magic eja ... More >>

Where the Stars Are

The "Spider-Man" Theme Song As Sung By the Ramones, Michael Bublé and Pauly Shore

If your spider-sense has been tingling lately it's because, today, The Amazing Spider-Man brings everyone's favorite arachnoid dude back to theaters. But while not everyone's looking forward to this Tobey Maguire-less incarnation, it does present an excellent opportunity to revisit the Spider-Man t ... More >>

The Amazing Spider-Man Review: The Spider Becomes a Man — and a Joy

Elvis Mitchell Picks the 10 Best James Bond Openings

Starting June 9th, LACMA, in collaboration with Loyola Marymount University's School of Film and Television and in celebration of the 50th anniversary of James Bond film franchise launches its new exhibit "...Is James Bond." The exhibit features the opening sequences for all twenty two Bond films. ... More >>

Apocalypse Then

The Farce Side

Close Encounters of the Wookie Kind

The Star Wars Cookbook vs. Food That's Actually Star-Warsy

ThinkGeek.com​Like the Salad Shooter or the electric quesadilla maker, some items that deserve to fade away -- and almost succeed in doing so -- experience a Frankenstein-like revival every Christmas shopping season. The 1998 Star Wars Cookbook is one of these things. While we've come to acc ... More >>

George Lucas' Star Wars Camera Breaks Records With $625,000 Sale at Debbie Reynolds' Profiles in History Auction

Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope. A world record. Thanks to Debbie Reynolds.​Who knew Debbie Reynolds was the gatekeeper of all things Hollywood? And who knew that Debbie Reynolds had anything to do with Star Wars ? (Okay, okay, aside from the fact that her daughter starred in it... that's coi ... More >>

If You Can Make It Here, You'll Want To Move To New York

Drive Review

Ryan Gosling at the wheel in the glossy, retro heist-gone-bad bloodbath

The Dark Knight Rises: The Trailer

​ The Dark Knight Rises won't hit theaters until July 2012, but this teaser surfaced on Facebook yesterday, sending the Internet into a tizzy. We have to admit, we're a little confused about why.

Hammer Conversation

John Barry, Legendary Film Music Composer, Dead at 77

David BaileyJohn Barry (with then-wife Jane Birkin)​ Oscar-winning composer for James Bond films, John Barry died today. He was 77. As the man behind the sound of the swinging Sixties 007 era and beyond, he presented the big band extravaganzas for the Bond films. He won Oscars for his work on ... More >>

Street Art, Travel Posters and Burlesque: Our Favorite Star Wars Finds of 2010

If the fact that we have a Style Council category devoted specifically to Star Wars weren't already an indication, we have a confession to make. A few of us on this arts/pop culture blog team are Star Wars fans. We've been known to spend hours looking at fan art online and chasing down cosplayers at ... More >>

YOU FORGOT "THE PIE WHO LOVED ME"

An Evening with Hans Zimmer

Seven Reasons Why Bruce Campbell Is the Ultimate Convention Guest

There was a lot going on Saturday afternoon inside the Burbank Airport Marriott for this year's Weekend of Horrors convention. Artists sketched guests as creepy caricatures. The stars of Dario Argento's films signed autographs. There was a costume contest as well as a gallery featuring horror-themed ... More >>

Daniel Logan Talks Playing Boba Fett in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones and Star Wars: Clone Wars

Sunday afternoon, we met Daniel Logan at the Shrine Auditorium, where he was a guest for the Los Angeles Comic Book and SciFi Convention. Amongst Star Wars fans, the New Zealand-raised, California-based actor is best known as the young Boba Fett in Star Wars Episode II: Attack of the Clones and, mor ... More >>

Star Trek: The Motion Pictures

Reevaluating the Enterprise enterprise, midnights at the Royal

GOOD KING WILLISLAS

WE'RE WITH STUPID

CREAM OF BROCCOLI

Aging Stormtroopers, Bland Blockbusters and Ingénues

Things to chew on this Memorial Day weekend

The Blockbusters Cometh

It could be a Promised Movieland this summer, unless...

High Rollers, Humbled Harvey and The Hills

Why is nothing in show biz as it seems?