Morgan P Salvo

After the over-praised flicks Metropolitan and Last Days of Disco, writer and director Whit Stillman has returned – 14 years later – with Damsels in Distress. And his comeback speaks volumes as to why Stillman should stay away for good.
Using a recipe steeped in superficial self awareness, Stillman turns Damsels into a low-budget fiasco that feels as if Jared Hess took time out from Napoleon Dynamite and teamed up with a Jennifer's Body-era Diablo Cody. In the hands of, say ,John Waters or Wes Anderson, this self aware flick might've played out better, but really no amount of genius could have kept this misguided crap out of the toilet tank.

The makers of The Raven would like you to believe that Edgar Allen Poe spent his final days helping police capture a killer who was using Poe's works as inspiration and, in doing so, saved the love of his life Emily, for whom he wrote the poem Annabel Lee.
The plot uses some of the real-life mysteries from Poe’s final days to form the backdrop of a fictional tale. Filmed in Serbia and Hungary, Raven looks cool, but that's about it.
Let's face it; John Cusack is not really an actor. He is just John Cusack. There's no discernable difference between his former roles and Poe with the exception of more hair and a goatee. Cusack's Poe could have cranked up the turmoil and debauchery; he was an alcoholic and opium addict for chrissakes!

I was under the impression that Being Flynn might be some sort of comeback for DeNiro after about two straight decades of duds. That is simply not the case.
Based on the memoir Another Bullshit Night in Suck City by playwright and poet Nick Flynn, the movie depicts Flynn’s reunion with his estranged father, Jonathan, a homeless alcoholic who lives at a shelter where Nick was a social worker in the late 1980s.
The concept is original and the film is touching at times, but lacks energy or any real rhythm.
We follow Nick (Paul Dano) who is semi down and out and looking for a cheap place to live and any work he can find, finally meeting his father (DeNiro), a delusional alcoholic who roams the streets doing odd jobs like driving cab. The full circle Taxi Driver reference is right there, but it seems director Paul Weitz overlooks the significance.

Kids in the woods horror movies are a pretty reliable genre. Evil Dead (1 and 2) being the best example of the formula. Cabin Fever also fits the bill and now, thanks to Lion's Gate and Mutant Energy Productions, we have the supreme example of them all in 2012's Cabin in the Woods. Horror movie fans and aficionados will go berserk with this one, but they'll also wonder why this film, made back in 2009, wasn't released until now.

Some movies clue you in from the first scene that you're in for a different experience. We Need to Talk About Kevin achieves this and falls into the category of really different. The opening looks like a blood orgy, with Tilda Swinton slathered to the hilt in red, but turns out to be some sort of tomato festival with gobs of crushed slime running red all over huddled masses. It's not clear if this is some sort of flashback or a surreal dream sequence, and frankly it doesn't matter. Scottish director Lynne Ramsay, responsible for the underrated Morven Callar and Ratcatcher, likes to give us a lot to work with. Here she uses the ever-present color red, symbolizing the stigma of never being able to wash the blood of tragedy from your hands.

Mirror Mirror wasn't horrible, and that's the problem. With a safe, even keel, this flick excels at being nothing special. It's not stupid enough for to me to be fully embarrassed for the human race, and not campy enough to be blasé. It's a prequel and also a bland retelling of the Snow White and the Seven Dwarves fairy tale that's decent enough for kids. Damn it!
Sent with cruel intentions by my wicked step-editor, I knew my movie-going experience was fated to be nightmarish given it's spring break and kids are out in droves. And so I was turned away from this kid magnet after at my first round of standing in a line of exuberant children because it was sold out. Perhaps that was a good thing.

Movies don't profess to really tell the truth. (Just check the Coen brothers' credentials surrounding Fargo.) But when a movie advertises something that it is not, you have to wonder, as an audience member, whether it's worth being lied to. If the movie is good enough, sure; however, in the case of Silent House, it's nothing short of an insult.
Silent House is based on La Casa Muda, a low-budget 2010 Uruguayan horror film, whose claim to fame is that it was shot in real time in one continuous take. Silent House also claims to employ this technique – one that has only been used effectively in just a few previous films, such as Hitchcock's classic Rope and director Yuri Zeltser's Circle starring Angela Bettis. However, I noticed at least three different cuts and one glaring camera trick, not to mention that the blood on Elizabeth Olsen's face and plunging neckline changed locations from scene to scene. That's not trickery – it's deception.

Not to be confused with the 1987 Matthew Broderick movie of the same name, in which military-trained monkeys act like people, 2012's Project X finds people acting like baboons. The film is basically Superbad gone turbo without any of its charm.
Nerdy high school seniors Thomas, Costa and JB, (Thomas Mann, Oliver Cooper and Jonathan Daniel Brown) decide to throw a party with the hope of having sex and winning fame. The obvious motivating factor in the flick is the necessity for these guys to get laid, especially nice guy Thomas for his 18th birthday. So plans are hatched for a major, babe-filled blowout the night his parents leave town for the weekend. As Costa puts it, “It's about changing the game.” Predictably, the festivities get out of hand to gargantuan proportions.

Just as in his last ghostly outing, Drive Angry, Nicholas Cage tries to ruin this movie every step of the way, but this time he has help. His mundane take is surpassed by the dismal directing of two hitherto innovative filmmakers, Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor, who drop the fiery ball big time. The fun that is supposed to be had in Ghost Rider: Spirit of Vengeance is lost entirely. This flick aims to dazzle, yet sadly, it flat-out sucks.
The plot tries to stay true to Marvel Comics' original idea with its various takes on Ghost Rider's origin. Johnny Blaze (Cage) is hiding out in Eastern Europe, when called upon by a wine-guzzling priest (Idris Elba) who wants to stop Satan from taking human form as a boy. Forget about my theory that all haunted house movies suck, my new theory is anything with a boy in it sucks. Cage rampages hither and yon on his lame quest to find the boy and fight evildoers in an attempt to lift his own demonic curse.

Before getting to what Safe House is, I'll say what it is thankfully not, and that is another of those disappointing Tony Scott/Denzel Washington collaborations. It's more like an espionage version of Training Day, with a much cooler, calmer Denzel. Instead of director Antoine Fuqua, it's a Swedish director with an equally exotic name, Daniel Espinosa, known for Snabba Cash (Easy Money). Instead of the hard-driving streets of L.A., we have the intense avenues of Cape Town, South Africa.
CIA agent Matt Weston (Ryan Reynolds) is a low-level CIA “housekeeper” in charge of a safe house where suspects are taken by CIA operatives to be interrogated. Enter Tobin Frost (Washington), the agency’s most notorious traitor, who mysteriously turns himself in. When the safe house is attacked, gunmen pursue Weston and Frost. Taking a page from the identity-and-loyalty-in-question Bourne movies and Salt, this flick has two action heroes and more gratuitous violence than you can shake a semi-automatic weapon at.