Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters 3D
SoberFilmChick

Directed by: Tommy Wirkola

Starring: Jeremy Renner, Gemma Arterton, Famke Janssen, and Peter Stormare

“If you’re gonna kill a witch, set her ass on fire.”
– Hansel (Jeremy Renner)

There has been a recent trend of modernizing traditional fairy tales and converting well known characters into butt-kicking action stars.  Snow White and the Huntsman and the upcoming Jack the Giant Slayer come to mind.  Hansel and Gretel: Witch Hunters 3D ...

Struck By Lightning
SoberFilmChick

Directed by: Brian Dannelly

Starring: Chris Colfer, Rebel Wilson, Allison Janney, Dermot Mulroney, Christina Hendricks, Sarah Hyland

Struck By Lightning boasts an impressive cast of television actors from shows like Modern Family, Weeds, Mad Men, Desperate Housewives and The Office.  Written by Glee’s Chris Colfer, the film is a high school comedy-drama that has a great deal of promise, but ultimately plays like a made for television movie.

Struck By Ligh...

John Dies At The End
SoberFilmChick

Directed by: Don Coscarelli

Starring: Chase Williamson, Rob Mayes, Paul Giamatti, Glynn Turman, Clancy Brown

Happy New Year movie lovers!  John Dies at the End is the first movie I am reviewing for 2013, and it is kicking my movie year off to an interesting start.  A film that opens with its lead character beheading someone with an ax and pondering in a detached fashion whether an ax remains the same after it has been broken certainly gets your attention qu...

This Is 40
SoberFilmChick




Directed by: Judd Apatow

Starring: Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann, John Lithgow, Megan Fox, Albert Brooks, and Melissa McCarthy

“F*ck 40.  40 can suck a d*ck.”
– Debbie (Leslie Mann)

I hear you sister!  After I saw the trailer for This is 40, I begged the SoberFilmCritic to let me review the film.  It includes some of my favorite comedic actors and was written by Judd Apatow who brought us gems like The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Bridesmaids, Stepbrothers, and Anchorman: The ...

Playing For Keeps
SoberFilmChick

Directed by: Gabriele Muccino

Starring: Gerard Butler, Jessica Biel, Uma Thurman, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Judy Greer and Dennis Quaid

I have a confession—I have had a little crush on Gerard Butler since Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life.  (Don’t judge me—for seeing Cradle of Life or liking Butler).  In any event, after his star turn in the blockbuster 300, Butler has starred in a string of forgettable films, leaning towards the romantic comedy genre. ...

Silver Linings Playbook





Directed By: David O. Russell

This Must Be the Place





Directed By: Paolo Sorrentino

The Loneliest Planet





Directed By: Julia Loktev

Starring: Gael Garcia Bernal, Hani Furstenberg, and Bidzina Gujabidze

The Loneliest Planet has been a film I've been curious about for some time now.  Having garnered quite a bit of love on the festival circuit and even getting nominated for a Best Feature Gotham Independent Film Award, I was of the mindset that this was going to be a great film.  However, I'm going to have to go against the grain here and say that The Loneliest Planet is a thor...

The Man with the Iron Fists





Directed By: RZA

Flight





Directed By: Robert Zemeckis

Starring: Denzel Washington, Don Cheadle, Kelly Reilly, John Goodman, Bruce Greenwood, and Melissa Leo

The age of movie stars is over.  Can you think of larger-than-life actors or actresses in their 20s and 30s?  I certainly can't.  There's nobody with that X factor.  The glory days of mega stars like Will Smith, Tom Cruise, and Brad Pitt are in the rear view mirror.  While they're all still active and making good movies, the next generation has not steppe...

Fun Size





Directed By: Josh Schwartz

Starring: Victoria Justice, Jane Levy, Thomas McDonnell, Chelsea Handler, Thomas Mann, Osric Chau, and Jackson Nicoll

More often than not, Halloween means bad horror movies for Hollywood.  Every once in a while though, we get a Halloween comedy, and I do mean every once in a while.  Until this weekend, it had been 17 years since the last comedy themed around the nightmarish holiday.  With this in mind, this weekend's Fun Size may just be the only Halloween...

Chasing Mavericks





Directed By: Curtis Hansen and Michael Apte

Starring: Gerard Butler, Leven Rambin, Jonny Weston, Elisabeth Shue, Abigail Spencer, and Taylor Handley

"We all come from the sea. But we are not all of the sea. Those of us who are, we children of the tides, must return to it again and again."
-Frosty Hesson (Gerard Butler)

I'm not a risk-taker, at least not when it comes to my physical health.  I'm certainly not one who would ever willingly put myself in harm's way purely for t...

Smashed





Directed By: James Ponsoldt

Starring: Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Aaron Paul, Octavia Spencer, Nick Offerman, and Megan Mullally

Each and every member of the STMR team can hold his or her liquor, so we have no problem whatsoever knocking back some drinks when a film calls for it.  Alcohol can help overcome any bad movie.  However, I do realize that everyone who frequents the site may not be so responsible in their drinking, and I've discovered just the right flick for them.  James Ponso...

Paranormal Activity 4





Directed By: Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman

Starring: Katie Featherston, Kathryn Newton, Matt Shively, Brady Allen, Aiden Lovekamp, Stephen Dunham, and Alexondra Lee

I normally start out a review on a crappy horror movie by throwing around some wisecracks about Hollywood's obsession with terrible scary movies that are often tantamount to torture porn.  I've got something a little different to talk about today, Hollywood's recent obsession with kids in horror movies.  La...

The Sessions





Directed By: Ben Lewin

Starring: John Hawkes, Helen Hunt, and William H. Macy

Sometimes, I wonder what makes a screenwriter tick.  I wonder how they come up with some of the crazy stuff they put in screenplays.  With all I've seen in recent months (e.g., For a Good Time, Call..., Cosmopolis, The Paperboy, etc.), I've really been pondering this lately.  Every once in a while, it's sheer creativity.  More often than not though, they simply got the idea from somebody else.  In the ...

Argo





Directed By: Ben Affleck

Starring: Ben Affleck, Bryan Cranston, Alan Arkin, and John Goodman

Argo couldn't have come to theaters in a more timely fashion.  Just several weeks after the attack in Benghazi that left the US ambassador J. Christopher Stevens to Libya and three other Americans dead, we revisit a similar situation, the Iran Hostage Crisis during which the lives of 52 embassy employees were put in grave danger for a total of 444 days.  While the film was put into production lo...

The Oranges





Directed By: Julian Farino

Starring: Hugh Laurie, Leighton Meester, Catherine Keener, Adam Brody, Alia Shawkat, Oliver Platt, and Allison Janney

New Jersey.  The Garden State.  The state where you can't pump your own gas.  It's not exactly the hottest travel destination (for good reason).  It's suburbia.  It's where urbanites go to die.  With this in mind, it's the perfect location for a film like the dramedy The Oranges.  Nothing quite says quintessential suburban life like the ...

The Paperboy





Directed By: Lee Daniels

Starring: Matthew McConaughey, Zac Efron, Nicole Kidman, John Cusack, David Oyelowo, Macy Gray, and Scott Glenn

Every once in a while, I catch a flick that leaves me feeling weird afterward.  I don't know quite how to describe it.  A film of this nature leaves me with seven words streaming through my mind: "What the hell did I just watch?".  These flicks typically come out of left field, and it takes a while for me to process everything I've witnessed.  ...

Taken 2





Directed By: Olivier Megaton

Starring: Liam Neeson, Maggie Grace, Famke Janssen, and Rade Šerbedžija

Taken was one awesome movie.  Despite the mediocrity around him, Liam Neeson rose to the occasion to turn a formulaic action flick into something much, much more.  Over the last four years, the film has become a beloved cult film.  When I first learned of the sequel Taken 2, I thought Liam Neeson would come back and give us everything we loved about the original all over again.  It ...

Hotel Transylvania

Kids' Rating:


Adults' Rating:




Directed By: Genndy Tartakovsky

Starring: Adam Sandler, Selena Gomez, Andy Samberg, Kevin James, Fran Drescher, John Lovitz, Cee Lo Green, Steve Buscemi, Molly Shannon, and David Spade

Animated films have really taken a dark turn in recent weeks.  While we had lighter films like The Lorax and Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted earlier in the year, we've now got studios bringing all kinds of monsters, ghouls, and witches to life for the kids.  We...

Won't Back Down





Directed By: Daniel Barnz

Starring: Maggie Gyllenhaal, Viola Davis, Holly Hunter, Oscar Isaac, Rosie Perez, Ving Rhames, and Marianne Jean-Baptiste

Sometimes, I watch a trailer, and I just know a movie will be bad.  I don't have to have any reasons.  I don't have to have any evidence.  I just know.  More often than not, I'm unfortunately right.  I just knew that I was in for a bad one when I saw the trailer for the drama Won't Back Down several months ago.  Because the movie ...

Looper





Directed By: Rian Johnson

Starring: Bruce Willis, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Emily Blunt, Paul Dano, Noah Segan, Piper Perabo, and Jeff Daniels

Time travel is quintessentially sci-fi.  Some of the greatest sci-fi flicks have turned the time and space continuum on its head.  What would cinema be like today if Marty McFly never went back to 1955 or if the Terminator never went back in time to kill John Connor?  Time travel is a cornerstone of the science fiction genre, and Rian Johnson decid...

The Perks of Being a Wallflower





Directed By: Stephen Chbosky

Starring: Logan Lerman, Emma Watson, Ezra Miller, Paul Rudd, Kate Walsh, and Dylan McDermott

It's been a long time since we've had a good teen movie.  These days, Hollywood spews crap at us like Prom and I Love You, Beth Cooper.  It's rare that we actually get a worthwhile flick that deals with growing up, surviving high school, and finding the right group of friends.  It's been a long time since the heyday of John Hughes when we w...

The Master





Directed By: Paul Thomas Anderson

Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Laura Dern, Jesse Plemons, and Ambyr Childers

It's been awhile since we've seen Paul Thomas Anderson at work.  It's been five years since Daniel Day-Lewis struck oil in Anderson's There Will Be Blood.  Now, Anderson has returned to the big screen with The Master, an ambitious, challenging masterpiece.  Featuring Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Amy Adams, the film delves int...

End of Watch





Directed By: David Ayer

Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Michael Peña, Anna Kendrick, Natalie Martinez, America Ferrera, Frank Grillo, and David Harbour

We've had our fair share of bromances this year.  With This Means War, 21 Jump Street, and Savages having already rolled into theaters in the last several months, it's safe to say that there has been plenty of male bonding on the big screen.  With David Ayer's cop mockumentary End of Watch hitting movie theaters this weekend, it's al...

Trouble with the Curve





Directed By: Robert Lorenz

Starring: Clint Eastwood, Amy Adams, Justin Timberlake, Matthew Lillard, and John Goodman

As most of you know by now, Clint Eastwood made some rather interesting remarks at the Republican National Convention several weeks ago to an empty chair in which an invisible Obama supposedly sat.  While I believe his comments were insulting to the presidency, I have a website to run, and I have to be able to separate the political activist from the scr...

Dredd





Directed By: Pete Travis

Starring: Karl Urban, Olivia Thirlby, Wood Harris, and Lena Headey

The fall movie season is officially under way.  In other words, it's a sad time for me.  We're no longer getting those awesome blockbusters with big stars like The Avengers or The Dark Knight Rises, and we're waiting on the awards season to really get started (though the release of The Master is duly noted).  It's most evident this weekend with Dredd, a film based on the futuristic British comic...

House at the End of the Street
SoberFilmChick




Directed By: Mark Tonderai

Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, Max Thieriot, Gil Bellows, Elisabeth Shue, and Eva Link

As I have said before in prior reviews of horror flicks, Jason, Freddy and Michael Myers do not scare me.  However, the depiction of truly insane people freaks me out.  Any time I see a female walking around in white pajamas with hair in her face and one crazy eye showing, I’m ready to run for the border.  Call it The Ring effect.  Hou...