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Furious 7 is the next tale of Dom, Brian, and the gang driving fast cars and surviving everything like they have some sort of invulnerability cheat code on. In this one, Jason Statham plays the baddie, out for revenge after the defeat of his brother in the last movie. It's a decent set-up that plays out really boring in the beginning. It takes quite a while for the movie to pick up (though there is one decent fight in there). Then they drive cars out of an airplane onto a narrow mountain pass, drive cars into each other at a hundred miles an hour and walk out unscathed, and all kinds of other assorted ridiculousness.

I spent most of the movie laughing at how stupid it was, but that's not a bad thing. It's a tad overlong but once it gets going, strap in for a fun ride. After all the destruction (which includes tons of civilians dying, most notably a truck driver), we get a nice tribute to Paul Walker and that's it.

It's a ridiculous, stupid movie that shouldn't be taken seriously. It's the kind of popcorn movie I enjoy going to the theater to see. But I walked away from it feeling slightly dissatisfied. It has no staying power beyond the one viewing. It's pretty shallow except for the end and the action, while crazy, feels like it would only be effective one time. Hell, it was barely effective this time since all the crazier stunts were shown in trailers and commercials.

Also, the acting is pretty awful. There are a few cast members who do a good job but I've always found Diesel wooden and boring and some of the secondary characters, especially a female villain later on, are God-awful.

A lot of people hate the series for changing so much; I personally feel the movies come out better that way. The racing movies felt like straight-to-DVD trash and I feel the series would probably head down that road if not for the insane stunts and action.

Should you see Furious 7? I think so. If you're a fan, you'll love it and if you love action films, you'll find some of the better car chase sequences of recent memory. But the biggest problem I have--the reason I give it a 5--is that it has no staying power. It's a one-and-done movie that you won't need to see again, nor probably want to.

Dr. No may be the first film in the Bond franchise, but it is one of the better ones. It stays pretty true to the novel and manages both the intrigue of a spy movie and the action that will later be a major selling point of the franchise. In this film Dr. No is threatening to topple American rockets and Bond is sent in to uncover the plot after a fellow agent is killed. He travels across Jamaica, eventually heading to Crab Key for the final confrontation.

The fights are cheesy and the movie is pretty cheap but what is here is nearly all the components of a Bond film. M, Q, Moneypenny, the opening song. It's definitely dated but maintains a certain old time charm. Sean Connery shines as Bond and the other actors and actresses are also wonderful.

There are problems though. The Three Blind Mice who seem to important at the beginning never show up or get subdued later on. There's a lot of editing errors, one great one being the sound of monkeys being used when birds take off.

In the end Dr. No is a good overall movie, one I'd suggest.

What's so especially great about From Russia With Love is that it is a spy story. SPECTRE plays a huge role but, for the most part, we have a tale of two countries on the brink of war and the spies doing the battles in the shadows. Bond goes Istanbul to steal a decoding device and save a Russian defector. It's obviously a trap and Bond knows it. The following two hours are a cat and mouse game between Bond and SPECTRE as war threatens the future of mankind.

What I like is that this movie isn't as action centric. We get time to see Bond and the other characters as humans and when the action does happen, it's grand and exciting. Romanova is an interesting female lead while Connery again shines as Bond.

It's hard to say much about From Russia With Love that hasn't been said before. It's a terrific film, Bond fan or not.

While I believe Once Upon a Time in the West to be a better film overall, I still believe that The Good, The Bad and the Ugly is one of the finest westerns ever made. It's hypnotic directing and story, combined with the grittiness and operatic nature of the music compound to create an absolute treat. If that's not enough for you, the performances in the film are entrancing. Clint Eastwood as the Man With no Name is as good as it gets and Lee Van Cleef is as excellent here as he was in the previous film. Add in Tuco, a character who has some real memorable lines, and you have one heck of a movie.

Not my favorite western, but darned close!

The third film in the Die Hard franchise is the best one yet (though I still think Live Free or Die Hard is the epitome of dumb action movies). In this film, John McClane is sent on a goose chase through New York to stop a series of bombs to go off, all while the villain steals billions of dollars of gold. Teaming up with John is Zeus, played by Samuel L. Jackson, who helps give the film a more edgy buddy-cop feeling. Jackson does a fantastic job in his role and the chemistry between him and Willis is dynamite. The bad guy isn't too great, though he was definitely evil.

What really stands out here is the humor. Despite the tense plot, the movie is ridiculously funny.

It's a smart, fun, fast-paced thriller and definitely ten steps up from the disappointing Die Hard 2.

After the fantastic first part, the second starts a little underwhelming. This film isn't quite as action packed as the first, instead building to the amazing finale. So there's about an hour and a half of each camp planning attacks and working to defeat the enemy. There are some really good parts here (especially how the rebels procure arrows) but it all pales in comparison to the massive, explosive finale. It's one of the best war scenes ever put to film and absolutely exciting.

Overall, this is a masterpiece of film and one of the best war movies of all time. It's well worth your time.

So after I thought it couldn't get any worse with Dream Child, it got even worse with Freddy's Dead, the final film in the series. In this one, Freddy has a child (something none of the other films wanted to apparently mention despite extensive research into the guy being done in nearly every one) and he's going after her so he can further his evil to every Elm street in the world.

What a piece of crap film this is. The death's in the previous films were ridiculous and stupid but this one has the video game death, one of the worst horror film deaths ever. Not only that but Freddy, who I commend for being a sarcastic villain, is way too corny in this. He makes a Powerglove reference, he does a Wizard of Oz parody. In the other films he was silly in the context of murdering people, in this one the silliness has been kicked to such a high level it's impossible to see that this series was at any point considered a horror film.

I like the idea of humanizing Freddy and showing who he was before he became a monster and showing his turning into a monster, but it falls short because it's too late in the series and the way it is done is awful. How did this girl not remember her father is Freddy freaking Kreuger? Anyway, terrible characters, writing, story, and a God-awful ending to the franchise.

While the fourth film started a decline in the quality of the films, this one is so poor I can't believe it actually exists. The acting is some of the worse in the series, the characters are all boring, the deaths and dreams are inventive but the grimy look of the dreams is getting pretty droll. The plot is that Alice is pregnant and Freddy is attempting to take over the child so Alice must battle the monstrous villain with some help from his mother.

It's an awfully broken movie in every way. Not even Robert Englund can save the film, most of his lines are pretty bad. The ending is bad, maybe even worse than the fourth films, and the entire film is an otherwise pointless, useless waste of time.

The first three movies in the series showcased a lot of potential but the series is falling apart the more characters that are introduced and the more trying the plots get.

With the director of Die Hard 2 at the helm (which isn't really much to brag about, that movie sucks), Dream Master is another pretty average entry in the series. It doesn't do too much new and may focus too much on the characters for its own good. In the last film, the Dream Warriors were interesting dynamically, in this film not so much. The tough black guy is turned into a whining baby when facing Freddy for real, Patricia Arquette is replaced by an underwhelming actress, and the new lead, Alice, is pretty boring as well.

Obviously this film had some minor inspirations from Karate Kid or something since there is an insistence on ridiculous, God-awful martial arts action. Some of the deaths are pretty good and Freddy's lines would make Roger Moore blush, which I find somewhat endearing. Freddy has character, making him a more enjoyable villain than Jason.

I don't think I've seen a bad Nightmare on Elm Street movie so far. They may be exceptionally confusing at points and really stupid at others, but they are pretty solid B-movies, maybe the most solid B-movie horror franchise I've ever seen.

The first part in a two-part epic clocking in at nearly five hours, John Woo helms one of the most breathtaking war epics ever made. Costing nearly a hundred million dollars to make just this first half, you see the production value from the first seconds. We open with a massive battle with great choreography and sweeping shots of scores of men. It's massive. From there we get into the plot, which includes tons of characters who the western audience won't know well, so it makes the plot confusing at points. That said, the gist is that Cao Cao is trying to take down rebels against the Empire as the Three Kingdoms era is being heralded in. The final battle will be at Red Cliff, where the rebels lay in wait.

The middle of the movie isn't very action packed but very beautifully shot and interesting in how it is composed, showing the Asian insistence on beauty and aesthetic over moving the plot. It's quite interesting and you are still treated to many breathtaking scenes full of energy.

The final battle is massive and absolutely amazing. The generals come out one at a time and kill dozens of soldiers like they're cardboard cut outs (making the Dynasty Warriors games seem like an inspiration or something). It's massive, it's kinetic, and entirely enjoyable.

The film ends with a cliffhanger (of course) but you'll leave feeling pretty complete. It's an excellent piece of cinema. That said, I can see complaints about the insistence on things that don't matter at all. The soccer game at the end of the film? That didn't matter at all. The jam session an hour into the movie? The horse giving birth? But as a complete picture, it's a great foray into a world that American audiences rarely get to see.

Sweeping, huge, and beautiful, Red Cliff Part One is definitely recommended.

With a somewhat intelligent plot, some amazing special effects, its own theme song, and some good actors, Dream Warriors sees the remaining kids of Elm Street banding together in a hospital setting to battle and defeat Freddy Kreuger. This movie is barely horror, more like an action/thriller. It focuses a lot more on the human characters working to defeat Freddy rather than Freddy stalking the protagonist. So as a film, it feels solid even outside of a slasher series (which I barely want to call this film. It may have the villain of a slasher, but it's like saying Hellraiser is a slasher film...it's hard to justify when there's an insistence not on murder in mundane settings but special effects and plot).

There are some great, cheesy special effects that really help add a creepy air to the film.

If you haven't checked this one out yet, I'd suggest you do, even if you're not into slasher films or horror movies the effects and horror won't be quite as effective to a modern audience and serves much better as entertainment.

I can't believe I'm going to say this but these movie must be going over my head. I just don't get it. He's inside a dream inside a dream...otherwise this inexplicable stuff happening would make no sense as Freddy can only manipulate dreams...

Anyway, a teenaged boy screams like a little girl as he is haunted by Freddy who is attempting to possess him to continue murdering people. This kid, Jesse, has a hot girlfriend who tries to save him and unravel what is happening in this second, entertaining chapter of the series.

Despite the stupidity of the acting and the nonsense story, it's actually a fun movie with some great effects. The school bus scene at the beginning is really well done and spooky. It's a pretty solid flick.

The biggest problem with this movie comes from the fact you don't enter the dreaming state of sleep until much later in the sleep cycle, thus making this entire movie stupid and pointless.

/End Review Actually this is a pretty good slasher film. Freddy Krueger was a child killer back in the day and now haunts the nightmares of a group of kids. This eclectic bunch is nothing more than your typical horror movie cannon fodder. The main girl is about the only character that I enjoyed slightly, and even she wasn't great. The idea of her perhaps going insane rather than actually being in a horrible situation could have been used to much better effect. The whole movie seems like Inception where there is a dream within a dream within a dream. There's no physics or laws that Freddy works within and he appears pretty much everywhere. That's why I'm led to believe this is dream within dream territory.

Nonetheless some of the effects are really good, Freddy can be really funny and has a lot of personality for a slasher villain, and the movie, overall, is a relatively good example of the genre. A little confused but definitely watchable and fun.

Despite a lot of problems (day for night shots, some bad film stock, a low budget) this is a fantastic western. Clint Eastwood shines as the Man With No Name, pitting rival gangs against each other in order to make money. Sergio Leone shows his directing chops, beautiful cinematography showing through even past the day for night.

There's a lot of good action in here, though if you're looking for blood and guts you're not going to see much. The best you'll get is flailing and smoke.

Not much to say other than: if you haven't seen this film yet, go see it. It's great.

So this film still has five minutes of recap, an opening section of nothing but padding and is pretty lame. The acting is awful, the characters are all lowly, and the plot makes no sense. Jason isn't actually dead, escapes the morgue, and goes to kill people. These people include six teens moving into a house across from an established family with no idea that three killing sprees have taken place (four technically) about a mile away from them. There's a kid who becomes the hero (not really, there's a hilarious "kids are murderers" vibe at the end) and blah blah blah.

It's typical fare for the series and not at all as good as the first. The gore effects are much better but the lighting is dreadful and the idea of a kid killing Jason is about as stupid as Jason being killed by a girl with psychic abilities...

Oh wait, that exists?

This movie is 95 minutes long. Cut six minutes out of that for recap (because this is a series that has a story so involving, you need a recap, let alone a recap longer than one given the season finale of an involved TV series) leaving us with 89 minutes. Cut about three minutes of that for the end credits. 86. Then cut the ten minute opening sequence of two shop owners who are killed by Jason and have nothing to do with the movie. So this is 76 minutes. Then you can cut any variety of bits and pieces out and you're left with a very bare bones film.

A bunch of random teens get together to go to camp and get systematically murdered by Jason. The back of the box likes to tell me they are all camp counselors, the victims of Jason's attacks, but nowhere in the movie does it say. It seems that the revenge killing that was the driving force of the previous films has been replaced with killing for the heck of it.

Despite the fact the plot is paper thin, the characters stale stereotypes (a jock, a loser, eighties bikers, potheads), and the movie is so padded out you could skip half of it, it still improves the series in a few ways. First of all, gone is the "The cameraman's gonna kill you" directing of the other two. I prefer to see the killer doing his stuff and rather than keep the killer behind the camera, we see him, making it a lot more exciting. Also, the gore is much better with a couple of ultra-ridiculous deaths rather than the boring ones of the previous two films.

That said, the formula is getting stale. The ending of the woman surviving and going insane has gotten extremely boring. They could at least try to do a different ending. Instead, we're given a padded piece of crap that is, once again, a terrible movie overall but so bad it's good. Easy to riff, hard to take seriously.

The plot behind this movie is best described as Dances with Samurai. An American played by Tom Cruise goes to train Japanese troops in the use of modern weaponry so that they can face off against rebels opposed to the modernization of Japan. What winds up happening? Cruise finds that the rebels are fighting a worthy cause, they should be allowed to continue, and he fights on their side against the much more modern army of the emperor.

As a film, it's very well directed and acted. It has a lot of great scenes of action and enough drama to keep you glued to the seat. The romance in it is rushed and unrealistic and I can see many people brushing it off as more of a "summer film" with a lot of flash but no substance but deep down I can see that spirit of the samurai coming through. It's a movie that showcases the honor and vitality of the samurai and condemn the more modern approach to warfare. It's also got some historical weight, showcasing a piece of history, the Meiji Restoration, that western films never have touched upon (well, Samurai movies in the west are very rare).

I feel that The Last Samurai is an excellent film overall and a definite watch if you haven't experienced it yet.

One of the best western's ever made, with fantastic directing, acting, and beautiful scenery, Once Upon a Time in the West is a true classic. The story has four characters coming together on a plot of land where a now dead owner was going to build a town around a rail station. From there, the violence ramps up toward a slow, wonderful conclusion.

It has pretty much all the classic staples of a western. Despite not being as action-packed as most movies these days, the long portions of quiet and beautiful scenery give us a sense of the west and leave us wanting more. It's rare that a director can make such a quiet, dream-like film that leaves the viewer wanting to be part of that world.

Beautiful, serene, and overall excellent, Once Upon a Time in the West is a grand film.

Taking place five years after the original film, this not-so-great sequel has a group of teens going to camp counseling camp at a camp nearby Crystal Lake. The movie opens with the hero of the first film having PTSD and we get to relive the events of the first movie...FOR FIVE MINUTES. Later on, the counselors all sit around the fire while the tale of Jason and the girl is told, making that five minutes a completely useless waste of time.

This film, unlike the first, moves at a snails pace with a lot of focus on the characters. It takes a long time before anything happens (about halfway through the movie) all to get a couple of lame deaths and an even lamer ending. This time, rather than battling the mother of Jason, they battle Jason disguising himself as the Zodiac Killer.

It's a poor movie but it's easy to make fun of. It's definitely nowhere near as good as the original, but it's still not quite as bad as some of the other sequels. Overall, I'd probably pass on this unless you're planning on riffing it.

Who would have thought a movie about a bunch of kids going to a camp where two people died years later would be so full of sex and violence? The critic side of me absolutely abhors this movie but the part of me that loves slasher films adores this film. It's such easy fodder to tear into but it's also entertaining despite all the flaws. Bad acting? Check. Bad camera work? Check. Spending four fifths of the movie thinking the camera man is the killer? Check.

It's got some decent gore here and there and, unlike Halloween (a movie both sides of me abhors) it actually gets to the killing and doesn't "build suspense" to get to a pointless ending. This movie moves along fast enough to keep you interested and, despite tons of filler, is so much fun to watch because it's so easy to sit with friends and riff it.

Thus, it's a pretty great horror film and party movie in my opinion.

Continuing directly after the first Project A, Project A 2 finds Dragon taking over the police force, and a corrupt one at that. The movie itself is pretty conventional in setup and shouldn't surprise anyone who watches Jackie Chan films. The only problem is a lack of action in the middle act that leaves the film pretty dry to its conclusion.

The concluding final action scenes are well-done, with a good handcuff sequence as well as a hilarious part when Dragon spits chewed up chili's onto his hands to keep the baddies at bay. But otherwise the action isn't anything you haven't seen and the movie itself is nowhere near as good as the original. It's definitely missing Sammo and Yuen, especially to help out the comedy.

It's an okay flick overall.

The week before E.T came out, a little film called Poltergeist was released. Well, the commercials seemed tame enough, the PG rating meant it couldn't be too scary. And especially after seeing E.T on June 11, there was no way that Poltergeist could be anything more than family friendly fun.

You see Spielberg was the director of E.T but produced this flick and a lot of people took their kids to see Poltergeist not knowing that it would be...well, what it is.

And what is it? It's well-directed, well-shot, and really creepy. It's not a horror movie in the sense of a single entity presiding over the scares. It's not that gory either. It's actually pretty tame considering the time period (the slasher flick genre was picking up steam).

That said, the movie is really freaky and maintains the weird from beginning to end. It has a few bumps here and there (the psychics slowed the movie down immensely) but you get a ton of pay off. The effects, for the time, were amazing and many of them are still really good even by today's standards. The story itself is cliché but done so well you won't care.

This will scare the crap out of your kids. I wouldn't suggest you show it to them. But it's a truly fantastic piece of cinema and one of my favorite horror films of all time.

Invasion of the Body Snatchers has an all star cast and a lot of potential. The idea of flower pods cloning humans and leaving behind emotionless creatures (essentially taking the memories and feelings of the humans and compiling them into what I assume is a hive-mind) is neat and the execution isn't bad. It's just the fact that the movie is really boring for the longest time. It's not till about two thirds in that things get exciting and even then it's not all that great. The film goes from a psychological thriller to a zombie movie in essence.

There were a couple strange and haunting moments sprinkled throughout but getting to them is the biggest problem, and then they aren't even long enough to care about. There's a romantic subplot that isn't very well-done. None of the characters are really likable.

The ending payoff isn't really great either. It's just a lackluster film with good ideas but not enough going on to keep me interested.

It seems that for the most part, Jackie Chan movies are the most entertaining with a historical setting and especially when Sammo Hung and Yuen Biao along. This film, following a man named Dragon's exploits as he tracks down and defeats a group of pirates who have been screwing with the Hong Kong Coast Guard and are smuggling weapons, is one of the best offerings of Chan's early career.

Much like the majority of his films, this one is full of good comedy and slapstick. Compounding that with some impressive and plentiful action as well as a decent story (for a Chan film at least) and you have a winner. Sammo Hung and Jackie work together quite well (duh, they're basically twins) and the fight scenes including them both are a joy. The other fight scenes are exceptionally choreographed and some of the stunts are death defying.

As a Jackie Chan film, this is a good offering. Fun, action-packed, and as entertaining as they come, Project A is a great way to blow a movie night.

As far as Jackie Chan movies go, I can't say that Supercop is suggested, nor does it excel in many fields. It's an average, easy to watch movie with a pretty basic story (Chan goes undercover, meets another undercover agent, and then takes down a drug lord) and some occasionally decent action sequences. The ending is about the only part of the movie that truly shines with a really neat train sequence, but the rest is nothing we haven't seen before. Chan beats someone up, shoots someone, and there's a lot of needless explosions.

As a Police Story movie, I can't say it's the weakest as I've yet to watch the second film, but compared to the fourth (which has one of the most memorable Chan action sequences) and the first (which also contains one of the best action sequences he's done), this one falls flat. It's just another average Jackie Chan police movie in a long line of Jackie Chan cop films.