Film and Television Reviews
Here at FlickDirect, our goal is to provide up-to-date reviews on theatrical, home entertainment, and television series. Check out the scoop on upcoming films or programming, and even our take on the classics.
Up
![]() (Marco Chacon) 06/01/2009 9:31 PM EDT I was able to tell from the teaser-trailer that Up was about an old man who fastens a bunch of helium balloons to his house and then uses it to take off. I thought "what then?" It turns out that the Pixar guys had the same question at some point during development. The answer turned out to be "the guy is fulfilling a... Read More |
Terminator Salvation
![]() (Nathan M Rose) 05/21/2009 10:21 PM EDT Since 1984, the Terminator franchise has teased us about the war in the future, the war after Judgment Day. Now in 2009, McG and Warner Bros bring that war to light with Terminator: Salvation – where adult John Connor (played by Christian Bale) attempts to organize a human resistance force which could prove to be humankind's last true h... Read More |
Angels & Demons
![]() (Roger Longenbach) 05/18/2009 3:30 PM EDT Shortly after 2006's The Da Vinci Code became a commercial success, Imagine Entertainment began work on the prequel to that novel, Angels and Demons. Due to the writer's strike, it took three years to get the movie to the big screen. Was it worth the three year wait? Dan Brown wrote Angels and Demons before The Da Vinci Code, and it ... Read More |
Star Trek
![]() (Marco Chacon) 05/11/2009 7:23 PM EDT Star Trek's promise has always been that it would show us a “for-real Utopian future” where the best voices of mankind have triumphed. Star Trek’s fans, sometimes reaching religious levels of zeal, have gazed into its holographic crystal ball looking for the fundamental truths of its vision. There was some actual visio... Read More |
X-Men Origins: Wolverine
![]() (Marco Chacon) 05/04/2009 2:39 PM EDT Wolverine takes the most popular character from the three successful X-Men movies, and explores his origins before the first movie began; wherein we saw him amnesiac and doing unsanctioned prize fights in a Canadian bar. Wolverine, in case you don't know, is the guy with the metal claws that come out of his knuckles, unbreakable bones, and th... Read More |
State of Play
![]() (Marco Chacon) 04/27/2009 7:34 PM EDT "Message movies" (like Stop Loss or Lions for Lambs) have a particular formula. They set up the victim for badness, but they must be sufficiently likable and innocent to be outrageous. They must educate the viewer with both expository historical data and the specific in-your-face incident of the movie. They must end poor... Read More |
Fighting
![]() (Marco Chacon) 04/27/2009 12:36 PM EDT I am on the lookout for the Rocky of Mixed-Martial Arts fighting. The "boxing story" is already its own genre -- perhaps more popular in earlier eras. Robert E. Howard wrote boxing stories before moving to Conan; but today I think MMA is on the rise and, perhaps, will replace boxing as the combat sport of choice. In the ... Read More |
Crank 2: High Voltage
![]() (Nathan M Rose) 04/19/2009 9:14 PM EDT A budding action star, Jason Statham, stared as Chev Chelios in a low budget film entitled Crank in 2006. Set in a surreal world that basically was a cinematic version of the Grand Theft Auto video game series, Chev (Statham) had one hour to get a lethal Chinese poison cocktail out of his system before he died.While quirky and extremely... Read More |
Fast & Furious
![]() (Marco Chacon) 04/14/2009 8:05 PM EDT The idea to simply give the fourth movie the same name as the first was either brilliant or idiotic, and as it broke all previous records for car/movie openings and April openings -- I am going to have to go with brilliant! The franchise was never exactly brain-food, but had managed to deliver high-octane racing action overlayed with a ... Read More |
Hannah Montana: The Movie
![]() (Jim Hill) 04/12/2009 9:02 PM EDT In the not-exactly-grand tradition of "Munsters Go Home" and "McHale's Navy Joins the Air Force," here comes "Hannah Montana: The Movie."My apologies if the lede of today's article makes it sound as if I'm taking a cheap shot. That's honestly not my intention here. I bring up the motion picture versions of "... Read More |