Movie Reviews, Digital HD Reviews, and Television Reviews

Reviews By Marco Chacon

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 classsics from our critics and Rotten Tomatoes Approved, Allison Rose.

Doomsday

(Marco Chacon) 3/15/2008 10:39 AM EDT
I could make some sort of quip like "Mad Maxine" (I fear to search Google and discover someone has done it un-ironically) but the grindhouse-ethic that Doomsday evokes all but asks for it. The movie confirms what 28 Days Later first pointed out to us: if there's a deadly viral outbreak that kills quickly and surely (with or without zombie... Read More

Star Wars: Episode IV - A New Hope

(Marco Chacon) 2/27/2008 11:33 AM EDT
In 1977 I walked out of the Mall 6 theaters (back when 6 theaters was huge) in a daze. I'd just had my 9yr-old brains blown out the back of my head: I didn't want the experience to end. Luke Skywalker was the ultimate hero, Han Solo, the ultimate rogue, and Princess Leia was hot. Even if she did have cinnamon buns for hair. I have a single, vivid r... Read More

Rambo

(Marco Chacon) 2/19/2008 10:46 AM EDT
The goal of every action movie since 1985 has been to even try to approximate the "scene" in That Movie Where Chuck Norris Comes Out Of The Water. If you grew up in the 80's, you know which one I'm talking about. The 80's legacy of movies is an interesting one: intensely patriotic (or jingoistic, depending on how you roll), centered on th... Read More

Jumper

(Marco Chacon) 2/16/2008 10:13 AM EDT
I read the 1992 Steven Gould novel which was fairly streamlined science fiction: take a precept that a young man can teleport and then play the game of figuring out how things might evolve from there. When he's out of cash, he figures out he can jump into a bank vault. When he has an apartment door that doesn't open, rather than having the super fi... Read More

Juno

(Marco Chacon) 2/14/2008 11:39 AM EDT
Teen pregnancy in, fiction (as well as real life), has some absolutely defining features. The most prominent is the moral atmosphere around abortion. The second is around the social consequences both at school and at home. Finally, if life is chosen and the girl isn't the victim of an honor killing, there's the question of adoption. At each step th... Read More

Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles

(Marco Chacon) 1/15/2008 4:59 PM EDT
Back in 1984 I heard Roger Ebert say on TV that an upcoming movie was about a "Cyborg assassin from the future." He advised viewers to "put your brain on hold for this one." The words "cyborg assassin" weren't very common in the early 80's (now they hand out candy covered cyborg assassins at baby showers) and i... Read More

Charlie Wilson's War

(Marco Chacon) 1/15/2008 1:36 PM EDT
It's fashionable today to talk about how "we" created the Taliban--our own present-day Frankenstein-Monster come back to haunt us. It's less common to hear people discuss the context in which we handed out state-of-the-art Stinger missiles to a bunch of religious fanatics. That context was the cold-war and mutually assured destruction.Whe... Read More

A Christmas Story

(Marco Chacon) 12/27/2007 11:34 AM EDT
The Christmas movie can get away with sappiness in a way that most other family-friendly movies can't. It's okay to have peace-on-earth and goodwill to all men as your message if you also have a Christmas tree or at least Santa Clause in there somewhere. If you do this with a killer whale, for example, you run the risk of making Free Willy 2.Releas... Read More

Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem

(Marco Chacon) 12/27/2007 10:06 AM EDT
It's hard to judge Alien vs. Predator - Requiem. On one hand the human characters are forgettable, the plot fairly absurd, and the movie, as a horror show simply a kinetic gore-fest. On the other hand, it does, fairly, deliver on its premise: the Aliens, macro-scale biological weapons, land in a small town on modern-day earth and we, humanity, are ... Read More

Beowulf

(Marco Chacon) 12/13/2007 1:31 PM EDT
There is more Beowulf than you might think. There are no fewer than four movies in IMDB with exact-matches to Beowulf in their title. That's not including The 13th Warrior that mixed in some of the 'Wulf along with a bunch of other historical inaccuracies and Antonio Banderas.Beowulf is an ancient epic poem about the original bad-ass, Beowulf, who ... Read More