Movie Reviews, Digital HD Reviews, and Television Reviews

Reviews By Chris Rebholz

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.

Impractical Jokers: Season One

(Chris Rebholz) 12/17/2013 8:43 AM EDT
It seems as if the punked-and-pranked genre of television ought to be dead by now, but four New York guys prove that it isn't in "(Impractical) Jokers," a gleefully idiotic show that has its premiere Thursday night on TruTV. Since then the show has garnered more and more fans as time passes. Unfortunately I am not one of them. While the p... Read More

Simpsons: Season 16

(Chris Rebholz) 12/16/2013 11:43 AM EDT
Perhaps the biggest indicator of just how indestructible The Simpsons seems to be is the fact that the latest Blu-ray release of The Simpsons is "only" its sixteenth season—which aired virtually a decade ago from fall 2004 to spring 2005! Many of us have always felt a special relationship to Homer, Marge and the rest of the extended... Read More

The Wolverine

(Chris Rebholz) 12/10/2013 2:59 PM EDT
What is it with superheroes these days, anyway? One might think they wouldn't have a whole bunch to complain about, what with their superpowers and everything, and yet more and more films about our favorite good guys tend to wallow in supposedly intense psychological introspection, where moodiness has replaced any simple formulation of a valian... Read More

Getaway

(Chris Rebholz) 12/6/2013 4:30 PM EDT
"Getaway" is a film fueled entirely on stupidity. And not the amusing kind of dumb that generates delightful junk food cinema, but the oppressive, lurching level of idiocy that takes roughly five minutes to sink into the system. Cruelly, there's another 90 minutes of screen activity to digest in "Getaway," and it doesn't go down... Read More

Despicable Me 2

(Chris Rebholz) 12/3/2013 3:38 PM EDT
That 2010's "Despicable Me" turned out to be an enormous hit is a bit of a surprise. Perfectly pleasant but also unremarkable, the feature scratched a certain audience itch at the time, striking a distinct cartoon blow while introducing the world to the hyperactive comedy antics of the minions -- those miniature yellow slapstick machines ... Read More

Paranoia

(Chris Rebholz) 12/2/2013 4:15 PM EDT
Paranoia is one of those films that probably looked great on paper—and maybe even on its actual promotional poster—but which is about as exciting as watching paint dry. This supposed thriller posits Liam Hemsworth as Adam Cassidy a young buck at a high tech firm who dreams of migrating across the river into Manhattan and taking the worl... Read More

The World's End

(Chris Rebholz) 11/26/2013 11:23 AM EDT
Is there a genre Edgar Wright and cohorts in crime Simon Pegg and Nick Frost haven't tackled? Victorian period romance, I suppose. Otherwise, it's all fair game for the Cornetto Trilogy boys. Shaun of the Dead cut a swath through horror and the house that Romero built, years before the New Zombie Renaissance. Hot Fuzz fired "two guns w... Read More

We're the Millers

(Chris Rebholz) 11/26/2013 8:59 AM EDT
Ah, improv. A seasoned filmmaker's greatest ally; an indecisive director's most fearsome foe. With We're the Millers, Rawson Marshall Thurber (best known for Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story) allows his F-bombing stars to go off script so fully and frequently that the scattershot comedy plays like a series of recurring sketches featurin... Read More

All the President's Men

(Chris Rebholz) 11/25/2013 9:16 AM EDT
The year 2013 has been called the fortieth anniversary of the Watergate Scandal, but it's hard to tie "Watergate" to a specific point in time. The affair spanned three calendar years beginning with the arrest of the so-called "White House Plumbers" during a break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters on June 17, 1... Read More

2 Guns

(Chris Rebholz) 11/22/2013 12:08 PM EDT
Double crosses. Triple crosses. An extra helping of crosses on top of increasingly tangled numerical crosses. 2 Guns is a buddy cop genre pic in the guise of a punchy pulp comic book actioner, one that attempts to toy with convention, actively subvert every action-movie cliché in the book, and crack a few familiar, wise-crackin' skulls i... Read More