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.

State of Play

(Marco Chacon) 4/27/2009 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) 4/27/2009 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

Sin City

(Marco Chacon) 4/21/2009 2:32 PM EDT
Frank Miller's "film noir" graphic novel series, riffs off the 'black, white, and [read] all over' joke. In this case, it is a gritty crime drama that is done in black and white and has a few splashes of color (often red); but has enough black-and-white blood to satisfy anyone who likes their violence in-your-face and their characte... Read More

Fast & Furious

(Marco Chacon) 4/14/2009 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

Monsters vs. Aliens

(Marco Chacon) 4/6/2009 9:51 AM EDT
Animated movies are assembled out of some basic component parts. There are the adult-demographic jokes -- designed to play to the parents; there are the sidekicks, colorful, usually without any arc, and designed for humor value; there is the "set back" in the 3rd act (as reliable as the boy-loses girl false-dawn element of romantic ... Read More

Knowing

(Marco Chacon) 4/1/2009 9:28 PM EDT
There are a few common ways to handle prophecy in fiction. The first is the Greek tragedy way: the prophecy comes true, even if your knowledge of it makes it come true. It does not lie, and it is not misinterpreted (this is the Oedipus configuration of prophecy). The second is that the prophecy may come true, but you can stop it o... Read More

My Bloody Valentine

(Marco Chacon) 2/24/2009 9:11 PM EDT
As the first R-rated film shot in 3D (modern 3D: 'Real D' technology), it is definitely worth at least a second glance. For starters, it is a perfect application -- sharp things, gory things, and surprising things leap out of the screen at you; this is one of the things 3D was made for -- in fact, it was the first thing 3D was made for. ... Read More

Friday the 13th

(Marco Chacon) 2/21/2009 6:59 PM EDT
Jason Vorhees, in the hockey mask (which didn't come about until the 3rd movie) is one of the most recognizable characters in cinema. He is the indestructible zombie serial killer who stalks teenagers out in the woods, right? Well sort of... it turns out that Jason's, character arc (if we can call it that), has several curves in the roa... Read More

Choke

(Marco Chacon) 2/15/2009 7:42 PM EDT
Chuck Palahniuk, the patron-saint of transgressive literature, came to public prominence with the masses through Fight Club. That movie had a story that was both hard to sum up and hard to analyze. It was interpreted very, very differently by many people and was, I think, whatever you wanted to make of it, a fairly sophisticated piece of work... Read More

The International

(Marco Chacon) 2/15/2009 5:50 PM EDT
In 1991 the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) in Luxembourg was charged with money laundering, supporting terrorism, arms trafficking, and the sale of nuclear technologies. In 2009, The International takes this story about the fictional International Bank of Business and Credit (IBBC) and tells the story of German Interpol agen... Read More