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Each week, Past the Popcorn offers a thorough look at the latest round of films opening on big screens.

Topping the blockbuster-wannabe list this week is the Sex and the City film, which has been variously described as Satanic or an attempt to promote loose morals. Reviewer Mike Brunk simply notes that whatever the HBO series was, the film simply amplifies… and draws out to nearly two and a half hours. (more…)

Is this the Movie Event of the decade thus far? Well, if it is, we can always remember that The Phantom Menace was the Movie Event of the last decade… right? George Lucas has a funny way of mucking up expectations.

Greg Wright finds Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull to be something of a mixed bag. “What’s really enjoyable about the Indiana Jones films,” he says, “is the way in which familiar bits of cultural trinkets are assembled into something that feels rather fresh. Raiders had that in spades; Last Crusade recaptured the magic.” Crystal Skull tries to mine the same vein, with references to dozens of film, including most of Spielberg’s and Lucas’s. But Greg advises that “we also get what’s rather tedious about the franchise. I’m not sure that ‘this film delivers exactly what you’d expect from it’ is the strongest recommendation in the world. Frankly, once Mutt and Indy left the States for the jungles in Crystal Skull, I felt like I’d seen all of this stuff in other Spielberg and Lucas movies before. Still, the film is never boring, always interesting, and knows how to tell a bloated tale (since we must).” And he finds Forbidden Kingdom and Iron Man to be the more original and entertaining films so far this summer. Let the dissenters begin howling.

Also in limited release this week is The Children of Huang Shi, a historical tale set in World War II China. It felt to Jeff Walls as if he were “watching a B-movie version of Lawrence of Arabia.” But that’s not always such a bad thing. The story of one man’s struggle to protect the orphans in his care, adds Jeff, “is a great story that deserves to be told, and The Children of Huang Shi is an adequate, if not great, method of delivering this largely untold tale of a heroic figure.”

Each week, Past the Popcorn offers a thorough look at the latest round of films opening on big screens.

This time of year, the big summer blockbusters take over thousands of screens each week, pushing the struggling smaller films out the door… and who wants to compete with Iron Man or Prince Caspian? So the field is left almost entirely to the Big Boys.

So when you’re looking to see what’s new on the marquee, and you only find one title, you’re likely to think, “Well, this had better be good!” (more…)

Each week, Past the Popcorn offers a thorough look at the latest round of films opening on big screens.

Last week brought us the second entry in the summer blockbuster sweepstakes and a solid slate of releases. This week, the pace doesn’t slack off even though it’s not up to last week. And the checkered flag goes to…… Speed Racer!

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Each week, Past the Popcorn offers a thorough look at the latest round of films opening on big screens.

When the worst movie released on a given week is merely an uninspired romantic comedy starring Patrick Dempsey, you’re not doing too bad.

Leading the pack, of course, is the much-anticipated Iron Man, a comic book superhero PG-13 adaptation starring Robert Downey, Jr. Michael Brunk was wholly won over. “If Iron Man is any indication of what we can expect this summer,” he says, “I think we’re in for a great time.”

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Each week, Past the Popcorn offers a thorough look at the latest round of films opening on big screens. We’re a few days late with this latest roundup—our apologies!

It’s not a banner week for new releases. The best of the bunch is the new Saturday Night Live alum flick Baby Mama, in which Tina Fey stars as a single businesswoman who hires a surrogate (played by Amy Poehler) to carry her child. It’s a PG-13 SNL-type effort in which “the humor never comes across as mean-spirited,” says Michael Brunk. “While it has its rude, crude moments, I never felt it was gratuitous or thrown in for shock effect. Not all of the jokes work, but in general it’s consistently witty and funny.”

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Each week, Past the Popcorn offers a thorough look at the latest round of films opening on big screens.

The film that everybody is waiting for this week is Expelled: No Intelligence allowed. Like the movie itself, even a review barely does the topic justice. But Greg Wright gives it stab: the movie, he says, “certainly provides proof of bias, in both intentional and unintentional ways. And the vituperative response from detractors who haven’t even seen the film proves that, yes, there is a much larger war going on out there. On the entertainment level, the film comes in at about a B. When it comes to its subject matter, though, Expelled fumbles the ball quite a bit. At the end of the day, I don’t find that the film makes a compelling case. Yes, I am inclined to believe that the opposition fights pretty dirty; I simply don’t think those folks are really the same cabal that Expelled.” If the filmmakers are really right, Wright says, they simply playing too nice to catch the culprits “red-handed.”

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Each week, Past the Popcorn offers a thorough look at the latest round of films opening on big screens.

With less than a month to go before the summer blockbusters break upon us like, well, blockbusters, the indies and the studio botique labels are trying to make as much hay as they can before all of the screens are sucked up by the megaflicks.

The darkest (and sharpest) of the bunch this week is Street Kings, a police-corruption action thriller starring Keanu Reeves in a familiar-looking role. But the well-pedigreed film is probably not what you expect, says Greg Wright: “I don’t think you’ll hate this movie. No, if either cop movies or Keanu Reeves are your thing, you’ll probably even love it. Still, I’m not sure you need this kind of dark vision of America, either.”

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Each week, Past the Popcorn offers a thorough look at the latest round of films opening on big screens.

Look no further than Ted Haggard or Jeremiah Wright. Evidence abounds that wearing the name of Christ exempts no one from fits of inexplicable behavior.

So it should come as no great surprise that one of the major releases this Holy weekend features a Christian who behaves very poorly—not because he’s a Christian, but because his basic character flaws are so profound that his weak grasp on Christianity isn’t enough to save him. David Gordon Green’s Snow Angels is “a drama that pulls no punches,” says Michael Brunk. “There are moments of levity, but overall the tone is fairly bleak… Personally, I found it riveting.”

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Each week, Past the Popcorn offers a thorough look at the latest round of films opening on big screens.

Last week, Past the Popcorn Managing Editor Greg Wright was none too kind to 10,000 B.C., calling it a less-than-fresh mashup of homages to better films. He concluded by pointing out that every recipe is made up of a list of ingredients, but not every dish is memorable or original.

This week, two reworkings of 1980s staples manage to do what 10,000 B.C. couldn’t. (more…)