Campaign to Reduce Bully Rating to PG-13 Intensifies in Light of Hunger Games' Success "Apparently, bullying is more shocking than outright murder." http://sandiegoreader.com/users/photos/2012/mar/26/21597/ Like a great many other American teenagers, high school junior Katy Butler saw The Hunger Games last …

So there's this movie coming out about a young man who can talk to dead people, and must use his powers to avert a catastrophe. I refer, of course, to Odd Thomas, the film version of the book by Dean …

Yes, The Hunger Games is like The Running Man meets The Truman Show...with a heart! No, that's not a bad thing. It's a good thing. It could have been a great thing. But sloppy direction undermines the smart story and …

http://sandiegoreader.com/users/photos/2012/mar/22/21354/ David Elliott begins and ends this week's review with fishy fantasies — first of fishing, then of serving. Salmon Fishing in the Yemen is about salmon fishing in the Yemen. "In England and Scotland, the film reaches for the …

So The Avengers continues its bloated, lumbering stroll toward release, and yesterday, I ran across these scintillating publicity photos of...room interiors? Hello, and welcome to Fury Realty, the choice of discriminating superheroes everywhere. Well, except Bruce Wayne. He inherited. Let's …

So when I got home from seeing The Lorax, The Wife asked, "Well? Did they rape your childhood?" "Not really," I admitted. "It was more of an aggressive, unwanted groping than a rape." But my people - the miserable, bitter …

Well, the Three Stooges have been getting a lot of play around these here parts of late, what with the 70th anniversary of Casablanca coming up and all. So I thought maybe I'd join in by posting video of a …

Wow. Just wow. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isjg9O7ifwM So Johnny Depp has adopted a bold, new eye-makeup routine for this one... Actually, that's not true. He's actually just doing a drag version of Winona Ryder in Beetlejuice... Seriously, though, remember when Gervais said that …

I had a good time at Casa de Mi Padre, Will Ferrell's semi-send-up of Mexican telenovelas (filmed, we are told at the outset, in MexicoScope). By the end of this review, I think you'll have a pretty good idea if …

John Rubio piles on the John Carter Meh-Train this week, but first... 21 Jumpstreet? Did we learn nothing from the film version of The A Team? Namely: '80s TV shows had the self-parody built right in. Making a parody is …

In Jack & Jill, Adam Sandler sought to work through some of the self-loathing that comes with becoming insanely wealthy and leaving your old world behind in a cloud of cocaine dust and Lambo fumes. He did this by creating …

Sometimes, a fellow can spend all day on the iTunes trailer page, you know? Especially when there are films like Turn Me On, Dammit!, with taglines like this one: Hee hee! I know the question is supposed to be rhetorical, …

Fascinating. Below is one trailer for the upcoming Clive Owen psychological thriller The Intruders. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy2vRMKa3kU Here's the description that accompanies that trailer, and it seems fitting enough: "The film tells parallel stories of two families whose lives are disrupted by …

First thought upon seeing poster for crummy-looking (seriously, some of the dialogue sounds like it belongs on local cable access) thriller Meeting Evil: "Man, the years have been rough on Crockett and Tubbs."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaU5GiAm1ws I mean, Mr. Marks got all the looks and even more of the hair, but still, the spiritual resemblance is uncanny. Especially because Pepitone is the sort of comedian that all the other comedians admire. A comedian's comedian. Sort …

"Oboy. Look, people, when Gore Verbinski said he wasn't going to give us a 'straight' version of The Lone Ranger, he didn't mean that it would therefore be gayer than a handbag full of rainbows. I don't even want to …

"Okay, for about 96% of the world, Depp is Captain Jack Sparrow, end of story. Apparently, the other 4% think he's Tim Burton. Sad, but understandable, given their rate of collaboration." "Moving on, then. The main thing is that we …

This one is a little scary to undertake, because Russell Crowe is a little scary. I'm not talking about thrown phones - good grief, people, actors don't get into acting because they're happy and well-adjusted - I'm talking about onscreen …

David Elliott is rested and ready following his post-Oscars period of mourning, and so here we go with Ralph "I Wasn't Always Voldemort" Fiennes' Coriolanus: "While never pleasurable, Coriolanus has austere power. It is a harsh warning about the price …

That's another line from the author Walker Percy, in answer to a question about why the South produced so many fine writers. And if it's true what John Gardner wrote in On Moral Fiction, that art begins in a wound, …