Movie Review: ROCK OF AGES

"It's all the same, only the names will change."

In 1987, the wailing guitar solos were as big as the hair you couldn't get your headphones around to listen on your Walkman. Sherrie (Julianne Hough) wants to make it big so takes a one-way trip to Hollywood. She's from Oklahoma (aren't they all?) and when she arrives in the big city, there are protesters outside The Bourbon Room, a happening rock club, crying against the depravity this type of music brings to their community. Lugging a suitcase full of her favorite records (to refresh your memory, they're big and made of vinyl), a thug mugs her. Drew (Diego Boneta), a barback at The Bourbon with his own dreams of making it big (don't they all?), sees this and gets her a job as a waitress. Oh, and while most of this is going on, they're singing.

Movie Review: PROMETHEUS

Engineer this!

Ridley Scott has said that his new movie, Prometheus, isn't a prequel to Alien, but that it does contain "strands of Alien's DNA." Whatever the basis of that rhetorical distinction means, DNA is an apt term for describing the new film because it is concerned with, more than anything, the beginning of life as we know it.

Movie Review: SNOW WHITE AND THE HUNTSMAN

Someday My Axe-Wielding Drunkard Will Come

A beautiful daughter is born to a king and queen. The queen falls ill and dies, leaving her family in mourning until, many years later, the king rescues in battle the fairest of them all--golden-haired Ravenna (Charlize Theron)--falls in love with her then crowns her the new queen. But she is a wicked one, beholden with magical powers and an omniscient mirror, kills her husband, and enslaves her stepdaughter (Kristen Stewart). If the story sounds familiar, it should.

Month In Review: May 2012

May was a little slower month for me, movie-wise, mostly due to a short trip we made to NYC for my best friend's wedding. Nevertheless, I saw a few terrific movies as well as a couple of duds.