Let’s get something straight about 300 right off the bat. This is not a movie about brave rebels fighting against some oppressive regime to safeguard freedom and democracy. When King Leonidas shouts “For freedom!” he’s not talking about truth, justice, and the American way. It’s mostly just jargon tossed into the trailers and the film for dim, easily manipulated people who get overly excited when they hear propaganda thrown around, you know, the type who aren’t big on paying attention to context. Telling your soldiers they’re fighting to be free men right before they march to their deaths to defend your right to sit on a throne and sleep with a hot queen is also a great way to energize the troops, even if it doesn’t mean anything. I’m sure the Taliban soldiers were told they were fighting for freedom too. In their case it was the freedom to tie their women up in the street and throw rocks.

Stone is a movie that at first glance appears to be a slow-burn erotic thriller, a la Body Heat. However, once it starts rolling, it quickly becomes apparent that this film is pure arthouse – a meditative look at identity, morality and spirituality in the modern age.

The film stars Robert De Niro as Jack Maybury, a veteran parole officer just a few days short of retirement. One of Jack’s final cases involves a longtime inmate named Stone (Ed Norton), who was convicted nearly a decade prior as an arsonist and accomplice to murder. Stone will be a free man if he can just convince Jack that he is a changed man – so to ensure his chances of release, Stone sends his beautiful wife Lucetta (Milla Jovovich), a walking man-eater, to seduce Jack.

Deception, starring Hugh Jackman and Ewan McGregor, is being sold as an "erotic thriller." Any experienced cinemagoer knows that this phrase, which promises two things, usually indicates a film that will fail to deliver either. American studio films either tiptoe around sex or stomp on it with clown shoes, and the modern thriller often relies on activities that are not, and cannot ever be, thrilling -- electronic funds transfers, typing, mouse-clicking. Deception, directed by Marcel Lanegger from a script by Mark Bomback, begins as Ewan McGregor's lonely auditor Jonathan McQuarry labors late into the night in a huge conference room, vast windows looking out over the lights of the city. Shut in, walled-away, cut-off, Jonathan is worse than miserable; he's invisible. But then Hugh Jackman's brash, blunt Wyatt Bose waltzes in, makes some small talk, sparks up a joint. It's not what Jonathan's used to. Then again, he hates what he's used to.

Jim Carrey’s portrayal of Steven Russell, a notorious real-life con man now serving a 144-year sentence in a Texas prison, hot-wires “I Love You Phillip Morris,” a nervy comedy that bills itself as an “improbable but true story.”

I was just reading an article about the oddly prolonged adolescence of American males, especially those in the movies. There's a common fantasy where the guys get away from their wives and girlfriends, and escape to where they're free to guzzle beer, eat sloppily, belch, fart, leave pizza boxes on the floor, scratch their butts, watch sports on TV, and in many other ways become irresistible to hot chicks. When was the last time you saw a man under 30 in the movies who had a stable marriage, a job, children, and a life where he valued his wife above his buddies?

Movies and video games have something of a love/hate relationship. The film industry loves to make movies out of videogames, which gamers inevitably hate. But Scott Pilgrim is different. Now, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World isn’t based on a videogame, it’s based on the geek chic comic book series of the same name. But like the comic, director Edgar Wright’s (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, and the upcoming Ant-Man) adaptation is steeped both structurally and aesthetically in the videogame tradition that Generation Y (or Millennials, or whatever the hell old people call us these days) grew up with.

Ben and Sandra are hot and provocative lovers, but Sandra is unfortunately married to Bens younger brother Jake, and soon Jake will find out about Ben.

The hot-headed young DArtagnan along with three former legendary but now down on their luck Musketeers must unite and defeat a beautiful double agent and her villainous employer from seizing the French throne and engulfing Europe in war.

What happens when a second rate strip club promoter decides to make a movie about his imaginary escapades as an international spy? Is it possible to pointlessly incorporate a screenwriter's penchant for transvestite celebrity impersonators into the plot of a semi-erotic spy movie? Is traveling in a motorcade of yellow motorcycles and Hummers the best way for undercover strippers to sneak up on a truck carrying chemical weapons? If you can make it all the way through its excruciating 90 minutes, Crazy Girls Undercover answers all of these questions and more. But the real question may be, could a movie be any worse? It took several viewings to comprehend the plot of this picture. Unfortunately, each time I sat through the film I became one percent dumber, so it is still not completely clear. Screenwriter Norbert Aleman operates on a different level than your average filmmaker. He has created a world in which logic and reason do not exist. Despite a plot that revolves almost entirely around strippers, Aleman boldly resists the temptation to show any real nudity, opting instead for badly choreographed topless show routines and brief nipple insert shots.

A friend sent me an email with a link to a movie trailer and told me to check it out. Normally I pass on such requests, but I had caught up on my assignments and this fellow was a respected hot rodder. As I played the trailer I found myself more than just caught up in the story line; I became lost in reverie. Great movies will do that to people. The mood simply takes you by surprise and you are remembering a time when you were young, foolish and searching for answers. I looked at four trailers and each one had a liveliness to it that reminded me of American Graffiti at its best. I searched the website and found an email address and wrote to the director, Faith Granger, to find out if this was going to be another attempt at the ‘great American novel’ or just a hot rod movie. The answer to that quest was as interesting as the movie that eventually came out of the mind and soul of an incredible young lady. I think I know who Faith is by now, and then I am surprised to find out that she has many sides. Her accent seemed to be French, but she supposedly was raised in Lebanon. She is as true a hot rodder as you will find and the movie that she created comes from the depths of her soul. Faith is the director, actress, producer, promoter, cinematographer, bottle washer, investor and whatever else was needed on the movie; Deuce of Spades. She has boundless energy, drive, persistence and dedication to making this movie. Faith is also stubborn and opinionated and when she makes up her mind there is no one who can sway her from her goal. The movie took years to make and except for a few small donations, the funding came from her employment and those who believed in her. Everyone who worked on the movie put aside their financial interests and volunteers flocked to help her. Months went by and we despaired seeing the completion of the film. Faith emailed many of her newfound friends in the hot rodding world, including me, and we all did what we could. Slowly she overcame problems plaguing production and found indoor and outdoor areas where she could film; with no budget and delays as actors and cameramen left to take paying jobs elsewhere.

Sometimes lowered expectations are a good thing. Coming into the summer movie season, Live Free or Die Hard looked like this year's Terminator 3 - the last wheezing gasp of a mostly forgotten franchise. So I'm pleasantly surprised to say that Die Hard 4 (as I'm going to call it for the rest of the review) is almost insanely fun.

Die Hard 4 scratches an itch I didn't even know I had. Sometime over the course of the last 15 years or so, the traditional shoot-'em-up action movie morphed into something else. Something...lamer. Think about The Mummy and its sequel, and how hard it was to become involved in their stories because everything felt so fake. If everything is digital, it's hard to feel any real risk, and therefore involvement with the plight of the characters. A giant sandstorm in the shape of a face isn't scary, primarily because it so obviously doesn't occupy the same space as the flesh and blood actors. You have to be a really skilled director (like Spielberg in Jurassic Park) to pull it off.

Until he was downsized, affable, amiable Larry Crowne (Tom Hanks) was a superstar team leader at the big-box company where he's worked since his time in the Navy. Underwater on his mortgage and unclear on what to do with his suddenly free days, Larry heads to his local college to start over.

There are only two types of Christopher Walken movies: the terrible ones that are somehow watchable because of Walken’s presence, and the good ones that just happen to feature a classic Walken performance. Because Walken seemingly tries to make at least 5 movies a year, thus never turning down a script, there’s just no predicting how films like his newest, $5 A Day, will turn out.

I’d like to call Obsessed a miserable failure, but that would imply this lazy waste of time had some sort of goal it failed to reach. It has nothing. No purpose, no drive, no direction. It just shiftlessly ambles forward buoyed by the assumption everyone will stop to watch a catfight, especially one involving Beyonce Knowles and Ali Larter. I did stop to soak it all in, a few million others will likely do the same, but like me, they’ll leave marveling a movie can feel so empty, useless and pathetic.

Set in a distant future where life in the universe and space travel is dependent upon a spice found only on the planet Dune, this film tracks the rise of young Paul Atreides, son of good Duke Lito, from the time of his fathers betrayal and murder by a rival lord, Baron Harkonnen, to his discovery of the great secret behind the planet Dune and his own destiny, which is to free the planet and its denizens of the cruel rule of the Emperor.