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?

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.

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.

Also known as Twisted Brain, Horror High is a no-budget fright flick set in -- you guessed it -- a high school. Nerdy student Pat Cardi is picked on by everyone in the free world: his parents, school bullies, pretty girls, even the school janitor. Spending a lonely evening in his basement lab, Cardi creates a serum that turns him into a monster. Here's the crayons...fill in the blanks as to what happens next.

The Angels, Dylan, Natalie, and Alex, are hired to locate a set of titanium rings stolen from the Department of Justice that, when put together in a special machine, will display a list of all individuals in the witness protection program. Having discovered that one person on the list has been killed, the Angels investigate the scene and discover evidence suggesting that the killer is a surfer with a scar on one leg.

Having tracked the killer to his next victim - who is subsequently sent to Bosley's house for protection - it is revealed that angel Dylan was once named Helen Zaas and is in the program herself for sending her former boyfriend Seamus - a member of the O'Grady mafia family - to jail.

With Werner Herzog’s quickie neo-noir My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done coming along so soon after his flipped-out rendition of Abel Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant, longtime Herzog fans may well wonder whether the grizzled German director is hiding some odd ulterior motive. Produced by David Lynch and written by Herbert Golder, My Son stars Michael Shannon as an unhinged free spirit and part-time actor who kills his mother (Grace Zabriskie) and takes hostages to keep homicide detective Willem Dafoe at bay. The movie follows Dafoe as he interviews witnesses (such as Shannon’s girlfriend, Chloë Sevigny) in order to figure out when and why Shannon went off his nut. My Son and Bad Lieutenant are both pretty far removed from the wilderness adventures and focused character sketches Herzog is known for. Has he developed this sudden interest in potboiler urban crime dramas in order to bank some cash? Or is this, as James Franco would put it, “performance art?”

Bill Dancer and his young companion Curly Sue are the classic homeless folks with hearts of gold. Their scams are aimed not at turning a profit, but at getting enough to eat. When they scam the rich and beautiful Grey Ellison into believing she backed her Mercedes into Bill, theyre only hoping for a free meal. But Grey is touched, and over the objections of her snotty fiance, insist on putting the two up for the night. As they get to know each other, Bill becomes convinced that this is where Curly Sue belongs - in a home, cared for by someone that can give her the advantages that his homeless, nomadic existence lacks. He plans to leave the young girl in the care of Grey and take off.... but Curly Sue has other ideas!

The necessity of China to tell their own version of the Mulan subject has been pressing at the latest when Disney brought their joyful-coloured animation movie full of clichés on screen, a rather shallow look on the Chinese. Jingle Ma's version of the story is supposed to show that the story around Mulan, who shouldn't be mistaken for a historical individual, can provide much more than just a singing and dancing protagonist. But wait a minute, Jingle Ma? The director who brought us such "gems" as "Seoul Raiders" or "Playboy Cops"? Even if some of his movies are actually entertaining, Ma is rather a second-rate director and so we have to wonder why he got the reins in his hands to direct this 12 million dollar project. However, interestingly enough "Mulan" shows its weakness when it comes to its entertaining value rather than the story. The plot may remain easy to follow but the necessities and sacrifices a war requires are at times illuminated in an almost profound fashion.

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.

Director Kevin “Witchboard” Tenney’s 1988 demonic horror outing “Night of the Demons” isn’t a movie I’m particularly fond of, so the idea of a contemporary remake didn’t ruffle my cinematic feathers whatsoever. The original isn’t a masterpiece by anyone’s definition of the term, though it’s hardly the worst genre effort produced during this decidedly prolific era in horror’s stories history. In fact, I consider the film’s 1994 direct-to-video sequel to be a superior film in every conceivable way. What can I say – I have horrible taste in movies. Feel free to throw rotten vegetables in my general direction.

I know at least six full-grown women who love Grease 2. I also know two women and one gay man who adore Xanadu. Hell, I know one lunatic who thinks The Wiz is better than The Wizard of Oz. And I'm certainly not immune: You know that live-action Popeye musical? I love it. So it seems that just about every movie fan has some weird taste in musicals every once in a while. Which brings us to the out-of-nowhere phenomenon hit that became a global virus a few years back when "just another" made-for-Disney Channel movie debuted ... and became that hottest kiddie sensation since, like, The Cabbage Patch Kids. (Yeah, I'm old.)

Hello again, friends. Times are tight for most as of late. The papers and the government pontificate about the economy stabilizing, and in some cases improving. Well, possibly, but most people that I know are changing their movie watching habits and straying away from the Cineplexes. They’re getting comfy on their couches after plundering the vast recesses of online video stores like Netflix and automated services such as Redbox, located outside of their local convenience stores.

This being the case, I am starting to write more often about movies that you can find at these outlets. Movies, in most cases, that were released a while ago straight to the DVD market, the hidden gems of independent cinema.

The fan-created Lord of the Rings prequel, available today for free viewing at DailyMotion.com, has benefited from terrific buzz, mostly due to a couple of impressive trailers released earlier this year.

Those trailers didn’t lie. This thing pretty much sings.