3/5 – An entertaining second half to our Nicholas Hoult double feature. After watching Warm Bodies, we promptly snuck our way into the theater down the hall to catch Jack the Giant Slayer and make it a Nicholas Hoult double feature night. I didn’t have any particular desire to see Jack the Giant Slayer. If Nicholos Hoult wasn’t in it, we probably would have skipped it. It just seemed funny to base a movie night around him. Plus the movie was starting 5 minutes after Warm Bodies ended. It’s like they wanted us make it a double feature night. Yes, this is the awkward kid from About a Boy. I’m amazed we didn’t get caught sneaking into Jack the Giant Slayer. Two of us were lugging around yoga mats on our backs, so we weren’t necessarily inconspicuous. But we didn’t even register on the staff’s radar.  I guess the theater employees have better things to do than hunt down people sneaking their way into a very less than full theater. Understandably, I wasn’t expecting to particularly enjoy a CGI-heavy live-action remake of the Jack and the Beanstalk story. Not being a child, I’m not in the target demographic. I was fully prepared to sneak out of Jack the Giant Slayer as quickly as we sneaked into it. Perhaps that’s why I was pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed Jack the Giant Slayer. It’s a good movie. Second head or well executed photo bomb? I really liked how they reworked “Fee, fie, foe, fum.” for this movie. I thought that was pretty clever. I also thought Ewan McGregor was perfect as the knight Elmont. He seemed to be channeling his inner Cary Elwes in the role. There seemed to be a touch of the Dread Pirate...

4/5 – An Engaging Inconvenient Truth If you liked the idea of An Inconvenient Truth, but found the movie itself to be as exciting as, well, a PowerPoint presentation, I recommend checking out Chasing Ice. Chasing Ice is much more personable than An Inconvenient Truth. It puts a human face on climate change. The film  follows environmental photographer James Balog in his quest to document the melting occurring at glaciers around the world. Balog and his team create their own camera housings that can withstand subzero conditions day after day and still function. They also have to trek out to hazardous and inaccessible frozen locales. It’s a project that takes its toll on Balog, both physically and mentally. This toll is what puts the human face on the project. Chasing Ice involves the science that made An Inconvenient Truth what it is, but seeing Balog struggles while undertaking this important project is what sets Chasing Ice a step above Gore’s movie. What comes out of this project are amazing photographs that show the rapid decline of the polar ice caps. These are photos that should put any climate change naysayers to rest. Chasing Ice is the Food Inc. of climate change. It’s a movie that you must see, but also one that will leave you shaken after you see it. While I usually catch documentaries at home, I suggest seeing Chasing Ice in the theater if you can. Seeing James Balog’s photographs blown up on the big screen is an awe-inspiring sight. The man is a tremendous photographer. The big screen allows you to really take in what is happening to these ice caps, and serves to make it more dramatic when they fall. I caught Chasing Ice at the Sebastiani Movie Theater in Sonoma, CA. Expect a post all on its own about...

Last month, Marvel and Comixology announced they would be giving away the #1 issue of 700 Marvel titles through their joint digital comics service. This quickly crashed the Comixology servers and the program was suspended. The program is reopening today for readers who signed up on Comixology’s website earlier in the week (check your inbox today for an email from Comixology if you signed up). The different #1 issues available to download span decades; you can download the Avengers first appearance as well as the first issue of a new Avengers series that debuted earlier this year. 700 comics can be a little daunting. Here are what Tuesday Night Movies feels are your best choices: Hawkeye #1 – You might recognize this from our Best Comics of 2012 post. Hawkeye is the best series that Marvel currently produces. The creative team of Matt Fraction and David Aja are working magic on the page. When I recommend this series to people, their reaction is usually, “Hawkeye? The guy from the Avengers? With the arrows?” Yes, yes and yes. This series is so much more than that though. It focuses on what Hawkeye does when he’s not with the Avengers. It’s very street level. His main antagonist is the Russian mob. After you download the first issue for free, you may want to buy the just released Hawkeye, Vol. 1: My Life as a Weapon, which collects the first five issues of the series. Avengers Arena #1 – If you like The Hunger Games or Battle Royale, I highly recommend checking out this series. 16 heroes have been captured by murderous villain Arcade and taken to an island where they’re told they have to battle it out to the death. I won’t lie, when this series was first announced I thought...

Roger Ebert passed away yesterday. He was 70. If you read movie reviews regularly, you probably have a favorite critic. The wild-haired, bushy mustached Gene Shalit has his fans. I feel like Leonard Maltin owes Doug Benson an agent’s fee for introducing his podcast listeners to Maltin’s reviews. Others will identify themselves with the late Gene Siskel or Joel Siegel. I, like many, always preferred Roger Ebert. I first encountered Roger Ebert when I was a young boy, turning the dial on my parents’s wood-pane-encased television on a weekend morning. Siskel and Ebert At the Movies was on. They were talking in a  movie theater, about a movie I was probably too young to watch and whose name is lost to time. But, I found them both fascinating, though to be truthful it would be years before I could remember which one was Siskel and which one was Ebert. Their thumbs up, thumbs down rating system quickly made its way into the US’s, and my own, lexicon. I didn’t always agree with Ebert’s reviews (I still haven’t quite forgiven him for calling The Blair Witch Project a masterpiece), but I always respected him. Like any great review, his reviews were both well thought out and well written. I wish my reviews were written half as well as his. His reviews didn’t come from his ego, and he wasn’t trying to show you that he knew more than you did like those guys at the New York Times. His reviews came from a love for the movies. They were often a jumping off point for my cousin and I when we would talk movies. It wasn’t until Esquire published his portrait in February, 2010 that I knew about the extent of his battle with cancer. Ebert’s perseverance while...

5/5 – Warm Bodies is like the anti-Twilight. See it! Zombies are very hot right now. Just ask Robert Kirkman, the creator of The Walking Dead. The success of The Walking Dead has led to a huge influx in the amount zombie-related fiction making its way to movie theaters, bookshelves and comic racks. Unfortunately, the majority of these zombie stories have me wishing that the copycats would leave the zombies to Kirkman. Thankfully, Warm Bodies does not fall into that category. I loved Warm Bodies. It works on so many levels. It’s a great satire of both zombie fiction and modern society. It points out that we are already a bit zombie-like before any zombie plague hits, walking around heads down, staring into our iPhones, oblivious to the world around us. Warm Bodies is my favorite horror comedy since Shaun of the Dead and my favorite adaption of Romeo and Juliet since West Side Story. I never thought I would have to ever write that previous sentence, but I did.Thanks, Warm Bodies.. Most of the movie is narrated by R, the main zombie played by Nicholas Hoult. Yes, that’s the awkward kid from About A Boy. No, I don’t get how he grew up to be so good looking either. But he did, and he’s better looking dead than I am alive. Theresa Palmer seems to be channeling her inner Hayden Panettiere when she plays J. Hoult and Palmer have great chemistry, which is something, because unlike the marble-like vampires of Twilight, R is a rotting corpse. Rob Corrdry wins in Warm Bodies. He’s M, another zombie, and the closest thing R has to a friend. Without a doubt, M has the best line in the movie, which I won’t spoil here. When the...