RiverBender.com Movie Reviews

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 02:07:43 CST

Director David Fincher's ("The Social Network") Europe is full of aloof nords, cold war punker girls, chain-smoking tabloid journalists (well everyone in Europe smokes anyway) and, of course, nazis. Okay, maybe these portraits aren't exactly ac...

Hugo

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 01:58:52 CST

An enigmatic young boy lives behind the scenes of a parisian train station within it's great, clockwork structures, living off of pilfered croissants and bottles of soda pop. But food isn't the only thing the boy is stealing: he also helps hims...

Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn-Part 1

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 01:47:46 CST

"Breaking Dawn-Part 1" is probably the first movie to ever spark the debate of vampire boners. Since vampires are dead and have no heartbeat, one has to wonder how the male vampire is able to achieve an erection. "It's like the bible, you...

The Muppets

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 01:38:40 CST

The muppets return to the big screen, some 12 years after their last film, this time brought to life by Jason Segel, the "Freaks and Geeks" star who wrote and stars in the film. Segel plays Gary, a guy who's in love with Mary (Amy Adams) and al...

A Very Harold & Kumar 3D Christmas

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 00:20:02 CST

For years I labored under the delusion that Harold and Kumar were spin-off characters from the "American Pie" films. In fact, John Cho (Harold) was in the first one, and was the character who coined the phrase "MILF". One thing about thos...

The Thing

Tue, 29 Nov 2011 00:14:15 CST

In 1982, John Carpenter made the scariest movie I'd ever seen in my life (a record it would hold for another 15 or 20 years). "The Thing" was an intransigent horror: unknown, inescapable, and unstoppable (three terror-generating things found in...

Moneyball

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 23:30:18 CST

Baseball is arguably the most emotional and passionate sport in America. Grown men will often get misty-eyed when the subject of our national pastime is brought up (it's an emotion somewhat akin to feelings of patriotism in that respect). ...

Drive

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 23:26:04 CST

I recall back in 2007, watching "There Will Be Blood" in a nearly vacant theater. At the end of the movie, a man sitting behind me stood up and loudly proclaimed it to be the worst movie he'd ever seen, as if preemptively pleading with us to sh...

Creature

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 23:16:32 CST

So an alligator steals a louisiana man's fiance/sister and in a rage the man eats the alligator and his sister and it mutates him into an alligator man. 100 years later, the alligator man is worshipped as a god in his local community. Ent...

Conan the Barbarian

Mon, 10 Oct 2011 23:04:41 CST

Whooo boy does this stink. No, it's not rocket-science, making a great Conan film. In fact, you can narrow it down to three ingredients: swords, de-capitations, and boobs. That's it, and it takes real incompetence to mess that up.&n...

Rise of the Planet of the Apes

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 21:41:57 CST

Everyone's favorite talking apes are back and gone are the latex masks, replaced by wholly animated and computerized chimps. James Franco is a young scientist who has seemingly discovered a cure for alzheimer's: when tested on chimps, it not on...

Captain America: The First Avenger

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 21:36:19 CST

To quote Rick Jones (who is none other than the Incredible Hulk's pal), "He acts like a guy who's used to being obeyed... and fast!". This was his first impression of Captain America, the WWII superhero that had recently been unfrozen by the Av...

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2

Tue, 16 Aug 2011 21:32:18 CST

At long, long last, the epic Harry Potter series comes to a close, after ten years and 30-plus films, we finally know professor Dumpledore's true secret identity (I won't spoil it here, you're just going to have to watch the film to find out). ...

Green Lantern

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 20:46:34 CST

Summertime means big, special effects blockbusters at the movie theater, and it's obvious the filmmakers of "Green Lantern" had their hopes lying in that direction. At the same time, Green Lantern, as far as superheroes go, is lesser known than...

Super 8

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 20:43:34 CST

"Super 8" is a fun, if slightly generic pastiche of similarly-themed films from the past few decades. A young group of kids ("Goonies") are making a film ("Son of Rambow") and catch something catastrophic ("Cloverfield") on camera. The ki...

X-Men: First Class

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 20:40:52 CST

I'll have to admit, when it comes to superhero films, the X-Men series is probably my least favorite. Too many characters, each with a more ridiculously unlikely super power than the last (mutant super powers in general seem like fodder for laz...

The Hangover Part II

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 20:38:01 CST

Yeah, it's the Hangover again. So let me copy/paste some of my original review here (since the filmmakers are copying and pasting their original film into this sequel): "A group of friends have a wild bachelor party in (Bangkok), only to wake u...

Bridesmaids

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 20:35:07 CST

Another Judd Apatow-produced comedy only this time the twist is that it's for the ladies. Kristen Wiig and Maya Rudolph play best friends, that is, until Lilian (Rudolph) announces she's engaged to be married. Of course, Annie (Wiig) is t...

Thor

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 20:32:15 CST

"Thor" is a big dumb movie about a big dumb Norse god who smashes things with his hammer first and asks questions later. His father Odin, king of the gods, sees this as some sort of flaw in his son, especially when the boy starts a war with the...

Source Code

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 18:13:13 CST

Director Duncan Jones, whose first film "Moon" gave us cause to question the nature of humanity in a scientifically-manipulated universe, brings us "Source Code", a film that pushes the conceptual boundaries of sci-fi within the typically rigid stand...