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Welcome to A1 Movie Reviews!

This site is your destination for new movie releases and films on DVD and Blu-ray. Our team of critics are dedicated to bringing you the best movie ratings and movie essays around, and they’ll always do so in an original and unbiased fashion. So take a look around, read our movie reviews, and feel free to comment by email or at our movie forum.

If you’re looking for movie reviews or movie essays, then you’ve come to the right place. In business since 2000, A1 Movie Reviews changed management in 2009 and brought in a crack squad of talent to make the site even better (think G.I. Joe, but with more corrective lenses and excess body fat). Based in the great state of Texas, we also boast writers from New York City in order to add a dash of cosmopolitan flavor. So take a look around, browse our reviews and movie essays, and prepare for an experience that’s without equal (that may be stretching it a bit, but you get the idea).

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By now, the basic style conceit of Apollo 18 is familiar to most moviegoers. Like The Blair Witch Project and Paranormal Activity before it, the film is presented as “found footage” of a real-life horror. This time around, the mock-doc takes us to the moon, specifically a secret 12th moon landing. According to the trailers, what they find there is the reason we never went back. Apollo 18 skips right over opening credits and gets straight to the purported home video and NASA surveillance footage. Through these grainy 16mm images, we watch a team of three astronauts head where only 12 others have gone before. While pilot John Grey (Ryan Robins, uncredited) orbits the cratered rock, astronauts Nathan Walker and Benjamin Anderson (Lloyd Owens and Warren Christie, also uncredited)touch down on the surface to install a series of cameras. It is 1974–in the midst of the Cold War–and the cameras, they have been told, are meant to spy on the Russians back home on terra firma. But that isn’t what happens. Instead, they discover the relics of a Russian moon module that isn’t supposed to be there, as well as the remains of its cosmonaut. Then, unexplained bumps and creaks in the night (it’s always night where they are) lead to one astronaut coming down with a strange inf...

Have you noticed just how tight-lipped the trailers for Don’t Be Afraid of the Dark have been? In fact, if you haven’t seen the 1973 television movie that inspired producer Guillermo del Toro’s remake, you might not have any inkling what this movie is about. Allow me to let you in on the secret. The film opens with a Victorian-era prologue. The master of a sprawling gothic mansion lures a pretty chambermaid into his basement workroom, where he pounces on her and uses a hammer and chisel to extract everyone of her pearly whites. His ghoulish grin reveals he’s already done the same to himself. What’s even more unsettling is that the two sets of chompers are meant to be an offering to an unseen, whispering army of creatures, who are not so easily satisfied. Their response to the gift: “We want child’s teeth.” That’s our first clue that this is no place for young Sally (Bailee Madison) to be sloshing around in her Wellies. Nonetheless, her off-screen mom has sent the little girl to live with her father, Alex (Guy Pearce) and his younger girlfriend, Kim (Katie Holmes) in the creepy old house. No sooner does Sally unpack her pink overnighter than the little tooth lovers begin whispering her name. Dad is so distracted with restoring the place and getting onto ...

The Guard, starring In Bruges’s Brendan Gleeson, is a quirky blend of Irish comedy and crime thriller. With a brogue as thick as the mist of May, Gleeson plays an unconventional policeman named Gerry Boyle in Western Ireland’s County Galway. And by unconventional, I mean potty-mouthed, slightly racist, and heavily revisionist of the crime code. When he’s not hiring prostitutes to play dress up or dropping acid filched from the pockets of car-crash victims, Boyle gets caught up in the investigation of a series of murders committed by a new-to-town drug smuggling ring. There to help him in his investigation are fish-out-water American FBI agent Wendell Everett (Don Cheadle) and a newbie Garda—that’s Gaelic for “guard”—named Aidan Mcbride (Rory Keenan). When the first murder is uncovered with the number “5 ½” scrawled in blood on the wall, McBride is convinced that it is part of an occult serial murder spree, with movies from David Fincher’s Seven to Federico Fellini’s 8 1/2 as his proof. But Everett explains that the real culprits’ motives involve trafficking $500 million (or maybe it’s a half-billion; it’s one of the film’s running jokes) worth of cocaine. Falstaffian Boyle and straitlaced Everett couldn’t have less in common but—in true buddy-...

In 1968, when the first Planet of the Apes movie was released, the prevailing issues of the day were pretty black and white, if you ask me. Should we go around detonating nuclear weapons because of differing political ideologies even if one of those ideologies is communism? Not if we like our babies with ten fingers, two eyes, and one head. Do Blacks deserve to be treated as full humans and citizens of their own nation as much as their White counterparts? Duh. Who is really to blame when the mistreated servant usurps his warmongering, thickheaded master? Is that really even a question? But, as they say, hindsight is twenty-twenty. These days, it feels as though our moral landscape is murkier (Someday my children may disagree.) So many of us–from the vegans who hug trees to the squints who cure diseases–mean well. But can we ever do well? After all, it’s not the road to heaven that’s paved with good intentions. That’s the question at the heart of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the Fox franchise’s most recent reboot. In it, James Franco plays Will Rodman, a sensitive scientist with a personal stake in finding a cure for Alzheimer’s: his own father (John Lithgow) is quickly being ravaged by the disease. In his experiments, he comes upon a promising serum that,...

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 marks the end of a decade-long film journey that’s become a cultural phenomenon. As a fan of J.K. Rowling’s children’s books, I’ve had a love-hate relationship with the film franchise. Anyone who has seen them all can tell you that it’s been an uneven body of work. It started with Chris Columbus’ over-long, slavishly adapted first two installments, picked up steam with two exceptional, moving films from the franchise’s one-off directors (Alfonso Cuaron and Mike Newell) and is now winding down with David Yates’ solid, if imperfect, final three films. In Part 2 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, the story resumes in medias res. Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) and his two best friends, Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint), are still hunting down the seven magical horcruxes, the physical objects that have been imbued with pieces of evil wizard Lord Voldemort’s (Ralph Fiennes) soul. They can only kill the powerful villain after these have all been destroyed. Meanwhile, Voldemort has gathered a formidable fascist army of magical creatures to take over Hogwarts on his way to world domination and Muggle extermination. There’s no “previously on Harry Potter” here, so if it’s been a while since you’ve r...

Horrible Bosses is a not particularly deep or shocking comedy about a trio of pals who decide to go dark side on their employers. It’s not that these guys hate their jobs, just their bosses. Nick (Jason Bateman) is a workaholic Wall Street-type who’s been busting his hump for paranoid megalomaniac Dave Harken (Kevin Spacey) for nearly a decade. Just when Nick thinks all the 16-hour days, weekend work, and missing his grandmother’s dying moments are about to pay off with a promotion, Harken eliminates the position. Meanwhile, lady-killer Kurt (Jason Sudeikis) finds himself unexpectedly working for his awesome boss’s (Donald Sutherland) cocaine-addicted son, Bobby (Colin Ferrell). Bobby isn’t just bad for Kurt’s career prospects, he’s bad for the environment and wants to start dumping the company’s toxic chemical waste irresponsibly so he can make more money for blow. Finally there’s mousy, high-pitched dental assistant Dale (Charlie Day). All he wants is to marry his fiancée and not get sexually harassed by his violently horny boss lady, Dr. Julia (Jennifer Aniston). One boozy evening, Nick, Kurt and Dale start dreaming aloud of killing off their employers. But somehow–the script doesn’t dwell too long on such pesky details–the boys st...

Pickles and strawberry ice cream. Lamb and tuna fish. Julia Roberts and Tom Hanks. Sometimes it happens that two great things just aren’t so great together. That’s what I discovered in Larry Crowne, which pairs two of the biggest stars of the 1990s in a romantic comedy geared towards the Centrum Silver set. In the film, Hanks plays Larry Crowne, a perennial nice guy who works at a big box department store called UMart. As a nine-time employee of the month–who even takes the time to recycle the trash left behind in his store’s parking lot–he is caught completely off guard when given his pink slip. Despite his 10 good years with the company and his 20-year military service, he lacks the right stuff (read: a college degree) to move up the company ladder. So, on the advice of his zany neighbors Lamar and B’Ella (Cedric the Entertainer and Taraji P. Henson), who also sell him a motorized scooter to replace his gas-guzzler of a car, Larry embarks on a community college education. On his first day he meets the two women who will change his middle-aged life. The first is free-spirited and fashion-forward fellow scooter rider, Talia (Gugu Mbatha-Raw); the second, his speech professor, Mercedes Tainot (Ms. Roberts). The prof is going through a mid-life quandary of her ...

Cameron Diaz plays a Bad Teacher, but I wish she’d been one of mine. I probably wouldn’t have learned a thing in her class, but at least I could have caught up on movies and sleep, when not staring at the hot, hungover babe slouched behind the desk up front. Her name is Elizabeth Halsey, but at the beginning of the movie she’s about to change it. Liz has coasted through a single year of teaching at John Adams Middle School (JAMS as the teachers annoyingly call it, with photos of “jammin’” faculty members–all but the conspicuously absent Liz–posted in the hallway), but she’s leaving, giving up her minimal four-class workload to marry a rich man like she’s always wanted. But her fiancé and his shrill mother are wise to her golddigging ways, and he dumps her. Three months later, her curvy tail between her legs, Liz slinks back to the school, forced to endure terrible cookies from the doting mother of the class suck-up, unwelcome advances from a goofy but kind gym teacher (Jason Segel), and the insanely perky social studies teacher across the hall, Amy Squirrel (Lucy Punch). Liz is so apathetic about the whole teaching thing that she just shows movies about other teachers to her class, like Stand and Deliver and Lean on Me, while she naps or sneaks liquor...

In brightest day, in blackest night, no comic movie will have a script so trite. Let those who worship CG’s might, beware the awful Green Lantern blight. The latest DC comic to make its way to the big screen is a disappointing mess on nearly every front. Ryan Reynolds plays Hal Jordan, the most well-known of the six Earthling Green Lanterns over the comic franchise’s 60-year history. At the start of the film, he is a hotshot test pilot for an aeronautical engineering company headed up by the father of his childhood love interest, Carol Ferris (Blake Lively). She’s also a pilot but being groomed by her dear old dad to take over the company. Hal, too, is walking in his poppa’s footsteps. Ever since Jordan the senior (Jon Tenney, looking handsome as ever in brief flashbacks) died on a test mission right in front of young Hal’s eyes, the soon-to-be super has been faking fearlessness and tempting fate. That must be why when he’s transported hundreds of miles in a computer-generated puff of green mist to the swampy crash-landing site of a dying purple alien named Abin Sur (Temuera Morrison), Hal hardly bats a long-lashed eye. Just another day at the office, I guess. The mist comes from a ring, powered by a green genie lamp that harnesses the energy of willpower to comba...

It’s a big summer for Marvel Comics. With three major superhero films slated for release from May to July, they’re poised to once again widen the gap between their big-screen adaptations and those of rival DC Comics (who, at this point, only have the Batman franchise to hang their hat on). Thor hammered the box-office last month, and Captain America: The First Avenger is scheduled for a July 22nd release. In the meantime, prepare yourself for X-Men: First Class, a groovy prequel set in 1962 and detailing the rise of Charles Xavier’s X-Men, the real story behind the Cuban Missile Crisis, and how Magneto got his spiffy helmet. But before we get to the events of the Swinging Sixties, the film takes a detour into 1944 occupied Poland and the grim confines of a concentration camp. When a young Jew named Erik Lensherr is ripped away from his parents, his anger causes his mutant powers over magnetism to manifest. This brings him to the attention of Dr. Schmidt (Kevin Bacon), a seemingly pleasant scientist who asks Erik to use his special gift to move a Nazi-minted coin on the good doctor’s desk. When the frightened boy cannot, his emaciated mother is brought into the room, Schmidt produces a gun, and a countdown begins. You can probably guess what happens next. Meanwhile, at a N...

One of my main criteria for evaluating a movie is originality. I like watching something different from the norm, and The Tree of Life easily fits that description. It is unlike any other film I’ve ever seen, except for previous works by the same director, Terrence Malick. Already a polarizing movie experience, it won top honors at Cannes despite considerable boos at the screening. If you glance at my star rating, you’ll immediately see where I land on the scale of critical opinion, but in keeping with Brad Pitt’s murmured, in-movie line about objectivity and subjectivity, I’ll attempt a bit of even-handedness before the rant begins. The Tree of Life stars Brad Pitt–mostly the back of Pitt’s crewcut–as a businessman (his profession undefined, like Ozzie Nelson) and an accomplished church pianist. He’s married to wispy, eternally weepy-eyed Jessica Chastain. Together, they raise a family of three boys in Waco, Texas, during the 1950s. What little story exists is seen from the view of the eldest son, Jack (Hunter McCracken), as he grows into his rebellious teenage years and begins to question his father’s bullying method of marriage and fatherhood, as well as his mother’s weak-willed acquiescence. Jack also has a seemingly playful but slightly disturbing...

Thanks to newbie director Richard Press, I’m in love with a man more than twice my age. The object of my affection is the eponymous subject of Bill Cunningham New York, an octogenarian fashion photographer for the New York Times. Then again, fashion photographer may not be the right term. As Cunningham tells us in this documentary look at his life and career, he hardly considers himself such. He has neither a studio–unless you count the middle of Fifth Avenue with taxis whizzing by–nor models. He has street muses: the men and women of New York City who get dressed with the kind of energy and originality that have demanded to be chronicled in the Sunday Styles section of the paper every week for the last 40 years. As a documentarian of sorts himself, Cunningham makes an unlikely subject for this type of film. He has spent his entire career shunning money and fame, although such luminaries as Anna Wintour and the late Brooke Astor count him among their friends and fashion idols. His devotion to being the man behind the lens is so dogged that he sometimes still gets cussed out by women on the street for being a dirty old man taking their photos. Even those who have known him longest couldn’t tell you where he was born, whether he was raised rich or poor, and what his...

Each week at A1 Movie Reviews, I make a decision regarding which films to see and which ones to skip. Back on June 5th of 2009, a little-known project named The Hangover was put into the latter category. I remember thinking it was just another raunchfest that would disappear without much fanfare. While the raunchy part was spot-on, I sorely underestimated the public’s need to see middle-aged men run around Las Vegas while suffering from alcohol-induced amnesia. The movie went on to gross over $467 million worldwide, turn Bradley Cooper and Zach Galifianakis into stars, and make me look like an idiot in the process. When The Hangover: Part II was announced, you can bet that I marked the date on my calendar. Let me assure you that The Hangover: Part II subscribes to the old adage of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” The premise is surprisingly close to the original, all your favorite characters return, and, if anything, the level of crassness has been taken up a notch. It’s two years after the chaos in Sin City, and mild-mannered dentist Stu Price (Ed Helms) is preparing to marry Lauren (Jamie Chung, who seems poised to put Lucy Liu out of business). The bride’s parents are originally from Thailand, so it’s decided that the nuptials will held at a private resort in...

Everyone’s favorite animated fighting bear has returned for Kung Fu Panda 2. This time around, he’s just as rotund, a little more confident, and a lot more reflective. He’s in search of his biological parents and ever-elusive “inner peace,” while trying to stave off the demise of his beloved martial art. At the start of the film, Po (voiced by Jack Black) is doing all right, having discovered a loyal group of skilled kung fu compadres in the Furious Five (Angelina Jolie as Tigress; Jackie Chan as Monkey; Seth Rogen as Mantis; Lucy Liu as Viper; and David Cross as Crane) to help him fulfill his destiny of being the Dragon Master. But when a band of marauding wolves descend on Po’s hometown, The Valley of Peace, he must abandon his current lesson from Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman) to stop the gang from stealing all the metal in town. The wolf gang is just the tip of iceberg. They’re really being commanded by Lord Shen (Gary Oldman), an albino peacock bent on dominating all of China and rendering kung fu obsolete with his new invention, the cannon. When Po sees Shen’s symbol–a red eye–on the head wolf’s uniform, it triggers a flashback to a dark day from his childhood and a pair of creatures that look remarkably like him. It suddenly occurs to Po...

It’s one of those marketing phrases used so often that it’s nearly lost its impact: Everything Must Go. Nick Halsey (Will Ferrell) is familiar with it, as well as the numerous “rules” of salesmanship he spouts in an effort to be taken seriously. But that old going-out-of-business cliché hits home for Nick–literally–in this imperfect but well-meaning indie film with an admirable dramatic turn by the usually comedic lead. Nick begins the movie caught up in an awful day. He’s fired from his job, despite being a longtime employee with respectable sales, because he’s an alcoholic. Nick’s had AA meetings and stints in rehab, but an incident on a business trip has led to a parting of the ways. His smarmy young boss thinks it’s an easy firing decision because Nick and his wife don’t have any children. On his way home to deliver the bad news, Nick buys a 12-pack and does a belly-flop off the wagon. But he doesn’t make it through his front door, as he encounters even worse news: His wife has put all of Nick’s possessions out on the front lawn, changed the locks, and disappeared. Losing his car and his money soon after, Nick begins living on his lawn, chugging Pabst and surrounded by his remaining possessions. Human contact comes in the form of Kenny (Chri...

Are you a fan of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies and anxious to know how the new fourth installment, On Stranger Tides, compares to the first three films? Sorry, I got nothing for ya. Thanks for stopping by, though. That’s because I am not a fan of the series. I found the first film so boring and devoid of humor or any other remotely interesting quality that I stopped watching halfway through; consequently I never bothered with the second and third films. But hey, somebody has to review the new one; it’s only playing on eleventy thousand screens across the country while Disney’s marketing tidal wave splashes across every other website. This review is for the person who maybe wanted to see Fast Five (no, you really don’t) or The Conspirator (good choice) instead, but was outvoted by the rest of the group. Or maybe you’re chaperoning an SUV full of hyper little fans of pirates and Johnny Depp. The movie wastes no time in getting revved up, beginning with the trial of Captain Jack Sparrow (Depp) that quickly devolves into chaos and a gymnastic escape through the cobblestone streets of London. It’s the most visually engaging action sequence of the film, as it turns out, and features a humorous cameo appearance by Judi Dench. Sparrow soon encounters a few associates fr...

Midnight in Paris is a charming new Woody Allen film about nostalgia. I know what you’re thinking. Isn’t a Woody Allen film about nostalgia sort of like a Stevie Wonder song about love? That is to say: nothing new. But for a writer-director holding a lifelong fascination with times and places that may exist only in his mind, this grown-up take on the subject matter is also refreshingly honest. This time around, Allen leaves his beloved New York City for the City of Lights, Paris. That’s where he’s dropped off leading man Gil (Owen Wilson), a successful Hollywood screenwriter, known more for his hacky crowd pleasers than genuine artistic merit. Gil is on his second visit to Paris, this time with his materially obsessed fiancé, Inez (Rachel McAdams), and her Republican parents (Kurt Fuller and Mimi Kennedy). While there, they bump into Inez’s pseudo intellectual ex-flame, Paul (Michael Sheen). All Inez and the in-laws want to do is shop, eat in Paris’s most posh restaurants, and complain that there’s no place like Malibu. All Paul wants to do is show off his passing knowledge of every topic under the sun with frequent didactic digressions. Meanwhile, Gil, who is struggling with writing a novel about “a guy who works in a nostalgia shop,” wants only to wander ...

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