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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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I was prepared to begin this review of Cop Out by making a lame comment about the film’s title reflecting the career of Bruce Willis. To an extent, that criticism may still apply. But this time, Bruce’s usual game is elevated above the norm, largely due to the presence of his co-star, Tracy Morgan. This movie serves up so much from the old buddy-cop movie formula, it’s as if the script was constructed out of MadLibs. Old, wizened cop Jimmy (Willis) is partnered with brash, inexperienced younger cop Paul (Morgan), polar opposites (one white, one black, of course) who form an uneasy crimefighting alliance. A police operation they’re working on–using a snitch to nail a drug dealer–goes awry, leaving the pair harangued by their by-the-book captain (Sean Cullen) and suspended from the force. To regain their dignity, Jimmy and Paul must go rogue to nab the villain with delusions of grandeur and badassitude, Mexican drug dealer Po’ Boy (Guillermo Diaz), who got them into trouble in the first place. Furthering the formula, our bickering heroes each have domestic issues roiling their personal lives: one is dealing with possible infidelity, the other with financial needs. They’re also repeatedly hassled by a couple of legitimate cops still on the force (Kevin Pollak...

Winner of the Golden Palm Award at Cannes in 2009, and nominated this year for the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar, The White Ribbon is both quiet and disquieting. It’s a strange film that goes in directions I did not anticipate and provokes thoughts I did not expect. It left me feeling puzzled and a bit unsatisfied, but upon reflection I believe the film is designed to produce a sense of uneasiness. Despite my reservations about it, I can’t stop thinking about the movie, and I want to see it again. The White Ribbon takes place almost entirely within a small German village called Eichwald. Most of the villagers farm the fields or tend to the needs of the local landowning Baron (Ulrich Tukur), his Baroness wife (Ursina Lardi), and their children. The village pastor (Burghart Klaussner) strictly governs his own houseful of children, sending the entire family to bed without supper when his two oldest kids, Klara (Maria-Victoria Dragus) and Martin (Leonard Proxauf), arrive home late without sufficient explanation. He ritually beats these two children, then makes them each wear a white ribbon until they regain their “innocence” and “trust” from their father/pastor’s perspective. The village doctor (Rainer Bock), a widower, is raising two children–a 14-year-old dau...

It’s 1954, and a dame’s gone missing…a criminally insane dame. That’s the basic premise of Shutter Island, Martin Scorsese’s part film noir, part psychological thriller, and fourth pairing with Leonardo DiCaprio. If you have a soft spot for any of the above-named people or things, as I do, this film is for you. It opens with Edward “Teddy” Daniels, a U.S. Marshal (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his new partner, Chuck Aule (Mark Ruffalo) aboard a ferry in the foggy waters off the coast of Boston. They’re headed to the titular island, one that looks like Alacatraz, only more forbidding. The island’s rocky outcrops and sheer cliffs protect the rest of society from Ashecliffe Hospital’s inhabitants: 66 dangerous mental patients who have all killed before. Or is it 67? We’ll save that question for later. For now, Teddy is there to investigate the seemingly impossible disappearance of patient #66, Rachel Solando (Emily Mortimer), housed in the institution for drowning her three children. From the moment he arrives, however, it’s clear that the folks in charge on the island are not giving Teddy their complete cooperation. The deputy warden confiscates his gun, while Dr. Cawley (Ben Kingsley), the psychiatrist in charge, obfuscates the truth. And then there’s th...

There’s an old Tin Pan Alley story that someone challenged Cole Porter, the foremost creator of witty in-song banter of his day, to write a hit a song called “I Love You.” The idea was that the title was just too head-on to make it work. Mr. Porter, a betting man, decided he would up the ante by filling the song with as many cliché lyrics about the many-splendored thing as he could unearth. And it was a hit. Apparently, Garry Marshall and Katherine Fugate, the director and writer of Valentine’s Day are also the betting types. What other explanation could there be for a film as transparently named, tied to a release date, rife with product placement opportunities, and chock-full of A-list celebs as this one is? Honestly, you know a movie’s overloaded with stars when the opening credits appear in alphabetical order, so that of the two Robertses that appear in the film, Emma gets a higher billing than her superstar aunt. The story revolves around Siena Flowers, a Los Angeles florist owned and operated by love-fool Reed Bennett (Ashton Kutcher). The movie opens on the morning of February 14, Reed’s busiest day of the year but that doesn’t stop him from proposing to his workaholic girlfriend Morely (Jessica Alba) before he heads off to work. Everyone in his life – inc...

Funny thing. Every time I see an ad or trailer for The Wolfman, I’m reminded of that episode of Friends where Phoebe and Chandler debate the pronunciation of Spider-Man. I think it’s the fact that the movie title is lacking the space between words that its 1941 counterpart had. But then, it’s lacking a lot of qualities that the original had. What the latest adaptation of the werewolf classic does have is Benicio del Toro. He plays Lawrence Talbot, the prodigal son of a wealthy Englishman. After witnessing the grizzly death of his mother and being hospitalized for his trouble, Lawrence escaped to the United States. He is back in jolly old England with his American accent as an actor performing Hamlet when he’s summoned to his ancestral home at Blackmoor Manor by his brother’s fiancée, Gwen (Emily Blunt). A few nights earlier, while Lawrence’s big brother Ben was strolling by the light of the full moon, he was attacked by some sort of creature and mauled beyond recognition. Gwen, all teary eyes and quivering lips, entreats Lawrence to uncover the truth of what’s happened to her man. What Victorian gentleman could resist? The Talbot patriarch, John (Anthony Hopkins), for one. He tries to convince his remaining son to dig no further into the strange goings-on o...

I was at a sold-out showing of Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief yesterday. It was just me and about a hundred fourth graders and their teachers. So my experience of this film is as much about how the boisterous tykes in Mrs. Esposito’s class responded as what took place onscreen. It boils down to this: They liked it. They really liked it. I can be convinced. Based on Rick Riordan’s series of young-adult novels, The Lightning Thief is the first installment of young Percy’s (Logan Lerman) adventures. He is a teenage boy struggling through school with ADHD and dyslexia and at home with his hygiene-challenged stepfather (Joe Pantoliano) and downtrodden mom (Catherine Keener). We first see him dreamily submerged in his school’s pool, dark hair floating around him. Or, as the girls in Mrs. Esposito’s class put it: Is he naked? Woooooo. On a school trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Greek/Roman wing, he discovers three interesting things. One, that his name is a cognate for that of Gorgon-slaying, nation-founding demigod Perseus. Two, that for some reason, he is able to read ancient Greek better than he can read English. And three, that there is a terrifying winged creature threatening to kill him if he doesn’t give the lightning bolt back. T...

Remember back when John Travolta was an entertaining movie star? John Travolta hopes you do, which is why he works “Royale with cheese” into an otherwise pointless scene in the middle of his new action movie From Paris with Love. His character’s in France, so it’s a custom-made moment for the star to recycle the French name for a Quarter Pounder, which he memorably popularized two decades ago in Pulp Fiction. There’s a big difference between winking at the audience, Mr. Travolta, and beating us over the head with a pop culture reference. And the scene rather obviously contains no McDonald’s packaging, branding, or even a mention; perhaps the fast-food giant was as skittish about the quality of this film as audiences should be. From Paris with Love centers its standard spy script around James Reece (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), an aide to the American ambassador (Richard Durden) in Paris. He’s a sharp young man who plays chess very well and has a hot French girlfriend, Caroline (Kasia Smutniak). He’s also an undercover agent for some mysterious U.S. government spy branch, presumably CIA, although those letters are never uttered. Reece’s spy work seems to be primarily utilitarian, as he receives periodic phone calls telling him to change a license plate here or to...

Horror. Comedy. Thriller. Movies based on books by Nicholas Sparks. The last of these is fast becoming a genre all its own, synonymous with star-crossed romances – with lovers that may or may not die – designed make you weep. Dear John fits in pretty well with the rest. In it, a young Army Special Forces soldier named John Tyree (Channing Tatum) comes home to Carolina on leave from Germany. His time off happens to correspond with the spring break of a pretty girl named Savannah (Amanda Seyfried). When John dives off a 20-foot pier to rescue her fallen handbag from the ocean, she is understandably impressed. She is even more so when he emerges from the water to reveal his mile-wide shoulder span and six-pack abs. Over the course of the next two weeks, the pair falls in love over a montage of surfing lessons, freak rainstorms, family dinners, and gazing at the moon. Maybe it’s the soft focus camera lenses that make John’s eyes sparkle and Savannah’s hair glow, or maybe it’s the folk-lite love songs playing softly in the background, but you know that this is the sweet, sincere, forever kind of love. They know it, too. So when the two must return to their respective corners of the world – she to school and he to his military base in Germany – they decide to...

I’ve got to hand it to Edge of Darkness. This movie doesn’t waste any time getting down to business–the business of a pissed-off Mel Gibson kicking ass and taking names. It’s an enterprise that Gibson had abandoned since he defended his baby brother and kids from aliens in Signs eight years ago…unless you count the freelance work he did with an L.A. traffic cop known as only as “sugar tits.” This time, Mad Mel plays Tom Craven, a squeaky-clean Bah-ston cop whose deepest connection is with his only daughter, Emma (Bojana Novakovic). At the start of the film, the MIT grad arrives via train to visit her dad. She’s only there for a few hours, inexplicably throwing up the whole time, until Craven decides he should take her to the doctor. No sooner does he open the front door than a drive-by shooter blows a cavernous hole in her chest with a shotgun. All of Craven’s police colleagues and the media assume that the shots were actually meant for him and attempt to figure out who might have held a grudge. But Craven instinctively knows that something else is afoot and starts investigating the people in Emma’s life, of whom he had known so little while she was still breathing. By investigating, I mean kicking the crap out of. Even before he starts getting...

First off, my apologies to all of the boyfriends and husbands who will inevitably be forced to sit through When in Rome, or as I like to call it, Love in the Time of Caller ID.  It’s a romantic comedy devoid of humor, and the only romance appears to be between a girl and her Blackberry. That girl is cute-as-a-button Beth (Kristen Bell), a workaholic junior curator at the Guggenheim Museum of Art in New York City. Oh yeah, Hollywood, we’re doing this again? Type-A big city career woman too screwed up to find love? Oh, well. Carry on. On the eve of her biggest exhibition to date–a gala centered on the art of pain (no comment)–Beth’s younger sister (Alexis Dziena) meets a gorgeous Italian fellow and decides to get married right away in Rome. Much to the displeasure of her slave-driver boss (Anjelica Huston), Beth must get out of town (read: Wi-fi range) to attend the nuptials. While there, she meets Nick, the good-looking best man (Josh Duhamel). You know it’s love at first sight because as he’s running down the aisle, late, his cell phone starts to ring. Someone as attached to his iPhone as Beth is to her Blackberry? It must be destiny. They make googly eyes at each from across the aisle until it’s time for a little close dancing at ...

My large music collection contains mostly classic rock and top-40 hits. I even collect what I call room clearers, cringe-inducing oldies like “Feelings” and “Seasons In The Sun” that are quite effective when the party’s ending and you wish your guests would just go home already. As I continually sort through my collection, there’s another musical subset that intrigues me (though not in a weird personal way, I assure you): jailbait songs, such as “Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon” and “Only Sixteen,” tracks that may have a catchy melody, but also contain lyrics that, if enacted in real life, would likely lead to felony prosecution. Likewise, jailbait movies range from the cheesy low-budget depths of Ed Wood’s Jail Bait to highbrow cinema like Lolita and Pretty Baby; the Oscar-winning American Beauty mixed the jailbait element with a mid-life crisis story. To this list we can add An Education, an intelligent production from BBC Films that centers its coming-of-age tale around a romantic relationship between a British schoolgirl and an older man — a coupling that, if not necessarily illegal by 1961 UK standards, was certainly enough to raise questions, concerns, and eyebrows. Jenny (Carey Mulligan) is a 16-year-old student at a girls’ school in Twickenham. He...

I love movies about or including archangels. I think it has something to do with that inevitable moment when they–Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, crazy-pants Tilda Swinton, crazier-pants Christopher Walken, and even bloated John Travolta–show off that impressive feathered wingspan. So, as tired as I am of the recent glut of apocalypse-themed movies out on the market (this one is the fourth in as many months), I have to admit to being pretty excited to see Legion. After factoring in good-looking and talented Paul Bettany and Dennis Quaid, it should have been a slam-dunk. It should have been. Legion begins on a promising, yet predictably, note: a Sarah Connor-esque opening voiceover (with accompanying views of barren desert landscapes) has a young woman telling the story of her mother who once regaled her with Bible-based end-of-days prophesies. That voice belongs to Charlie (Adrianne Palicki of TV’s Friday Night Lights), a curly-haired, cherub-faced pregnant waitress at a roadside diner–proleptically named Paradise Falls–at the intersection of Las Vegas, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and precisely nowhere. In addition to Charlie, there’s the usual ragtag bunch of strangers whom fate has brought together: Bob Hanson (Dennis Quaid), the divorced, cynical proprieto...

Remember when I unabashedly admitted to being biased in favor of James McAvoy? I wasn’t lying. What that means is that, for me, The Last Station was about a man (played by McAvoy, of course) with saucer-sized blue eyes, an intriguingly crooked nose, perfect teeth, and a Scottish accent. It may have also been about the last days of Leo Tolstoy. Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (played here by Christopher Plummer) was the writer of such literary masterpieces as War and Peace and Anna Karenina. In his dotage, he was also a cult political figure who inspired a throng of followers headed up by Vladimir Chertkov. In this film, Chertkov (Paul Giamatti) hires a young Tolstoyan named Valentin Bulgakov (McAvoy) to serve double duty as Tolstoy’s personal secretary and to spy on the scribe’s wife, Countess Sofya (Helen Mirren). Over a lifetime, Tolstoy’s written and political work have come to support vegetarianism, passive resistance, celibacy, and the abolishment of personal property. Those last two especially rub the Countess the wrong way. She is convinced that the sycophantic Chertkov is plotting to get her husband to sign over the rights to his body of work to the people of Russia, leaving her and her children without an inheritance. To prevent this from happening, she tries ever...

How do you make a statue of an elephant? Easy–you take a big block of marble, and then carve away everything that doesn’t look like an elephant. Similarly, if you wrote a screenplay and filmed it, edited out the meaningless material, and then assembled a movie using only that useless, extraneous footage, it would be much like 35 Shots Of Rum, which is perhaps the most pointless and boring film I have ever barely stayed awake through. This movie by French director Claire Denis features a story with the depth of a grade-school primer: Meet Lionel (Alex Descas). He drives a subway train. He has a daughter, Jo (Mati Diop). She is a college student. She has a boyfriend, Noe (Gregoire Colin). He is their landlord. He is sensitive because he has a goatee and a cat. A cab driver lives next door. Her name is Gabrielle (Nicole Dogue). She likes Lionel and Jo. They do not seem to like her very much. We never know why. Lionel has a friend named Rene (Julieth Mars). Rene is retired from driving a subway train. Rene is sad. So is everyone in this film. Except for Gabrielle, who is the only one who smiles. We never know why. This admittedly sarcastic summary is also sadly accurate, and is the best way I can illustrate that for nearly the entire length of 35 Shots of Rum, NOTHING HAPPEN...

It’s about time Denzel Washington took his turn as the leading man in a post-apocalyptic dystopia. Most of the better (and better-looking) actors of his age have already left their marks on the role. Mel Gibson started his career with one (Mad Max). Kevin Costner nearly ended his career with two (Waterworld and The Postman). And Viggo Mortensen is in one right now (The Road). In the sepia-toned futuristic Wild West world of The Book of Eli, Denzel finally has his chance to walk the scorched Earth. In fact, his character has been walking–dressed in sunglasses, a kaffiyeh, and backpack–for quite a while. The year is unspecified. What we do know is that it’s been so long since the heyday of mankind that there are very few alive who remember the way it was. One of those few is Eli (Denzel Washington). Eli has been on his walkabout for 30 years, ever since the war and ensuing cataclysm that folks describe as “the hole in the sky.” While the film never explains what happened (one if its major flaws, but I’ll get to that in a moment), the consequences are clear: the sun is the enemy. Water is a scarce commodity, literacy an even scarcer one, and basic human decency is the rarest of all. That makes Eli’s reading material–the last surviving Ki...

In 1994, several years before he dove head-first into J.R.R. Tolkien’s Middle Earth and created perhaps the greatest film trilogy of all time, director Peter Jackson impressed international critics and audiences with Heavenly Creatures, a visually stunning depiction of the most infamous murder in New Zealand’s history. After the epic scale of The Lord Of The Rings and the excesses of his King Kong remake, Jackson has returned to his roots to deliver another murder tale laden with fanciful imagery, The Lovely Bones. Unlike Heavenly Creatures, The Lovely Bones is based on a work of fiction, but it shares the former film’s strong attention to period details and its reality-based human drama. It’s 1973 in suburban Pennsylvania, and 14-year-old Susie Salmon (Saoirse Ronan from Atonement) is a typically awkward teenage girl, moony-eyed over the cute English boy at her school, sweetly devoted to her loving father Jack (Mark Wahlberg), and a budding photographer thanks to the 110 Instamatic camera (complete with flashcubes and 24 rolls of film) she received for her birthday. Everything about her life is familiar and relatively typical — until the day she is murdered by George Harvey (Stanley Tucci), an older man living alone in a house right down the street. Susie’s body is n...

It’s January again, which means that between the holdovers from the holiday awards-bait movies, theaters wedge in a few new releases that aren’t good enough for accolades of any kind. Lionsgate continues this dubious tradition with the release of Daybreakers, another cliché-ridden attempt to cash in on the ridiculous vampire craze permeating nearly every avenue of pop culture these days. Honestly, it’s a tired pun to say that vampires suck, but with two current television series based on them, plus the Twilight books and movies, as well as weaker contributions like last year’s Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant, I’m begging and pleading for a moratorium on the whole fanged, blood-swilling subject. Daybreakers is set in the year 2019, about ten years after a plague spread around the world and turned nearly everyone into vampires. This means that now cars have sun shields and are driven with the use of roof-mounted cameras, subways (inexplicably without subway trains) are used for subterranean walking during the daylight, and people —excuse me, vampires — have glowing eyes and fangs and like to mix a little cream in their evening AB-negative coffee. And because they only come out at night, everything’s lit with blue-white lights to make it all look f...

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