Gerard Butler is all-American presidential security guard Mike Banning. In this epic terrorist attack action flick, he uses all his dedication, manhood,¹ and skill to save the president of the United States and America itself. Dude…

The trailers for Olympus Has Fallen say it all: this is a crazy-dangerous movie with loads of ambition to deliver the greatest action film of 2013 to date.

Storyline

On a ride from Camp David on a bitter winter’s night, tragedy strikes the U.S. president’s limo convoy on an icy bridge. Presidential security guard, Mike Banning (played by Gerard Butler),…

We’ve got what looks like one decent new option this weekend (I’ll be able to tell you for sure after tonight), and a couple still in theaters that are great options as well. I look forward to writing this feature every week because I love seeing what’s new and still in theaters and kind of seeing where things are at.

Topping my list of “want to see” and the one I will be seeing this weekend is:

Olympus Has Fallen - R
This film has Morgan Freeman, need I say more? But seriously this film looks to be fantastic to me. It’s been a while since we’ve seen a good action/thriller in the white…

A new study published by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre has found that illegal downloading doesn’t hurt the music industry. After examining the browsing habits of more than 16,000 Europeans, the research showed that there is actually a positive link between online piracy and visits to legal music stores — so rather than negatively impacting digital revenues, researchers found that music sales can actually benefit from piracy.

“It seems that the majority of the music that is consumed illegally by the individuals in our sample would not have been purchased if illegal…

I sat down to watch Emperor expecting the larger-than-life persona of General Douglas MacArthur to blow me away through the performance of Tommy Lee Jones. By the end of the film, there would be several vocal exclamations from the audience endeared to his beguiling reenactment, much the way audiences responded to Tommy’s performance of Thaddeus Stevens in Lincoln (2012). The emperor of Emperor would be Douglas/Tommy.

While Tommy’s acting was as good as ever, the film took a different turn. Rather than dwelling on the general and his greatness, it is a close look at one of the men behind…

We’ve got a couple of things coming out in cinemas, and a few things still in the cinemas that you might be interested in seeing. We’re slowly but surely getting away from the absolute trash that was in theaters for a couple of dull, dreadful months.

New This Weekend

The Call - R
I plan to see this film tomorrow evening (hopefully). I’m hoping for a decent, film, but probably not a great one. I’m going to venture a guess that this will be a 3 or possibly a 3.5 star rating from me. We’ll see.

When veteran 911 operator, Jordan (Halle Berry), takes a life-altering call from a teenage…

Chinese censors have ended their three-year block on IMDb.com. The country’s cinephiles responded on social media with cheer after regaining access to news and reviews of foreign films, but also expressed doubts about how long this privilege is going to last.

News of Chinese netizens being able to access the Amazon-owned website began to circulate last week, with some quickly commenting on their ability to search for entries of films which have been denied screening licenses by the country’s film regulators – such as Lou Ye’s 2006 Cannes entry Summer Palace, which remains banned in the…

Things are picking up a little at the cinema, there are actually a couple of things worth seeing this weekend. Let’s dive in.

New This Weekend

Oz The Great and Powerful - PG
I saw this film last night and it’s worth seeing, if not quite as good as I might have hoped. Still, it’s loads better than that other Oz film I can’t stand (oh Judy Garland…). Of course this is technically a prequel to that part of the story. And it gets just a tad cheesy from time to time, but it was always enjoyable.

When Oscar Diggs (James Franco), a small-time circus magician with dubious ethics, is hurled…

The industry’s first digital theatrical delivery service is mere months away after five studios and the nation’s three largest exhibitors, Regal, AMC and Cinemark, reached an agreement to partner on a model that delivers films and other content via satellite.

Formed by the three major circuits, Universal and Warner Bros, the group first announced its intentions at last year’s CinemaCon, calling itself the Digital Cinema Distribution Coalition. The five studios involved now are Lionsgate, Disney, Paramount, Warners and Universal; Sony and Fox are in negotiations to join.

Sad in some…

MovieByte has a five star rating system: 0.5 to 5.0. This frees our reviews to be fairly specific about the value of a film using 2.5 stars for a median in terms of entertainment value and quality. However, there are so few good explanations of star rating systems on the Internet. What does a “2.0” or “4.5” mean? Why do we use a 5 star scale instead of a 4 or 10 star scale?

We at MovieByte leave it up to our individual reviewers to determine how to gauge a film. Yet it is people’s natural inclination to give most movies a 1 or 5, which is something all star rating systems suffer from.…