Remember Hans Gruber, Simon Gruber, Col, Stuart, and even Thomas Gabriel as the baddies in the previous four Die Hard Films? Well don’t go looking for the likes of them here because you will be disappointed. Also remember how John McClane was a blunt but intelligent weapon of the law, and how he cared what happened to the people around him? That’s gone from this film too.

Oh, and remember how the plots of the previous films made sense, simple though the plots were? Well don’t expect everything to make sense this time out, because it’s not going to.

A lot of elements just didn’t add up…

1. A Good Day to Die Hard – $47 million

Five years after Live Free or Die Hard scored $134.5 million, Bruce Willis is back as John McClane in a fifth installment in the enduring action franchise — this time with random Cold War overtones! After a slew of weak performances from movies like Parker and The Last Stand(it’s been a tough winter for Expendables stars), A Good Day to Die Hard is poised to become the first outright action hit of the year. Fox is releasing the film, which was made on a $92 million budget, into 3,553 theaters, and between Valentine’s Day, President’s Day, and Fox’s…

Identity thief suffers from a fundamental flaw. On the one hand, it wants to be a funny and non-serious film full of slapstick humor and cartoony violence that would hospitalize real world people. On the other hand it wants to be taken as a serious drama at other points of the film. While this has been done before, and has even worked for some films, it fails miserably here. Doing a film in the manner I have described, like having your cake and eating it too, is very tricky business.

Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire

Diana (Melissa McCarthy) is established as the identity thief here, she’s…

The marketing for the upcoming film based on the Stephanie Meyer novel, The Host, is starting to pick up some marketing steam. No doubt there will be a lot of built in fans of the The Twilight Saga that will automatically ensure this film’s initial success at the box office, but I also have to admit it does look intriguing.

Recently, the marketing machine has been releasing character featurettes of the various characters in the film. Here’s the latest one, as well as two previous featurettes below. The Host comes to theaters on March 29.

The offerings at the box office this time of year may be a bit tepid, but we’re still here to tell you what might possibly be interesting to you. So here’s your guide to the box office this weekend. Buckle up though, with all the (lack of) excitement here at this weekend’s box office, your (not) going to need to hang on to your socks!!!!!1!!!!!

New This Weekend

Identity Thief - R
This actually looks like it might be fun. I don’t know for sure, it could be so over the top as to cross the line from fun to tedious. Still, I don’t expect it to be any more than a three star film at…

In keeping with the theme of Favorite Fun Futon Films for February (FFFFfF), we are reviewing classics — old and new — that ring true for us. These are carefully selected from the grand archives of film, and we wish to respectfully grace them with our reviews as fans.

We could write about any number of favorite films for home viewing, but a month isn’t long enough to hit more than a handful. We are focusing on the ones we have time to address thoroughly at the risk of appearing like nutty fans for these films. But, hey, if you aren’t nutty about something, then you have never lived!

So…

Not my favorite Star Trek series by any means, in fact easily the worst. To top it off, the first season is absolutely terrible, mostly devoid of action, terrible plots, lack of interesting character dynamics, stupid gaffes that mess up Star Trek‘s timeline and more. Oh, and that theme music. BLEH! Whoever thought it was okay to use sudo pop music for a star trek theme should be FIRED!

But it is Star Trek, and I still like it better than a lot of TV trash out there.

Anyway, if you’re interested (and I don’t blame you if you aren’t), then here’s the trailer.

“What’s wrong with me? I just want to connect. Why can’t I connect with people? Oh, right, it’s cause I’m dead. I shouldn’t be so hard on myself, I mean, we’re all dead. This girl’s dead. That guy’s dead. That guy in the corner is definitely dead. These guys look awful.”

I had to do a double take when I looked at the Tomato Meter at Rotten Tomatoes. As of this writing it is averaging a 77% approval rating from the critics and an 83% from the audience. That’s… weird. Maybe it’s not surprising that the audience rated it so highly, given that there is not a whole lot of good happening in the…

I understand it, and I get why Netflix thinks this is the way things should be. Netflix has ton of television programing available, and their users binge watch seasons in the matter of days. They have the stats to prove this. Why change whats been working for them? Why not challenge the status quo of releasing an episode a week with an original series?

I’m all about challenging the way things are done… but does it make sense?

A fine question, and as much as it may surprise you to hear it, I don’t think I like the idea of releasing all episodes of a season at once. I think Peter makes…