Blockbuster Video has shelved its last title.The video-rental giant opened its first outlet in Dallas, Texas in 1985. The chain reached its peak in 2004 with 60,000 employees in more than 9000 stores. By 2010, …

Tag along for a treat in Tagalog tomorrow night when four members of our town's critical elite — City Beat's Glenn Heath, East County Magazine's Brian Lafferty, Movie Wallas' Yazdi Pithavala, and Cinema Spartan's always …

Who coined the phrase “laughing all the way to the bank” and later amended it to, “You know that bank I used to laugh all the way to? I own it now.” None other than …

For the second year in a row, the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Theatre in Balboa Park's Museum of Photographic Arts will host the San Diego Arab Film Festival. A total of 15 shorts and features …

With 140 films to choose from — the program book is as thick as the city directory — spread out over ten days, a world of cinema (aka the 14th Annual San Diego Asian Film …

Devotee that I am of film noir — Jim Thompson, James Ellroy, and underworld lore, in general — there are a few words in the criminal lexicon that no matter how many times their meanings …

Hollywood on Parade No. B-5 (1933): It's the star-studded premiere of Mae West's I'm No Angel at Grauman's Chinese and the Paramount newsreel cameras were there to capture it for Hollywood on Parade, a series …

My introduction to the concept of trick-or-treating was so bland and uneventful that it has forever soiled my view of the holiday. Never wanting to venture too far from home, the first door we knocked …

Why hasn't Landmark's Ken Cinema hired a new employee in six years? Those fortunate enough to work at Kensington's consecrated single-screen are so crazy loyal to the theater that the thought of leaving never once …

Bad role models frequently make for memorable protagonists. Walter Matthau’s beer-soaked little league coach in The Bad News Bears. Chazz Palminteri as Lilo Brancato’s gangster mentor in A Bronx Tale. Toni Colette's zoned out hitchhiker-turned-babysitter …

To date, Paul Feig’s greatest contribution to film comedy has had nothing to do with bridesmaids or bumbling female cops. Am I the only one who made it all the way through I Am David, …

It's official. After persistent rumors of a 2014 release date, the L.A. Times reports Martin Scorsese's long-awaited The Wolf of Wall Street will open on Christmas Day. That's Christmas Day, 2013. Yesterday, some of the …

What’s Halloween without a Saw sequel? This marks the second holiday in a row minus Jigsaw and a cellar filled with raw teenage bodies to exenterate. Last year at this time Frankenweenie, Sinister, Paranormal Activity …

Upon exiting my fourth screening of Jackass #2, one of the ushers at Reading Cinemas Gaslamp 15 noted, “Man, we heard you laughing all the way in the lobby!” Show me a guy walk into …

One has to admire someone with a set of cast iron balls. Local video satirist Mark Dice can use his to chime the hour. It’s a sunny day in San Diego (duh) and you decide …

Casey Kasem, the voice of Scooby Doo, suck-up extraordinaire on The Jerry Lewis Telethon, and the one man who can count backwards better than all others has been absent from the limelight for some time …

Commercials generally don't offer viewers much to chew on. Next time you're confronted with 10 minutes of pre-show advertisements, try munching on popcorn as a means of counteracting the effects of subliminal seduction. According to …

Three separate trailers that basically show the same cataclysmic incident from three different angles did little to arouse my interest. It looked like more effects-driven outer space shenanigans, this time with Bullock and Clooney on …

The twinkle lights of the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Theatre at the Museum of Photographic Arts will once again shine upon German Currents, the third annual festival of German films. Limited to four films and …

See the job, do the job. Shoot a Glock, punch the clock. Based on a true-life, precinct-clearing scandal that rocked the Philippines, On the Job tells the story of high-ranking politicians who employed the services …

Mom-and-pop movie shop Kensington Video is a film-renters haven for its top-shelf collection and personal — familial, even — service. Oh, and their knowledge of all things Charles Bronson.

What’s this? An intelligent, paranoid suspense thriller with no bullets fired, zero special effects, two sizzling romantic leads who don’t kiss (let alone hit the sheets), and the good sense to pack a tripod?! Summer’s …

Cecil Gaines (Forest Whitaker), an African-American man born into a family of sharecroppers and schooled in the art of “knowing he’s black,” spends 34 years of his life in domestic servitude under seven presidents. While …

Films about missing children are as common today as unmotivated camera movements. Shake a cable box and at any given time you’re bound to find a couple. Few are about adult children and even fewer …

Everything you always wanted to know about honeybees but never thought to ask is answered in the sweet documentary More than Honey. Who knew that one-third of what we eat would not exist without these …

Jean-Pierre Grumbach’s (Melville was the French filmmaker’s nom de guerre, appropriated in honor of his literary correlate, Herman) acutely minimalist take on American gangster films resulted in a formal probity unlike anything cinema has experienced …

Look! Up on the screen! It’s absurd! It’s inane! It’s Snyder’s Man! Zack Snyder sucker-punches Richard Lester’s Superman II to date Hollywood’s final say on how to film a comic book. Credit the man of …

A monumental achievement in cinema-as-time-travel. Writer, director Julien Temple (Absolute Beginners, The Filth and the Fury) and his frequent editor, Caroline Richards, availed themselves of the opportunity to boil down 800 hours of sparklingly restored …

If you’ve already had your fill of illusory summer movie magic, why not set aside the comic books and spend some time watching the Iron Man of misrepresentation. In the hands of crackerjack conjurer Ricky …

In order to help underwrite their addiction to steroids and dumbbells (and also to impress the bitches), a trio of meathead bodybuilders resorts to a life of crime by kidnapping an unscrupulous Florida businessman (Tony …

The studio rep described it as “Dreamgirls, only happier.” A stop at the concession stand to pick up an air-sickness bag seemed in order. Well, blow me down! The Sapphires is a feel good movie …

How do you say Neil Simon in French? A professional sperm donor, going by the name Starbuck (Patrick Huard), anonymously fathers what amounts to his own chapter of Big Brothers Big Sisters of Canada. Eventually, …

Like Someone in Love is a logical follow-up to Abbas Kiarostami’s Certified Copy (2010). From its opening long take — the lead character speaks from outside the frame — the director’s sleight of hand draws …

A friend who saw it in Cannes apprised me of the situation: No was Pablo Larrain’s bid for commercialism. If using an old-fangled 1983 U-matic video camera to shoot a 2012 re-creation of the 1988 …

Werner Herzog just happened upon a friend who was screening four films about professional trappers in the Siberian taiga, tradesmen who for centuries have used the same system of capturing animals because they are “unable …

For 28 years, two loyal friends serve a concurrent prison sentence: Val (Al Pacino), behind bars for refusing to finger an associate, and Doc (Christopher Walken), on the outside, waiting to perform the hit when …

The “West Memphis Three” (Jessie Misskelley, Damien Echols, and Jason Baldwin) were teenagers in 1993 when they were wrongfully convicted of the murders of three eight-year-old boys. Directed by investigative journalist Amy Berg (Deliver Us …

Spoiler alert: it ends with the bad guy getting killed. More hurt from Kathryn Bigelow in this docudrama-style (read: handheld) account of the hunt for Osama bin Laden. You can’t preach due process without practicing …

A nonstop joke machine (Billy Crystal) and his equally overbearing wife (Bette Midler) are forced to spend time with their work-obsessed daughter (Marisa Tomei), son-in-law (Tom Everett Scott), and a trio of estranged grandchildren, all …

Quentin Tarantino fails to do for slave owners what he did for Nazis in this, his long-awaited western (southern?) follow-up to the epic war comedy Inglourious Basterds. Oscar-winner Christoph Waltz returns to the Tarantino fold …

UltraStar Mission Valley at Hazard Center. Has there ever been a less appealing name for a theatre? Wasn't this digital transformation supposed to make it easier on all of us? The birthplace of "Pure Digital …

Movie theaters still maintain the magic of moviegoing and, boy, do we need it now. In this issue, we present San Diego's 10 best theaters to get lost in.

Scott: The first inkling that Christmas was not a holiday for Hebrews came from a neighbor kid, the fine Aryan specimen Timothy Murphy: “My Uncle Roy says Jews celebrate Christmas by staying home and counting …