Short version: While very enjoyable overall, there are some things about it that are incredibly annoying and could have been easily corrected.

I’m going to presume that you have already seen this film before you read this review. It’s pretty filled with spoliers, so be warned!

I don’t think that I have to talk about how much I love Indiana Jones, or how much I’ve been looking forward to this fourth instalment in the franchise. You all ready know, and if you don’t - then why haven’t you been reading Screen Rant before this?

George Lucas is a personal hero of mine, the man comes under a lot of fire from movie fans, but I have stood firmly beside the quiffed, plaid shirted wonder for years, and I can even defend the Star Wars prequels. If it’s possible I’ve been looking forward to Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull more than the last three Star Wars movies - mainly because I didn’t feel that they’d have the same magic as the originals because Harrison Ford, Mark Hamill and Carrie Fisher wouldn’t be on the cast list. I had no such worries with Indiana Jones - Ford would be back, and to me, that made me want to see this new movie.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Learn more about Screen Rant or if you want more frequent updates follow us on Twitter. Thanks for visiting!

Short version: Prince Caspian is much better than the first Narnia film.

Let’s get straight to the point: If you liked the first Chronicles of Narnia movie, you’ll like this one even better. For some reason I never wrote a review of the first one, but if I had I probably would have given it about , a full point lower than Prince Caspian.

On the other hand, if you’re a big fan of the book upon which this film is based, you’re going to be torn because it deviates heavily from that story. I wouldn’t have known that myself, but my daughter re-read the book just recently and found herself pulled in two directions regarding the movie. On its own she thought it was very good, but she was perturbed over the inclusion of entire sequences that never appeared in the book while parts of the original story were completely absent from the film.

Short version: While not perfect, it comes pretty damn close - Iron Man is one of the best superhero movie adaptations to hit the big screen so far.

Finally. It’s here.

And yes, you can rest easy - especially if you’re a long time Iron Man fan, this movie will rock your world. If you’re not, get ready to witness the launch of the next big superhero franchise.

Believe it or not, this is one of the more difficult reviews I’ve written. I’ve been a huge supporter of this film, the production and Jon Favreau since day one, and I’ve also been looking forward to it probably longer than most of you reading this have been alive. So it was difficult to balance the fanboy love for the character and the fact that I want it to do well, with an objective look at the film as a whole.

So, without any further delay, here’s my review, free of any major spoilers…

The movie opens with the very familiar scene of Tony Stark (played by Robert Downey Jr.) riding in a Humvee with some soldiers in what is presumably Afghanistan. Although we’ve seen about a minute of this scene in trailers and clips, there’s much more to it that’s very funny and serves to start giving us a sense of who Stark is almost immediately. He’s a billionare, but he’s very engaging and as far from “stuffy” as you can imagine. Within a couple of minutes he puts the intimidated soldiers at ease.

Of course just as that happens all hell breaks loose when an explosion takes out the vehicle ahead of theirs and brings their convoy to a stop. They’re obviously outgunned and the vehicle (and soldiers are peppered with armor piercing bullets. Stark manages to get away from the vehicle and behind cover where he tries to call for help, but (as we’ve seen) he gets hit by shrapnel from another explosion.

By Vic Holtreman

Short version: Your opinion of the film will with almost complete certainty be predicted by your opinions on Darwinism vs Intelligent Design.

Yes, I know everyone is looking for reviews of Morgan Spurlock’s Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden? Here’s a spoiler: He doesn’t find Osama. His movie is funny and entertaining, but I think this film will generate far more debate and discussion and is as relevant to what’s happening today as Spurlock’s movie.

Having said that, I believe that writing this review is almost a pointless exercise, but I’ll write it anyway. Why? Because your opinion of the film will with almost complete certainty be predicted by your opinions on Darwinism vs Intelligent Design.

I’ve been scouring a few sites looking to see what people thought of Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed and it is expectedly getting skewered. Rotten Tomatoes has it at 9% at the time of this writing and over at IMDB.com it’s sitting at 3.3/10. The interesting thing about the rating over at IMDB is that 88% of the votes are either a “1″ or a “10,” with very few in between. I’m guessing that most of the votes on the “1″ side are from people who haven’t even seen the film.

By Vic Holtreman

Short version: Forgetting Sarah Marshall is like a great comedy buffet: a huge variety of jokes and situations, most of them laugh out loud funny.

When I attended WonderCon a few weeks back, I had the opportunity of attending the panel for Forgetting Sarah Marshall. The cast and director were quite funny and engaging, in particular British actor Russell Brand, who the audience found hysterically funny. We were also shown some extended clips from the film which I thought were pretty good, but I did have some reservations.

Sometimes a funny cast and director manage to make a movie that isn’t.

I’m happy to report that isn’t the case here. If you don’t mind (or are even a fan of) bawdy comedies that are not shy in their use of four letter words, nudity (particularly of the male variety, but I’ll get to that in a minute) and um, mature situations, then I think you’re going to like this one a lot.

The film opens with our “hero” Peter Bretter (played by Jason Segel). He’s in a sloppy apartment, consuming a huge bowl (and I mean huge) of what look like Fruit Loops. He looks like your typical Joe Shmoe bachelor: sloppy apartment, pudgy, sloppy looking himself, and basically harmless. But as it turns out, he’s been dating the uber-hot female star of a CSI-like TV series named of course, Sarah Marshall (played by the uber-hot Kristen Bell).

By Vic Holtreman

Short version: As close as you can get to a family-friendly, live-action satire of Disney animation, made all the better since Disney itself made the film.

No, Enchanted isn’t usually the sort of movie we review here on Screen Rant, but you know what? It’s a great, funny film and if the more “macho” among you can set aside your testosterone, you just might find yourselves enjoying this.
I mean who among us has never seen at least a couple of Disney animated films when we were kids? The fun of this film is watching how it manages to poke fun at Disney movies and the fascination comes from how they did it without being the slightest bit mean-spirited about it.

Enchanted opens with a traditional 2-D animated sequence that could fit into many old Disney movies: Pretty young girl, singing and dancing with a bunch of woodland creatures, all helping her to build a mannequin of her Prince Charming. The actual prince hears her singing, makes his way to her and within minutes they decide they’re in love and prepare to be married.

By Sybil Vasche

Short version: Don’t wear white when watching this wonderfully crafted first feature film from Jonathan “we need more blood” King.

Picture if you will, scenic green hills next to a panoramic view of the ocean, beautiful orchestrated music, and mutant flesh-eating sheep.

It could happen and it does in the New Zealand import Black Sheep (2006). In New Zealand, the sheep out-number the humans so a movie like this was just begging to be made and thankful for us, that person was writer/director Jonathan King.

A young man named Henry (Nathan Meister) returns to his family’s ranch in order to sell off his share of the business to his older brother Angus (Peter Feeney). But instead of the quick transaction he imagines and (he arrives in a taxi and tells the driver to wait) he gets sucked into a weird journey that will take him through his own personal hell.

By Vic Holtreman

Short version: Jack Black is awesome in this movie that starts out hysterically funny but veers off into sentimentality.

Two things could have made Be Kind Rewind better:

1. If it actually had been made on a shoestring budget by a couple of buddies.

2. If it had stuck with the premise of being a comedy all the way through to the end.

Aside from those points, it was still a great film.

Jack Black stars as Jerry, a uneducated slacker with big dreams who lives in a trailer. He’s pals with Mike (played by Mos Def), a low-key guy without any big aspirations who works at one of the last few VHS video rental stores left in New Jersey.

By Vic Holtreman

Short version: Funny, scary, gory and unpredictable, this is sure to become a cult classic with a strong following.

The Signal was one of my favorite films from those I had the opportunity to watch and review at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival. As a longtime horror movie fan (much more of older stuff than what’s come out recently), it was great on many levels and fortunately you’ll be getting the opportunity to see it soon as it was picked up for theatrical distribution.

There was a short film before the main feature called Little Farm which was shot in only 48 hours. Given that constraint it wasn’t bad, except for the fact the two of the three main characters gave pretty close to the worst performances I’ve ever seen on screen. Aside from that, although it was pretty strange, in the end it delivered some pretty good scares. I actually had a woman sitting next to me ask if that was the main feature.
On to the main event…

By Vic Holtreman

Short version: If you’re a fan of the previous films, Stallone’s awesome new Rambo will blow you away.

After having seen some of the Rambo reviews over at Rotten Tomatoes and the overall rating of only 35%, I fully expected to be disappointed by Sylvester Stallone’s second revisiting of an iconic character. So you can imagine that it came as a complete shock to me when I ended up loving it.

Rambo opens with real footage of the nightmarish abuses that are currently going on in Burma. It’s very disturbing and at the very least I believe that Stallone is hoping that this will draw attention to what’s going on over there with the military murdering innocent men, women and children on a daily basis.

From there the film cuts to John Rambo in the Thai jungle (Thailand borders Burma) where he is out with a local man wrangling cobras. The local town’s main attraction involves shows were men taunt cobras, pythons and other dangerous snakes. It seems that he has been living there for a long time - living a spartan, simple existence among the local people.