This week’s featured film is White House Down which comes out June 28th and stars Jamie Foxx and Magic Mike, check that, Channing Tatum. I got confused there because Tatum wears an undershirt while fighting all the terrorists because why take Kevlar off any of the bad guys you kill.

Looks like Maggie Gyllenhaal plays the female lead, although she’s never at her best when she tries to play a tough guy. But glad to see her back in action after what the Joker did to her. Bruce Wayne will be so relieved.

The plot seems pretty realistic. A criminal mastermind manages to compromise, blow up, and/or occupy the Capitol, Air Force One, the White House and more all at once. Let’s take a look.

I think they basically gave us the whole movie eh? I’m kind of getting an “Air Force One but inside the White House” vibe. This one will probably be a rental for me.

What do you think?

Trailer Gold or Trailer Trash?

How do you rate White House Down?

SKIP IT, RENT IT, or SEE IT IN THEATERS?

Check out all the films we’ve sneak peeked at the Movie Trailer Mine.

WARNING: Spoilers will be all over this. Don’t read if you don’t want to know major spoilage!

Check out Part 1 of my review: The 5 Best Things About Man of Steel

To hear me discuss Man of Steel, check out my StoryMen podcast!

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Superman is a rare character in my life. I would always be able to walk away from a movie about him acknowledging some cinematic shortcomings yet pretty much still loving the movie because I have a hard time separating my feelings for the cape from my perspective on the movie. But to quote Doc Holliday in Tombstone: “My hypocrisy goes only so far.”

In 2006 we finally got Superman Returns which effectively closed out the Richard Donner/Christopher Reeves films. That movie started out okay and then out of nowhere, um, Superman found out he had a kid he didn’t know about. What?

Now the new movie is here and it was going along smashingly, literally, until the end when, well, let’s come back to that in a moment.

3 Things That Could’ve Been Done Better In Man of Steel

1. Minor Characters

The lack of minor character development is noticeable, especially as it concerns Perry White and The Daily Planet crowd (and the complete absence of Jimmy Olsen). And if they were going to have Supes and Lois Lane making out they could have done more to develop that romantic relationship. I guess they went The Princess Bride rules and skipped the kissy parts because a massive segment of their target audience is teenage boys.

2. Some more happiness and humor

Where’s the joy? I figured this film wouldn’t be a laugh riot since Christopher Nolan was basically doing the Superman version of Batman Begins, but how about a bit of happiness eh? Man of Steel is a gritty, edgy story of Superman’s origins–both on Krypton and Earth–sans humor, especially the campy kind.

Clark Kent has always been such a charming klutz which is one of the reasons I could always relate to him. I was never a broody rich kid/man like Bruce Wayne, but I understood what it was like to be a goofy writer like Clark and always hoped that I was secretly awesome too. Continue Reading…

WARNING: Spoilers will be all over this. Don’t read if you don’t want to know major spoilage!

To hear me discuss Man of Steel, check out my StoryMen podcast!

I started writing my review for Man of Steel the morning after catching the first midnight showing available. I wrote and rewrote. I edited, revised, and mostly rethought.

Any fan of Superman will think about this film. A lot. Good or bad, it definitely resonates.

I’ll divide my thoughts into two parts. Here are 5 things I really liked about the film: Continue Reading…

Time for Classic Cinephiles with Melissa Tagg and yours truly. This week we’re chatting about Some Like It Hot which stars Marilyn Monroe, Tony Curtis, and the amazing Jack Lemmon.

The American Film Institute considers this movie, directed by Billy Wilder, to be the greatest comedy of all-time. I disagree but did only recently watch the film for the first time ever.

Since I’ve already introduced Melissa and this new series called Classic Cinephiles, let’s get right to the conversation. I hope you’ll chime in too.

(We had a bit of echo-y audio since it’s still early but already have that ironed out in video three).

What do you think is the funniest movie of all time?

Have you ever seen Some Like It Hot?

Classic Cinephiles is a regular feature in which we revisit/introduce classic movies from the Golden Age of Hollywood. Catch up on all the movies we’ve talked about by visiting the Official Classic Cinephiles Page.

We at The StoryMen LOVE our Star Trek and have been anxiously awaiting the new film Into Darkness which released a couple weeks back. So we thought we would dedicate an entire episode to all things Trek.

We cover everything from the original series that launched a thousand ships through some of the modern variations. Turns out we each have plenty of memories related to this franchise of our youth. Do you?

Check out this episode and tell us about your connection to Star Trek in the comments over at our StoryMen webiste. We held off on reviewing the new movie and spoilers until later in the episode so you can listen to most of the podcast if you still haven’t seen Into Darkness. Just follow this link and boldly go where… just kidding (about the catchphrase, not the link).

The StoryMen episode 18: StoryMen Into Darkness

Connect with the StoryMen in two simple ways.

1. Rate & Subscribe on iTunes.
2. Like the Storymen Facebook page.

This week’s featured film is Monsters University which comes out June 21st. If you never saw Monsters, Inc. (2001) by Pixar you should do that.

Good news for those of you with Halloween costumes of Sully and Mike stored in your attic because this prequel is sure to bring the lovable monsters (voice by John Goodman and Billy Crystal) back to prominence.

You really should check out the official movie website which is super creative and detailed, not to mention a great example for storytellers about crafting a fiction world. They even have an MU events calendar loaded with items like movie night for “Screaming In The Rain.” Fun stuff.

What do you think?

Trailer Gold or Trailer Trash?

How do you rate Monsters University?

SKIP IT, RENT IT, or SEE IT IN THEATERS?

Check out all the films we’ve sneak peeked at the Movie Trailer Mine.

This week’s featured film is The Internship starring Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson in which a couple of guys attempt to land a dream job at Google after losing their low tech jobs. the film comes out June 7.

This isn’t the first time we’ve seen this comic duo. Vaughn and Wilson teamed up for The Wedding Crashers eight years ago. When I first saw the teaser for this film a while back I had a ‘Meh’ feeling. Then I saw this extended trailer in the theater and my curiosity increased.

I think Vaughn and Wilson will be funny and the supporting cast looks good. Check it out.

What do you think?

Trailer Gold or Trailer Trash?

How do you rate The Internship?

SKIP IT, RENT IT, or SEE IT IN THEATERS?

Check out all the films we’ve sneak peeked at the Movie Trailer Mine.