(By David Lay) After 18 years, America’s favorite family has come to the big screen. Behind a massive marketing campaign, The Simpsons Movie was a huge deal well before the curtain fell. Any show that can hang on (especially on Fox) for 18 years, is bound to produce a movie that will be a mega-hit.

This movie definitely did not disappoint. The diehard Simpsons fans as well as the casual movie goers will all be incredibly impressed with this big screen animated comedy. Matt Groening and company went all out for this one, creating a film that is FAR more than “just an hour-and-a-half version of the TV show. The comedy is really top-notch.

The writers were at the top of their game when creating the classic satirical humor that The Simpsons has become famous for. There is a great mix of satire and low-brow humor – just enough to appease the Beavis’s of the world, as well as the Frasier’s. As with the television show, the movie does get fairly political at times, but keeps it funny and never gets preachy.

The creators kept a tight lid on the plot of the movie throughout, which really help to add to the excitement of the experience. As usual, Homer creates a monumental problem that threatens life in Springfield as we know it. It is then up to…well, Homer… to solve the problem. The plot centers around Homer and his newly acquired pet pig, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency and their attempts to solve the pollution problem of Springfield. After a series of events (including a giant dome over the city, a sink hole, and a near mass hanging by the townsfolk), the Simpsons end up in Alaska only to realize, some more quickly than others, that Springfield is their home and is worth saving.

Read the entire review at ColdLeftovers.com

The latest installment of Harry Potter titled Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is embargoed from being released until Saturday at 12:01am. The New York Times was able however to pay a N.Y. book store a pile of cash to get a copy violating the embargo. The review is very positive for J.K. Rowling’s last installment of the pubescent wizard.

J. K. Rowling’s monumental, spellbinding epic, 10 years in the making, is deeply rooted in traditional literature and Hollywood sagas — from the Greek myths to Dickens and Tolkien to “Star Wars.? And true to its roots, it ends not with modernist, “Soprano?-esque equivocation, but with good old-fashioned closure: a big-screen, heart-racing, bone-chilling confrontation and an epilogue that clearly lays out people’s fates. Getting to the finish line is not seamless — the last part of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,? the seventh and final book in the series, has some lumpy passages of exposition and a couple of clunky detours — but the overall conclusion and its determination of the main characters’ story lines possess a convincing inevitability that make some of the prepublication speculation seem curiously blinkered in retrospect.

From his first days at Hogwarts, the young, green-eyed boy bore the burden of his destiny as a leader, coping with the expectations and duties of his role, and in this volume he is clearly more Henry V than Prince Hal, more King Arthur than young Wart: high-spirited war games of Quidditch have given way to real war, and Harry often wishes he were not the de facto leader of the Resistance movement, shouldering terrifying responsibilities, but an ordinary teenage boy — free to romance Ginny Weasley and hang out with his friends.

Read the full NYT Book Review Here

(By David Lay) Elisha Cuthbert brings the sexy back in Captivity, the newest “gore for the sake of gore� horror flick to come out of annals of a dark, disturbed Hollywood. Now, I have seen (and to some degree enjoyed) the Saw series, but this stinker of a flick was just too much.

Its not just that this movie is grotesque, its that it is also completely pointless, endless, and just plain stupid. Director Roland Joffe, from The Killing Fields and… *ahem* Super Mario Brothers: The Movie, puts it all on the line in this modern day story of torture, kidnapping, betrayal and…Love?

But seriously, this is one flawed film. Aside from the direction, the acting was terrible. Cuthbert was far better in The Girl Next Door and Daniel Gillies, who peaked in 2004’s Bride and Prejudice, adds absolutely nothing to the movie……….

Read Complete Review at Cold Leftovers

(By David Lay) Ok, let it be known… I am a Harry Potter fan. I love the books…and the movies. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is the 5^th movie in the Harry Potter series, and because I’m a huge fan of the books, it is really hard for me to separate the books from the movie. But, that notwithstanding, I did like this movie. I’m not sure it was the THE best of the franchise, but it was top 2, for sure.

For starters, the acting was actually pretty good. Daniel Radcliffe is starting to come into his own, and the supporting cast was better than in the previous films. Now, don’t get me wrong, no one from this film will be nominated for an Oscar (or even a Golden Globe), but it was fairly good, especially for a “family friendly? fantasy movie. The movie was well cast, with several huge stars (Ralph Fiennes, Gary Oldman, Alan Rickman) returning. As well as Helena Bonham Carter excellently cast as the purely evil Bellatrix Lestrange. The new-comer, Evanna Lynch, played Luna Lovegood well (though I think she may have been playing herself). All in all, they all got the point across, which for a movie like this is sufficient………….

Read the complete review at Cold Leftovers.