X-Men Origins: Wolverine: A Movie Review 

By John David Ebert 

There is a scene in this movie that occurs early on which shows how Wolverine derived his enormous physical strength. He was part of a government experiment that involved injecting his bones with an indestructible metal called “adamantean.” We watch as Wolverine descends into a tank full of water and a series of needles inject his body at various points with a liquid form of this metal which coats all his bones, effectively transubstantiating their calcium into a mythical metal that is indestructible. Read the rest of this entry »

Terminator Salvation: A Movie Review

by John David Ebert

When James Cameron’s film The Terminator came out in 1984, the idea of machines becoming sentient and eliminating human beings from the world may have seemed far-fetched, a mere science fiction premise for an entertaining 80s drive-in movie. (Yes, drive-ins still existed in the 80s). But now, 25 years later, with the fourth Terminator film having just been released, the idea is not only no longer far-fetched, but it has in fact become a reality.

You don’t believe me? Read the rest of this entry »

Star Trek: A Movie Review

By John Lobell 

The new Star Trek movie is so highly satisfying because it introduces a richness of back-story into a franchise we know so well, and because it adds a mythological depth. This depth does not approach that of Star Wars, but it is there. And since we now have time travel (the young Spock meets the old Spock, played by Leonard Nemoy), we may even get to see the development of a mythological relationship between James Kirk and his father. Read the rest of this entry »

Knowing: A Movie Review

 By John David Ebert

Great artists are always sensitive to changes in our environment that remain subliminal to the rest of us. They pick up these transformations –usually inflicted by new technologies — with their ant-like antennae, and narratize them as pictures which often dramatize scenarios of invasion. George Pal’s 1950s version of War of the Worlds, for instance, was not about aliens from another planet, but about the invasion of our society by television. Note how the aliens bathe their victims in floods of electromagnetic radiation just like the average denizen of our modern living rooms bathed in low frequency pulses fired at him at light speed from his electronic scanning box. Read the rest of this entry »

Watchmen: A Movie Review

by John David Ebert

When I put a mask on my face, it instantly changes the relationship between you and me. Whereas, only moments ago, there was you a three dimensional human being troubled by various difficulties and me a similar type of entity also with similar kinds of problems now there is you and it, a third thing, a new entity that has entered into the relationship. This third entity, more often than not, evokes some type of strange, otherworldly being: a monster or a demon or an evil spirit, or else, if it is a mask of another human being, tends to evoke a cliche, such as, say, Richard Nixon. In either case, the I that was me only moments before has temporarily one hopes disappeared into another realm entirely, namely, the world of ritual, dream, myth, superstition, stereotypes and even cliches. It is, in other words, a flatter world, simpler than ours, more iconic, two-dimensional rather than three dimensional, in which beings tend to exist as eternal icons. Read the rest of this entry »