In an admission that will come as a considerable disappointment to a former coworker (who, for the record, is decidedly not Goth), my initial memories of “The Nightmare Before Christmas” were somewhat fuzzy. My first viewing of producer Tim Burton and director Henry Selick’s stop-motion animated film, not too long after its original home video release, was marred with, umm, distractions. So I hadn’t the concrete impressions one might have with a more focused viewing — just an impression of the hand-crafted feel, and a lingering sense of disappointment in relation to the movie’s songs, from Danny Elfman. A re-visiting of the somewhat seminal work — which scored a visual effects…

Too many romantic comedies witlessly hone in on the differences between men and women to create a heightened-stakes backdrop in which every interaction with the opposite sex is imbued with some sort of grand, gender-statement significance, which is of course then supposed to be neatly resolved and tidily put away by the time a paired-off happy ending rolls around. Co-written by Annie Mumolo and “Saturday Night Live”‘s Kristen Wiig, “Bridesmaids” instead focuses a considerable amount of its energy on female friendships, yes, but also the things women want in relationships — love, security, availability — that are the same as men. The result is the best female-fronted Hollywood comedy in years, and a…

The revenge thriller “Hanna” – which plays as sort of like a cross between “The Professional” and “Run Lola Run,” with a pinch of “The Bourne Identity” — courses with an unflagging, forward-leaning vigor. It’s a smart, stylish, interesting and fun piece of pop entertainment, powered by strong performances and all wrapped up in an offbeat but engaging fairytale motif that gives the material a little extra zesty kick. Opening in the snowy wilds of Finland, the story centers on 16-year-old Hanna Heller (Saoirse Ronan), who has the intelligence, strength, stamina and lethal combat skill set of a soldier the opposite gender and twice her age, all thanks to her father Erik…

Directed by “Ice Age”‘s Carlos Saldanha, animated family film “Rio” centers on a rare, domesticated macaw, Blu (voiced by Jesse Eisenberg, who must have beaten out a crestfallen Simon LeBon), who lives an easy life in Minnesota. Believing he’s the last of his kind, Blu has never spread his wings and learned to fly — both figuratively and literally. When he learns of a female counterpart in Rio de Janeiro, Jewel (voiced by Anne Hathaway), however, Blu sets off a wild adventure and makes some new friends along the way. The supporting vocal performance (from George Lopez, Tracy Morgan and Jamie Foxx, among others) are energetic and peppy, but not always…

Back when he was busy being a figment of Russell Crowe’s imagination in “A Beautiful Mind,” no one likely would have much expected Paul Bettany to be an ass-kicking action hero. Of course, folks would have said the same thing about Liam Neeson too, and look how that turned out. While wrestlers-turned-actors like Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and other muscle-bound he-men in the vein of Jason Momoa still fit the mold for a certain breed of action flick, there are other movies that don’t require the correlative “Men’s Fitness” magazine cover, per se, and in the slick streamlined “Priest” — a sort of vampiric re-telling of the classic Western “The…

Walt Disney Pictures rolled the dice with producer Robert Zemeckis’ “Mars Needs Moms”, which was trotted out in 3-D to great fanfare earlier this year, and took a critical and commercial beating, to the tune of a meager $39 million worldwide gross. The film — produced by the same team behind “A Christmas Carol” and “The Polar Express” — isn’t quite as much of a stinker as that dismissal might indicate, but neither is it a wonderful romp or, as Boxoffice Magazine’s Pete Hammond claims on the cover, “the perfect family film in every way.” The storyline — in which nine-year-old Earthling Milo (Seth Green, but also voiced by another,…

Back in the day, Bill Cosby’s “Leonard Part 6″ didn’t have much luck introducing itself to audiences as an original product with a higher integer in its title, and the teen-lilting sci-fi action adventure “I Am Number Four” perhaps elicited similar confusion when it bowed in theaters earlier this February. Unimpressive domestic returns ($55 million), however, might not have sullied the chances of survival for this adaptation of the first in a proposed six-book series cowritten by James Frey (yes, the lying author emasculated by Oprah Winfrey) and Jobie Hughes. If it returns, one will have both international markets (where it grossed $90 million) and the presence of Teresa Palmer,…

Teenagedom and early adolescence is many things, but it’s perhaps chiefly characterized by a crazy hormonal swirl and the feeling that everything matters so deeply and acutely, and hasn’t been experienced by anyone else before. That’s why there will always exist movies like “The Roommate”, which released earlier this year, and turned a tidy profit to the tune of a $37 million domestic gross. And that’s why the bulk of these movies will almost always be terrible, or at least extremely unimaginative — because their target demographic is captive to the embrace of merely goosed feelings as much as anything else, so why try harder. A notably terrible young adult…

Sony Pictures Animation’s smash hit Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs serves up a hilarious, mouth-watering food storm of epic portions on Blu-ray and DVD on January 25, 2010, from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. Based on the beloved bestselling children’s book, the CG animated film features the all-star voice talents of Bill Hader (Night At The Museum: Battle Of The Smithsonian), Anna Faris (House Bunny, Scary Movie franchise), James Caan (Get Smart, TV’s “Las Vegas”), Andy Samberg (TV’s “SNL”), Mr. T (Rocky 3, TV’s “The A-Team”), and Neil Patrick Harris (TV’s “How I Met Your Mother”) in the story of Flint, an outcast inventor who creates a machine that rains…

DreamWorks Animation recently released the latest movie trailer from the upcoming animated film “How to Train Your Dragon” by directors Dean DeBlois (Lilo & Stitch) and Chris Sanders (The Croods) and starring Jay Baruchel (The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian), Gerard Butler (Gamer, The Bounty Hunter), America Ferrera (Ugly Betty), Craig Ferguson (American Dad!), Christopher Mintz-Plasse (Role Models, Year One) and Jonah Hill (Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Superbad). Synopsis: A comedy adventure set in the mythical world of burly Vikings and wild dragons. Stay tuned to Shockya.com for the latest movie news and trailer from “How to Train Your Dragon” and DreamWorks Animation.