Movies

Whether "American Hustle" is the sign of a brilliant work by a confident filmmaker or a haphazard jumble by an indulgent one is up for the viewer, but even with its numerous detours, it entertains through an outstanding cast, strong dialog and a very solid sense of place and style.

No matter how hard life gets there are always reasons to live, and at Pop Mythology we find that pop culture alone gives us more than enough reasons to endure. And so with 2014 coming on fast, here is our list of the stuff we anticipate most.

Maybe my sense of time has become warped but didn’t they just come out with an Apes movie only last year? Dawn of the Apes, eh? Sounds like they’re trying to play off of Dawn of the Dead, especially with that creepy, zombie-esque close-up shot of the ape. I dunno. The …

Like movies themselves, casinos are monuments to the things we long for. In this spirit, here's a list of some of my favorite movies that either have important casino scenes or, in a few cases, almost entirely take place in or near casinos.

"Game of Thrones" star Emilia Clarke has been officially confirmed to play Sarah Connor in the planned Terminator reboot and we, for one, are thrilled about it.

"The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug" is entertaining enough and an improvement over the previous film that fixes many problems from the original. Still, someone desperately needs to teach Jackson the importance of leaving some things off screen or unspoken.

Mash up "Groundhog Day" with "Starship Troopers," throw in some Philip K. Dickian existentialism and then garnish with Bourne-ish car chases and an exoskeleton borrowed from "Elysium" and you've got "Edge of Tomorrow."

"Frozen" tries really hard to present two strong, independent female characters and I respect that. But I still couldn’t bring myself to love this movie even though I wanted to.

Paul Walker (1973 – 2013)

Of the three movies about the Beat Generation released in theaters this past year, the one worth seeing is "Kill Your Darlings."

"Catching Fire" lives up to its name, and although we don’t yet know if it’ll be the best of the Hunger Games movies, it does what every second chapter should: keep the story hot and spread its flames.

There’s one thing these imagined futures have in common: they all suck. So in this list of awful dystopias, we try to find the bright side of things. Mass infertility in "Children of Men"? Hey, no more worries about birth control!

This is not simply a list of “cult” films or movies with obsessed fans. This list focuses on films in which the fans have taken over its legacy, usurping the producers’ control and proclaiming, “This belongs to us now.”

We at Pop Mythology feel there are other Disney villains who, like Maleficent, are capable of carrying films of their own. The following list represents some of the strongest candidates.

'Ender’s Game' is a generally agreeable sci-fi popcorn flick, though one more likely to be enjoyed by kids just discovering the franchise than those who grew up on the books.