About the only thing this Shaft remake has in common with the original Richard Roundtree cop classic is that great Isaac Hayes theme song and similar funky score (and Roundtree pops up in a supporting role in this one). Both Shafts are swinging ladies men and both have to deal with race issues being African-American cops in a hostile world and working with a corrupt police force. What makes the remake stand out as more than just a serviceable late night TV time killer is the presence of two great unlikely villains teaming up, played by two great actors, Christian Bale and Jeffrey Wright, working at their scenery chewing best.

The original Shaft, directed by Gordon Parks is usually unjustly labeled "blaxploitation," but it’s degrading because Shaft was actually much closer in class and style to an acclaimed crime film like The French Connection than say, some jive like Superfly. Shaft became a minor cultural phenomenon, birthing two decent sequels and even a short-lived television series. The inevitable remake comes 30 years later, and though it might not have delivered as a franchise starter, it does deliver perfectly as a solid action guilty pleasure.

Directed by Oscar nominated director David O. Russell, The Fighter tells the true story of Micky Ward's (Mark Wahlberg) rise to fame from a "stepping stone fighter" to WBU Light Welterweight Champion, and Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale), Ward's half brother. Known as the Pride of Lowell, Eklund rose to stardom for knocking down Sugar Ray Leonard on July 18, 1978 (where Eklund claimed it was a knock down, Leonard claimed he tripped). Unfortunately for Eklund, that was his crowning achievement. Subsequently, after having a fairly average career post Sugar Ray Leonard, Eklund turned to a life of drugs and reckless abandon. Despite Eklund's lifestyle, he trained Ward who eventually became a great welterweight contender.

As this year’s Academy Awards approaches I find myself trying in vain to understand how Public Enemies didn’t garner a single Oscar nomination. The film was gorgeous to look at, featured a career-best performance from Johnny Depp, and avoided the cliché-ridden territory of the period piece biopic for something more ambiguous and relatively challenging. Was that why the film was a relative critical and box office disappointment? Clearly the film did not satisfy as Summer blockbuster entertainment. Universal Pictures didn’t quite know how to market the film and seemingly tried to sell it almost like a comic book adaptation a la The Dark Knight with a larger-than-life image of Depp in a trench coat and fedora, shotgun at his side, stretching the length of office buildings on the huge banner posters that draped L.A. prior to the film’s release. It didn’t work to sell the film because the film they were selling wasn’t exactly the movie that we got. It’s a movie with beautifully shot bank robberies, shootouts rendered in symphonic splendor, and plenty of compelling narrative, but somehow in its fly-on-the-wall approach to following Dillinger it left audiences cold.

Contrary to the average Hollywood celebrity, Bob Dylan’s a star who largely created the stories surrounding him, sold his image based on those stories, but then resisted those stories once the media and his fans began to read him too literally through them. In this fantasy documentary about the singer, director/co-writer Todd Haynes tries to walk the line between individualism (subjectivity defining itself) and his own radical semiotic belief that everything is just stories, signs signifying other signs. The problem here is that if there is no core Dylan that we can ever arrive at, only a series of stories that we compile, how can we understand or appreciate what Dylan was resisting against or why, since that rebel is nothing but another confabulation, no truer than the rest? As the title suggests, the movie celebrates Dylan’s resistance to being defined, giving its subject what he wants, a portrayal on his own terms, not held down by anything he says about himself or others. It’s hardly surprising, then, that Dylan gave permission for the extensive use his music. The irony here is that, despite its postmodernist structure of multiple narratives, the film divines a core Dylan-construct by giving into and clearly defending his side of the story, or stories.

Based on the bestseller by Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho tells the dark tale of sociopath Wall Street trader, Patrick Batemen’s (Bale) slide into insanity and an insatiable need to slaughter.

Christian Bale provides a virtuoso performance that launched him as an adult leading man. From one moment to the next, he is distant and unreadable and on a dime, becomes manic and frenzied. He is both frightening and funny, which is always a great combination in an anti-hero.

The character of Patrick Batemen could easily be interpreted as a metaphor for American society in the 1980s. In his greedy self-importance with little concept of morality, Batemen mirrors the cutthroat capitalistic attitude that defined that decade.