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Matthew Scott Hunter

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  • Film

    Wednesday, Nov. 26, 2008

    If you’re looking for effective over-the-top fight scenes, Transporter 3 won’t disappoint. Jason Statham is arguably the most charismatic current Hollywood action hero.

  • Luxor

    Thursday, Oct. 30, 2008

    It’s a testament to the power of alcohol that I’m able to stomach a standard lime margarita on my way out. But the lure of T&T’s adjoining frozen daiquiri bar, just outside the restaurant, is irresistible.

  • Reviews

    Thursday, Oct. 16, 2008

    With a title like The Secret Life of Bees, I suppose bee metaphors are inevitable, so here we go.

  • Bar Exam

    Thursday, Oct. 16, 2008

    First Spock died. Then the Enterprise was destroyed. Then the Next Generation Enterprise was destroyed.

  • Mandalay Bay

    Thursday, Sept. 18, 2008

    I’ve never known much about Russian culture. In college, our studies focused almost exclusively on Europe, so most of what I know about the former superpower was gleaned from the film The Hunt for Red October (and that Russian guy had a Scottish accent).

  • Reviews

    Thursday, Sept. 11, 2008

    There are few films quite as oppressively bleak as Frozen River. We follow a single mother, Ray (Leo), whose husband has just robbed her blind and taken off to indulge a gambling problem in Atlantic City.

  • Nightlife

    Thursday, Sept. 4, 2008

    The Grape is a welcome addition to this corner of Town Square. It’s a place for good wine, good conversation and good gripes about how Anakin and Count Dooku shouldn’t have fought in The Clone Wars movie because in Episode III, they clearly indicated that they hadn’t seen each other since Episode II!… Of course, it’s entirely possible that we’ll be the only ones to make use of The Grape for that last purpose.

  • Bar Exam

    Thursday, Aug. 21, 2008

    I’ve tagged along on karaoke nights before, but none quite like this. Sure, there’s the usual database of 70,000 songs (including a large Korean selection), and there’s the requisite private room with dual microphones, but between the couch and the screen that will inevitably broadcast the lyrics of Elvis Presley and The Righteous Brothers, there’s an elevated stage with a stripper pole.

  • Film

    Thursday, Aug. 21, 2008

    There are few narrative formulas as crowd-pleasing and oft-used as the underdog story. Audiences have a timeless desire to see the snobby nobleman fall face-first in the mud while the salt-of-the-earth everyman soars to unlikely victory.

  • Film

    Thursday, July 31, 2008

    There’s a thin line between “winking at the camera” and “drawing attention to how bad your movie is.” In its third installment, The Mummy franchise crosses that line.

  • Nightlife

    Thursday, July 24, 2008

    The Silverton Hotel & Casino has an off-the-beaten-path sort of feel to it, which is odd considering it’s just off of Las Vegas Boulevard—an exceptionally well-beaten path.

  • Film

    Thursday, July 17, 2008

    I remember reading years ago that when John Woo was making Mission: Impossible II, he conceived the action scenes first and then had the screenwriter write his script around those sequences. It showed. The narrative had to strain to explain why there was suddenly a motorcycle chase and where all these doves were coming from, and sometimes it didn’t even bother.

  • Nightlife

    Thursday, July 10, 2008

    In case you didn’t notice from the dozens of enormous cranes littering the skyline, Las Vegas is a city obsessed with the new. Where once there was nothing, there must now be something, and where once there was something, there must now be something new. The old must be redesigned, reinvented and rebuilt. In some cities, places become more precious with age. They become antiques. In Las Vegas, they just become antiquated.

  • Nightlife

    Thursday, June 26, 2008

    When wine connoisseurs think of great places for their beverage of choice in the western United States, several locales come to mind. There’s the Santa Ynez Valley in central California. There’s Napa Valley in northern California. There’s Green Valley in … Henderson, Nevada?

  • CineVegas 2008

    Sunday, June 22, 2008

    Ah Jie lost his money in the stock market and calls a suicide hotline for consolation. His counselor is an overweight woman, but he imagines she’s the sexy betel-nut stall girl he’s become infatuated with.

  • CineVegas 2008

    Sunday, June 22, 2008

    The nameless hero of Goliath is having a bad week. He’s getting divorced, a convicted sex offender just moved into his neighborhood, his job has reassigned him to a department where his co-workers call him “bitch tits,” and his cat (the film’s namesake) has run away. This is a man on the verge of a breakdown, but he’s not quite there yet.

  • Saturday, June 21, 2008

  • CineVegas 2008

    Friday, June 20, 2008

    Mark Twain once said that it’s a pity that the best part of life comes at the beginning and the worst part at the end. In youth, we’re too inexperienced to appreciate the unconditional care offered by a parent and the freedom from responsibility that allows us to simply sit around and waste time.

  • CineVegas 2008

    Monday, June 16, 2008

    Watching Finally, Lillian and Dan is like being on a first date with someone who thinks it’s going really well, while you’re checking your watch every 30 seconds and debating whether or not to fake receiving an emergency phone call. The film bills itself as an awkward love story.

  • Monday, June 16, 2008

  • CineVegas 2008

    Sunday, June 15, 2008

    Those who avoid foreign films because they don’t like reading subtitles have nothing to fear from ¿Donde Estan Sus Historias? (Where are Their Stories?). There are only a handful of lines in the entire film, and you could easily ignore everyone who speaks without losing the plot. There’s no plot to speak of. This movie takes minimalism to the max.

  • CineVegas 2008

    Sunday, June 15, 2008

    ambling addict Frank (Andrews) gets his girlfriend pregnant, loses a lot of money at the racetrack and goes out to sea to fish for crab for six months. When he returns, his girlfriend is gone (surprise!). His best friend happens to be gone, too. Can you guess why they’re both gone at the same time?

  • CineVegas 2008

    Sunday, June 15, 2008

    “Wellness represents a huge paradigm shift in American healthcare,” Thomas Lindsay (Jeff Clark) explains to people throughout the film Wellness, when pitching the titular product/regimen/system. “It’s all-natural, FDA-approved,” he continues, “um … helps the flow of … electrodes in your brain … gives you regular bowel movements with better … uh, shape … and is the first product to ever be distributed globally.”

  • Nightlife

    Thursday, June 12, 2008

    Enjoying Las Vegas nightlife is a tough job if you live waaaaay out near Summerlin. First, there’s the commute. You have to drive for nearly 10 minutes before you even see the teeny little Stratosphere on the horizon. To make it the rest of the way, you have to run a gauntlet of gas stations—at least a dozen, each boasting a sign announcing in big, bold numbers exactly how much this drive is costing you.

  • Film

    Thursday, May 29, 2008

    The summer’s latest tent-pole event movie doesn’t have digital spaceship battles or whip-cracking adventurers or superheroes soaring between skyscrapers. But it does have not one, not two, but three scenes devoted entirely to showcasing different outfits. It’s what my girlfriend gleefully refers to as “fashion porn,” and it will have women lining up at theaters in their best pairs of shoes the same way Star Wars fans lined up for those movies in their best approximations of Jedi robes.

  • Nightlife

    Thursday, May 29, 2008

    You know you’ve had enough to drink when you find yourself on a rock in the middle of the desert early in the morning, staring down a cow with orange spots. And I haven’t even visited this week’s bar yet.

  • Reviews

    Thursday, May 22, 2008

    I’ll just come right out and admit it: I’m typing this review in a battered fedora.

  • Nightlife

    Thursday, May 22, 2008

    Like much of America, Team Hangover is feeling the crunch—and it’s not of crisp bills in our palms.