Contributor: Adam R. Holz

After serving as an associate editor at NavPress’ Discipleship Journal and consulting editor for Current Thoughts and Trends, Adam now oversees the editing and publishing of Plugged In’s reviews as the site’s director. He and his wife, Jennifer, have three children. In their free time, the Holzes enjoy playing games, a variety of musical instruments, swimming and … watching movies.

The Pursuit of Happyness

Will Smith and his son, Jaden, bring to life the true story of a father-son family valiantly struggling to step up from the bottom rung of the ladder in 1980s San Francisco.

Read more

Catwoman

“When I’m good, I’m very good. When I’m bad, I’m as bad as I wanna be,” Catwoman Halle Berry purrs. Her movie leans toward the latter.

Read more

Please Step Away From the Pink Pony

Last week, Selena Gomez shot a video for her latest single, “Love You Like a Love Song”—a video that included a couple of ponies with a decidedly pink hue to them. Ordinarily, this is not the stuff of blog posts. But here’s where things take a strange …

Read more

This Is Country Music

God, country and marital faithfulness. Backwoods trysts, ogling girls at the beach and hoisting a tall cold one. Want the dictionary definition of country music? Read on.

Read more

Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo

Deuce Bigalow is back—not that anyone missed him. This time, he’s trying to save his pimp from going to jail in Amsterdam for a crime he didn’t commit.

Read more

Torches

Foster the People generated lots of conversation with its provocative hit about school violence, “Pumped Up Kicks.” Is the rest of the band’s debut album similarly controversial or more conventional?

Read more

Whose Rapture Is It Anyway?

An 89-year-old retired civil engineer from Oakland, Calif., believes today will be Christians’ last Friday on Earth. That prediction has been circulating widely in the news media and on the Internet—and generating all kinds of responses. According to c …

Read more

Super Summer

If—somehow—you haven’t noticed, there are a lot of superhero movies this summer … and even more in the pipeline for next year. Thor has already started hammering the box office. But the Norse god of thunder will soon face stiffer competition than his c …

Read more

“You Make Me Feel …”

There’s not much to Cobra Starship’s latest pulsating dance hit, lyrically speaking. The video’s another story, though.

Read more

Brink

Brink is by definition a first-person shooter. But shooting is only half the battle in this intricate, strategy-intensive contest for control of a desperate island dystopia known as the Ark.

Read more

lovestrong.

Singer/songwriter Christina Perri cozies up to the maidens of ’90s-era Lilith Fair on her melancholy debut about love and loss … and more loss.

Read more

Goblin

The sophomore effort from this influential 20-year-old rapper is so shockingly extreme it makes Eminem and Howard Stern look like middle school boys trying out for the school talent show.

Read more

Lethal … Beaver?

I wasn’t sure what to expect when I walked in to screen Mel Gibson’s latest film, The Beaver (which opens in limited release today). After all, here’s a man who shot to stardom inhabiting iconic characters practically doused in testosterone: Mad Max, L …

Read more

The Beaver

On paper, Mel Gibson’s latest “comeback” film sounds like a bad joke: A depressed and despairing middle-aged father tries to stave off mental illness through … a beaver puppet? On the screen it’s much more serious than that.

Read more

Hot Sauce Committee Part Two

Nearly 25 years after the Beastie Boys first fought for their right to party, this influential rap trio is still banging the same drum.

Read more