John Cusack

Miss Pop Rocks: Lloyd Dobler, How Could You?

Drenched In Blog: Van Halen in Houston

Miss Pop Rocks Has the Flu

Dear Patrick Swayze, Please Get Better Fast. Love, Miss Pop Rocks.

A Bust on Broadway

Good idea, good characters, bad result; Allen's roll comes to a stop

Control Freaks

Being John Malkovich pulls all the right strings

Dogging Ellroy

James Ellroy is straddling popularity and acclaim

Artist of the Week: Room 101

Each Wednesday, Rocks Off arbitrarily appoints one lucky local performer or group "Artist of the Week," bestowing upon them all the fame and grandeur such a lofty title implies. Know a band or artist that isn't awful? Email their particulars to introducingliston@gmail.com. Here at Rocks Off we’ ... More >>

Enema of the People

Each Wednesday, Rocks Off arbitrarily appoints one lucky local performer or group "Artist of the Week," bestowing upon them all the fame and grandeur such a lofty title implies. Know a band or artist that isn't awful? Email their particulars to introducingliston@gmail.com. Here at Rocks Off we’ ... More >>

City Hall Confusion

Each Wednesday, Rocks Off arbitrarily appoints one lucky local performer or group "Artist of the Week," bestowing upon them all the fame and grandeur such a lofty title implies. Know a band or artist that isn't awful? Email their particulars to introducingliston@gmail.com. Here at Rocks Off we’ ... More >>

For Valentine's Day: The Five Worst Romantic Comedies

With Valentine's Day approaching, tbe best most of you poor single bastards can hope for is to get through the night with your bank account relatively intact. Married folks are better off, as all they're really expected to come up with is a perfunctory gift and maybe an evening spent watching a drea ... More >>

A Killer

Grosse Pointe Blank aims high and hits its target

Air Disaster

Bruckheimer's production shows all his Con-temptible traits

History in the Faking

Anastasia plays fast and loose with the truth

Denatured Dixie

Anastasia plays fast and loose with the truth

As You Get Ready For South Padre: The Five Best Spring Break Movies

Spring Break! Since time immemorial (or the mid-20th century, anyway) it's been a rite of passage for college students to spend their days on the beach, presenting their hindquarters to potential suitors, and their nights crammed into structurally unsound firetraps alongside hundreds of potential da ... More >>

Unconventional Conflict

War films get redefined by the complex Thin Red Line

Control Freaks

Quality acting overcomes a thin plot in Pushing Tin

Artist of the Week: O Pioneers!!!

Each Wednesday, Rocks Off arbitrarily appoints one lucky local performer or group "Artist of the Week," bestowing upon them all the fame and grandeur such a lofty title implies. Know a band or artist that isn't awful? Email their particulars to introducingliston@gmail.com. If we were forced by thr ... More >>

Grace Is Gone

A Marine mom dies in Iraq

Martian Child

Schmaltzy Martian Child attacks John Cusack, all dads

Caligula: Imperial Edition, The Paul Lynde Halloween Special, 1408: Collector's Edition and Mystics in Bali

Schmaltzy Martian Child attacks John Cusack, all dads

Tapes 'N' Tapes

Bringing strangers together via the International Mixtape Project

1408

Who woulda thunk it: 1408 is a terrifying, touching Stephen King adaptation

Common Cold

Harold Ramis's Ice Harvest is just a reheated Christmas caper

Puppy Love

John Cusack is another endearing mutt in Must Love Dogs

Hot for Teacher

Jack Black makes School of Rock rock

Identity Crisis

James Mangold's latest looks scary, plays funny and might be genius for it

From Hell to the Theater

The Houston Press Indie Film Series makes its debut

Max Factors

Writer-director Menno Meyjes asks, what if Hitler were once a human being?

Blood Money

Why John Cusack wouldn't do anything till he made this Hitler movie

Back to the Future

Most of this year's best won't be seen until next

The Year of Living Dangerously

Cinema 2002 counterbalanced a treacherous world

Revolting

Meet The New Guy, same as the old guy

Ready to Rock?

Supagroup and the Violent Femmes

Creep Show

O Pioneers!!! turns growing up into unrelenting punk rock.

Screen Plays

O Pioneers!!! turns growing up into unrelenting punk rock.

For Woodstock: The Five Lamest Hippies In The Movies

Forty years ago this weekend, hundreds of thousands of unkempt youngsters descended on the town of Bethel, NY for an advertised "three days of peace and music." Woodstock has since become etched into our country's history, not just for symbolizing the 1960s, but also for unleashing the continuing th ... More >>

Pop Rocks: Dear John...Cusack

​You used to be cool, John Cusack.We first noticed it in the 1980s, when "cool" didn't have a lot of meaning. People used the word in connection with Jan Hammer, the Go-Bots, and Kirk Cameron, which should give you an idea how lost we really were. But somehow you dodged the pitfalls of The Bre ... More >>

He Said She Said: Our Favorite Fictional Performers, Part 2

​Why is that sometimes the fictional bands in movie and television are cooler than real bands? Sadly, some of He Said's favorite bands don't even have albums or videos to speak of, because they don't even exist. The fun part is imagining how awesome their full-length records and tours would be. Th ... More >>

New On DVD: It's The End Of The World As We Know It, And John Cusack Feels Fine As He Cashes A Paycheck

​The only DVD released today that earned big bucks at the box office was the Sony Pictures apocalyptic thriller 2012. The year 2012 has long been predicted by various ancient cultures as the year the world will end (or at least end as we now know it). That idea's the basis for director Roland Emme ... More >>

Where We're Going,We Don't Need iPads

The DeLorean's a Jacuzzi and the '80s are back in Hot Tub Time Machine.

For Opening Day: Five Terrific Baseball Movies, None Of Which Star Kevin Costner

Opening Day is finally here, and we can once again try to resolve our love/hate relationship with the Houston Astros.As of this writing, they are undefeated, so -- so far, so good.Baseball, for all its problems, has long had an unbreakable hold on Americans. So have movies. So here are five great ba ... More >>

The Top 5 Musical Eco-Fails

uscgd8 via Flick​The bad news about the Deepwater Horizon oil spill is that BP's magic undersea dome didn't work, and the slick is now the size of Connecticut. And unless the latest half-assed stopgap measure (a "junk shot" of debris fired down the well in an attempt to plug it) works, it could be ... More >>

Rock And Roll Saved Steve Almond's Life - Here's How

​It's one thing to enjoy music as the kind of casual background noise to a car ride, jog in the park or commercial extolling the incredible mileage of the new Honda. Fiction writer, memoirist and former Miami New Times music writer Steve Almond (My Life in Heavy Metal, Candyfreak) is not that kind ... More >>

A Decade Makes a Comeback

Paying homage to the '80s, from Hot Tub Time Machine to MacGruber.

Bands Named After Movies, Characters & Other Film Stuff

​Ever wonder which of your favorite bands are named after movies? So have we. So we went out and did a little bit of research. BANDS NAMED AFTER ACTUAL MOVIES My Bloody Valentine: The seminal shoegaze act took their name from a low-budget 1981 horror movie about a guy who really, really hat ... More >>

Top 10 Self-Titled Debut Albums

​It wasn't until we were discussing its release this week that Rocks Off realized we're basically the same age as Led Zeppelin's debut album. Recorded in October 1968 and released the following January, Led Zeppelin is 42 years old. It suffers from some of the same ailments as all of us who r ... More >>

Why Are We Building Such A Big Ship? Find Out Here.

It's a well-known fact that most band names are essentially gobbledygook, but here at Rocks Off we're trying to find some meaning in the oddest monikers. Holly Gee​We've said before that New Orleans is providing some really quality acts these days like The Consortium of Genius and Alias: Orio ... More >>

Apollo 13 Launched 41 Years Ago: 5 Best Trivia Bits About the Film

Not only is failure not an option, it's not an accurate quote​Forty-one years ago Apollo 13 blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center, and things went swimmingly for a while. Last year we listed our favorite dweebiest nit-picks about the movie; this year let's look at some favorite pieces of ... More >>