Movie Reviews
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time
If nothing else, "Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time” can claim one achievement: It's based on a video game, yet it is not terrible. This has never happened before.
Go ahead and argue! Go ahead and list the video-game-based movies that you think...
Micmacs (French)
In "Micmacs," a man seeks revenge on the soulless companies responsible for manufacturing the weapons that killed his father and left a bullet lodged in his own head. Dark stuff, no? Except "Micmacs" isn't a gritty thriller but a whimsical comedy -- ...
Sex and the City 2
There's nothing wrong with "Sex and the City 2" that couldn't be fixed by shaving 45 minutes off the running time and replacing Carrie Bradshaw with a character who isn't spoiled and unlikable. OK, I know "unlikable" isn't the right word, because obv...
MacGruber
There isn't much competition in this category, admittedly, but "MacGruber" is the funniest "Saturday Night Live"-based film since "Wayne's World." We'd have breathed a sigh of relief if it were merely not awful. The fact that it's actually pretty goo...
Shrek Forever After
Any movie franchise that reaches its fourth entry runs the risk of becoming too familiar, no longer a special event but merely another episode in a never-ending series. That's how "Shrek Forever After" feels. If there were a "Shrek" TV show, this cou...
Letters to Juliet
The people who write the letters to Juliet in "Letters to Juliet" are lovelorn women who seek the fictional dead teenager's counsel. Never mind that she is fictional, and dead, and a teenager. They don't really expect a response anyway. They just wan...
Just Wright
There is something to be said for a movie like "Just Wright," where the protagonist is decent and noble and eventually has good things happen to her simply because she deserves them. There is something to be said for letting the character who would n...
Robin Hood
A great many thing are wrong with Ridley Scott's "Robin Hood" -- it's too long, too drab, and too tedious, to name a few -- but let's start with its title. Just as Tim Burton's "Alice in Wonderland" sounded like a remake but was actually a sequel, Sc...
The Swimsuit Issue (Swedish)
You may be familiar with the type of movie where a group of lovable losers get together to do something you wouldn't expect people like them to do, and therein lies the comedy. You had out-of-shape men stripping in "The Full Monty," and old ladies po...
Iron Man 2
"If it lacks a little oomph in the story department, or if you could wish for maybe one more action sequence, Robert Downey Jr.'s dynamo central performance makes overlooking those slight flaws an easy thing to do."
That probably sounds familiar, ...
Babies (documentary)
Babies! They're adorable! What with their big eyes and their smooth skin and their happy smiles and their unrivaled feces-production capabilities. Babies! Am I right?
The documentary "Babies" asks the tough questions about human infants, questions...
Trash Humpers
I told my brother I was reviewing a film called "Trash Humpers," and he said, "Oh, they're probably using 'hump' to mean carrying or hauling, like, 'I gotta hump this trash out to the landfill.'" And I told him that knowing what I do about the filmma...
Mercy
Stop me if you've heard this one before. A womanizing cad doesn't believe in true love, even though he makes his living writing novels about it. He sleeps with one beautiful woman after another, never getting attached, always pleased when the women l...
Please Give
By the looks of things, Nicole Holofcener's muse must be Catherine Keener. The tart-tongued, throaty-voiced actress has appeared in all four of her feature films, "Walking and Talking," "Lovely & Amazing," "Friends with Money," and the new "Pleas...
A Nightmare on Elm Street
If you get right down to it, "A Nightmare on Elm Street" is a movie about people trying not to doze off. Having just watched it, I know how they feel. OH SNAP!
There was no reason to remake the 1985 slasher classic, of course, except that "Hallowe...
The Human Centipede
You are familiar with the type of horror movie in which attractive young people get lost in a rural area and seek refuge at the only house they can find, where they learn, to their great dismay, that the occupants are homicidal maniacs. That is the t...
Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll
You may recall that "Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll" was the name of a song by Ian Dury and the Blockheads, a British New Wave punk band from the late 1970s and early '80s. If you don't remember it, or if you're not sure you've heard of Ian Du...
Best Worst Movie (documentary)
When Michael Stephenson was a young boy in Utah, he got the starring role in a film that was being shot locally by an eccentric Italian husband-and-wife team who knew how to crank out bad movies cheaply. This one, ostensibly a horror, was called "Gob...
The Back-Up Plan
It happens every time. The minute you get in the bathtub, the doorbell rings. As soon as you wash your car, it rains. And the very day you're artificially inseminated so you can have a child on your own, you finally meet the man of your dreams. Whadd...
The Losers
"The Losers" is one of those jokey, comic-book-based action movies where things get blown up a lot and nobody takes anything seriously. That in itself is fine, but "The Losers" takes the nonchalance too much to heart and comes across as lazy. It's bi...
Zonad
The moment "Zonad" clicked for me was about halfway through, when Cinematical editor Erik Davis leaned over and whispered, "This is like a 'Simpsons' episode." Yes! Exactly! I mean, you shouldn't talk during the movie, but yes! The cheerfully implaus...
The Joneses
Do people still say "keeping up with the Joneses"? I know we still jealously observe our neighbors' lifestyles and try to compete with them, but I think the expression has gone out of fashion. Here's hoping "The Joneses," a dark and funny satire abou...
Death at a Funeral (2010)
Understand that I have no problem with "Death at a Funeral" being remade even though the original is only three years old and was already in English. While there are certain films that should be off-limits to remakes, "Death at a Funeral" -- a passab...
Kick-Ass
We've all had daydreams about being a superhero, but how many of us have actually pursued that goal? I quote Dave Lizewski, the protagonist and narrator of "Kick-Ass": "Like every serial killer already knows, eventually fantasizing just doesn't do it...
Date Night
We begin with the premise that Steve Carell and Tina Fey are funny. If you don't accept this, then "Date Night" -- in which they play a husband and wife who get mixed up in a crime caper while trying to enjoy a simple night out -- has nothing for you...
The Square
"The Square," a fiendishly gripping thriller from Australia about non-criminals who get sucked into a life of crime, plays out like one of those nightmares where things keep getting worse no matter what you do. That doesn't sound like much of a selli...
The Greatest
Is there any emotion harder to portray on film than grief? Where other emotions generally have obvious physical manifestations, grief is often completely internalized, leaving it up to actors and filmmakers to find ways of conveying that a character ...
Clash of the Titans
The first thing you should know about "Clash of the Titans" is that if you pay extra for a 3-D ticket you are being ripped off. The film wasn't shot in 3-D; it was retrofitted for 3-D in post-production, when Warner Bros. decided people would think t...
Why Did I Get Married Too?
Tyler Perry's "Why Did I Get Married Too?" is a sequel, but you don't need to have watched 2007's "Why Did I Get Married?" to understand what's going on. In fact, you barely need to watch THIS one to understand what's going on. In accordance with his...
The Last Song
You guys, Miley Cyrus is totally growing up. As Ronnie Miller, the protagonist in "The Last Song" -- her first big onscreen role since Hannah Montana -- she does teenager-y things like act rebellious and kiss a boy. She even storms off in a huff. In ...
Hot Tub Time Machine
When the movie-title hall of fame is built, surely "Hot Tub Time Machine" will be honored in the same wing as "Snakes on a Plane." What is "Hot Tub Time Machine" about? It is about a hot tub that is also a time machine. The title gives you permission...
How to Train Your Dragon
We've come to expect certain themes in our animated features, and "How to Train Your Dragon" has most of them: single-parent family, kid who's weird or different, cute animal for a sidekick, message of individualism and follow your dreams and just be...
The Eclipse
The press kits that accompany most films usually aren't very useful beyond telling you how to spell the actors' names, but the one for "The Eclipse" was insightful. The film is an unusual mixture of somber character drama and supernatural horror, and...
City Island
Just off the Bronx, in Long Island Sound, is a spit of land called City Island. It's an obscure place, even to New Yorkers, which probably explains how it retains the look of a quaint New England fishing village despite being part of the biggest city...
The Runaways
In the mid 1970s, an all-girl rock band from L.A. called The Runaways briefly flourished before self-destructing for the usual reasons: drugs, jealousy, not being very good, etc. The group helped kick the door open for other female rock singers and b...
Mother (Korean)
Is there a sweeter word than "mother"? It (or a simplified version of it) is usually one of the first words a baby learns to say. In every language it suggests love and nurturing, as well as fierce protection. You do not get between a mother and her ...
Green Zone
You may have heard in history class that the United States led an invasion of Iraq in 2003, toppling Saddam Hussein's government in order to stop him from using the weapons of mass destruction that he supposedly had access to. You may have also heard...
Our Family Wedding
The premise of "Our Family Wedding" makes it sound awful: Two young people are engaged to be married, but their fathers hate each other. There will be wackiness and sabotage and childish behavior! Ha ha! But you gotta hand it to them. They took this ...
Alice in Wonderland
Here are a few things that Tim Burton's new film "Alice in Wonderland" is not:
- A remake of Disney's animated "Alice in Wonderland."
- An adaptation of Lewis Carroll's novels, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass."...
Brooklyn’s Finest
According to the ads, the major selling point of "Brooklyn's Finest" is that it's from the director of "Training Day." This is true! They are not lying about that. His name is Antoine Fuqua. He also directed "Tears of the Sun," "King Arthur," and "Sh...
A Prophet (France/Arabic/Corsican)
In "A Prophet," Malik El Djebena is a 19-year-old semi-delinquent who has just been sentenced to six years in prison for assaulting a police officer, an offense he vehemently denies at first, until he realizes no one cares whether he did it or not. M...
Cop Out
The best joke in "Cop Out" isn't even in the movie, it's in the title. The film was originally called "A Couple of Dicks," using the old slang term for detectives, but Warner Bros. blanched at the thought of putting it on billboards and TV commercial...
The Crazies
There isn't a lot for "The Crazies" to do that hasn't already been done, and not just because it's a remake. (The 1973 original was written and directed by zombie godfather George A. Romero.) As set-ups go, "a small town is hit by a virus that makes ...
The Ghost Writer
It is very frustrating that Roman Polanski drugged and raped an adolescent girl and fled the U.S. justice system, yet still occasionally produces outstanding films. We don't want a man guilty of his crimes to continue achieving professional success; ...
Shutter Island
Coming on the heels of his multiple-Oscar-winning "The Departed," Martin Scorsese's "Shutter Island" is bound to feel like a letdown, especially since the "Departed" recognition had such a strong whiff of "lifetime achievement" about it. Scorsese's c...
Valentine’s Day
All of New Line Cinema's careful planning has not been wasted on Douglas Young ("the-movie-guy"), an IMDb user who begins his review of "Valentine's Day" with: "What timing! The producers are releasing 'Valentine's Day' two days before the real event...
The Wolfman
Universal Pictures is rightfully proud of its heritage as the Hollywood studio that first popularized horror films. Most of the iconic movie monsters of yesteryear -- Dracula, the Mummy, Frankenstein's monster, the Wolf Man, the Invisible Man -- were...
From Paris with Love
When you see that crazy French filmmaker Luc Besson is involved with a movie, you know you're in for something giddy, energetic, over-the-top, completely ludicrous, crazy, and French. About 80 percent of the time -- "The Fifth Element," "The Transpor...
Frozen
You can picture Adam Green, the writer and director of "Frozen," sitting on a ski lift one day, idly thinking, "What if I fell off? How high above the ground am I? No! What if the lift stopped moving and they couldn't get it started? What if I was tr...
Ajami (Hebrew/Arabic)
The Middle East is such a powder keg that we've come to assume every film from that region will be ABOUT the fact that it's a powder keg. "Ajami" is what you'd expect in that regard, but in nearly every other way it's a surprise, a bold and serious f...
Extraordinary Measures
Three friends of mine pointed out, independently of one another, that the commercials for "Extraordinary Measures" make it look like a TV movie. This is partially explained by its being a production of CBS Films, the newly formed film branch of the n...
Legion
In, "Legion," the first thing Michael the archangel does when he arrives in Los Angeles two days before Christmas is slice off his wings and kill a couple of cops. If this behavior strikes you as decidedly un-angelic, wait'll you learn that he's actu...
Tooth Fairy
"Tooth Fairy" stars Dwayne Johnson as an arrogant minor-league hockey player who is forced to serve a stint as the title character as penance for his disbelief in magic, or dreams, or something. The motivation for this scenario, obviously, is that so...
The First Movie (documentary)
When Mark Cousins was growing up in war-torn Belfast, he would escape the horrors of life by going to the movies. For a child, imagination can make all the difference. But what about kids in strife-ridden areas who don't have the luxury of nearby mov...
His & Hers (documentary)
You know who's great? Women. Seriously, they're one of my favorite genders. And you know who agrees with me? Ken Wardrop, whose adorably sweet documentary "His & Hers" presents life through the eyes of about 70 different Irish women. I should cau...
The Book of Eli
As usual with apocalypses, the one in "The Book of Eli" left America covered in soot, grime, dust, and ash. We know little about what happened, only that it was 30 years ago and the survivors call it "the flash." Actually, probably The Flash. Kind of...
The Spy Next Door
When Jackie Chan gave up on acting and decided to retire, he didn't issue a press release, he made "The Spy Next Door." The message is poignant and unmistakable: I give up. I have been defeated. My career no longer means anything to me.
It's sad ...
Leap Year
Every January there's at least one awful comedy aimed at female audiences that makes you wonder how dumb Hollywood thinks women are. Last year it was "Bride Wars" and "New in Town." In 2008 it was "27 Dresses." This year it's "Leap Year's" turn to su...
Youth in Revolt
"Youth in Revolt" could mark the moment where Michael Cera's standard persona of timid, virginal worrier wears out its welcome. He's starting to suffer from "Funny, But" Syndrome, i.e., "What you're doing here is funny, but it's the same thing you di...
The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus
You know who would love "The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus"? Terry Gilliam. It's bizarre and whimsical and often beautiful to look at, and it makes no sense whatsoever. It's totally something Terry Gilliam would dig!
Wait, what? He directed it?...
It’s Complicated
The message of "It's Complicated" seems to be that it sure is tough being a wealthy white person in Santa Barbara. Boy howdy! First there's your highly successful bakery that's pulling in money hand over fist. Then there are the complications of buil...
Sherlock Holmes
Apparently tired of his moderate but waning success as a fringe filmmaker, Guy Ritchie has gone mainstream with "Sherlock Holmes," his sixth feature and the first one he didn't write himself. Gone is most (but not all) of the frenetic editing and bon...
Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel
Being aimed at children isn't a valid excuse for a movie to be simple-minded and illogical. You know that, right? You know that that's what lazy filmmakers fall back on, don't you? "Well, so what if it doesn't make any sense. It's for kids!" NO. That...
Crazy Heart
"Crazy Heart" has been compared to "The Wrestler" in terms of plot and characters, but the tone is completely different. "The Wrestler" was a heavy, mostly very serious movie. "Crazy Heart," though also about a washed-up performer trying to redeem hi...
Avatar
"Avatar" will seem familiar if you've seen "Pocahontas" or "Dances with Wolves," or any film where an outsider comes to a village and falls in love with the chief's daughter. You'll recognize elements from the movies you've seen with environmental me...
Did You Hear About the Morgans?
The makers of "Did You Hear About the Morgans?" probably would not consider this much of an endorsement, but here it is: It's not THAT bad. There isn't too much in the plot that's aggressively stupid, it produces a few chuckles here and there, and th...
Nine
Federico Fellini's 1963 film "8 1/2" won the foreign-language Oscar, revealed Fellini's newfound fascination with the subconscious, and inspired countless cineastes to look more deeply at European movies. It was also, inexplicably, turned into a Broa...
The Young Victoria
"The Young Victoria" is a noteworthy title because the British queen it refers to lived to be 81 and reigned for 63 years. She was young once, of course, like everyone (except Larry King), but she's more famous for being old. Moreover, the "Victorian...
A Town Called Panic (French)
"A Town Called Panic" is a feature-length version of a children's TV show produced in Belgium in the early 2000s, in which toy figurines have adventures by way of stop-motion animation. Not having seen the TV show, I can only assume it's as insane as...
Invictus
Though "Invictus" has elements of a biopic and a sports drama, it doesn't belong to either of those categories. Its treatment of Nelson Mandela, the iconic South African president and anti-apartheid leader, is limited to one year of his life, and its...
The Lovely Bones
Susie Salmon, the goofy-named girl at the center of the very serious "The Lovely Bones," tells us her fate right off the bat: "I was 14 years old when I was murdered, on Dec. 6, 1973." Um, spoiler alert much??
Played by Saoirse Ronan ("Atonement")...
Up in the Air
It's bad enough being laid off from your job. Imagine getting the news from a suit-wearing stranger you've never seen before who was flown in at the company's expense just to fire you and a bunch of your coworkers. With all that money they spent payi...
The Princess and the Frog
The people at Disney have been candid about their hopes that "The Princess and the Frog" -- their first old-fashioned hand-drawn cartoon since 2004, and their first full-blown Broadway-style musical since 1998 -- would recapture some of the magic tha...
A Single Man
What kind of film would you expect from a fashion designer who has never made a film before? Something glossy, favoring style over substance? Something flashy, perhaps? Something ornate and weird that you can't imagine a regular person ever watching?...
Brothers
In "Brothers" we have a movie that's sometimes too intense for its own good, that ends without really resolving its issues, and that relies too much on a plot point that isn't given the weight it needs. And yet I like it. Based on an acclaimed Danish...
Everybody’s Fine
"Everybody's Fine" has cuteness and wholesome charm in its very DNA. It was written and directed by Kirk Jones, who made the twee "Waking Ned Divine," and it's a remake of a 1990 Italian film by Giuseppe Tornatore, who also made the sentimental "Cine...
Old Dogs
I will say this for "Old Dogs": It is exactly as funny as you'd expect a movie to be that stars John Travolta and Robin Williams as two bachelors who must suddenly take care of precocious 7-year-old twins, and that was directed by the man who made "W...
The Road
"The Road" is 2009's entry in the Movies You Admire and Respect but Don't Ever Want to Watch Again sweepstakes. You know going in that it's going to be bleak and somber; the question is whether it's also going to be profound and touching enough to co...
Ninja Assassin
For a movie about a calculating, silent killer, "Ninja Assassin" sure is dumb and loud. It's uncreative, too. A typical gory movie might show someone getting sliced in half, but it's usually the money shot, the big special effect they've been saving ...
New Moon
Bella Swan's problem, and the thing that makes her so enviable to many of her adolescent female fans, is that there are two strong, handsome young men deeply in love with her, both of them willing to die for her. Is this not the epitome of the classi...
The Blind Side
Speaking of being blindsided, "The Blind Side" is good enough to make me almost forgive Sandra Bullock for "All About Steve," which is the worst movie I've seen this year. I wasn't sure I'd ever get over that debacle, and yet here we are, barely two ...
Planet 51
As the umpteenth computer-animated film released this year, "Planet 51" must contend with an over-saturated marketplace. That's one strike. The second strike is that it's not any good.
Written by "Shrek" veteran Joe Stillman and directed by a tri...
Pirate Radio
In ancient historical times, i.e., 1966, the officially licensed radio stations in England didn't play rock 'n' roll music. That would have been no great loss in, say, the mid '70s, but 1966? That was the high point of British rock music: The Beatles...
2012
In 2004, Roland Emmerich, having already depicted the destruction of large parts of the world at the hands of aliens ("Independence Day") and Godzilla ("Godzilla"), upped the ante by introducing a new villain: the weather. "The Day After Tomorrow" wa...
Fantastic Mr. Fox
If you're familiar with the movies of Wes Anderson you will not be caught unawares by his version of Roald Dahl's "Fantastic Mr. Fox," which is every inch a Wes Anderson movie. All that separates it from "The Royal Tenenbaums" or "Rushmore" is that t...
The Messenger
The first thing we see in "The Messenger" is a soldier putting drops in his eyes, a war wound having left him with vision trouble. The drops produce tears; it looks like the man is crying -- an irony, given that the rest of the film will have him doi...
Precious
The premise of "Precious" is so unsettling and bleak that no one would blame you if you didn't want to see it: It's the story of an obese 16-year-old illiterate Harlem girl who's pregnant (for the second time) by her own father, lives with her monstr...
The Box
Richard Matheson wrote more than a dozen episodes of "The Twilight Zone," which, if you're unfamiliar with his work, should give you an idea of the sort of story he favors: twist endings, moral dilemmas, and monsters on the wings of airplanes. When "...
A Christmas Carol
The fear many of us had when it was announced Jim Carrey would play Ebenezer Scrooge and other parts in Robert Zemeckis' adaptation of "A Christmas Carol" was that Carrey's clowning would turn the story into a goofy farce. This fear turns out to have...
The Men Who Stare at Goats
We're told at the beginning of "The Men Who Stare at Goats" that "more of this is true than you would believe." But the story of the U.S. Army's attempts to harness psychic powers to create super-soldiers is so bizarre it almost HAS to be true, in ac...
The Fourth Kind
When so many films are bad in lazy and ordinary ways, it's refreshing to occasionally see one that fails interestingly. "The Fourth Kind" is that sort of movie: not good, for sure, but at least it appears to have been attempting something intriguing....
The House of the Devil
"The House of the Devil" is a great name for a movie. It hearkens back to the days of grindhouse horror, when a film's title and its trailer told you basically everything you needed to know. Yet it's different from those movies, too, in that it prefe...
Gentlemen Broncos
The surprise success of "Napoleon Dynamite" earned writer/director Jared Hess some Hollywood clout, which he used to make "Nacho Libre," a profitable but forgettable mixture of Hess' deadpan buffoonery and Jack Black's winking, self-aware slapstick. ...
Saw VI
In "Saw VI," the torture franchise takes a cue from another remarkably long-running series -- TV's "Law & Order" -- and rips its story from the headlines. Predatory mortgage lenders and callous health-insurance providers are among those singled o...
Antichrist
"Antichrist" is the only film I've ever seen where the credits mention someone whose job was "research on misogyny." Apparently Lars von Trier takes his hatred of women so seriously that he assigns someone especially to oversee that portion of the fi...
Untitled
Few subjects are more ripe for ridicule than pretentious artists, and Jonathan Parker's "(Untitled)" skewers the world of contemporary art in a way that's insightful and funny without becoming a broad parody. The characters, satirical though they are...
Amelia
This Amelia Earhart gal can't catch a break, can she? First she goes missing over the Pacific Ocean in 1937, never to be heard from again; now she's the subject of a film that's in the running for the dullest, most lifeless biopic of the decade. Earh...
Astro Boy
You tread on shaky ground when you make an animated film for kids that's also straight-up science fiction -- not "The Jetsons" sci-fi, but real sci-fi, with complex ideas and political metaphors and laws of robotics, all that Isaac Asimov stuff. Kids...
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire’s Assistant
Just as it would be weird to watch "It's a Wonderful Life" in any month but December, I can't imagine enjoying "Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant" anytime but now, in October, when the color of the leaves and the crispness of the air put me th...
Law Abiding Citizen
In its wildest dreams, "Law Abiding Citizen" imagines it's a 21st-century hybrid of "Death Wish" and "Silence of the Lambs." In reality, it's a ludicrous combination of the two, a pointless exercise in phony social commentary that has no idea what it...
