Movie Reviews
Hannah Montana: The Movie
I've never seen the Disney Channel sitcom "Hannah Montana," of course, so I approach "Hannah Montana: The Movie" blind. Is this it? Is THIS what has been enthralling the tween girls lately? A show about a girl who gets into wacky situations and then ...
Gigantic
"Gigantic" represents the dark side of what Sundance has wrought: self-consciously quirky indie films that don't have a single natural, uncontrived moment in them.
Why, here's Paul Dano playing a quiet young man who's uncertain about his future! ...
Adventureland
Greg Mottola is currently best known, to the extent that he's known at all, as the director of "Superbad" -- a movie that you'd think didn't even have a director for as often as he was mentioned in the reviews. That film belonged more to its writers,...
Fast & Furious
The films in the "Fast and the Furious" series have gotten progressively dumber since the harmlessly energetic 2001 original, and the latest, reductively called "Fast & Furious," takes it a step lower. Not only is the story silly, but there's not...
Alien Trespass
"Alien Trespass" is a feature-length homage to the cheesy invaders-from-space B-movies of the 1950s. In fact, it purports to actually BE one of those movies, shot in 1957 but unreleased until now, in glorious color!
Director R.W. Goodwin, an "X-Fi...
The Haunting in Connecticut
The definite article in the title of "The Haunting in Connecticut" is repeated in the onscreen assertion that it's "based on the true story." You know -- THE true story. Surely you've heard THE story about how some people moved into a large old isola...
Monsters vs Aliens
Jaunty, jokey, and absolutely bursting with visual energy, "Monsters vs Aliens" is unquestionably a treat. If it had a more substantial story, it could be a classic. As it stands, it's a shrewd, fast-paced confection that takes full advantage of its ...
12 Rounds
In 2006, professional wrestler John Cena starred in "The Marine," playing a man who must rescue his kidnapped wife. His acting muscles sufficiently stretched, he now returns to cinemas in "12 Rounds," playing a man who must rescue his kidnapped girlf...
Goodbye Solo
"Goodbye Solo" is Ramin Bahrani's third feature film, not counting the one he made as his film-school thesis. The first two, "Man Push Cart," and "Chop Shop," were highly acclaimed in certain circles, but only now have those circles have begun to wid...
Sin Nombre (Spanish)
Cary Fukunaga is the son of a Japanese father and Swedish mother, born in the United States, a graduate of universities in California, New York, and France, and now the writer and director of "Sin Nombre," which was filmed in Mexico with Spanish-spea...
I Love You, Man
South By Southwest has become a prime spot for raucous R-rated comedies to premiere. "Knocked Up" debuted there in 2007, with "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" in 2008, and now here's "I Love You, Man." And while it doesn't bear Judd Apatow's name as those...
Duplicity
Tony Gilroy wrote the three Jason Bourne movies and "Michael Clayton," so he knows from twisty espionage stories. But "Duplicity" marks the first time he's really injected much humor into his work, and it's a welcome variation. Not everyone has to be...
Knowing
"Knowing" seems like a generic title for anything, let alone a tense cinematic thriller, but it turns out to be a good choice. The film takes place at the intersection of science and religion, at the point where faith and certainty meet, and it has s...
Máncora (Spanish)
When MTV Latin America honcho Ricardo de Montreuil made his first film, "La Mujer de Mi Hermano," I thought (and wrote): Here is a man who ought to be making TV movies for Lifetime or Telemundo. His follow-up, the generic coming-of-age story "Máncora...
Valentino: The Last Emperor (documentary; Italian)
Valentino Garavani, the Italian-born, Paris-trained designer of haute couture, is on a first-name basis with the entire fashion world, but what do we know of his personal life? "Valentino: The Last Emperor," a frothily entertaining but insignificant ...
True Adolescents
The genre of comedies about scruffy, directionless 30-year-old man-boys has occasionally produced a sub-genre where those men are pitted against actual young people, either as contrast (when the teenagers are more mature than the adults) or so they c...
Race to Witch Mountain
In fulfillment of the prophecy that Disney will eventually remake every single one of its live-action movies, here is "Race to Witch Mountain." It bears a passing resemblance to 1975's "Escape to Witch Mountain," but it's more reminiscent of a tireso...
The Last House on the Left
The new remake of "The Last House on the Left" makes full use of the dramatically compelling scenario that Wes Craven used in his 1972 original: First some terrible things happen, and then someone gets revenge. There's something admirable about a fil...
Miss March
If you haven't seen the sketch comedy show "Whitest Kids U' Know" on IFC, fire up the ol' DVR and have it grab a couple episodes for you. Like all such programs, the sketches are hit-or-miss, but the five guys, all in their late 20s and mostly from N...
Watchmen
"Watchmen" was a 12-issue comic book published in 1986 and 1987 and subsequently compiled into a single graphic novel that has since become a widely respected and rabidly scrutinized work of fiction. Time magazine called it one of the 100 best Englis...
Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li
You don't need to have seen 1994's "Street Fighter" movie, which starred Raul Julia and Jean-Claude Van Damme, in order to appreciate the new "Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun-Li," which doesn't star anyone. In fact, you don't need to have seen the...
Fired Up!
"Fired Up!" (enthusiasm theirs) is a teen-centric horndog comedy that you would do well not to get attached to, as it will disappear quickly from theaters and never be heard from again. The meatheads who would find it appealing and are eager to see i...
Madea Goes to Jail
Heaven help me, this Madea character is starting to grow on me. In "Madea Goes to Jail," Tyler Perry's latest adaptation of one of his innumerable stage plays, his giant, pistol-packing alter ego finally runs afoul of the law one too many times and f...
Confessions of a Shopaholic
Yes, it's a bad time to release a film like "Confessions of a Shopaholic," an ode to shallow consumerism whose vapid Manhattanite heroine loves racking up credit card debt and has a dangerous psychological attachment to department stores. ("A man wil...
Friday the 13th (2009)
Its impressive capacity for producing lucrative sequels notwithstanding, the original "Friday the 13th," from 1980, was a lousy movie. A blatant rip-off of "Halloween," it suffered from shoddy production values and dimwitted plotting. People liked it...
The International
The only logical conclusion to be drawn from the title "The International" is that whoever came up with it doesn't want us to be interested in seeing the movie. I don't know what the strategy would be in that, but why else would they give it such a d...
Push
Fans of TV's "Heroes" have been frustrated by the show's declining quality ever since about the end of the first season. But take heart, friends! It could be worse. It could be "Push."
"Push" has ordinary people with super powers being pursued by...
The Pink Panther 2
When Steve Martin arrived on the comedy scene more than 30 years ago, he found his niche by bucking trends and defying convention. He's gotten pretty middle-of-the-road since then, particularly in the mediocre (or worse) films he's made in the last c...
Coraline
One of my dark secrets is that I don't care much for "The Nightmare Before Christmas," the Tim Burton-produced, Henry Selick-directed Halloween favorite. Technically, the film is a wonder, with stop-motion animation that never fails to impress. As fa...
He’s Just Not That Into You
A video circulated online last week in which three male cast members from "He's Just Not That Into You" assured wary men (whose girlfriends will drag them to it) that the film is not a generic "chick flick," offering as proof a list of 10 chick-flick...
New in Town
Look, movie, if you're not even going to TRY to entertain me, why should I put forth any effort in reviewing you?
Yeah, I'm talking to you, "New in Town." You have Renee Zellweger as a brittle, icy corporate honcho named Lucy who goes to a tiny M...
Taken
For the past several years, there has been a tug-of-war in the world of action films. Some, like the Jason Bourne and recent James Bond movies, have sought to establish moodier, more introspective heroes who face realistic dilemmas in the midst of th...
The Uninvited
This is a thorny one. I didn't particularly enjoy most of "The Uninvited," a PG-13 thriller about teenage sisters who believe their dad's new girlfriend is evil. Some of it was tolerable but nothing special; some of it was truly irritating. But then ...
Underworld: Rise of the Lycans
If you are interested in the mythology created by "Underworld" and its sequel, "Underworld: Evolution," then surely you will enjoy "Underworld: Rise of the Lycans," which goes back in time to tell us what happened before the first film. As far as I c...
Notorious
One of the measures of a good biopic is whether it can engage a viewer who has no prior interest in the subject, or whether it just preaches to the choir. I think "Notorious" works. It's about Christopher Wallace, aka The Notorious B.I.G./Biggie Smal...
My Bloody Valentine
"My Bloody Valentine" is smarter than you'd think, which maybe isn't saying much, considering you probably think it's just a slasher film about a maniac who goes around slaughtering people. Which, OK, it is. But it's also a whodunit and a psychologic...
Paul Blart: Mall Cop
One of these days I'll have to watch a rerun of "King of Queens," the sitcom Kevin James starred in for like 18 years. I've heard from reliable sources that it's actually funny (unlike most sitcoms), and what I've seen of James elsewhere -- as in "Hi...
Hotel for Dogs
It's been a booming season at the movies for dog-lovers, with "Bolt," "Marley & Me," and "Beverly Hills Chihuahua" all scoring big grosses with their warm tales of canine companionship and leg-humping. Even the art house circuit got into the act ...
The Killing Room
You know those thrillers about a group of strangers who get locked in a room together and have to figure out how to escape? "The Killing Room" is one of those, except that neither the characters nor the things that happen to them are interesting. Tha...
Art & Copy (documentary)
People who live in free-market societies have a love/hate relationship with advertising. We dislike TV commercials in general, yet we'll watch the Super Bowl specifically to see them. We hate the blight of billboards cluttering the landscape, but we ...
Mystery Team
Scientists predict that at the current rate, every sketch-comedy troupe in the world will have produced a feature film within five years. The latest to follow in the footsteps of Monty Python and Broken Lizard is Derrick Comedy, a three-man group fro...
Mary and Max
In this era of computer animation, the art of claymation -- hand-molded figures painstakingly shot one frame at a time -- is all but lost. It seems only Aardman Studios, responsible for "Wallace and Gromit" and "Flushed Away," has continued the pract...
Midgets vs Mascots
If you combine "Jackass" and "Borat" and remove all semblance of discipline or organization, you get something like "Midgets vs Mascots," an occasionally very funny but often very sloppy mockumentary that is far too eager to show us how taboo it is. ...
Bomber
"Bomber" is a prime example of a movie that feels fresh and insightful even though its individual elements are familiar. It's about a road trip, an underemployed 30-year-old man-child who lacks direction, a husband and wife who no longer communicate,...
The Unborn
For several years, the trend has been for Hollywood to remake Asian horror films into PG-13-rated thrillers that aren't scary but sort of entertain teenagers. I am pleased to report that with "The Unborn," Hollywood has finally graduated -- now, at last, we are making crappy horror films entirely on our own, without having to rip them off from Japan! U-S-A! U-S-A!
Bride Wars
"Bride Wars" isn't as bad as it looks, but how could it be? The film's trailer, packed with scenes of Anne Hathaway and Kate Hudson as screeching brides-to-be sabotaging one another's weddings, has been horrifying audiences for months. It's the sort ...
Just Another Love Story (Danish)
"Just Another Love Story" is not just another love story. It is from Denmark, it has elements of film noir, and it has an outlandish batch of twists in its final 20 minutes. There is nothing “just another” about it.
We begin with images of our he...
Not Easily Broken
Among his other achievements, Tyler Perry can be credited for helping create room at the multiplex for Christian-themed, African-American-targeted melodramas. Just as Judd Apatow has made the R-rated comedy fashionable (and profitable) again, Perry h...
Silent Light (German/Plautdietsch)
I feel bad for the poor souls who saw "Silent Light" without knowing anything about it first and came away hating it. They were probably expecting a movie that was, well, normal. You know, with a plot and stuff. A movie where things happen.
"Sile...
Defiance
Every year, Hollywood produces about a dozen movies about Nazis, and every year there's one that stands out as being the one that you can just disregard altogether. This year those honors go to "Defiance," an unengaging, emotionally distant drama fro...
Revolutionary Road
The first scene in "Revolutionary Road" is of a young man and a young woman meeting at a party and charming one another with small talk, clearly destined, in the shorthand of movies, to fall in love. The next scene jumps forward several years, to whe...
Last Chance Harvey
"Last Chance Harvey" is a film that brims with small delights. For example, did you know that Dustin Hoffman plays jazz piano? Maybe that's one of the things I should have known about him, but I didn't. His character in the movie is a musician, too, ...
Marley & Me
"Marley & Me" would probably be a fine man-and-his-dog film if it actually were a man-and-his-dog film. But it isn't. It's an anemic comic-drama about a dull couple searching for happiness, and they happen to have a dog. Sometimes the dog takes o...
The Spirit
Watching "The Spirit," it's hard to tell whether writer/director Frank Miller intended it as an homage to Will Eisner's classic comic book character, or whether Miller hated it and wanted to sully its reputation. You could make a strong case for eith...
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
The subject of death has been addressed so often in art and entertainment that it's hard to find anything new to say about it. "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button," which is all about Life and Death, doesn't come up with any new insights, perhaps, b...
Valkyrie
Tom Cruise, his reputation defamed, his career desperately in need of a makeover, has chosen as his comeback vehicle a film in which he plays a Nazi officer who tries to kill Hitler. C'mon, Tom, you're not making this easy on us. Couldn't you have go...
Bedtime Stories
The thing about Disney movies is that no matter what the hero does, we're supposed to accept that it's OK, even when it's actually kind of jerky. That's Adam Sandler in "Bedtime Stories," a simple-minded kid comedy directed by Adam Shankman ("Hairspr...
The Class (French)
"The Class" stars a non-actor named François Bébaudeau as a fictionalized version of himself, a teacher in the rough part of Paris dealing with a rowdy, multi-ethnic class of middle-schoolers. The film was written by Bébaudeau and is based on his boo...
Yes Man
After a string of misfires and strange choices, Jim Carrey has returned to familiar territory with "Yes Man," a genial comedy that seeks to duplicate the normal-guy-turns-nutty formula of "Liar Liar" and "Bruce Almighty." The film's structure is unso...
Nothing But the Truth
The political drama has a good friend in Rod Lurie, who makes intelligent, earnestly liberal movies that are meaty and watchable, if not always great. He has a thing for strong female protagonists, too. He was first noticed for "The Contender," about...
Seven Pounds
This is going to be one of those reviews where people say I went easy on what they consider to be a terrible, terrible movie. I can certainly see that point of view, though I think the movie leans more toward mediocre than terrible. It's definitely n...
The Tale of Despereaux
Anyone trying to market an animated film without the words Disney, Pixar, or DreamWorks attached faces an uphill battle, and Universal's "The Tale of Despereaux" is a prime example of why that is: because cartoons by upstarts tend to be mediocre.
...
The Wrestler
Much has been made of Mickey Rourke's career-reviving performance in "The Wrestler," where he plays a washed-up Hulk Hogan type trying to make sense of his life outside the ring. As eye-opening as that performance is, I'm also intrigued by the work o...
The Day the Earth Stood Still
"The Day the Earth Stood Still," from 1951, is considered a sci-fi classic in part because it eschewed the cheesy "invaders from Mars!" B-movie tropes of that era and didn't have a lot of action -- its focus was its ideas. The new remake, predictably...
Nothing Like the Holidays
There are no ingredients in "Nothing Like the Holidays" that you're not already familiar with from other big-crazy-family Christmas movies. Then again, so what? The Christmas breakfast my mom makes every year never has anything new either -- in fact,...
Gran Torino
There is a palpable thrill in seeing Clint Eastwood stand in his front yard with a rifle and growl, "Get off my lawn!" at some punk kids. It's a stereotypical thing for a cranky old man to say, and Eastwood -- now comfortably settled into the Cranky ...
Dark Streets
There are many things to admire about "Dark Streets," a film noir set against a 1930s backdrop of jazz, blues, and booze. Unfortunately, the story isn't one of them. It's your basic "Chinatown"-inspired tale of double crosses and femmes fatales, with...
Doubt
You should take the title "Doubt" seriously. Uncertainty hovers over nearly every part of this riveting, mature film, including the central question of whether a priest did or did not behave inappropriately with a young boy. Doubt is the point, you s...
Delgo
Work on "Delgo," an independently produced animated film, began in 1999. Here's an article from CNN in 2004 saying it was "due out in the spring of 2005." And now here it is finally being released at the tail end of 2008. It features voice work by Anne Bancroft, for crying out loud, and she died 3 1/3 years ago.
What Doesn’t Kill You
The bookstores are filled with memoirs by ex-cons, drug addicts, and all varieties of perverts, many of them believing that because their personal histories are unusual, that automatically means they are interesting. The problem, of course, is that w...
The Reader
Stephen Daldry has directed two very different feature films, "Billy Elliot" and "The Hours," and earned Oscar nominations for both of them. One was joyful, one was somber, but both were full of humanity: You believed in the characters, and you relat...
Wendy and Lucy
Kelly Reichardt's new film, "Wendy and Lucy," is a lot like her last film, "Old Joy" (and presumably like the two before that, which I haven't seen), in that it contains very little action and the barest wisp of a plot. The word "boring" will be appl...
Frost/Nixon
As the reign of a once popular but now unpopular wartime president draws to a close, it feels timely to look back at another such commander-in-chief, one Richard Milhous Nixon. Watergate has been done to death in the movies, but "Frost/Nixon" is a su...
Punisher: War Zone
"Punisher: War Zone" is proof of just how tenacious the people at Marvel Comics are. They're going to keep remaking and rebooting their characters' franchises whether anyone likes it or not!
This is the third time they've taken a stab at Frank Cas...
Milk
The only way Gus Van Sant's "Milk," a biopic of America's first openly gay public official, could have been more timely is if it had been released before the election, not after. The parallels between Harvey Milk's crusading against anti-gay Proposit...
Transporter 3
Remember "The Transporter"? It was a silly but effective high-energy butt-kicker starring Jason Statham as a taciturn military-trained fighter named Frank whose skills included evasive driving and the efficient delivery of illicit goods. It was good,...
Four Christmases
Who thought it was good idea to put Vince Vaughn and Reese Witherspoon together? He's 15 inches taller than she is, with a receding hairline that makes his gargantuan head seem even larger, while her tiny little noggin is all but covered by her bangs...
Australia
Can it be that "Australia" is only Baz Luhrmann's fourth film? His uniquely Australian style, which mixes broad comedy and campy performances with sweeping romance and beautiful photography, is so clearly defined that it feels like it must have taken...
Bolt
Remember when you saw "The Truman Show" and thought, "Gee, this would have been better if instead of Jim Carrey it was a dog"? Well, the fellows at the Disney animation studios have taken your desires to heart and created "Bolt," a jaunty action come...
Twilight
Look, I know the drill. If any element of the "Twilight" movie varies even slightly from the way you pictured it in your head, then it is the worst film ever made and you hate it and Catherine Hardwicke has ruined your childhood. Or, alternatively, y...
Quantum of Solace
Though the character has remained basically the same, the James Bond movies have always been products of their time. "From Russia with Love" (1963) came at the height of the Cold War; "Moonraker" (1979) arrived just in time to capitalize on the recen...
Slumdog Millionaire
Poverty, deprivation, murder, love, family bonds, and TV game shows are among the unlikely combination of ingredients in the enchanting "Slumdog Millionaire," a movie full of familiar elements that somehow feels wholly original, not to mention entert...
Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa
I didn't think much of "Madagascar," which had an unfocused story, no internal logic, and only a few laughs, scattered mostly among the minor characters. It relied too much on pop-culture references, too, a common problem these days in animation. So ...
The Boy in the Striped Pajamas
Go big or go home, that's what the athletes say. No point in batting unless you're going to swing for the fences. "The Boy in the Striped Pajamas" takes that attitude to heart. It's about a little boy who becomes friends with another little boy who i...
JCVD (French)
The days of mocking Jean-Claude Van Damme as a washed-up meathead who makes cheesy, terrible movies might be over. In "JCVD," the muscles from Brussels demonstrates stunning self-awareness, proves to be adept at self-deprecation, and -- are you sitti...
Role Models
The absurdist writer/director/actor David Wain, having scored cult hits with "Wet Hot American Summer" and "The Ten," seeks to bring his odd genius into the mainstream with "Role Models," and whaddaya know, it actually works. He and his pals from The...
Zack and Miri Make a Porno
You have to feel a little sorry for Kevin Smith. His first film, "Clerks," set the modern standard for vulgar, talky comedies, initially earning an NC-17 rating for its dialogue alone. Yet mainstream success has eluded Smith -- none of his seven film...
Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father (documentary)
In November 2001, a man named Andrew Bagby died in Pennsylvania. His lifelong best friend, Kurt Kuenne, a filmmaker, set out to honor Andrew's memory by interviewing everyone who loved him and compiling it into a little movie. The result, "Dear Zacha...
The Haunting of Molly Hartley
"The Haunting of Molly Hartley" isn't bad as far as movie titles go, though it would be a lot better if the movie contained any actual haunting. The girl is plagued by voices that say "Molly!" and "I know what you are!," but is that really a "hauntin...
Changeling
One thing you should not do before seeing "Changeling" is Google the real-life story it's based on. Knowing the essentials of the plot would ruin the movie, which relies on surprising you -- at least for the first 75 minutes -- with how crazy it is. ...
Pride and Glory
There's been a lot of talk the last few years about how television has become more cinematic, often outpacing theatrical films for depth and complexity. A prime example is "Pride and Glory," an ugly and unpleasant cop drama that tries -- and fails --...
Let the Right One In (Swedish)
One of the things that some "Twilight" detractors don't like about the book (and especially the movie) is that despite having vampires in it, it's not a very good vampire story. Its focus is on the romance between the two main characters, not on the ...
Saw V
No one expects the fourth sequel to a horror film to be any good, but the "Saw" series has grown particularly redundant. "Saw V" is as rote and mechanical as one of Jigsaw's traps, though at least Jigsaw's traps are suspenseful and ingenious. The mov...
Synecdoche, New York
As the screenwriter of such loopy, melancholy comedies as "Being John Malkovich" and "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," Charlie Kaufman has been lucky to work with directors like Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry who appreciate -- and can translate...
High School Musical 3: Senior Year
Taking potshots at "High School Musical" is easy, not to mention fun and profitable. The original Disney Channel film was cheap and simple-minded (but harmless), and its sequel was more of the same. Now the geniuses at Disney have figured out that th...
Sex Drive
"Sex Drive" has a plot that's similar to the one in "The Sure Thing." It's also a road-trip comedy, and it features all the usual types of automotive mayhem and run-ins with strange rural characters and misadventures involving animals. It also begins...
The Secret Life of Bees
The main thing I learned from "The Secret Life of Bees" is that forcing your disobedient daughter to kneel down, barelegged, on a pile of uncooked grits is mean and painful.
But obscure punishments enacted by abusive Southerners are not the main ...
W.
If anyone ever wants to make a serious biopic about George W. Bush, his relationship with his father would be a good focal point. The differences between these two men, plus their pivotal roles in U.S. history, have all the elements of high drama, an...
Max Payne
For a movie based on a video game, there's a curious dearth of action in "Max Payne." I know we've often complained that these movies were ALL action and NO substance, but this one has gone in the opposite direction. Well, except there's not really a...
Body of Lies
Leonardo DiCaprio's perpetually youthful face means he's forever doomed to wear beards and goatees in movies where he's supposed to be taken seriously as an adult. It never looks right, either, even when it's his own hair that actually grew out of hi...
