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Starring: Tommy Lee Jones, Susan Sarandon, Charlize Theron, Jason Patric, J... Review: Paul Haggis actually thinks movies can mean something, even change things. So, of course, critics like to crush him. Ambition equals pretension every time. Crash won the 2005 Oscar, but detractors tarred Haggis' race parable for overreaching. Right. Feed us more pap, please. Haggis haters will have a field day with In the Valley of Elah. The title, referring to the spot where David slew Goliath, is a showy symbol. That's Tommy Lee Jones, minus even a slingshot, as Hank Deerfield, a retired Vietnam vet taking on the whole Army to find out why his soldier son, Mike (Jonathan Tucker), is dead. Not in Iraq -- Mike's murder happened at home, near Fort Rudd, his base in New Mexico. Leaving his wife (Susan Sarandon) at their house in Tennessee, Hank drives off to get answers. And Roger Deakins, a... Rating: 3 Stars |
| Starring: Tony Leung, Tang Wei, Joan Chen, Wang Lee Hom Review: Ang Lee doesn't direct movies according to fashion or the dictates of short attention spans. So leave it to the Taiwanese Oscar winner for Brokeback Mountain and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon to craft a Chinese-language film version of Eileen Chang's iconic short story and let it play out for 158 minutes. No matter. A whole world unfolds in those minutes, a fully realized world of Japanese-occupied Shanghai during World War II, of espionage and carnal power games. The film starts in 1938, when Wong Chia-Chi (Tang Wei), a student and aspiring actress, is recruited by the charismatic Kuang Yu Min (pop star Wang Leehom) to act her most demanding role: seducer of Mr. Yee (Tony Leung). He's a Japanese collaborator these Chinese patriots want dead. It culminates in 1942, at a jewelry shop,... Rating: 3 Stars |
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Starring: Jodie Foster, Terrence Howard, Naveen Andrews, Mary Steenburgen Review: Question: why would Jodie Foster want to play a female Charles Bronson in Death Wish mode? Answer: She wouldn't and doesn't. Foster and her fearless director, Neil Jordan (hell, he did The Crying Game), are way too smart to cash out their reputations for a cheap vigilante flick. But the glib response to The Brave One (awful title) would be to think just that. I'll concede that Foster and Jordan have a deeply implausible script to subvert. Foster's Erica Bain, a Manhattan radio host happy to live in "the safest big city in the world," changes her tone when she and her fiance, David (Lost's Naveen Andrews), are brutally beaten by thugs in Central Park. David's death leaves her angry and scared, but not too scared to buy a gun on the sly and start shooting. Erica can't leave her apartment... Rating: 2 Stars |
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Starring: Jamie Foxx, Colin Farrell, Chris Cooper, Jason Bateman, Tom Bresn... Review: A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down. But that's the only hint of Mary Poppins you'll find in Peter Berg's geopolitical thriller, with an emphasis on the thrills. The sugar for Berg, a genuine wild man, is action, and he heaps it on as FBI special agent Ronald Fleury (Jamie Foxx at his cool, mofo best) leads his team into Saudi Arabia to find the culprits behind a terrorist attack on a compound housing American oil-company employees and their families. The Saudi ambassador has given them only five days to investigate, and a U.S. diplomat (Jeremy Piven) would rather they just do a photo op and slink out. But Fleury is not one for slinking. With the help of an explosives expert (a forceful Chris Cooper), an intelligence analyst (Jason Bateman, nailing all of his smart-mouthed one-l... Rating: 3 Stars |
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Starring: Emile Hirsch, Vince Vaughn, Zach Galifianakis, Marcia Gay Harden,... Review: Sean Penn has molded one of the best movies of a bustling fall out of Jon Krakauer's best-selling Into the Wild. Krakauer told the true story of Chris McCandless, an honors grad from Emory University who walked into the Alaskan wilderness in 1992 to find himself outside the confines of estranged family, well-meaning friends and any governing impulse besides his own questing heart. If you read the book and pegged Chris as a wacko narcissist who died out of arrogance and stupidity, then Penn's film version is not for you. If, like Penn, you mourn Chris' tragedy and his judgment errors but also exult in his journey and its spirit of moral inquiry, then this beautiful, wrenching film will take a piece out of you. Into the Wild represents Penn's most assured and affecting work yet as... Rating: 3 Stars |
| Starring: Review: Back in the Pleistocene Era (1957), Elmore Leonard?s short story ?3:10 to Yuma,? became a tense, tight High Noon knockoff of a Western about a rancher (Van Heflin) trying to get an outlaw (Glenn Ford) on a train to Yuma prison so he could collect a reward and pay his debts. By the end ? it?s a three-day trip through Apache territory -- no one would help the poor bastard. The same plotlines run through this flashily entertaining remake from Walk the Line director James Mangold, who already updated the material in 1997?s Cop Land. The story?s moral code clearly speaks to Mangold, and he?s put two top-notch actors in the saddle. Christian Bale is the anti-American Psycho as rancher and family man Dan Evans, and a dynamite Russell Crowe practically licks his lips as charm-boy villain Ben... Rating: 3 Stars |
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Starring: Review: You might think you already know everything you need to know about the Apollo space program that galvanized America in the 1960s. But David Sington?s remarkable documentary proves you wrong. Using never-seen NASA archive footage of the nine moon missions attempted from 1968 to 1972 and fresh interviews with all the surviving astronauts, save the elusive Neil Armstrong, the film is a bracing reminder of a moment in history in which pride is justified. OK, the rah-rah gets a bit thick at times, especially a soundtrack that won?t stop at rousing. But the insipid soon becomes inspiring as the astronauts recall raw details, and we watch in amazement at the wonder and tragedy on view. Want to know what the ?right stuff? really is? Take a look. Rating: 3 Stars |
| Starring: Michael Douglas, Evan Rachel Wood Review: With a crazed glint, a bushy beard and a firm desire to fly over his own cuckoo?s next, Michael Douglas gives one of his best performances ever as Charlie, the just-released mental patient at the core of the hilarious and heartfelt King of California. Back home after two years, Charlie becomes the unwanted responsibility of his sixteen-year-old daughter, Miranda (the ever-wonderful Evan Rachel Wood), who?s been getting by selling Big Macs. Now she?s being dragged into Dad?s scheme to find seventeenth-century Spanish treasure he?s convinced is buried under the local Costco. In updating Shakespeare?s The Tempest, writer-director Mike Cahill focuses on the magic worth finding between a father and daughter. That?s why the film sticks with you. It?s a gift. Rating: 3 Stars |
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Starring: Monica Bellucci, Clive Owen, Paul Giamatti, Greg Bryk, Jane McLea... Review: This wet dream for action junkies leaves out logic and motivation --you know, all the boring stuff. It?s eighty-two minutes of hardcore pow. Clive Owen, relieved of saving the world a la Children of Men, is having a ball as Mr. Smith, a loner who?d kill you as fast with a carrot as with a gun. His mission, other than spewing one-liners and hitting on a hooker (megababe Monica Bellucci), is to save a baby from the clutches of gun-crazy Hertz (Paul Giamatti). The shooting starts when the baby is born --a bullet cuts the umbilical cord --and doesn?t stop. Writer-director Michael Davis seems to have washed down the collected works of John Woo and Sergio Leone with all the caffeine left at Starbucks. The dazzling and daffy result isn?t really a movie at all, it?s a live-action cartoon that... Rating: 3 Stars |
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Starring: Naomi Watts, Vincent Cassel, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Viggo Mortensen Review: How like David Cronenberg -- the master of body horror as a path to the soul -- to begin his mesmerizing power-punch of a thriller with a hemorrhage. The bloody fetus that we watch a fourteen-year-old Russian girl?s uterus struggle to expel is a child of rape. But in Cronenberg, be it the exploding heads of Scanners or the imploding ids of The Fly, brutality and beauty are inextricably linked. The baby becomes a promise and a threat in the eyes of the film?s central characters. Anna Khitrova (Naomi Watts), a midwife at a London hospital, tries to unite the baby with its Russian family from clues she finds in the dead mother?s diary. Her path leads to Nikolai Luzhin (Viggo Mortensen), a driver and butcher for a Russian crime ring, led by Semyon (a magisterially scary Armin Mueller-Stahl),... Rating: 3 Stars |
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Starring: Walter Day, Billy Mitchell, Todd Rogers, Steve Sanders, Doris Sel... Review: Who would have guessed that a documentary about gamers obsessed with scoring a world record at Donkey Kong would not only be roaringly funny but serve as a metaphor for the decline of Western civilization? Using Billy Mitchell?s need to stay champ and Steve Wiebe?s need to beat him, director Seth Gordon deftly manages to show how age, marriage, fatherhood and so-called ethical thinking will not stop man?s need to go to war, no matter how stupid the reason. Rating: 3 Stars |
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Starring: Steve Buscemi, Tara Elders, Molly Griffith, Robert Hines, Jackson... Review: The controversial dutch film-maker Theo van Gogh had intended to make this movie before he was murdered by a Muslim extremist. So Steve Buscemi took over as director and co-writer. He also takes the lead role of Pierre, a snob of a D.C. correspondent who gets his nose out of joint when assigned to interview Katya (Sienna Miller), a sex-kitten actress he ranks below Paris Hilton. The film is unashamedly a claustrophobic exercise, shot in one room in which two characters strip away layers of pretense to get at the truth. Stick with it for Miller?s gutsy tour de force and the kick of watching Buscemi, as actor and filmmaker, turn an experiment into a mesmerizing battle of wills. Rating: 3 Stars |
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Starring: Michael Cera, Jonah Hill, Seth Rogen, Bill Hader, Evan Goldberg Review: The geek boy has been a staple of comedy since the Greeks. OK, I?m lying, but you know what I mean. He?s the scrawny dickhead with no chance of ever getting laid. Except in the movies, that is. Now, as McLovin in Superbad, Christopher Mintz-Plasse (hardly a name you expect to see up in lights) reinvents the geek boy for the new century. He?s a big reason why the hip, hot and hilarious Superbad packs more gut-busting laughs than you can count. Judd Apatow produced this raunchy antidote to High School Musical from a script that Apatow?s Knocked Up star Seth Rogen wrote with his Canadian school chum Evan Goldberg when they were -- do you effing believe this? -- thirteen. This deceptively throwaway farce (it?s actually a keeper that comes up aces in writing, acting and directing) takes place... Rating: 3 Stars |
| Starring: Matt Damon, Julia Stiles, Joan Allen, David Strathairn, Paddy Con... Review: Matt Damon damn near jumps off the screen, returning for the third and (he says) final time to his career-crowning role as amnesiac Jason Bourne, a killing machine out to go whup-ass on the CIA operatives who made him. The Bourne Ultimatum is a wow of an action movie with a soul that isn't computer-generated. Like the two previous films, this Bourne borrows only the name and the central character from Robert Ludlum's best-selling spy novel. Paul Greengrass (United 93), who directed the last two films (Doug Liman did the first), digs out all the provocation in the script, co-written by Tony Gilroy, to plumb the violence of the minds behind global terrorism. With his handheld camera, Greengrass keeps the suspense taut as Bourne trots the globe. In Madrid, Bourne tilts emotionally with... Rating: 3 Stars |
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Starring: Andy Samberg, Isla Fisher, Jorma Taccone, Sissy Spacek, Bill Hade... Review: Andy Samberg is cool beans. At least he is on SNL, where he rocked that "Dick in a Box" video with Justin Timberlake. But his screen debut is out of the Will Ferrell reject pile. Just when you want Hot Rod to rev, it stalls. Samberg plays Rod Kimble, a wanna-be stunt man with no talent for the game. Though his suburban mom (Sissy Spacek, underused) gets him, his stepdad, Frank (Ian McShane, overqualified), thinks Rod is dead wood. So why does Rod try to raise fifty grand for Frank's heart operation by doing a motorcycle jump over fifteen school buses? So he can kick Frank's ass. The joke is repeated so often that all humor evaporates. And Wedding Crashers live wire Isla Fisher is drained of personality as Rod's dream girl. Samberg and his Lonely Island buds from SNL (director Akiva... Rating: 1 Stars |
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Starring: Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Yeardley Smith, Nancy Cartwright,... Review: Look, there's no way you can go wrong spending ninety minutes at the multiplex with animated characters who have raised the bar sky-high on quality TV. Created by Matt Groening and produced by James L. Brooks, who could be buried alive in their justly won Emmys, The Simpsons is TV for the time capsule. For two decades and counting, this dysfunctional Springfield family, drawn in yellow and dripping with comic irreverence, kept us in whoo-hoo euphoria. So why did I leave the film version feeling entertained but frustrated? Expectations are part of the problem. How do you please rabid fans, me included, who pore over the past 400 episodes like holy writ? As for new audiences who never bothered to watch the show and wouldn't know Krusty the Clown from Apu, frankly I don't give a... Rating: 2 Stars |
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Starring: Kang-ho Song, Hie-bong Byeon, Hae-il Park, Du-na Bae, Ah-sung Ko Review: Need proof that South Korea is the epicenter of cool Asian cinema? Look no further than The Host, where a family battles a huge, contagion-carrying ? fish monster? The film is hilarious and the action is out-of-control ? simply one of the greatest monster flicks ever made. Rating: 3 Stars |
| Starring: Review: Who knew? Apparently, there are English hipsters out there who revere trashy big-budget buddy-cop flicks like Lethal Weapon and Bad Boys. Hot Fuzz is the latest from the U.K. geek squad behind the cult comedy Shaun of the Dead: writer/director Edgar Wright, writer/star Simon Pegg, and demented plus-size sidekick Nick Frost. Together, they parody cop movies with the same fanaticism Shaun of the Dead brought to zombie flicks. For the first half or so, it's bloody brilliant. Pegg and Frost are police in a rustic English village. Great lines abound, like when Frost turns Pegg on to Bad Boys II: "Well, I won't argue that it was a no-holds-barred, adrenaline-fueled thrill ride, but there's no way you could perpetrate that amount of carnage and mayhem and not incur a considerable amount of... Rating: - Stars |
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Starring: Jake Gyllenhaal, Mark Ruffalo, Robert Downey Jr., Anthony Edwards... Review: David Fincher, who directed Se7en, loves his crazies. But this film doesn?t just tell the story of the serial killer who plagued 1970s California. Fincher shows how the lives of cops and journalists were ruined when they got too obsessed with the case. Witness Robert Downey Jr. as a reporter turned cokehead. Rating: 3 Stars |
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Starring: Adam Sandler, Kevin James, Jessica Biel, Steve Buscemi, Ving Rham... Review: Say it isn't so. Not that Adam Sander as Chuck and Kevin James as Larry play idiot hetero fireman who fake being gay for health benefits. I mean that Sideways writers Alexander Payne and Jim Taylor actually contributed to a script that trots out every fag joke -- yes, even dropping the soap -- and then tells us how wrong it is to laugh. No comedy this year can beat this dud for mealy-mouthed hypocrisy. Watch Peter Travers' reviews of I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry and Hairspray. To embed the video on your site, copy the following code: Rating: 1 Stars |
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Starring: John Travolta, Queen Latifah, Billy Crystal, Michelle Pfeiffer Review: It's a gay thing. That seems to be the excuse most guys use to avoid musicals. Chicago? Gay. Dreamgirls? Supergay. Phantom of the Opera? Don't start. No way is Hairspray going to turn the dudes Brokeback. For starters, it stars John Travolta in a dress. But cut it some slack, and the movie version of the still-running Broadway hit is a plus-size bundle of fun, despite herky-jerky pacing. It helps that Leslie Dixon's screenplay stays in tune with the source material, the 1988 movie that gave John Waters -- the sultan of sleaze -- his first mainstream hit. Set in the racially divided Baltimore of 1962, the Waters film suggests that the closest a black teenager could get to cultural integration was "Negro Day" on The Corny Collins Show, a local whiter-than-white American Bandstand.... Rating: 3 Stars |
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Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Rupert Grint, Emma Watson, Helena Bonham Carter... Review: If you're not hot for Harry onscreen, watch out for Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the fifth of the seven Potter books to be filmed to date. It will hook you good and keep you riveted. The candyass aspect of the first two films -- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone in 2001 and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets a year later -- was replaced by heat and resonance with 2004's Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban when Mexican master Alfonso Cuaron (Children of Men) took over the directing reigns from the prosaic Chris Columbus. Director Mike Newell held the line in 2005's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. But it's the lesser known David Yates, behind such British TV dramas as Sex Traffic and State of Play, who truly raises the bar with this fifth installment.... Rating: 3 Stars |
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Starring: Bruce Willis, Justin Long, Maggie Q, Yancey Arias, Yorgo Constant... Review: It's easy to joke about Bruce Willis, now past fifty, returning for a fourth chapter in the Die Hard series. It's been a dozen years since the last one. Shouldn't Willis be winded by now or prepping for AARP meetings? Even his former wife Demi Moore married a younger man. OK, I said the jokes were easy. Know what? Willis gets the last laugh. Live Free or Die Hard may not be much a movie -- it's a series of increasingly nutty stunts clumsily strung together -- but Brucie boy is truly an analog hero in a digital age. The role of no-frills New York police detective John McClane still fits him like a glove and he looks as fit as a guy half his age. What's your secret, dude? There's no secret about the movie. It's another techno-thriller with Die Hard slapped across the title. The bad guy... Rating: 2 Stars |
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Starring: Patton Oswalt, Brian Dennehy, Brad Garrett, Janeane Garofalo, Ian... Review: Thanks to this new miracle in animation from Pixar, the next time you see a rat scurry across a restaurant floor you?ll end up smiling appreciatively instead of screaming for the Board of Health. I?m only half kidding. Remy (voiced by comedian Patton Oswalt) is a French rat with a dream to become a master chef. And by the time Remy follows his dream to Paris, captured by the animators with a swoony loveliness that makes you want to dive into the screen, you?ll be rooting for Remy. Look, Mickey did OK for a mouse. Why not screen immortality for a rat? The folks at Disney who are releasing this unique and unmissable film would like you to pronounce the title the more rodent-centric rat-a-too-ee instead of the traditional ra-ta-touille, which is merely a peasant stew of eggplant, tomatoes, g... Rating: 3 Stars |
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Starring: John Cusack, Samuel L. Jackson, Jasmine Jessica Anthony, Christop... Review: John Cusack checks into Room 1408 at Manhattan's posh Dolphin Hotel and finds that the joint is jumpin' with ghosts who will do their damnedest to make sure the dude will not get out alive. It's a hellish premise, just the wicked mastery you expect from Stephen King, whose short story gives this mindbender its spine. King's recent work has been royally botched onscreen (hello, Secret Window, Needful Things and Dreamcatcher). Not this time. For that all praise to Cusack, who brings his welcome smartass savvy to the role of Mike Enslin, the author of bestsellers that debunk the idea of things that go bump in the night. Mike has his own demons, notably the death of his daughter (Jasmine Jessica Anthony), a tragic event that shattered his marriage to Lily (Mary McCormack). He makes... Rating: 3 Stars |
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Starring: Steve Carell, Morgan Freeman, Lauren Graham, John Goodman, John M... Review: It's too lame to be mighty, except in budget that is. At a reported $175 million, the shamelessly juvenile, pseudo-religious, mock-sincere Evan Almighty -- an update on Noah's Ark for Christian-conservative families everywhere -- is the most expensive Hollywood comedy ever made. Problem? It's not that funny. I compute that every laugh cost about $20 million. And most of those of are poop jokes. Let me back up a bit. In 2003, Jim Carrey hit paydirt with Bruce Almighty, playing a TV reporter who cursed God. The deity appeared to him in the imposing form of Morgan Freeman and told him to try playing God for a while. Lesson learned. A sequel didn't interest Carrey (wise man), so Steve Carell, who costarred in Bruce as another TV airhead, was coaxed into duty. What luck since The... Rating: 1 Stars |
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Starring: Marion Cotillard, Gérard Depardieu, Sylvie Testud, Clotilde Coura... Review: The troubled life of French songbird Edith Piaf, who died in 1963 at forty-eight, had enough drama to fill a dozen movies. Her upbringing in a brothel, followed by bruising encounters with sex, booze and drugs, created a voice that touched the world with hits such as "La Vie en Rose," "Milord" and "Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien." Somehow Olivier Dahan's impressionistic heartbreaker of a movie gets it all in. And Marion Cotillard, lip-syncing Piaf's songs and digging into her soul with gale-force urgency, gives a performance for the ages. Rating: 3 Stars |
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Starring: Kevin Costner, Demi Moore, Dane Cook, William Hurt, Marg Helgenbe... Review: Listen to me: trash can surprise you. So don't get all elitist about the so-called cheap thrills in Mr. Brooks. The film, directed by Bruce A. Evans, who co-wrote the screenplay for Stand by Me, is out to trigger shocks of recognition. Kevin Costner is off the hook as Earl Brooks -- by day a devoted husband, father and businessman, by night a serial killer with a taste for kink. Costner's career is enjoying a second wind that started with 2005's Upside of Anger. Age (he's fifty-two) has opened him up more to risk. Not since 1993, when director Clint Eastwood brought out his dark side in A Perfect World, has Costner veered so far from the straight and narrow. Depravity becomes him. You don't expect raw brutality from a man who prides himself on his corporate face. Or, as this movie wittily... Rating: 3 Stars |
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Starring: Angelina Jolie, Dan Futterman, Archie Panjabi, Will Patton, Irfan... Review: Brangelina inspired a paparazzi frenzy by decorating the red carpet at May?s Cannes Film Festival - he as one of the Ocean?s Thirteen gang, she as the star of A Mighty Heart, a devastating real-life drama that his company, Plan B, co-produced. Both stars made a pile squandering their talents on 2005?s Mr. and Mrs. Smith. But A Mighty Heart reveals and rewards their deeper ambitions. Jolie plays journalist Mariane Pearl, the widow of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl (Dan Futterman), who was kidnapped and murdered by jihadists in 2002. Based on Mariane?s memoir, the film is given a raw and riveting docudrama treatment by the superb British director Michael Winterbottom, whose films - from Welcome to Sarajevo to 24 Hour Party People - are notable for their total absence of... Rating: 3 Stars |
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Starring: Ioan Gruffudd, Jessica Alba, Chris Evans, Michael Chiklis, Doug J... Review: Rise of the Silver Surfer is the perfect summer movie, that is if you're eight years old or under. For the rest of us, the sequel to the first Fantastic Four that miraculously amassed more than $150 million in 2005, is a plotless, brainless, witless bore. It's not egregiously awful like the first film. Just plain awful in that formula way that kills your spirit and all hope for summer movies. This time the Fan Four -- if you need their origin stories just Google them for pity's sake -- are out to stop the evil Galactus from destroying the Earth. Jeez, aren't they always? The Silver Surfer is the new wrinkle -- he's sent by Galactus to give Earth a head's up. Go figure. There are two sleek, shiny special effects: Jessica Alba falling off a building naked (OK, you don't see much, the flick... Rating: 1 Stars |
| Starring: Jean-Louis Coulloch, Marina Hands Review: Eighty years ago, horny boys read D.H. Lawrence?s Lady Chatterley?s Lover for the dirty parts where the lady gets it on with her sweaty gamekeeper. Lawrence can still compete with Internet porn if you?re in the right mood. But director Pascale Ferran hunts bigger game in her spellbinding film, which focuses on the clash between animal nature and social class, now seen as the man feeling inferior to a prettier woman (hello, Knocked Up). When Lady Constance (Marina Hands is award-worthy) first sees the naked Parkin (Jean-Louis Coulloc?h), she connects to the carnal identity she had shut away in her marriage to an invalid. In Ferran?s hands, Lawrence?s tale becomes the story of a man and woman cutting through the restrictions of body and mind to learn about each other without all the... Rating: 3 Stars |
| Starring: Dylan Baker, Billy Connolly, Carrie-Anne Moss, K'Sun Ray Review: Just when you thought there was no way to spin a fresh zombie story, along comes Fido. Set in a Canadian suburb during the 1950s, the movie boasts a delicious premise: What if humans were the victors in a zombie war, and now the living dead ? fit with dog collars to zap their cannibal instincts ? were turned into domestic slaves? Hey, zombie, mow that lawn. Housewife Helen, played with inspired silliness by Matrix diva Carrie-Anne Moss, persuades her wimp hubby (Dylan Baker) to get the family its own rotting corpse. Lonely son Timmy (K?Sun Ray) calls his new pal Fido. As played by Scottish comic Billy Connolly, Fido is a good doggie until he gets his collar off. Then, oh boy! Director Andrew Currie is better at laughs than scares, but he can?t sustain either as Fido runs out of steam in... Rating: 2 Stars |
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Starring: Claire Danes, Toni Collette, Vanessa Redgrave, Patrick Wilson, Hu... Review: Susan Minot?s resplendent novel of a dying woman, Ann Lord (Vanessa Redgrave), remembering her defining romance with the man who got away (Patrick Wilson) stumbles on its way to the screen. Hungarian director Lajos Koltai (Fateless) pushes emotions that need to flow. But the actors, including Toni Collette and Natasha Richardson (Redgrave is her mom) as Ann?s daughters, provide flashes of brilliance. Hugh Dancy scores as the plot?s catalyst for tragedy. And Claire Danes is stellar as the young Ann, attending the Newport, Rhode Island, wedding of her friend Lila (Mamie Gummer). Even if you don?t know that Gummer, 23, is the daughter of Meryl Streep, who plays the older Lila, the resemblance hits you instantly. But Gummer proves her talent is her own in a star-is-born performance that... Rating: 2 Stars |
| Starring: Review: Note to the president: Here?s your chance to lock up Michael Moore. The radically fierce and funny fireball he aims at our health-care system is a flat-out invitation to steal. First, Moore shows us how France, England, Canada and ? yikes! ? Cuba actually help sick people instead of letting them wither and die for lack of health insurance. Then he instructs us to loot those places for ideas. Anti-American? Hell, no. Moore argues that if another country builds a better car, we buy it. If it crafts a better wine, we drink it. Why not free universal health care? As the agent provocateur of modern cinema, Moore is a moving target. Three of his docs (Roger & Me, Bowling for Columbine, Fahrenheit 9/11) had the bad taste to be box-office hits instead of slouching quietly to oblivion like most... Rating: 3 Stars |
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Starring: George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, Andy Garcia, Don Cheadle Review: Brad Pitt doesn't really act in Ocean's Thirteen, he just glides through the third chapter in Steven Soderbergh's heist-flick annuity on the magic carpet of his own unimpeachable cool. Don't knock it. Genuine star power is rare -- just watch Colin Farrell, Jude Law and Orlando Bloom struggle to attain it. Pitt has it in spades -- all aces. Like Dean Martin did with Rat Pack capo Frank Sinatra in Ocean's Eleven back in the Pleistocene era (1960), Pitt, 43, damn near holds his own with George Clooney, 46, the current go-to icon for effortless charm. That they both rolled craps in 2004's Ocean's Twelve, the self-satisfied ringer in the series, seems to have taught a hard lesson: Do not overplay the arrogance card. While co-stars Matt Damon, Don Cheadle and Al Pacino, as the scrappy... Rating: 3 Stars |
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Starring: Burt Pugach, Linda Pugach Review: For those who don't believe that truth trumps fiction for whacked-out depravity, mark this shockingly fierce and funny spellbinder as Exhibit A. Director Dan Klores, who heads one of the largest public relations firms in the country, lets rip with a tale of erotic obsession so schizoid that it's impervious to spin. It could only be a documentary. Back in the 1950s, hotshot New York attorney Burt Pugach was a negligence specialist in his thirties who was struck by lightning in the form of Linda Riss, a naive Bronx beauty whom Burt took on a whirl of Manhattan high life. Linda knew nothing of Burt's wife and disabled daughter. When the truth snuck out, Linda moved on. That's when Burt hired goons who disfigured her with lye and left her nearly blind. After fourteen years in prison, Burt was ... Rating: 3 Stars |
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Starring: Seth Rogen, Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann, Katherine Heigl, Jason Segel Review: If you want to hate on Judd Apatow's Knocked Up -- and the anti-crowd-pleaser contingent will surely ding it -- then get ready to be drowned out by the sound of laughter from the rest of us. I'll admit there's something sitcom-trite about the setup. Idiot-boy Ben Stone (Seth Rogen) knocks up gorgeous Alison Scott (Katherine Heigl) on a drunken first date and forges a truce with his lifelong enemy: maturity. Talk about buzz kill. But Apatow, as he proved with his 2005 directing debut, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and the sharp wit of his TV work on Freaks and Geeks and Undeclared, transcends the usual multiplex traps (Delta Farce, anyone?) by anchoring what's funny to what's real. Knocked Up runs for 132 minutes -- way long for a laffer -- but there's a reason that Apatow is the new king of... Rating: 3 Stars |
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Starring: Megumi Hayashibara, Tôru Furuya, Kôichi Yamadera, Katsunosuke Hor... Review: Director Satoshi Kon (Tokyo Godfathers) makes an art of Japanese anime in this tale of technology as an invader of dreams. Fiercely provocative, Paprika shames Hollywood?s use of animation as a kiddie pacifier. Rating: 3 Stars |
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Starring: Jamel Debbouze, Rie Rasmussen, Gilbert Melki, Serge Riaboukine, A... Review: Leg men everywhere, rejoice. There?s nothing like seeing Rie Rasmussen, a Danish model and actress, in a little black dress, towering heels and stems that go on for miles to distract you from all that?s wrong with this movie and, for that matter, the world. But critical duty calls. And writer-director Luc Besson, who had my vote for films as diverse as The Fifth Element, The Professional and ? speaking of legs ? La Femme Nikita, drops the ball this time. Angel-A never finds the heart in a promising It?s a Wonderful Life premise. Andre, a small-time hood played by Jamel Debbouze, owes debts all over Paris. But when he rescues bombshell Angela (Rasmussen) from a suicidal leap into the Seine, she becomes his guardian angel with all the goo factor that implies, although she does use sex... Rating: 2 Stars |
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Starring: Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, Keira Knightley, Stellan Skarsgard, N... Review: The good news first: Keith Richards totally rocks it playing pirate daddy to Johnny Depp's Capt. Jack Sparrow. The deep rumble of his voice and those hooded eyes that narrowly open like the creaky gates of hell make him what the rest of this three-peat is not: authentically scary. It's fun to see Richards swagger, even sitting down. Watch him stage a macabre reunion for Jack and his dear old mum. Don't worry, I won't reveal her secret. So what's the bad news? Richards is onscreen for barely two minutes. The rest of At World's End left me at wit's end wading through nearly three hours of punishing exposition, endless blather (pirates take meetings -- who knew?), an overload of digital effects and shameless setups for Pirates 4. I ask you people: Even if you like Depp (and who doesn't?),... Rating: 2 Stars |
