Starring:
Hannah Bailey, Colin Clemens, Megan Krizmanich, Jake Tusing
Review:
Reality tv, welcome to the multiplex. If The Hills went
back to high school and developed wit, perception and a conscience,
it might play something like Nanette Burstein’s wallop of a doc.
Burstein (The Kid Stays in the Picture) did total
immersion with a handful of seniors at the only […]

Continue reading " American Teen "

Starring:
Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Mary Steenburgen, Richard Jenkins,
…
Review:
Starting at infantile and regressing hysterically from there,
Step Brothers flies on the comic chemistry of Will Ferrell
and John C. Reilly. They riffed on the baby Jesus in Talladega
Nights. Now they’re goofing on grown men who stay babies. Are
you ready to see Ferrell rub his hairy […]

Continue reading " Step Brothers "

Starring:
David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson
Review:
Being suitably paranoid about the paranormal, I wanted to
believe that X-Files creator Chris Carter, having had six
years since the TV show went off the air to craft a humdinger of a
plot, could conjure up something with more ding and less (ho) hum
than The X-Files: I Want To Believe. What I […]

Continue reading " X-Files: I Want To Believe "

Starring:
Christian Bale, Michael Caine, Heath Ledger, Gary Oldman, Aaron
E…
Review:
Heads up: a thunderbolt is about to rip into the blanket of
bland we call summer movies. The Dark Knight, director
Christopher Nolan’s absolute stunner of a follow-up to 2005’s
Batman Begins, is a potent provocation decked out as a
comic-book movie. Feverish action? Check. Dazzling spectacle?
Check. Devilish fun? […]

Continue reading " Dark Knight "

Starring:
Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgard,
Jul…
Review:
Meryl Streep can do anything: sing, dance, do splits, act her heart
out. She (almost) saves this clumsy, overwrought film version of
the Abba musical that’s been running on stages from Broadway to
Barcelona since 1999, grossing over $2 billion and luring more than
30 million ticketbuyers to hear Abba […]

Continue reading " Mamma Mia! "

Starring:
Eddie Murphy, Elizabeth Banks, Gabrielle Union, Judah
Friedlander…
Review:
Eddie Murphy — was that Oscar nominated performance in
Dreamgirls just something I imagined? — continues to
trash his very real talent with bottomfeeding material. In Meet
Dave, Murphy limits himself to two roles (none human). He
plays a pint-sized alien from outer space and the spacecraft he
rode in on. If […]

Continue reading " Meet Dave "

Starring:
Brendan Fraser, Josh Hutcherson, Anita Briem
Review:
Remove a star from the rating if you take this Journey
without wearing 3-D glasses. That’s where the real fun comes in.
Otherwise you have a family-friendly retelling of Jules Verne’s
1864 novel (best remembered is the 1959 movie with an overqualified
James Mason, a shirtless Pat Boone and a gorgeous Arlene […]

Continue reading " Journey to the Center of the Earth "

Starring:
Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones, Jeffrey Tambor, Ladislav
Be…
Review:
Granted, Guillermo del Toro’s sequel to his 2004
Hellboy is not a work of art like his Oscar-winning
Pan’s Labyrinth. But his latest spin on Mike Mignola’s
vividly drawn Dark Horse comic series sure is a surprise
package of fun, fright and untamed imagination. If you’re looking
for a creature […]

Continue reading " Hellboy II: The Golden Army "

Starring:
Fred Willard, Jeff Garlin, Sigourney Weaver, John Ratzenberger,
K…
Review:
First image: the Earth as a garbage dump, a future reduced to
ruins. For the past 700 years, what’s left of humanity has been
cruising the skies in a spaceship. Only a tiny robot,
WALL-E (for Waste Allocation Load Lifter: Earth class),
scoots around on urban terra firma compacting trash […]

Continue reading " WALL-E "

‘Mongol’ {4stars} Beautifully made epic about the formative years of Genghis Khan, portrayed here not as a brutal conqueror but as a progressive leader inspired by the love of his wife. Tadanobu Asano is very good as Khan, as is Khulan Chuluun, who plays his wife; Honglei Sun is outstanding as […]

Continue reading " ‘Mongol’ "