Starring:
Ed Asner, Christopher Plummer, John Ratzenberger, Delroy Lindo,
J…
Review:
A grumpy old coot, a chubby kid and a house hoisted by helium
balloons — if you’re thinking that Up sounds like a
shortcut to sugar shock, snap out of it. Pandering to ninnies is
not on the agenda for this latest landmark in Pixar animation. With
Pete Docter and […]

Continue reading " Up "

Starring:
Justin Long, Jessica Lucas, Alison Lohman, David Paymer, Reggie
L…
Review:
There’s no truth in the title. Drag Me to Hell is
horror-movie heaven. Director Sam Raimi, breaking the shackles of
mainstream success with his Spider-Man trilogy, returns to
the down-and-dirty cheapies that spawned him with The Evil
Dead in 1983. The result, again co-written with his brother
Ivan Raimi, plays […]

Continue reading " Drag Me to Hell "

Starring:
Sasha Grey, Glenn Kenny
Review:
Looking for the dirty thrill of ogling a real porn star, Sasha
Grey, as she plays a high-priced Manhattan hooker doing a suck-fuck
Kama Sutra? Then, dear God, steer clear of The Girlfriend
Experience. Grey, 21, is there, all right, but director Steven
Soderbergh, 46, has no interest in servicing the panting john in
us. […]

Continue reading " Girlfriend Experience "

Starring:
Sasha Grey, Glenn Kenny
Review:
Looking for the dirty thrill of ogling a real porn star, Sasha
Grey, as she plays a high-priced Manhattan hooker doing a suck-fuck
Kama Sutra? Then, dear God, steer clear of The Girlfriend
Experience. Grey, 21, is there, all right, but director Steven
Soderbergh, 46, has no interest in servicing the panting john in
us. […]

Continue reading " The Girlfriend Experience "

Starring:
Christian Bale, Sam Worthington
Review:
No laughs. No swinging-dick R rating (PG-13, really?). No road
map for Terminator newbies to follow yet another
time-travel plot. But even with a rusty script, T4 still
manages to blend action and feeling. Director McG, filling the big
shoes of James Cameron on the first two films (Jonathan Mostow had
less luck on T3), […]

Continue reading " Terminator Salvation "

Starring:
Jessica Biel, Ben Barnes
Review:
The elegant barbed wit of Noel Coward bubbling up in a time of
Wolverine grunts. I must be dreaming. But here it is, a 1920s-era
comedy of bad manners done by experts. Jessica Biel is funny and
touching as Larita, an American auto racer catching hell from the
snob Brit parents (Colin Firth and […]

Continue reading " Easy Virtue "

Starring:
Ben Stiller, Amy Adams
Review:
If this movie were a museum exhibit — you know, a hologram
where kids can watch paintings and sculptures come to life —
it’d be great fun for about five or 10 minutes. But Night At
the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian drags on for a punishing
104 minutes. The money shots of the […]

Continue reading " Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian "

Starring:
Juliette Binoche
Review:
A mother dies. A family gathers to divide the estate and trade
memories. Life and death, those persistent cliches, duke it out
once more at a country house just outside Paris. From familiar
material, writer-director Olivier Assayas (Irma Vep, Boarding
Gate) crafts a near perfect blend of humor and heartbreak, a
lyrical masterwork that measures loss in […]

Continue reading " Summer Hours "

Starring:
Tom Hanks, Ayelet Zurer, Ewan McGregor
Review:
To say that the film version of Dan Brown’s bestselling
Angels & Demons is better than the static anti-cinema
that was The Da Vinci Code is like saying oral surgery is
better with Novocain. Director Ron Howard eases off on the pain
this time by speeding up the pace, toning down the […]

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Starring:
Jennifer Aniston
Review:
It takes half an hour — forever in movie time — for
this relationship comedy to get going. But when it does, Jennifer
Aniston, as a corporate type who buys ghastly motel art, and Steve
Zahn, as the night manager at his parents’ Arizona motor inn, do
quiet wonders. Smarting from her split from a yogurt […]

Continue reading " Management "