Roger Moore's Movie Reviews
 | View Orlando Sentinel movie critic Roger Moore's film reviews, the most recent releases at the top. View all reviews since September 2008 in Roger's movie archive. For reviews before September 2008, view them in our movie database. |
Movie Review: Cera turns 'rebel' to get the girl in 'Youth in Revolt'
"Punk" and "rebel" don't belong in the same sentence with " Michael Cera." But somehow, they connect in the few-holds-barred teen comedy Youth in Revolt.
Movie Review: Leap Year needs more of a skip in its step
If chemistry were all, then the sparks Amy Adams and Matthew Goode set off would be enough in 'Leap Year,' a romantic comedy in which those sparks never quite ignite.
Movie Review: A 'Bad Lieutenant,' just not bad enough
Nicolas Cage shows entirely too much restraint in taking on the title role in Werner Herzog's remake of Bad Lieutenant, titled The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call, New Orleans.
Disney's A Christmas Carol
Movie review: A Christmas Carol -- 3 of 5 stars
The new Disney A Christmas Carol is another epic achievement in motion-capture animation, advancing the art form closer to photo-realism than The Polar Express or Beowulf. Dazzling, ornate visuals take us to the snowy London of 1837, swooping over its digital rooftops and down its digital chimneys. Faces take on musculature, expression and detail.
Astro Boy
Movie review: Astro Boy -- 2 out of 5 stars
Lovely dollops of wit and warmth float through the big screen version of Astro Boy, the latest Japanese TV cartoon to make it to the big screen. But the look, themes and slam-bang Transformers violence of that 1960s animated series make this every bit as dated as Speed Racer, even if it is easier to watch.
Saw VI
Movie review: Saw VI -- 2 out of 5 stars
"You have seen the errors in your policy," Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) hisses in the latest Saw movie. And, kids, he's hissing a pun at Big Insurance when he does, the profiteers who determine "who lives and who dies." As Jigsaw tortures the actuarial menace who sentenced him and other cancer patients to death, forcing Not-Evil-Just-Officious Will (Peter Outerbridge) to save or let die his Umbrella Insurance colleagues, Will is reminded that "your decisions [are] symbolized by the blood on your hands."
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant
Movie review: Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant -- 3 out of 5 stars
Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant is sort of a Twilight-lite. It's about vampires and it's about teenagers. But where Twilight vamps down Romance Novel Road, Freak, based on Darren Shan's novels, is a lark and in this case, the laughs are intentional.
Good Hair
Movie review: Good Hair -- 3 out of 5 stars
Like the titular follicles this documentary surveys, Good Hair is a bit all over the place. It's about black women trying to achieve "European" standards of beauty, about the way black men feel such "unnatural" hair keeps them at a distance, the loaded language that frames the way black people relate to their hair, about black hair salons and their role in the economy of black communities, about India's thriving hair-weave export trade and the alarming and dangerous chemistry of hair relaxers.
Amelia
Movie review: Amelia -- 3 out of 5 stars
Amelia has magnificent period settings and airplanes and majestic aerial photography. It boasts the two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank, perfectly cast as Amelia Earhart, with Richard Gere as Earhart's promoter-publisher husband, George Putnam. They even have nice on-screen chemistry.
A Serious Man
Movie review: A Serious Man -- 3 out of 5 stars
It's not all Fargo Oscars and No Country for Old Men box-office glory for the filmmaking Coen Brothers. Sometimes they stumble and give us a bad movie that's deliriously watchable -- a Big Lebowski. Sometimes they drop a challenging, worthwhile film that you won't ever want to watch again (Barton Fink).
The Boys Are Back
Movie review: The Boys Are Back -- 3 out of 5 stars
A widowed dad doesn't quite come to grips with his shortcomings as a parent in The Boys are Back. This mournful melodrama serves up Clive Owen as a "free range" parent in an Aussie Kramer vs. Kramer. The movie argues that no matter how selfish or irresponsible, Dad is still the right one to raise his son.
More Than a Game
Movie review: More Than a Game -- 3 out of 5 stars
"Access" is what distinguishes the basketball documentary More than a Game. Like an agent or recruiter with an eye for talent, filmmaker Kristopher Belman latched onto Akron's LeBron James and his basketball teammates as young teens and filmed them for years as they -- or at least James -- became stars.
Where the Wild Things Are
Movie review: Where the Wild Things Are -- 2 out of 5 stars
The author of Where the Wild Things Are picked Spike Jonze (Being John Malkovich) to direct the long-planned film of the much-loved children's book. But whatever Maurice Sendak thought the quixotic Jonze would bring to the movie -- a penetrating understanding of the thin, allegorical picture book, perhaps -- what Jonze delivers, with a script by Dave Eggers, is not a children's movie at all. This dull, downbeat, yet faithful adaptation has become a Sesame Street of the Spotless Mind.
World's Greatest Dad
Movie review: World's Greatest Dad -- 3 out of 5 stars
The title character in World's Greatest Dad is anything but. Lance (Robin Williams) is a beleaguered high school English teacher and a frustrated novelist. And the indignities he suffers at work pale in comparison with the way his teen son (one-time Spy Kid Daryl Sabara) treats him.
Law Abiding Citizen
Movie review: Law Abiding Citizen -- 2 out of 5 stars
Law Abiding Citizen is a glib, brutal and preposterous revenge fantasy, a take-the-law-in-your-own-hands rabble rouser that taps into a lot of fears and genuine gripes about the American legal system. It's the sort of movie that Mel Gibson or Clint Eastwood might have made back in the day -- a man survives the slaughter of his family by thugs and sets out to get even, and then some.
Couples Retreat
Movie review: Couples Retreat -- 2 out of 5 stars
Couples Retreat was made because of its sunny, sandy location, scenic Bora Bora. Judging from the light, cast members slept late and took it pretty easy, even in the "We rise at dawn" scenes.
Seraphine
Movie review: Seraphine -- 4 out of 5 stars
Yolande Moreau plays the industrious but touched washerwoman-turned-painter Séraphine de Senlis with an open-faced conviction that is almost unnerving in its intensity. In Séraphine, Martin Provost's painterly story of the painter's life, Moreau makes this woman both a bio-film archetype and a one-of-a-kind creative spirit.
The Blair Witch: 10 Years After
Movie review: The Blair Witch Project -- 4 out of 5 stars
The simplest effects are the most effective "effects." That's the horrific lesson of micro-budget masterpiece of modern horror, The Blair Witch Project.
Capitalism: A Love Story
Movie review: Capitalism: A Love Story -- 4 out of 5 stars
With Capitalism: A Love Story, Michael Moore brings it all back to Roger & Me (1989), the essay/documentary that started it all. That cautionary Jeremiad about the export of American jobs overseas and the export of power and money from "We the People" to Wall Street is the warning at the beginning and the exclamation point at the end of Capitalism. And Moore being Moore, he can't quite resist a bit of "I told you so" in the process.
Zombieland
Movie review: Zombieland -- 4 out of 5 stars
In the months after the zombie apocalypse, brought on by a virulent mutation of Mad Cow Disease, America has ceased to be.
The Invention of Lying
Movie review: The Invention of Lying -- 4 out of 5 stars
Brit-comic Ricky Gervais stakes a serious claim to the title "the British Albert Brooks" with The Invention of Lying, his droll, witty and thoughtful comedy about the thing that really makes the world go round.
Toy Story, Toy Story 2 3D double feature
Movie review: Toy Story, Toy Story 2 3D double feature -- 5 out of 5 stars
Converting Pixar's history-changing cartoons Toy Story and Toy Story 2 into 3D and pairing them, in theaters, for a double feature reminds us how very good these movies were and remain, how great the computer animation and how witty and sentimental the scripts.
Amreeka
Movie review: Amreeka -- 4 out of 5 stars
The immigrant experience gets a fresh, post- 9/11 Palestinian spin in Amreeka, a film that has all the familiar ingredients but is such a well-acted, winning re-combination of those that we see them with fresh eyes.
Pandorum
Movie review: Pandorum -- 3 out of 5 stars
Pandorum plays like the best movie based on a video game to not actually have a video game to base it on, ever.
Surrogates
Movie review: Surrogates -- 2 out of 5 stars
Surrogates is a workmanlike sci-fi action film with few pretenses, a movie that hints at much but grapples with little.
Bright Star
Movie review: Bright Star -- 4 out of 5 stars
John Keats' life, love and death make him a romantic cliche and a fine subject for a period romance in Bright Star.
It Might Get Loud
Movie review: It Might Get Loud -- 4 out of 5 stars
The conceit is simple enough. Round up three generations of famous rock guitarists, use home movies, visits to their old stomping grounds and concert footage to tell their stories, then put them in a room together to see what happens.
The September Issue
Movie review: The September Issue -- 4 out of 5 stars
Vogue editor Anna Wintour towers over fashion like a high priestess.
I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell
Movie review: I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell -- 1 out of 5 stars
I have no idea if they serve beer in hell. But I have some notion of what might be playing at the Hades AMC 20. It's I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, probably on a double bill with All About Steve.
Paranormal Activity
Movie review: Paranormal Activity -- 3 out of 5 stars
Some movies are a more shared experience than others, and that's certainly the case with Paranormal Activity, a micro-budget horror flick about things that go bump in the you-know-what in a nice new home. It's opening in select college towns, midnight-only showings, in a handful of theaters. The combination of the late hour and the horror-jazzed audience could make this minimalist chill-fest the new Blair Witch Project, or so Paramount hopes.
O'Horten
Movie review: O'Horten -- 4 out of 5 stars
The day you retire is a little late to realize everything in life you've missed out on. But that's what Odd Horten does in the droll, wistful Norwegian (with English subtitles) comedy O'Horten. Odd is his name, and odd is the way to describe this 67-year-old railroad engineer who lives alone, drives his train, sucks on his pipe and sticks to a routine that he developed 30 years before. It takes his retirement to shake up, even mildly, this man who wonders what he has lived for and what he has left to live for.
Broken Hill
Movie review: Broken Hill -- 2 out of 5 stars
There are pleasures in the inoffensive little Aussie coming-of-age romance Broken Hill. But they're as sparse as trees in the arid Outback that is the movie's setting. It's a picture with the ambitions of a Billy Elliot but the execution of an August Rush.
The Informant!
Movie review: The Informant! -- 3 out of 5 stars
If only The Informant! was as giddy as its exclamation-point title, as jaunty as its corporate Muzak soundtrack -- or even as funny as its TV commercials.
Love Happens
Movie review: Love Happens -- 2 out of 5 stars
Love Happens is a comedy in mourning, a romance so sad that even Jennifer Aniston at her most engaging can't save it. The writer of the deadly Dragonfly has been promoted to writer-director for this one, and despite having the same template as a hundred screen romances, he can't make it work.
Jennifer's Body
Movie review: Jennifer's Body -- 2 out of 5 stars
Megan Fox, queen of cut-off jeans, lip gloss and hair toss, Fandango bait to the fanboys in the Transformers movies, makes a mess of herself in a teasing mess of a movie titled Jennifer's Body.
Sorority Row
Movie review: Sorority Row -- 2 out of 5 stars
The ending of Sorority Row is bad -- cheesy, worn-out, seen it in 78 horror movies before. It's almost awful enough to make you forget that the movie that came before it is -- as R-rated youth-horror films go -- kind of fun. It's all cheese, but at least this cheese, for the most part, doesn't stink.
'Whiteout'
Movie review: Whiteout -- 2 out of 5 stars
Whiteout as a movie title might signify the whiter-than-white panties Kate Beckinsale treats us to about five minutes into her new thriller. But it doesn't.
Thirst
Movie review: Thirst -- 3 out of 5 stars
The juvenile heavy-petting of Twilight gives way to all-out Korean kink in Thirst, a macabre, darkly humorous and at times nauseating vampire tale from the director of Old Boy, Park Chan-Wook. Park gives us geysers of blood, gallons of gore and sound effects cranked up so that every squishy bite, slurp, gurgle and bodily function hits you in full Surround Sound.
"9"
Movie review: 9 -- 2 out of 5 stars
The animated sci-fi film 9 -- not to be confused with the non-animated sci-fi District 9, or the non-animated non-sci-fi musical Nine -- is a perfect example of a thin idea stuffed and stuffed with filler until it loses much of its charm. Shane Acker's film is built on his 2005 short animation of the same title, an almost magical and mysterious little movie about animated rag dolls in a post-apocalyptic future struggling to "survive" the terrors of their ruined world.
Humpday
Movie review: Humpday -- 3 out of 5 stars
Humpday is a chatty indie collision of pop-culture trends, the sort of comedy you get when "mumblecore" wrestles with the boundaries of "bromance." There's something to chew on, even if it is more self-conscious and less amusing than its "mumbling" antecedents, In Search of a Midnight Kiss and The Puffy Chair.
Extract
Movie review: Extract -- 3 out of 5 stars
Mike Judge finds humor in the lone, sane person swimming against a tide of idiots. That formula worked for umpteen years on King of the Hill, and it still works well enough in his workplace comedy Extract. Judge fills the screen with rubes, klutzes and jerks. Then he hurls them at poor Jason Bateman.
All About Steve
Movie review: All About Steve -- 1 out of 5 stars
At times like this, it's good to think positive. That's what Sandra Bullock's socially inept crossword puzzle "constructor" does in All About Steve.
Gamer
Movie review: Gamer -- 1 out of 5 stars
When did Gerard Butler hire Jason Statham's agent? When did the star of 300, Friend of Guy (Ritchie, of RocknRolla), savior of Katherine Heigl (The Ugly Truth), need to do B-movies built on video-game cliches, conventions and stereotypes?
Movie review: Halloween 2 -- 1 out of 5 stars
Rob Zombie's transition from scary heavy-metal maven to slash-and-splatter movie maker is completed with Halloween II. The director of House of 1,000 Corpses and The Devil's Rejects is so mainstream he's a sequel sell-out now. No wonder he's moving on to "creature features" -- he announced this week he'll remake The Blob.
Movie review: Taking Woodstock -- 4 out of 5 stars
This is the way we should remember Woodstock -- a sea of people, a river of mud, a mountain of garbage and a whole lotta love.
Movie review: Adam -- 4 out of 5 stars
She is winsome, witty and wounded, an elementary school teacher who comes from money.
Movie review: Inglourious Basterds -- 1 out of 5 stars
Hollywood's two most indulged enfant terrible filmmakers have now made the worst two World War II movies of this millennium. With Inglourious Basterds Quentin Tarantino has topped Spike Lee ( Miracle at St. Anna) in awfulness.
Movie review: Shorts -- 4 out of 5 stars
Robert Rodriguez channels his inner 11-year-old with Shorts, a childish but fun wish fulfillment-fantasy for kids that's equal parts boogers, big messages and product placement.
Movie review: Paper Heart -- 3 out of 5 stars
Charlyne Yi is a mopey Plain Jane in her hoodie and fashionably unfashionable glasses, a conceptual comic, an Andy Kaufman for the viral-video generation. You can find her more-quizzical-than-funny sketches all over YouTube. She was right at home as the no-energy token female stoner in Knocked Up.
Movie review: Post Grad -- 2 out of 5 stars
Alexis Bledel, the Gilmore Girl with the Traveling Pants, takes a baby-step into adulthood with a retro romantic comedy about looking for love and career fulfillment the minute you get out of college.
Movie review: The Time Traveler's Wife -- 4 out of 5 stars
Clare's jaw drops the moment she spies Henry, and it's not just love at first sight. Clare knows Henry, even if he doesn't recognize her. She's met him many times over the years. And his visits to the meadow on her family's estate turned him into her ideal man -- tall, dark and handsome.
Movie review: Ponyo -- 4 out of 5 stars
Ponyo, the latest Japanese anime fantasy to gain American distribution, is the most broadly accessible movie of that genre to ever reach these shores. Charming, amusing and firmly anchored in a child's point of view, this movie from the master animator of Spirited Away makes a great introduction to that acquired-taste style of filmmaking.
Movie review: District 9 -- 4 out of 5 stars
The newcomers are, in a word, gross. They showed up, a million of them, on South Africa's doorstep 20 years ago. And they won't go home.
Movie review: Bandslam -- 3 out of 5 stars
Bandslam, Summit Entertainment's High School Musical/Camp Rock clone, is a movie about music and high school and guilt and fitting in. It's surprisingly not awful for something this over-familiar.
Movie review: The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard -- 2 out of 5 stars
Hollywood's "Cash for Clunkers" program misfires with The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard. It's a car-selling comedy that plays like a backfiring Bentley -- a shiny ride that runs in fits and starts, never quite hitting on all cylinders.
Movie review: G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra -- 2 out of 5 stars
Summer blockbuster season officially ends with the arrival of G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra, another brainless popcorn picture built on an awful '80s TV cartoon.
Movie review: Valentino: The Last Emperor -- 4 out of 5 stars
He dominated high fashion for 45 years. And when it was time to go, nobody was ever given a curtain call like the epic one his longtime love and partner Giancarlo Giammetti gave Valentino -- a Roman gala that would rival any spectacle from the age of Caesar.
Movie review: Julie & Julia -- 4 out of 5 stars
Julie & Julia is a gloriously frothy confection, a late summer delight built on Meryl Streep's hilarious impersonation of The French Chef, Julia Child.
Movie review: Son of Man -- 4 out of 5 stars
The story never went like this: "For unto you is born, in the City of Soweto, a King..."
Movie review: A Perfect Getaway -- 3 out of 5 stars
A romantic vacation hiking the wilds of Hawaii is not in the cards for one couple in the somewhat engrossing thriller A Perfect Getaway. Since there are three couples on that trail, the trick to this not-as-tricky-as-you'd-hope mystery is figuring out which couples are potential victims and which are murderers.
Movie review: (500) Days of Summer -- 4 out of 5 stars
Here's a romantic comedy that remembers that the best romances have a touch of the bittersweet. That's the happy accident happily titled (500) Days of Summer.
Movie review: The Collector -- 1 out of 5 stars
Matt Damon and Ben Affleck must be so proud. Their reality TV competition to give movie careers to worthy filmmakers-in-training rewarded writer-director Marcus Dunstan and co-writer Patrick Melton. Their beast feature Feast spun directly out of Project Greenlight.
Movie review: Funny People -- 3 out of 5 stars
Funny People is a comedy at the apex of Judd Apatow's ambitions and the outer limits of Adam Sandler's talent. An overlong and rambling riff on stand-ups who struggle to "make it" in movies or TV, it psychoanalyzes the insecure folks who make us laugh.
Movie review: Adoration -- 4 of 5 stars
Canadian director Atom Egoyan is most at home wrapping delicate mysteries of fate inside mournful elegies. He has strayed from the style and sort of story that made him famous in recent years, and risked obscurity (Ararat, Citadel) or ridicule (Where the Truth Lies).
Movie review: The Ugly Truth -- 2 out of 5 stars
For an actress trying to escape her Grey's Anatomy rut and carve out a movie career, Katherine Heigl has been awfully quick to dive into another rut, this one on the big screen. Just three romantic comedies into her leading-lady status she's displayed a range that ventures from A as far as B, done two movies in which she's played TV producers and claimed that potty-mouthed-girl-next-door title all to herself.
Movie review: Orphan -- 2 out of 5 stars
The scares are cheap, the laughs mostly intentional and the ending is a real lulu in Orphan, the latest from the director of House of Wax.
Movie review: 'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince' -- 4 out of 5 stars
A great treachery is revealed, a great light is snuffed out and the final quest is set up in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, an emotional and involving installment in the hit-or-miss Harry movie series.
Movie review: Bruno -- 3 out of 5 stars
Brüno, Sacha Baron Cohen's shock-and-ach du lieber follow-up to Borat, is a miss-or-hit mockmentary aimed at turning another of his Ali G Show guises into a pop cultural phenomenon. But Borat was such a hit that it's a struggle to find people gullible enough to not recognize the star. And in many "bits" developed for this gay Austrian fashionista's assault on Fashion Week in Milan, the Middle East, clueless cogs in LA's dream machine and rural America's rube-eoisie, the strain shows.
Movie review: Departures -- 5 out of 5 stars
Awards watchers predicted the animated Israeli docudrama Waltz with Bashir would take home the best foreign language film Oscar this year. But the little-seen Japanese Departures pulled off the upset. When you see the poetic, funny and life-affirming film, you'll have to say that this time the Academy got it right.
Movie review: Moon -- 3 out of 5 stars
Moon is a low-budget, paranoid sci-fi thriller that gives up its paranoia and mystery far too early. It's one of those indie films whose selling point is "look what they made with very little money." Because what "they" -- director Duncan Jones and the British production team -- pulled off is an eye-poppingly real lunar base that, if nothing else, looks messy and lived-in.
Movie review: I Love You, Beth Cooper -- 1 out of 5 stars
Oh, to have teenage kids just so I could forbid them to see I Love You, Beth Cooper.
Movie review: Whatever Works -- 3 out of 5 stars
Woody Allen has aged into that grandpa you hate taking out to Cracker Barrel because you never know what might come out of that mouth. He's still got the occasional Oscar-worthy bit of wit in him. He can still land Penelope Cruz an Oscar for a Vicky Cristina Barcelona. But the clunky and dated Hollywood Endings and Scoops come along so often that it's a relief when he doesn't embarrass himself.
Movie review: Cheri -- 3 out of 5 stars
She's a leading Paris courtesan, that high-class brand of prostitute that had its heyday before the telephone created "call girls."
Movie review: Tyson -- 4 out of 5 stars
There was a Kodak commercial that aired in the late 1980s, a sentimental peek at the relationship between "Iron Mike" Tyson and the trainer who shaped him, polished the prison off him and focused his energies on boxing, Cus D'Amato. D'Amato had died, but the gist of the very touching commercial was that the tough fighter with the high-voiced lisp had his soft side, his memories of his mentor, and those are preserved forever on Kodak film.
Movie review: Away We Go -- 4 out of 5 stars
Verona and Burt are having a baby. But where? Where is a support system? Where would the lifestyle be right for raising a child?
Movie review: Tennessee -- 2 out of 5 stars
Tennessee, a formulaic indie road drama, plays like a prospectus for an indie film. New Mexico has filmmaker incentives, so we'll shoot a lot of it there. Find a pop star willing to work cheap as she takes another stab at a film career. Those two elements secure your funding. Now try and write a movie around them.
Movie review: The Proposal -- 3 out of 5 stars
Sandra Bullock may be aging out of her the years when Hollywood sees her as Miss Congeniality, but not without one last fling. The Proposal has her playing the icy boss who blackmails her younger assistant into a sham marriage to save her Green Card. It's a performance with real comic juice, a woman acting her age and matched by a co-star whose comic timing complements her own -- the very face of big-screen sarcasm, Ryan Reynolds.
Movie review: Year One -- 2 out of 5 stars
Year One is this summer's The Love Guru, this weekend's Land of the Lost.
Movie review: Imagine That -- 3 out of 5 stars
Eddie Murphy finds his Inner Cosby in Imagine That, a comedy that is long on Cosby-like, kid-friendly charm even if it falls short in the funny department. He keeps the mugging to a minimum and smartly allows the moppet (Yara Shahidi) playing his daughter steal scene after scene of this tale of a father-daughter relationship in need of fixing.
Movie review: Outrage -- 4 out of 5 stars
Idaho Congressman Larry Craig stands in front of the microphones and declares that despite being caught soliciting a cop for sex in a men's room, despite lovers telling their stories of him to the press, that he is not gay. And in the background a bystander calls out -- "Come on Larry, be gay!"
Easy Virtue: 4 out of 5 stars
The director of the bubbly Priscilla, Queen of the Desert tackles the bubbly playwright Noel Coward for Easy Virtue, a loose but spirited adaptation of Coward's scandalous Jazz Age romp. All that bubbling means that some of the froth floats off this confection. But it's still a winning, witty fox trot through the Roaring 20s, when men were men, women were liberating themselves and the "to the manner born" were losing their grip on their manners -- and manors.
Movie review: The Taking of Pelham 123: 3 of 5 stars
That 1970s action classic The Taking of Pelham 123 earns an efficient if not exactly riveting treatment from Tony Scott, the lesser of the two hyper-editing Scott brothers. It stars Tony's go-to actor, Denzel Washington. But the film is built around and wholly dependent on John Travolta chewing a microphone and chowing down on what little scenery there is underground as the tattooed, foul-mouthed mastermind of a New York subway car hijacking.
Movie review: Lifelines -- 3 out of 5 stars
Nancy and Ira are stressed, a couple of working parents caught in the crossfire that is life with their kids.
Movie Review: Land of the Lost -- 2 out of 5 stars
Stupid on an epic scale or epic on a stupid one, Land of the Lost is as close as Will Ferrell comes these days to a "kid friendly" movie.
Movie review: The Limits of Control -- 2 out of 5 stars
Jim Jarmusch has never been a filmmaker in a hurry. His films that work -- from Night on Earth to Broken Flowers -- have a droll, meditative vibe and pace. He often pieces together an episodic story that allows movie stars to show up in tiny, single-scene roles -- star power for his quirky, self-conscious riffs.
Movie review: Every Little Step -- 4 out of 5 stars
It ran on Broadway for so long it became a New York institution and a cultural punch line. But for all its self-absorption and the ways its "edge" has dulled over the decades, A Chorus Line still has the power to move, amuse and thrill.
Movie review: My Life in Ruins -- 2 out of 5 stars
The adorable Nia Vardalos makes an obvious choice for a movie she hopes will recapture a bit of her Big Fat Greek Wedding mojo from 2002.
Movie review: The Hangover -- 3 out of 5 stars
If Internet buzz is to be believed, The Hangover, the new road trip-to-Vegas comedy by the director of Old School, is the "in" comedy of the summer.
Movie review: Up -- 4 out of 5 stars
Up is the movie in which Pixar makes it look easy. A feather-light farce with a delicious dose of the sentimental, it isn't the animation company's biggest, most complicated or even its best. It's just a film in which most every oddball element of an odd yet familiar story works.
Movie review: Drag Me to Hell -- 4 out of 5 stars
Sam Raimi leaves Spider-Manliness behind and digs up his horror roots in Drag Me to Hell, a terror tale almost as fun as its tease of a title. Raimi, who got his start with the Evil Dead movies, sure-handedly blends thrills with giggles in this old-fashioned, newfangled, over-the-top hair-raiser.
Movie review: The Brothers Bloom -- 4 out of 5 stars
The Brothers Bloom is a dark "big con" comedy in The Grifters tradition. Writer-director Rian Johnson has a genre Jones, a literary bent and an ear for chewy dialogue. Brick, a film noir about a tough kid trying to solve a murder in his high school, was his debut. You probably haven't seen that, but it's worth renting.
Movie review: Rudo y Cursi -- 3 out of 5 stars
By day, the brothers cut and tote fruit at the local banana plantation. Each night, Tato (Diego Luna) bikes home to his wife and growing family of niños while the single and happy-go-lucky Beto ( Gael Garcia Bernal) drinks cerveza, plays his accordion and sings with passion if not exactly skill.
Movie review: Anvil! The Story of Anvil -- 4 out of 5 stars
Anvil were in the thick of that whole 80s "hair metal" craze, touring with Whitesnake, appearing on the same bill with Scorpions, Bon Jovi and the like.
Movie review: Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian -- 3 out of 5 stars
The warm moments rise from the real history sampled in Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian. The kid-friendly thrills come from the special effects -- the monsters, mannequins, artifacts and paintings that come to life in this sequel to Night at the Museum.
Movie review: Terminator Salvation -- 3 out of 5 stars
Terminator Salvation is one of the most visually impressive films in the series. The action is non-stop and the look borders on dazzling.
Movie review: Sin Nombre -- 4 out of 5 stars
The extraordinary Sin Nombre strips much of the sentiment from the classic "illegal immigrant" tale. The heroes and villains of this are all Mexican -- even the shouts of warning, "La Migra!" (Immigration!), are about Mexican immigration agents. The standard-issue immigrant odyssey becomes a brutal and brutish gangland thriller in this film, with intersecting lives converging on the trek to El Norte -- the U.S.
Movie review: Angels & Demons -- 3 out of 5 stars
There are a several moments of real pathos in Ron Howard's film of Dan Brown's Angels & Demons, which is several more than he was able to conjure up in his film of Brown's The Da Vinci Code. Howard has made a better, more entertaining thriller out of the first book in Brown's saga about symbols expert Robert Langdon ( Tom Hanks) and his research into skulduggery entangling the Catholic Church.
Movie review: Star Trek -- 4 out of 5 stars
It took decades of increasingly mediocre TV series and Data-dull movies to beat Star Trek to death. But J.J. Abrams brings it all back to basics, and back to life, with a rousing "How Scotty Met Sulu" prequel about how the intrepid crew of the Enterprise became shipmates. Abrams has delivered a not-too-reverent space opera that follows the Trek canon even as it reinvents what made generations fall in love with this saga.
Movie review: Lymelife -- 4 out of 5 stars
A nearly perfect cast more than compensates for the over familiarity of elements of Lymelife, the umpteenth coming-of-age drama to roll out of Indiewood in recent years. Derick Martini's film has the gangly, awkward boy crushing on the cute girl next door, the two dysfunctional families they come from and assorted scenes with an over-compensating older brother, a bully and teens really stumbling into sex.
Movie review: Next Day Air -- 2 out of 5 stars
There's no honor among thieves in Next Day Air, a dopey, bloody and downbeat "Black Pineapple Express." The laughs come easily enough. But the violence and grim finale drag this coke-deal-gone-wrong comedy into a hole it can't giggle its way out of.
Movie Review: X-men Origins: Wolverine -- 3 out of 5 stars
The second coolest thing about the Wolverine of the X-Men movies -- after Hugh Jackman's epic sideburns -- was his mystery. So naturally that's what Marvel set out to delete with its first X-Men sequel.
Movie review: Ghosts of Girlfriends Past -- 3 out of 5 stars
The Internet Hate Fest for Matthew McConaughey reached its nadir this past week, with one blogger going so far as to call the goofy-go-lucky dude "Satan."
Movie review: Battle for Terra 3D -- 2 out of 5 stars
Battle for Terra is a 3D oddity that's a war movie grafted onto an anti-war message. Naive but ambitious, it comes across as a Battlestar Galactica vetted by pacifists, Clone Wars neutered for Saturday morning kids' TV.
Movie review: Is Anybody There? -- 4 out of 5 stars
Occasionally wistful, often melancholy but always charming, Is Anybody There? is a coming-of-age comedy about old age. This wise but slight film is best appreciated for another winning Michael Caine turn as the old boy conjures a winning performance out of a gossamer-thin role and proves, yet again, that he's got plenty of magic up his sleeve.
Movie review: The Soloist -- 5 out of 5 stars
He's just another homeless man -- layers of mismatched clothing, a shopping cart loaded with all his worldly possessions, a voice that never stops chattering and eyes that never make contact.
Movie review: Paris 36 -- 4 out of 5 stars
It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. Because, as always, those French can never seem to find a balance.
Movie review: 12 -- 4 out of 5 stars
A dozen Russians gather in a high school gym to consider the fate of a young Chechen man accused of murdering his Russian stepfather.
Movie review: Fighting -- 2 out of 5 stars
Randy Crawford's 1970s cover of "Street Life" blasts from the soundtrack and Fighting director Dito Montiel (A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints) fills the screen with precisely that -- a grungy, hustling Midnight Cowboy New York. The director plays a visual game of three card monte on us for this silly, weakly acted and yet sometimes entertaining variation on the "Big Fight" movie formula.
Movie review: The Informers -- 2 out of 5 stars
Thanks to Brett Easton Ellis, nobody can ever tell you "You had to be there" when talking about the '80s. Ellis lets us re-live those halcyon days of cheap coke, Miami Vice fashions and the rise of AIDS. Occasionally, some fool gets the idea that his literary wretched excess would make for a good film.
Movie review: Disneynature's 'Earth' -- 3 out of 5 stars
In Earth, the first film from Disney's new documentary unit, Disneynature, the studio serves up a sort of nature documentary's greatest hits, a film that covers every corner of the natural world, from the Arctic to the Antarctic, jungles to deserts. It's a grab bag of beautiful nature footage, a bit all over the place in subject. But it serves to introduce the sorts of films and sorts of places Disneynature will take its cameras in coming films.
Movie review: Crank: High Voltage -- 2 out of 5 stars
If Jason Statham is the greatest B-movie action star of our day (and he is), then the Crank movies are his showcase. These gonzo, amoral, politically incorrect rides put the ripped, bald and mean Statham through his paces like nothing else in his action repertoire.
Movie review: State of Play -- 4 out of 5 stars
As dense as a Watergate era newspaper and as immediate as a blog, State of Play is an absolutely riveting state-of-the-art "big conspiracy" thriller. It's an often brilliant collision of political scandal, murder, a privatizing military and the rapidly evolving journalism that may (or may not) remain democracy's watchdog once newspapers, "instant history," are rendered history by a culture that has abandoned them.
Movie review: Sugar -- 3 out of 5 stars
Sugar is a simple baseball melodrama about The Dominican Dream. And that dream is to master America's game and win a trip to the States and a shot at the Major Leagues.
Movie review: 17 Again -- 3 out of 5 stars
As a remake of It's a Wonderful Life or Back to the Future, the movies it borrows from most heavily, the re-live-your-senior-year comedy 17 Again falls a little short of the mark. But as a funny, sweet and smart star vehicle tailored for Zac "High School Musical" Efron, it's right on the money.
The Golden Boys: 2 out of 5 stars
Movies aimed at older audiences are so rare that it's a crying shame so few of them come off.
Movie review: The Great Buck Howard -- 3 out of 5 stars
The Great Buck Howard is a pleasant enough comedy in the My Favorite Year mold. Colin Hanks, son of Tom (who produced and has a cameo) plays a young man who drops out of law school and takes a job as road manager of has-been "mentalist" Buck Howard. Not-quite-hilarity ensues.
Movie review: Fast & Furious -- 2 out of 5 stars
Fast & Superfluous is the fourth film in the Fast/Furious franchise, a tepid, repetitive and digitally augmented hot cars-hot women thriller that might probably won't give Vin Diesel and Paul Walker the career boost that The Fast and the Furious did.
Movie review: Play the Game -- 2 out of 5 stars
Here's an AARP-friendly romantic comedy about a "playa" who tries to teach his grandpa how to Play the Game, while grandpa tries to teach sonny boy about true love and companionship.
Movie review: Adventureland -- 3 out of 5 stars
A summer away from college, a seasonal amusement park job and a little romance -- the ingredients of yet another "coming of age" dramedy, one that allows Kristen Stewart to try out her newfound Twilight fame.
Movie review: 12 Rounds -- 2 out of 5 stars
Renny Harlin, who hasn't had a hit since he divorced Geena Davis, was the right guy to lift World Wrestling Entertainment's infant film division to something closer to legitimacy. If anybody could shoot and cut an action film to hide wrassler John Cena's lack of Actors Studio training, it's the director who made Stallone look like a mountain climber in Cliffhanger and Willis look like he was really worried those planes were going to crash in Die Hard 2.
Movie review: The Haunting in Connecticut -- 2 out of 5 stars
Never play hide-and-seek in a haunted house. Isn't that one of those motherisms handed down at the same time as "Look both ways before crossing the street" and "Don't swim after eating"?
Movie review: Sunshine Cleaning -- 4 out of 5 stars
In high school, Rose Lorkowski wasn't just a cheerleader, she was head cheerleader. A redheaded looker, she dated the captain of the football team.
Movie review: Monsters vs. Aliens -- 4 out of 5 stars
The animation wizards at Dreamworks leave Shrek and Madagascar sequels behind, and what do they come up with?
Movie review: I Love You, Man -- 4 out of 5 stars
"Bromance," setting up a "man date" -- who knew male bonding could be so complicated?
Movie review: Wild Ocean -- 3 out of 5 stars
Large-format nature films rely a lot on the WOW factor, eye-popping images that are even more so when you're seeing them on a screen eight stories tall. Wild Ocean, the latest from the team that made Pulse -- the big-format movie about the dance ensemble Stomp -- grabs you with seas boiling with sharks, dolphins, gannets and seals, stunning underwater photography that takes you into "bail balls," the swarms of small fish who move in unison to avoid predators.
Movie review: Duplicity -- 4 out of 5 stars
Duplicity is a romantic comedy with spies, a heist picture with sex and a corporate intrigue thriller filled with funny banter.
Movie review: Timecrimes -- 4 out of 5 stars
There's something going on at the "research institute" that's just over the hill. But that "something" could be the undoing of Hector, the moderately nosy neighbor who stumbles into a myriad of temporal paradoxes in the clever Spanish thriller, Timecrimes (Los Cronocrimenes), opening at the Enzian.
Movie review: Wendy and Lucy -- 3 out of 5 stars
Movies about people living on the fringes during hard times have a particular resonance in the multiplex of 2009. Sunshine Cleaning touches on the struggles of the working poor. Wendy and Lucy gives us a young woman and her dog that are just now discovering homelessness.
Movie review: The Cross: The Arthur Blessitt Story -- 3 out of 5 stars
Arthur Blessitt is a Mississippi-born evangelist who wanders the globe toting a 12-foot wooden cross on his shoulder. He's been doing it for 40 years, starting in LA where he had a Sunset Strip ministry, and he's carried that cross on every continent, walking every country on the face of the Earth -- more than 300 in all.
Movie review: Race to Witch Mountain -- 3 out of 5 stars
Race to Witch Mountain is the first kids' film in ages to have action beats that measure up to Hollywood's grownup action fare. Inspired by but not really a remake of Disney's much milder 1970s children's hit Escape to Witch Mountain (based on Alexander Key's novel), this Witch Mountain has a lot more in common with Men in Black, WarGames, E.T. and Close Encounters.
Movie review: Last House on the Left -- 3 out of 5 stars
The violence is immediate, unflinching and relentless in The Last House on the Left, a movie of shocking sadism and cruelty. Most shocking of all is the performance of Sara Paxton. The onetime teen star (Aquamarine) is objectified by the camera long before the horrific, graphic rape that is the triggering event in this remake of the movie that made Wes Craven famous. But Paxton's humanity shines through. And as her character Mari suffers the insufferable, our heart breaks for her.
Movie review: Miss March -- 1 out of 5 stars
What a mess Miss March is. And I'm not just talking about the repeated involuntary bowel-evacuation moments.
Movie review: Watchmen, 3 of 5 stars
The long-awaited film of Alan Moore's classic comic book/graphic novel Watchmen is a work that's easier to ponder than enjoy. Director Zack Snyder has delivered a literal, almost page-by-page transcription of Moore and Dave Gibbons' messianic, End of Days superhero epic. It gives you a lot to chew on in its 2 hours and 40 minutes. But as striking as it is to absorb and behold, as literal as the adaptation is, Watchmen rarely hits the thrilling or entertaining stride that Snyder's 300 had from start to finish.
Movie review: The Class -- 4 out of 5 stars
The Class, an Oscar-nominated French film about a Paris middle school, should be required viewing for anybody considering a career in teaching. The problems seen here — class time wasted on discipline; parents in denial; frustrated teachers — seem endemic and universal. Any hope of "inspiring" those one or two children a year who let you see the light flash on contrasts with the sobering reality of how frustrating the work can be.
Movie review: Two Lovers -- 4 out of 5 stars
Two Lovers is a melancholy love triangle played in a melodramatic key — an age old tale of "She loves him, he loves another, but that other loves a married man."
Movie review: Jonas Brothers: The 3D Concert Experience -- 2 out of 5 stars
To be a 15 year-old girl, in braces and swooning over that first love. To join friends you can giggle, text and scream with at a show. To bubble at that gum that is bubble-gum pop.
Movie review: Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li -- 2 out of 5 stars
Anyone who remembers the godawful 1994 Jean Claude Van Damme/Raul Julia film based on the ancient video game Street Fighter will be shocked at how much better the new film built around the game's characters is.
Movie review: Che: Part Two -- 3 out of 5 stars
Few filmmakers have to sell a subject as unpopular as the one Oliver Stone tackles with his latest cinematic "history lesson." But you've endured eight years of George W. Bush, Stone seems to say with his new bio-pic W., what's another two hours?
Movie review: Che: Part One -- 3 out of 5 stars
Steven Soderbergh narrowed the life of Che Guevara to two slices of his story, cast Oscar winner Benicio Del Toro in the role and gives us four hours and 17 minutes with the late Marxist icon.
Movie review: Fanboys -- 2 out of 5 stars
Fanboys is an affectionate homage to Star Wars -- the films and the feeding frenzy they fed. A "scruffy nerf-herder" of a comedy, it stumbles about, taking wild swings at its subject, like Luke Skywalker practicing blindfolded with his light saber. But it has heart, it finishes well, and it'll probably play better on home video than in a theater, where its Clerks II production values and clumsy shifts in tone won't stick out like a Wookie in an Ewok convention.
Movie review: Must Read After My Death -- 4 out of 5 stars
When aspiring filmmaker Morgan Dew's grandmother Allis died, he stumbled onto a treasure trove of found audio and video -- 8 mm home movies, audio discs and tapes. "Must Read After My Death," she had labeled them. He opened each and found a veritable Pandora's Box of family dysfunction, a potential film essay on the "swinging '60s" and its consequences laid bare.
Movie review: The International -- 3 out of 5 stars
Eleven years ago, Tom Tykwer was the hot new German director of Run Lola Run, an amped-up action film that began at a sprint and never once slowed to a trot as it followed a woman dashing from place to place trying to raise the cash to save her lover. That was the movie that raised the bar on chases and action films.
Movie review: Confessions of a Shopaholic -- 3 out of 5 stars
Confessions of a Shopaholic is a lot more in sync with the zeitgeist than you'd expect from a movie with that title. A dizzy and chic chick picture for our times, this hit-or-miss comedy is about the perils of conspicuous consumption, the void that shopping fills in some souls.
Movie review: Friday the 13th -- 1 out of 5 stars
Let's celebrate Friday the 13th with a little red meat, shall we? And hard numbers.
Movie review: Coraline -- 5 out of 5 stars
Dark, magical and endlessly inventive, Coraline is the latest stop-motion animated marvel from Henry Selick, whose Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach are gold standards for the style.
Movie review: The Pink Panther 2 -- 2 out of 5 stars
Someday, we'll stroll through the Steve Martin Wing of The Los Angeles County Museum of Art, admiring his collection, and we'll appreciate what he had to do to pay for his Picassos, Seurats and Edward Hoppers.
Movie review: He's Just Not That Into You -- 2 out of 5 stars
He's Just Not That Into You is the movie equivalent of watching somebody learn to juggle. A lot of things go into the air. Most are dropped. And afterward, there's the awkward silence of an entertainment that hasn't quite delivered.
Movie review: Push -- 2 out of 5 stars
Dakota Fanning plays her first-ever drunk scene in Push, a new comic-book-inspired thriller about mind-readers and mind-benders, people with telekinetic powers given to them by the government in some demented effort to create walking, talking human weapons.
Movie review: The Uninvited -- 4 out of 5 stars
An effective blend of thriller and horror -- of The Hand that Rocks the Cradle and The Grudge -- The Uninvited is the best Hollywood adaptation of an Asian horror title since The Ring. Taut, nervy performances, lean, unobtrusive direction and a smattering of wit in the script make this the rare horror picture that rises above cheesy "gotchas" and gore.
Movie review: New in Town -- 3 out of 5 stars
As stereotypes go, Minnesotans don't have it so bad.
Movie review: Waltz with Bashir -- 4 out of 5 stars
Waltz with Bashir is an animated docu-drama about one Israeli's efforts to recall what he did in "The War." The War in this case was the invasion of Lebanon in 1982 -- Israel's Vietnam. And the event filmmaker Ari Folman wants to remember, but can't, is the massacre in the Sabra and Shatila Palestinian refugee camps, when Christian militias moved in, with Israeli permission, and slaughtered hundreds of civilians.
Movie review: Taken -- 4 out of 5 stars
Three self-evident truths emerge from Taken, the lean and brutal thriller about why one should NEVER kidnap a retired secret agent's daughter.
Movie review: Underworld: Rise of the Lycans -- 2 out of 5 stars
It takes a few minutes to get the mind and the eyes around the fact that, yes, that's the great Brit-thespian Michael Sheen, impersonator of Tony Blair (The Deal, The Queen) and David Frost (Frost/Nixon) transforming into a werewolf in Underworld: Rise of the Lycans. But it is Sheen, all buff and hairy and toothy, giving his all in a struggle with vampire Bill Nighy over the vamp's fanged daughter, played by Rhona Mitra.
Movie review: Inkheart -- 2 out of 5 stars
The children's fantasy Inkheart arrives in theaters as an orphan of Warner Bros.' decision to fold up its New Line Cinema division, an orphan dumped in the movie wasteland of January.
Movie review: Outlander -- 2 out of 5 stars
Who knew that when James Caviezel became the most popular big-screen Jesus of all time he'd have to endure 40 years in the cinematic wilderness afterward? B-movies, indie films that no one sees, it's as if JC is atoning for some Mel Gibson sin or other.
Movie review: My Bloody Valentine 3D -- 1 out of 5 stars
That cyclical cinematic fad known as 3D gets back to its gimmicky "gotcha!" roots with My Bloody Valentine 3D, a pick-axe-in-your-eyeball remake of a 1981 horror classic. No cartoon cuddliness in this 3D outing: It's a hand-drips-blood-in-your-lap exploitation picture that will remind anyone who has seen the original 3D fad films of those flaming arrows and other stuff that leapt off the screen at folks sitting in the dark with silly glasses.
Movie review: The Wrestler -- 4 out of 5 stars
Mickey Rourke has earned that face. Every mile of hard living, every bar fight, delusional boxing match and botched plastic surgery is there, a badge of hubris if not courage.
Movie review: Defiance -- 3 out of 5 stars
Defiance is, in too many ways to count, a defiantly old fashioned World War II Resistance movie.
Movie review: Hotel for Dogs -- 1 out of 5 stars
Kids will watch most anything with a dog in it -- witness the success of Beverly Hills Chihuahua and Marley & Me, or the never-ending Beethoven franchise. But studios usually have the good sense to send the runts of the dog-movie litter direct to video. Disney's Snow Buddies and the new Beethoven's Big Break come to mind.
Movie review: Last Chance Harvey -- 2 out of 5 stars
Dustin Hoffman might be well-cast as Last Chance Harvey, an aging loner who takes one last shot at love on a trip to London. But he doesn't act the part. Sure, Harvey Shine's going to have a polish to him after a lifetime of composing commercial jingles in New York. But if you're playing a "loser" at love, you need to stumble, hesitate and utterly lack the confidence to approach a pretty woman. Hoffman, his 71-year-old body buffed and coiffed to a fine sheen, swaggers like an Oscar winner putting the moves on a woman whose body language and language language says, "Not interested, pushy American."
Movie review: Paul Blart: Mall Cop -- 2 out of 5 stars
The thin comic appeal of Kevin James is laid on a bit thicker in Paul Blart: Mall Cop, his first solo star vehicle for the big screen. As a chunky loner-loser who can never pass the New Jersey State Police exam and never get the girl, James practically channels John Candy at his most sympathetic in this not-a-real-cop comedy.
Movie review: Chandni Chowk to China -- 2 out of 5 stars
The success of Slumdog Millionaire has Warner Bros. thinking America's ready for the magical wackiness known as Bollywood cinema, thus Chandni Chowk to China earns a limited release in the U.S. This zany blend of Kung Fu Hustle, Kung Fu Panda and curry sauce is not a bad way to introduce audiences to India's Bollywood film traditions.
Movie review: Revolutionary Road -- 4 out of 5 stars
Did we begin questioning "The American Dream" with Richard Yates' acclaimed 1961 novel, Revolutionary Road? Or was he reporting something that began in the unquestioning 1950s?
Movie review: Gran Torino -- 3 of 5 stars
The racist, homophobic Dirty Harry Callahan has retired in Detroit. Sgt. Highway of Heartbreak Ridge may not wear his stripes, but he still keeps his rifle loaded. And William Munny, the haunted, aged gunfighter of Unforgiven, has one last shot at redemption.
Movie review: Bride Wars -- 2 out of 5 stars
The big problem with the romantic comedy Bride Wars seems as plain as the opening credits.
Movie review: Not Easily Broken -- 2 out of 5 stars
Not Easily Broken is a marriage-in-crisis melodrama baked from the Tyler Perry recipe.
Movie review: I've Loved You So Long (4 of 5 stars)
Her name is Juliette. And since she's played by Kristin Scott Thomas, there's something regal in her bearing, a Paris catwalk in her cheekbones, her brows, the chic haircut.
Movie review: Valkyrie -- 4 out of 5 stars
An unfussy, adult and stoic Tom Cruise anchors the World War II thriller Valkyrie. In a compact performance of nerve and rare glimpses of emotion, Cruise is a leading man who takes us through a complex story, and ennobles and personalizes events that have now almost faded into history.
Movie review: The Curious Case of Benjamin Button -- 4 out of 5 stars
There's a lot of Gump in The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. This meandering parable about a man born old who ages into adulthood, then youth and finally infancy, is a film that meditates on love, aging, death, each to its season. Since it was written by the same fellow (Eric Roth) who adapted Forrest Gump, Button has many Gump characteristics.
Movie review: Doubt -- 4 out of 5 stars
The thunderclap moments are a tad muffled in John Patrick Shanley's film adaptation of his play, Doubt. But thanks to a nearly perfect cast, this provocative glimpse into the Catholic priest child-molestation scandal manages to be deeply disturbing on several levels.
Movie review: The Reader -- 4 out of 5 stars
In some stories, there can be no catharsis, the German writer Bernhard Schlink Ö has said of his novel, The Reader. For some crimes, there is no forgiveness.
Movie review: Marley & Me -- 2 out of 5 stars
It's a relief that Marley & Me, the film of John Grogan's a newspaperman-and-his-dog memoir, isn't better. That's obvious as the weepy third act unfolds. Whatever tears director David Frankel, stars Owen Wilson and Jennifer Aniston and a very cute dog, may try to wring out of us, the almost lifeless movie that comes before guarantees those tears won't come.
Movie review: The Spirit -- 2 out of 5 stars
This is what Sin City would have looked like without the restraining hand of co-director Robert Rodriguez behind the camera. And 300, shorn of Zack Snyder's reality? It might have had the same expressionist flourishes, the loony, loopy excesses of The Spirit, a. k. a Frank Miller run amok.
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