2/23/11:  "It's hard to make a great movie, but it's equally hard to take the resources of a studio and churn out something truly inert.  Usually, some kind of entertainment value slips through, or at least the whole affair is so terrible one gets the giggles and has a perverse anti-enjoyment of what they're watching.  I can report no such luck with The Eagle, Kevin Macdonald's Roman Epic On The Cheap most noteworthy for being more patriotic for a country/empire that no longer exists than just about any movie I can think of.  The Eagle isn't poorly acted so much as its performances uniformly fail to make an impression.  It's not so much badly plotted as that it's barely plotted at all:  remarkably little happens in virtually two hours of screen time.  It IS ideologically confused to the point of corkscrewing itself into the ground by the end of its running time, but that's only going to matter to you if you've been bored to the edge of a coma by the rest of what's going on and forced to latch onto analyzing the film's worldview in a desperate attempt to stay awake long enough to leave.  If you're all about this sort of Roman thing or a really big fan of Channing Tatum, I suppose The Eagle might prove adequate to your completist needs.  Otherwise, I highly advise you to stay far, far away from this long winter's nap." MORE

10/8/08:  "There are two kinds of great movies.  Some illuminate the human condition, captivate us with their ingenious, labyrinthine plots, or delight us with unforgettable characters.  Others are just wicked awesome.  Eagle Eye falls into the later category, telling an improbable sci-fi action story with such commitment and relentless gusto that it's easy to ignore how patently ridiculous many of its' events are.  Disturbia director D.J. Caruso reunites with his star Shia LaBeouf while doing his best Michael Bay impression under the eye of producer Steven Spielberg, who did the same job on Disturbia and the Bay-directed LaBeouf bone-cruncher Transformers.  A pure popcorn thrill ride with sensational stunt sequences and a plot so overheated it pops like Orville Redenbacher for two solid hours, Eagle Eye is not a movie for the discriminating cineaste.  But for fans of joyful mayhem, it's not to be missed.

Jerry Shaw (Shia LaBeouf) is a loser:  working at the Copy Cabana after dropping out of Stanford, he's so distanced from his family that he hasn't spoken to twin brother Ethan in over two years.  Then comes a fateful call:  Ethan has died.  " MORE

9/27/07:  "With the passing of the Toronto Film Festival, the nature of moviegoing hype changes for the six month Oscar Season.  After a summer of letting marketers and trailer editors tell us what movies we MUST see, now it's time to let buzzmeisters (both critics and reporters who tell us how much some movies look like critics should love them) take over.  The funny thing is, I've never found one group to be more reliable than the other when it comes to heralding what's actually going to amaze me beyond all measure.  Case in point:  Toronto Audience Award Winner Eastern Promises, the recipient of some of the year's ravest reviews.  It's a good movie, a competently diverting crime thriller directed with consummate skill and sporting one really good performance, but any resemblance to the groundbreaking slicing of bread is purely coincidental.

A teenage girl enters a London pharmacy with blood running down her legs and collapses.  She's rushed to a nearby hospital where she gives birth... and dies.  Identifying her and finding a family for her newborn daughter becomes an obsession for midwife Anna (Naomi Watts), who recently suffered a miscarriage.  She finds the girl's diary among her things, but it's in Russian." MORE

1/1/11:  "When the late writer/director John Hughes was honored with a special segment during the 2010 Academy Awards, I read more than a few commentators express their puzzlement, and he was truly the ultimate “you had to be there” filmmaker... as in, you had to see movies like The Breakfast Club and Sixteen Candles when you were a teen yourself and he seemed to see inside your soul and really KNOW the struggles of adolescence in a way no other movie writer before or since has.  And while those already beyond their high school years when those films were made can appreciate them, I don't think they can really understand the impact he had and continues to have as each subsequent generation sees those movies and the emotional richness that lies behind the increasingly shameful 80's wardrobes.  Bert V. Royal and his director Will Gluck are no John Hughes, but his spirit is alive and well in their new movie Easy A, a teen farce that name-checks Hughes almost as often as it follows in his footsteps.  Its heroine, the delightful Olive Penderghast, is wise and worldly in that way teens can be rather than the way teens like to imagine they are; which is to say that during the course of her adventure, she learns that she didn't know nearly as much as she thought.  What makes Easy A earn the Hughes comparisons it begs for is the way it can really put itself inside her head rather than simply putting a bunch of adult characters in high school." MORE

8/23/10:  "It's interesting once in a while to see a movie that allows you to check in with a world of which you are not a part.  Don't get me wrong; I'm a highly screwed-up guy and am not averse to picking up a little advice and perspective along the way to try and help right the Good Ship Lamar, but I'm not a believer in the Self Help Bestseller culture that spawned Eat Pray Love, Elizabeth Gilbert's blockbuster tome turned feel-good Julia Roberts vehicle.  Yes, yes, I know that EPL is a memoir as opposed to a flat-out “tell me what to do!” book like He's Just Not That Into You, but the point of the exercise is still to suggest that the key to your happiness lies in following, either literally or figuratively, in Gilbert's footsteps.  And while watching the movie, I spent a lot of time contemplating the possible value in this sort of second-hand standardized epiphany.  I'm not really persuaded:  the film, for my money, simply blends selfishness and cafeteria religiosity and calls the result personal growth.  But it is mounted with maximum effort by co-writer/director Ryan Murphy and a first-rate cast without which it would very likely be unbearable.  I accept that Eat Pray Love is intended for an audience that does not include me, but I still can't help but believe that even they are paying for 130 minutes of cinematic snake oil." MORE

2/3/10:  "Stardom is a double-edged sword:  sometimes we feel better about an actor's work because we like the persona we see in interviews and at award shows.  But sometimes, what we learn of actors off-screen can work against them, too.  Mel Gibson, one of the greatest movie stars of the 80's and 90's, has spent the last 7 years in behind-the-camera exile thanks to public backlash against his blockbuster The Passion of the Christ and a really, really bad night when he was arrested for drunk driving and responded by raging against the cops in a series of anti-Semitic slurs.  But time heals all wounds, and the Lethal Weapon finds himself back in front of the camera for the first time in 7 years as the star of Martin Campbell's remake of his own 1985 BBC miniseries Edge of Darkness.  For Gibson, who was riding high on an amazing streak of great performances in great movies (Were Were Soldiers, What Women Want and Signs were his last three leading roles), it's a chance to pick up right where he left off.  Not only does the role provide him with a chance to hit many of his best notes (virtue, fatherly love, grief and vengeance), but the movie itself is a first-rate thriller that mixes gunplay, vehicular homicide and Big Ideas about ethics and our responsibility to the society in which we live in just the right measure." MORE

4/23/08:  "I couldn't help thinking of the man who picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue repeatedly while watching 88 Minutes, a luridly overcranked and utterly ridiculous thriller that plays like an entire season of 24 compressed into a hair under two hours.  Unsavory serial murders and random assassination attempts alternate with the bizarre, endless spectacle of Al Pacino on his cell phone multitasking his way through enough suspects, evidence and red herrings to fill a dozen thrillers, all en route to a solution easily guessable without one single clue.  For all its' overheated frenzy, 88 Minutes includes not a single minute of genuine entertainment, except that sometimes it made me a little giggly.

We open with a sequence that really wishes the Hostel sequel had done better:  twin sisters (their status as twins the first of many things that screams “CLUE!” but is never followed up on) are drugged in their apartment, hung upside down and subjected to assorted nastiness I no more want to describe than watch.  One is able to scream for help that arrives too late to save her sister, but does scare off the assailant.  She thinks she can pick him out of a lineup and ends up IDing Jon Forster (Neal McDonough), who's convicted in large part because of the expert testimony of forensic psychiatrist Dr. Jack Graham (Al Pacino)." MORE

11/25/07:  "As I understand it, the history of the Disney Princess goes something like this:  for about 50 years between the release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and the era of Beauty and the Beast, little girls everywhere dreampt of themselves wearing awesome gowns, having woodland critters as their friends and, most importantly, being swept off their feet by a Prince Charming with whom they would live Happily Ever After.  Then, right around the time the ever-profitable Disney corporation caught on to how promotable the notion of the “Disney Princess” as a kind of asexual Bond Girl was, the country was catching up to the idea that singing to woodland critters and waiting for Prince Charming were not skills that were going to get a woman into the White House anytime soon.  So began a tug of war each subsequent Traditional Disney flick has tried to stay on the right side of:  fantasy vs. empowerment.  While the largely human-free Pixar revolution has called Time Out on this eternal struggle for the last few years, it's back with a vengeance in Enchanted, which sends a Disney Princess through a magical portal into The Real World.  There, the movie has a lot of fun with the contradictions between the two universes, and utterly fails to say any of the many meaningful things it so desperately wants to." MORE

1/27/07:  "Airplane! is one of my all-time favorite comedies, and I've seen it dozens of times.  One of the things I always marvel about it and the other movies created by the comic geniuses David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker is how they know that things which make absolutely no sense are going to be funny for that precise reason.  Humor is so subjective, and never more so than in their films and the whole “spoof” genre they inspired.  I try to keep that thought in mind as I ponder how exactly Epic Movie, the new blockbuster spoof from writer/directors (and in this case I use both terms loosely) Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, got made.  Mistaking references for referential humor, acted with an amazingly tin ear for comedy, and maddeningly padded out with dance numbers and musical montages, it is amateurish almost beyond belief.

The plot makes detours to reference a few recent films but mostly follows that of The Chronicles of Narnia:  The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.  Four orphans find Magic Tickets inspired by Charlie and the Chocolate Factory to visit a cannibalistic candymaker Willy (Crispin Glover, at least entertaining himself)."  MORE

1/4/07:  "I love cheesy dragon movies, particularly the ones the Sci-Fi Channel runs on Saturday nights, like Dragon Storm, Dragon Dynasty and Dragon Sword (aka George & the Dragon).  I even kinda liked Joel Silver's goofily awful theatrical take on Dungeons & Dragons, if for no other reason than to hear Jeremy Irons bellow perhaps the greatest bad line of all time, “I'll have to craft a new destiny for you, a destiny of pain!”  So, it is with great disappointment that I must announce that the latest big-screen dragon epic, Eragon, is a misbegotten mess, albeit one with some eye-popping special effects.

All together now... “It is a time of darkness.”  The evil King Galbatorix (John Malkovich, so overcranked he seems ready to attack any extra who might wander into the frame) rules his medieval kingdom with an iron hand, his soldiers forceably recruiting every able-bodied man for his (off-screen) wars.  Young Eragon (Edward Speleers), whose brother fled the country to dodge old man Galabatorix's draft, goes hunting one night and stumbles upon a remarkable stone.  It is in fact a dragon's egg, which hatches the adorable Saphira (voice of Rachel Weisz)." MORE

6/23/07:  "I've often said that the best sequels are to movies that don't entirely work.  Not “bad” movies per se, but the ones that leave you frustrated that their potential went unrealized.  Sequel a great movie, and you've got a high bar you're expected to meet or even exceed.  Sequel a mess, and you've not only got a lower bar to get over, but a clear guide to all the things you shouldn't do.  2003's Bruce Almighty got a few laughs from the clever idea of an ordinary man (Jim Carrey) given the power of God to teach him a thing or two about faith, but mostly failed at the story level.  Carrey wasn't interested in returning for a sequel, but writer Steve Oedekerk and director Tom Shadyac found a new leading man within their own cast:  Bruce was the first major movie role for rising comic Steve Carell, who played TV anchorman Evan Baxter.  Morgan Freeman returns as God, and Oedekerk worked his rewriting magic on a Bruce-free spec script called The Passion of the Ark about a modern-day politician called upon by God to build an ark, just like Noah.  The result, Evan Almighty, is not just a movie far better than its' predecessor, but a funny and inspirational extravaganza that delivers just about everything you could ask for from a Summer movie.

Tiring of his TV news gig, Evan ran for Congress, promising to “Change the World”, and won." MORE

9/4/10:  "Times change, genres evolve, and as we grow older, each of us has a sense that not all these changes are for the better.  Take the action genre:  once made up of tentpole blockbusters featuring some of Hollywood's biggest stars, films built around the crunching of bones have been mostly marginalized, watered down in worship of the PG-13 rating, and stripped of their high-impact by a transition from stunts to CGI effects.  Sylvester Stallone feels my pain.  In the middle of a 3rd-act renaissance built around the successful revisiting of his iconic franchises Rocky Balboa and Rambo, Sly has assembled The Expendables, the greatest collection of iconic action stars ever collected on one screen.  His cast ranges from massive superstars to beloved direct-to-video faces and professional athletes, and the movie he and co-writer Dave Callaham have built for them is a retro treat.  Bruising fights, massive explosions, a sky-high body count and wacky male bonding combine to make The Expendables the kind of film that will bring tears of joy to people who grew up watching its particular brand of action.  And even if you didn't, it's not to late to hop on board:  The Expendables is everything mindless cinematic mayhem should be.

The Expendables are an elite group of mercenaries who do good bad and morally neutral jobs for the highest bidder." MORE

9/8/09:  "There are cold, hard facts in life that we discuss openly:  not everyone gets to be rich, tall or handsome.  But for the most part we don't talk about the fact that some people are just plain dumb, stupid and generally a bunch of friggin' imbeciles.  And if you've ever found yourself in a position of authority, trying to lead them can drive a person mad.  Perhaps alone among contemporary filmmakers, satirist Mike Judge has made stupidity a major theme in his work, most notably in his brilliant but little-seen Idiocracy, which posited a future in which the dim reproduced at such a faster rate than the intelligent that a cryogenically frozen man of “average intelligence” was thawed out to find himself the smartest man in the world.  Extract, his new workplace comedy that will be discussed mostly as a management level mirror-image of his cult classic Office Space, offers a more down-to-Earth perspective.  The movie is slow and unfocused, but it's also awfully funny, particularly if you've ever been forced yourself to lead a combination of the unwilling and the incapable.

Joel (Jason Bateman) is an unhappy guy.  The extract plant he founded is staffed by idiots.  He can't drive home without being accosted by dullard neighbor Nathan (David Koechner)." MORE

1/28/12:  "For some people, it will always be “too soon” to “deal” with the 9/11 terror attacks on film.  I give a pass to anyone who lost family members, was there that day or even lives in one of the affected cities.  But for the rest of us, I’ve never been able to grasp the hubris that demands that “our” tragedy be considered “special” and kept off-limits from all the ways in which we process our existence, from gallows humor to fictional examination, through which every other global tragedy is inevitably filtered.  I’ve noticed that the media in general and film critics in particular have proven to be quite protective of the subject, in part because for a while it was verboten among liberals to suggest that anything heroic happened on that day because that suggestion gave strength to President George W. Bush much as the prayers of his subjects power Clash of the Titans’ Zeus.  But it really is time to stop grinding that ax:  yes, 9/11 has a particular power for everyone who’s old enough to remember their own experiences that day (for 99.9% of everybody, the heart-wrenching experience of hearing about it on the news), and that’s fair game for writers and filmmakers to consider the same as every other tragedy.  I make this stump speech because Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, director Stephen Daldry and writer Eric Roth’s adaptation of Jonathan Safran Foer’s 2005 novel, arrives amidst a certain amount of critical backlash for “not being 9/11 enough”." MORE

2/3/10:  "Everybody loves a true story.  The notion that the larger-than-life adventure we see play out on the screen actually happened speaks to the part of us that's based more of our worldview than we realize on the things the movies have taught us.  Of course, like most real world/movie comparisons, reverence for the “true story” can also set us up for heartbreak.  When the words “Inspired by” appear in a movie's credits, it's Caveat Emptor when it comes to believing what you're about to see.  That tension applies more than usual to Extraordinary Measures, a nice little drama about John Crowley, a real-life pharmaceutical executive who started his own company to develop a cure for the rare disease that afflicted two of his children.  Beyond that, separating fact from fiction becomes dicey while the movie's leisurely pace and lack of dramatic momentum encourage you to spend more time thinking about it than you should.  But a great cast uses its considerable charisma to good advantage, and aficionados of courageous parent/sick kid dramas will be in Heaven.

John (Brendan Fraser) and Aileen (Keri Russell) Crowley are happy, loving parents with one big problem:  two of their three children suffer from a rare genetic disease that will kill them before their ages reach double-digits." MORE

2/14/08:  "You hear it all the time, but there really aren't many good leading role for actresses, especially in mainstream movies.  Since making a splash as the ass-kicking transgenic hero of James Cameron's TV series Dark Angel, Jessica Alba has taken a lot of critical abuse as a pretty face with no acting chops.  But after seeing her in The Eye, it's worth reflecting on exactly what she's had to work with up to now.  Other than suiting up as The Invisible Woman in the Fantastic Four movies (and even that wasn't much of a role in last summer's sequel), she's been mostly asked to look good in a swimsuit and smile a lot (two things, granted, that she does exceptionally well).  But The Eye confirms that she's more than just a hottie:  tasked with commanding every scene as a blind woman who finds a cornea transplant to be a mixed blessing at best, Alba delivers the goods.  And she has to, because The Eye is creepy at times and engaging at others but it is first and foremost a star vehicle, one which overcomes some conceptual flaws to deliver 90 minutes of quality B-movie entertainment.

We know Sydney Wells (Alba) is as smart and refined as she is beautiful because she's got the movies' go-to career for the smart and refined:  concert violinist." MORE