9/25/08:  "I hate the New York Yankees.  My baseball team of choice is the Texas Rangers, who've appeared in a grand total of 3 postseason series, all Division Series losses to the New York Yankees in which my Rangers were wildly outplayed and won only once in ten games.  These were soul-crushing, heartbreaking losses and could have processed them by directing anger and disgust at the players I rooted so hard for who let me down.  But that would require introspection about the choice to root for an out-of-state team that almost always loses and recrimination of players who'd once again be my favorites the following year.  The better, the easier choice:  hate the Yankees.  And, oh, how I do!  I try not to live the parts of my life that actually matter that way, but don't always succeed.  We're all guilty of hating third parties that remind us of the things we don't like about ourselves or our lives, and at its' best, Neil LaBute's Lakeview Terrace is a fascinating meditation on our enthusiasm to embrace hatred of random people.  It's also a throwback to the “Neighbor From Hell” cycle of thrillers that held sway in the late 80's and early 90's, but it's a smart and well crafted one.  Terrace is not a movie for viewers who need to like characters to empathize with them, and the ending is pat when it should have been complex."  MORE

6/7/09:  "I'm pretty sure I watched an episode or two of Sid and Marty Croft's Saturday Morning Magnum Opus Land of the Lost back in the day, but since I was all of five years old by the time it left the air in 1977, I don't feel particularly guilty to admit that I don't remember them other than the vague sense that the Sleestaks were really scary.  But I do know that it couldn't have taken a more different approach to its' subject (three people thrown into a strange parallel world) than Brad Silberling's new film version.  Rather than square-jawed low-budget earnestness, this Will Ferrell vehicle goes bananas on comedy and camp, producing a goofball cinematic acid trip I happened to find hilarious.  But then I'm a huge fan of filtering genre cliches through the prism of camp craziness (witness my 4-star review of DOA:  Dead or Alive).  Make no mistake:  Land of the Lost is very much a Ferrell comedy with dinosaurs and is in no way a family film.  But if you're picking up what they're putting down, this is a delightfully silly lark.

Dr. Rick Marshall (Will Ferrell) has spent 50 million taxpayer dollars studying time warps in hopes that they can be harnessed to provide unlimited free energy.  Confronted by Matt Lauer (as himself) on The Today Show, the “temporal paleontologist” goes crazy and is so discredited he ends up teaching a grade school science class."  MORE

1/20/09:  "Holy Mother of God, where do I begin?  I've counted myself as a pretty big fan of Pennsylvania's reigning genre auteur, M. Night Shayamalan, since he burst onto the scene with the Oscar-nominated blockbuster The Sixth Sense.  I joined pretty much everybody in supporting his other massive hit, Signs, was a huge admirer of the more divisive films Unbreakable and The Happening, had room in my heart for the generally disliked The Village and, well, Lady in the Water wasn't very good.  But no matter how much contempt you may have for the low points of Shayamalan's very distinctive body of work (and I will grant you, no man should cast himself as a genius writer the greatness of whose work will not be appreciated until after his death), none of it can prepare you for the horror of The Last Airbender.  It's an out-of-left field attempt by a guy who specializes in deliberately paced Twilight Zone horror to make the kind of FX-filled, based-on-an-animated series summer blockbuster we all praised his work as the antidote to, and I am hard-pressed to imaging a less successful marriage of filmmaker and subject.  Simultaneously, it is impossible to imagine a worse marriage of writer and subject.  Shayamalan's Airbender screenplay would make Menahem Golan demand rewrites:  for a shade over 100 minutes, his characters hammer away at the same list of powers, names and national affiliations over and over, often two to three times in the same sentence." MORE

1/20/09:  "As longtime readers know, I have a love/hate relationship with romantic comedies, and one reason why is that they're very rarely actually about love.  Infactuation, flirtation, a crush, stalking; whatever you call it, spotting someone across a crowded room, bumping into them a couple times and then twisting yourself into a knot of contrivance trying to get a date isn't actually romance, no matter how much the movies might have conditioned us to think so.  It's not that those elements (and worse) aren't in play in the plot of Last Chance Harvey, Joel Hopkins' new Dustin Hoffman/Emma Thompson vehicle, but they share time with that rarest of movie events:  extended sequences of a couple actually talking.  Harvey is so good for so long that it's kinda depressing when it not only succumbs to formula, but does so badly, but the relationship at its' core is so good, and so well-acted, that I was willing to forgive a lot.

Harvey Shine (Dustin Hoffman) writes background music for commercials in New York, and he's clearly on the way out at the agency he works for.  Kate Walker (Emma Thompson) conducts surveys at Heathrow Airport in London, and her personal life consists entirely of looking in on her lonely, divorced mother Maggie (Eileen Atkins)."  MORE

2/17/07:  "“Nobody cares about Africa.”  If it's not already there, add it to your list of movie cliches.  Every movie set in a war-torn African nation must feature at least one character laying out this fact:  the West can see as many images of atrocities and innocent victims as the news can muster and will still be unable to rouse itself to offer more than a brief humanitarian mission and a few benefit concerts.  I'm not saying this sentiment isn't true, it is.  But it does help when the movie itself cares more about Africa than, say, The Last King of Scotland.  After an intriguing buildup, and despite a first-rate performance by presumptive Oscar winner Forest Whitaker, the film all-too-quickly loses interest in anything other than getting the Hell out of Kampala.

Feeling the weight of an already mapped-out future in the family medical practice, Nicolas Garrigan (James McAvoy) wants to run off to someplace exciting.  He spins the globe and, when his finger lands on Canada, spins it again.  This time, he hits Uganda.  He gets there, knowing nothing about the country and little at all except how to use his medical degree to land one night stands with the local women.  People in the countryside are celebrating the military coup that's led Man of the People Idi Amin (Forest Whitaker) to power."  MORE

3/29/07:  "I'm a big believer that every movie should be seen in a theater.  You're locked in there with the story, without your attention drifting to that TV Guide sitting next to your chair or you wandering off to the kitchen during the dull parts (OK, you CAN wander off to the bathroom or the concession stand, but that's on you!).  As such, I never really understand why people are so quick to say “I'll wait for DVD for that one” while the trailers run (I do understand why they're quick to say “Why are there so many friggin' trailers?!?”).  However, in this case, I might make an exception. The Last Mimzy is a nice, pleasant little kiddie sci-fi thriller that starts slow, picks up steam around the middle and then loses it again toward the end.  Lacking much in the way of spectacle and with a plot that's best thought through only once, it's good enough to merit 90 minutes of your life, but I will understand if you choose to spend those 90 minutes on your couch shooting occasional glances toward the refrigerator.

The Wilder family is happy but kinda stale.  Dad David (Timothy Hutton) spends way too much time at work and sends Mom Jo (Joely Richardson) and kids Noah (Chris O'Neil) and Emma (Rhiannon Leigh Wryn) ahead on vacation without him.  On the beach, the kids discover an ornate box which, when opened, produces a set of weird “toys”."  MORE

10/23/09:  "There has, to my knowledge, never been a positive movie plea bargain.  By their very nature, they fall somewhere between Uncinematic and Unamerican, and I know John Wayne would never have signed off on one.  The District Attorneys of 70's and 80's cop movies tended to treat plea agreements as excuses to let the guilty off scot-free for no good reason other than their own stinkin' civil libertarianism.  Kind of like a form of diplomatic immunity for those lacking the good fortune to be diplomats.  Then, the 90's and 00's became such a dry time for cinematic DA deal-cutting, you'd think Dirty Harry had gotten a law degree.  But fear not, fans of prosecutorial injustice:  the Evil Plea Bargain returns with a vengeance (does it ever!) in Law Abiding Citizen, in which Gerard Butler portrays an angry crime victim whose reaction to one of the men who murdered his family Getting Away With It makes King Leonidas look positively Soft on Madness.  The point of the screenplay by the ever-demonstrative Kurt Wimmer is maddeningly elusive, and after a while he runs out of ghoulish tricks to keep the plates spinning.  But it's a tour de force for Butler, and it's not every day you see a man murdered with a spork." MORE

5/4/08:  "Like a young actress who sells issues of Maxim more easily than movie tickets, George Clooney has done a sensational job parlaying the respect of critics and peers, old school movie star good looks and a seemingly bottomless well of self-confidence into a position on Hollywood's A-List without many hits to back it up.  Not that I'm complaining:  he's one of the best actors working today, capable of delivering shattering, subtle dramatic work as in last year's Michael Clayton.  But I've got a confession to make.  My affection for Clooney's work goes back a bit before he caught America's attention on TV's ER, back to a time when he starred in one of the funniest movies no one's ever seen, 1988's Return of the Killer Tomatoes.  It began a decades-long love affair with the “other” George Clooney, the comic goofball willing to do almost anything for a laugh.  His performances in Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? and Intolerable Cruelty are among the funniest in recent memory, and I'd go so far as to say that when he wants to be, Clooney is the funniest guy in the movies today.  So it's a good thing he was on hand to act in his latest directorial outing, Leatherheads.  It's an overreaching story about the early days of pro football and a time when good old American barnstorming gave way to big business and the horror of “rules”, but it's light on its' feet and nicely nails the rhythms of old-school screwball comedy.  Just don't expect to pass a test on what happened the next day."  MORE

2/3/10:  "We've been through this before, but it bears repeating.  All of us have certain movie subgenres that just ping the hell out of us.  Within those subsets of themes and cliches, all the filmmakers have to do is step over a certain bar set somewhere around the waist for their movie to give us what we're looking for.  A lot goes right and a lot goes wrong with Legion, Scott Stewart's new movie that views the Biblical Apocalypse through the eyes of a middle-of-nowhere diner where its pivotal battle is to be fought between humans and angels.  Some will look at the swiss cheese plot and inadequate lead performance by Lucas Black and throw up their hands, but for me, well, Stewart had me at Biblical Apocalypse, and for fans of that genre, Legion's good stuff is very good indeed.

Archangel Michael (Paul Bettany) falls from the Heavens, slices off his wings, loads up on automatic weapons and is stopped by two police officers, one of whom transforms into what looks like a demon.  Michael escapes and races out of town as all the city's lights go out and “it begins”.  At a small diner/gas station/auto repair shop that seems to be the small town of Paradise Falls, we meet Charlie (Adrianne Palicki) a very pregnant young woman itching to be rid of the baby and under the care of Jeep Hanson (Lucas Black), who is very much not the father but wishes to apply for that job." MORE

1/23/07:  "In its' history, the United States has fought two kinds of wars:  those we won, and those we were able to pull back from with our nation's way of life unchanged.  I think that's one of the fascinations of the US Civil War, the notion that the breakaway Confederacy actually lost in a way alien to the US military experience.  Clint Eastwood had already told the story of the price our troops paid for one of our greatest military triumphs in Flags of Our Fathers.  Now, in its' extraordinary companion piece Letters From Iwo Jima, he turns things around to show us the horror of true defeat as experienced by the Japanese troops who fought the Battle of Iwo Jima.

The film begins well before the US invasion, but at a time when Japanese forces know it's coming.  Saigo (Kazunari Ninomiya), a baker drafted into service, wearily digs trenches with his friend Nozaki (Yuki Matsuzaki) under the harsh command of Lieutenant Ito (Shido Nakamura).  Then, a new commander arrives: General Tadamichi Kuribayashi (Ken Watanabe) has been to the United States, and has greater knowledge of and respect for the enemy than his counterparts."  MORE

7/7/07:  "One of the hardest things about articulating a critical position on movies is defining and describing that certain feeling I get in my gut when a movie that's made me laugh (sometimes a lot) comes to a close and I more or less don't feel anything.  I haven't cried (and yes, I'm a crier), I feel no better than average about the fact that things worked out for the characters, and I'm just generally ambivalent about the entire enterprise.  The new Robin Williams comedy License to Wed is such a movie:  maybe my position will become clearer to me after I walk you through the plot.

Ben Murphy (John Krasinski) and Sadie Jones (Mandy Moore) are an adorable couple who seem made for each other.  So much so that he's finally screwed up the courage to pop the question.  Sadie's only too happy to say “yes”, but on one condition:  she wants to be married in the same church as her parents (Peter Strauss and Roxanne Hart).  Sounds easy enough, but Ben soon regrets agreeing when he meets Reverend Frank (Robin Williams).  He's a little odd in a “I knocked the real Reverend over the head and took his place” sort of way and insists that every couple he marries first go through a “Marriage Preparation Course” of his own creation."  MORE

11/10/07:  "We're screwed.  I turn the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan over and over in my head:  even in the absence of a preferable victory, how could we even get out without collapsing the International Jenga stack into total and irreparable chaos?  The only conclusion this thinking ever draws?  We're screwed.  Which brings me to Lions for Lambs, Robert Redford's wonky new drama, which trots out every possible argument for and against the wars, has no answers, only challenges to get our asses out there and come up with some.  In essence, it's a movie telling us to go unscrew ourselves:  very well-acted and intellectually engaging, but also targeted primarily at those least likely to be open to anything but being told they're right.

Three (maybe three and a half) stories play out simultaneously:  Professor Stephen Malley (Redford) asks bright but slacking student Todd Hayes (Andrew Garfield) to meet with him about his spotty attendance at Malley's political science class.  Todd's lost his faith in politics and the power of the little guy to make a difference, so the Professor tells him the story of two students who had that faith. They're Ernest Rodriguez (Michael Pena) and Arian Finch (Derek Luke), who we now see as soldiers in Afghanistan."  MORE

6/27/07:  "Those who peruse my Blog recently chuckled with disdain when I declared John McTiernan's Die Hard to be the 10th Greatest American Movie.  But they also have some idea of the high bar I set for any further adventures of NYC Police Detective John McClane (as immortally played by Bruce Willis).  Die Hard 2 had its' moments, although it's far too long and full of its' own cleverness, while Die Hard With a Vengeance was a sorry attempt to shoehorn McClane and Special Guest Star Samuel L. Jackson into a Lethal Weapon sequel.  Now, twelve years after that misfire, McClane returns in his best sequel yet.  Live Free or Die Hard may fall far short of the Greatest Action Movie Ever Made, but it's a fun, exciting summer thrill ride with some of the best stunt/FX sequences I've ever seen.

The last few years haven't been so good for McClane.  He's divorced and his daughter Lucy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) isn't speaking to him.  It's during a late-night attempt to ambush her into talking that he finds himself in just the right area to pick up computer hacker Matt Farrell (Justin Long, best known for being a computer in those cute Mac/PC TV ads), wanted by the FBI for questioning."  MORE

4/24/10:  "We're just closing up shop on the first third of 2010, but a look at the trailers for coming releases tells me that the action franchises of 80's television are going to be one of the year's big themes.  MacGruber will spoof can-do icon MacGyver, The A-Team will get their own big-screen vehicle, and as a warm-up, we get a quasi-A-Team (the B-Team?) in the form of Vertigo Comics heroes The Losers.  Sylvain White's slam-bang, quip-a-minute flick has the right jokey, “blowing stuff up is fun!” tone, and his team is filled with guys like Jeffrey Dean Morgan and Chris Evans who specialize in macho cool while Jason Patrick's villain is in a demented league of his own.  The Losers leans a little too hard on its TV groove, frustratingly unclear about the differences between a would-be franchise-launcher and a TV pilot, and like most TV tough guys, isn't exactly sure how to behave when there's a girl (a game Zoe Saldana) around.  But as spring action escapism, it packs a big punch.  And some really big guns.  And a few mighty big explosions.  And, yeah, there's a bomb that melts islands.  But we'll get to that part later.

The Losers (the branding comes only from the press materials, the group has no official name in the dialog) are an elite military unit of high-functioning eccentrics." MORE

10/4/09:  "Serious moviegoers (fans of serious movies, as opposed to those who seriously saw Transformers 2 35 times) obsess over endangered genres like a naturalist fretting the fate of the Spotted Owl.  High on the list is the Romantic Drama, the straight-faced counterpart of those movies where Matthew McConaughey makes a bet he can get Kate Hudson to do something and they fall in love.  Does that mean Romantic Dramas can't be contrived?  Of course not, it just means they try to deal with recognizable human emotions and issues in between the contrivances, and tend to give their actors more to do.  All of the above is true of Love Happens, the feature directorial debut of Brandon Camp, who ladles on the contrivances (especially down the stretch), but also gets a very strong performance from Aaron Eckhart and makes a few real emotional connections before the credits roll.  All without a single bet.

Burke Ryan (Aaron Eckhart) is a best-selling author whose book “A-OK” recounts how he came to terms with his grief after the death of his wife.  He travels the country doing seminars where he helps others with their own issues, but the current stop is one he didn't want to make."  MORE

1/18/10:  "It's like a law of physics:  a blockbuster novel MUST spawn a film adaptation, preferably one jam-packed with big-name talent and positioned as an Oscar contender.  I've never read Alice Sebold's million-selling The Lovely Bones, which doesn't sound like my cup of tea, and nothing about Peter Jackson's film version leads me to believe that was the wrong choice.  However, it does persuade me that it's a novel not really meant to be filmed.  Combining a queasy thriller about a child murderer with an Oprah's-eye view of the Afterlife, The Lovely Bones seems designed to drift unsatisfyingly all over the map, but this particular take on it also sputters out just when it should be getting good.  Jackson does his best, getting great performances from his first-rate cast, creating a memorable vision of a personalized afterlife and delaying the inevitable deflation of the plot as long as he can.  As such, The Lovely Bones isn't a bad movie.  But it also doesn't “work” by any definition, winding up as a lovely pile of puzzle pieces that don't connect.

It's 1973, a happy time for the Salmon family:  Jack (Mark Wahlberg) and Abigail (Rachel Weisz) and their kids Susie (Saoirse Ronan), Lindsey (Rose McIver) and Buckley (Christian Thomas Ashdale)."  MORE

5/6/07:  "I've never been to Las Vegas, and can't say I've ever felt a strong desire to go.  Sure, I bet it's cool to stand in the street surrounded by all those lights, and some of the shows sound like an interesting stop as part of a better trip, but at the end of the day all that stuff sounds a lot like coating cigarettes in chocolate.  I doubt there's anything fun you can do in Vegas that you couldn't do someplace else that isn't working so hard to ruin your life while you're there.  This view is only re-enforced by Curtis Hanson's Lucky You, a movie about the World Series of Poker that makes the event seem to occur someplace just south of Hell.

Huck Cheever (Eric Bana) calls himself a professional poker player, but he's really a professional loser.  He's always in search of money to gamble, and always looking for a way to lose anything he happens to win.  Huck's father is a legend:  L.C. Cheever (Robert Duvall) has won the World Series of Poker twice and taught his son how to play just well enough to never beat his Dad.  L.C. left Huck and his Mom when he was young, and now pretty much everything the kid does is about taking out that anger.  Even when he meets idealistic lounge singer Billie (Drew Barrymore), he only knows how to express his affection by stealing her money."  MORE