6/10/07:  "The movie franchise that began with Steven Soderberg's 2001 remake of Ocean's Eleven is a truly odd duck.  Each film assembles as much star power as is possible in today's Hollywood, then lacquers on truckloads of gloss and production values, all in the name of mild, understated entertainment.  The formula worked pretty well in the clever and amusing original, then drowned under a tidal wave of self-satisfied smarminess in Ocean's Twelve.  The cute and entertaining Ocean's Thirteen is a back-to-basics romp that focuses on the camaraderie of Danny Ocean's cheeky band of thieves and benefits from adding a top-shelf villain in Al Pacino.  Fans should have a good time, but new recruits are unlikely.

Desperate to be part of an ambitious new Las Vegas undertaking that would secure his legacy, casino tycoon Reuben Tishkoff (Elliott Gould) ignores the advice of his friends and throws all his money into a new project with underhanded developer Willie Bank (Al Pacino).  But Bank is every bit the nightmare business partner he was advertised to be and violently forces Reuben to sign everything over to him.  Left penniless, he collapses with a heart attack, and while he hovers between life and death, his old friends assemble to plot revenge."  MORE

11/29/09:  "The movie business needs stars.  Sure, they're a great promotional platform to get potential ticketbuyers to listen to your pitch, but more than that, a true star can be expected to deliver a certain level of excellence necessary to elevate some of the astonishingly bad screenplays that are greenlit.  Case in point:  on the page, Old Dogs is one of those utterly miserable family comedies where a workaholic learns to fall in line and want a family like everyone else does/is supposed to.  But it's got a secret weapon in John Travolta, whose comic style relies on a certain edge-of-his-seat mania that means no gag can be going so badly he can't at least elicit a smile.  Throw in Robin Williams, game enough for anything that he makes a horrible role tolerable, and a movie that could have been 90 minutes of pure hell instead becomes almost worthwhile.  Interspersing stretches of genuine hilarity with others where it simply lays there like a dead fish, Old Dogs wastes the talent it's assembled to a criminal degree.  But once trapped in a theater with it, I couldn't have been more glad they decided to sign on."  MORE

2/23/11:  "A few years back, we all had pretty much the same reaction when we heard Aron Ralston's real-life story of amazing survival (SPOILER ALERT!-trapped in a canyon with his arm pinned under a rock, he amputated his own limb to escape):  Holy crap, I don't think I could have done that!  Danny Boyle's new feature 127 Hours documents Ralston's ordeal with documentary-like precision, giving James Franco a stage upon which to mount a compelling one man show of a performance.  When it's at its best, Hours is truly gripping stuff, telling us more than we ever wanted to know about the details and logistics of this sort of life-and-death ordeal.  Because it's admirably unwilling to take excessive license with the facts, the less fascinating parts, particularly early on, are a bit repetitive and as dull as a life-and-death struggle can be.  If you've got the stomach for it (and, late in the game, you'll need it), 127 Hours is a rewarding viewing experience, albeit one that could probably have been mounted more effectively under the time constraints of an hour TV drama.

Aron Ralston (James Franco) leaves the world behind for a fun weekend mountain-climbing in Utah."  MORE

11/8/10:  "Here's an odd movie that says almost as much about the difference between the way I watch movies and the way most people I know watch movies as it does about any of the topics it covers.  The Other Guys marks Adam McKay's 4th feature, all four of which have starred his longtime friend and collaborator Will Ferrell.  Two of those, Anchorman and Step Brothers, are utterly hysterical and relentlessly quotable gems.  I wasn't as big a fan of Talladega Nights:  The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, although it has its moments and a tremendous supporting performance by Gary Cole.  The Other Guys slots somewhere between those two groups in terms of laughs, but it's a total change of pace in the sense that it seems to want to, I don't know, be really, really artistically brilliant.  It's not, and at times the effort makes it downright confusing, but I couldn't help but be a little bit fascinated by the rumblings of ambition that are confirmed by closing credits filled with, of all things, statistics designed to stir audience outrage.  Most people won't even notice, but I actually enjoyed The Other Guys almost as much as a thematic puzzle as I did as a comedy.  Which would be a lot better thing if it were funnier or more thematically sound."  MORE

11/8/10:  "Ask just about any filmmaker and they’ll tell you that their perfect cast has never acted a day in their life:  all the better not to carry previous associations and allow an audience to view them exclusively as their characters.  This, of course, flies in the face of the way most people watch movies, with our love of familiar faces who help to bind us to stories that are, you know, not always perfect.  When a cast is chock full of people you really like from past roles, that does an awful lot of a movie’s work for it, and it’s hard to remember the last movie I saw deeper in performers I really like than My Idiot Brother.  Jesse Peretz’s comedy about three messed-up sisters and their slacker brother who introduces a shocking element of honesty into their lives after his release from prison is a cute little movie, albeit one best enjoyed by folks more familiar with the various California lifestyles its characters live.  But, MAN what a cast, and Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks, Zooey Deschanel, Rashida Jones and Adam Scott are particularly sharp.  Brother is a sweet little end-of-summer comedy:  nothing to get worked up about, but a fun 100 minutes of watching actors who know this genre inside-out show what they can do.

Ned (Paul Rudd) sells organic produce at a stand, and when a uniformed police officer asks him very nicely, he’s happy to sell him some weed.  After time off for good behavior, he’s released from prison but needs a place to live."  MORE