1/28/08:  "When they're flying high, actors can be disdainful of franchises:  who wants to play the same characters over and over when there are all kinds of new and exciting roles offering comparable paychecks?  But once those A-list roles dry up, they're always happy to have those iconic characters to fall back on, usually in inferior knockoffs produced to ever-diminishing returns.  Sylvester Stallone ran his iconic Rocky and Rambo franchises into the ground in the 80's, but the characters retained their grip on our consciousness:  one the eternal underdog, the other the ultimate symbol of America's military might.  With his movie career more or less in ruins, it was no surprise to see Stallone return to those characters.  But what has come as nothing less than a shock is that he has done so with energy, imagination and skill that rivals his finest work.  Rocky Balboa was a gloriously heroic and thoughtful period on the character that made Sly a star:  a worthy bookend to the Best Picture of 1976.  The Rambo franchise which began in 1982 with First Blood was never that kind of artistic enterprise, but it delivered its' share of high-octane entertainment to 80's kids like me.  Rambo, the unambitiously-titled 4th film adventure of the traumatized Vietnam vet, is an outstanding comeback vehicle, sticking to the formula but running it with a newfound skill and intensity. It's simple, really:  set up an unjust foreign power as bowling pins for our hero to knock over.  And blow up.  And disembowel.  And decapitate.  Let the fun begin!" MORE

6/30/07:  "I often sniff derisively at trailers when they use the phrase “From the studio that brought you...” suggesting that the genius of a film you love came not from the actors, writers, directors, cinematographers, composers, set designers and best boys who actually made it, but rather the suits who signed their checks.  But it's pretty much impossible to resist the carefully plotted hype campaign that has, from the moment I was first wowed by Toy Story over a decade ago, sought to present Disney subcontractors Pixar as an authorial, rather than corporate, entity.  And so it is that one has come to expect a higher level of skill and sophistication from animated films bearing that label than those of rival studios or even plain old Disney itself.  Alas, while Ratatouille comes to us from acclaimed writer-director Brad Bird, whose previous Pixar outing The Incredibles may be the best movie ever produced under their brand, and has a look that absolutely shines, it is a relentlessly average story with no memorable characters and precious few laughs.

Remy (voice of Patton Oswalt) isn't like other rats:  he doesn't want to simply gather and devour every piece of crap he can get his hands on." MORE

4/5/07:  "I have a weakness for Theological thrillers:  not because of any particular religious bent, but because it's interesting to watch characters forced to confront as real things they'd been certain existed (if at all) only on some metaphysical plane.  While The Reaping isn't as Scripture-focused as, say, the Left Behind series, it uses the ten plagues of the Old Testament as a hook for an intriguing game of “What do you believe?” and “How can you be sure?”  At heart, it's a Twist Movie, but the twist is awfully good and flows more organically from the subject matter than you'd expect, even moments before it's revealed.

A traumatic experience (believe me, it's pretty traumatic...) while serving as a Missionary has caused Katherine Winter (Hilary Swank) to turn away from God and toward science.  She now specializes in debunking “miracles” reported around the world with Perfectly Rational Explanations.  Her latest task comes to her from Doug (David Morrissey), a science teacher in the small town of Haven, Louisiana.  Following the death of a local boy, the river where his body was found has turned red.  Blood red.  While Katherine and her assistant Ben (Idris Elba) collect samples, frogs start falling from the sky.  Then come the flies, and the diseased livestock." MORE

6/2/08:  "It's fun every once in a while to see a director go somewhere genre-wise that you would never expect to find him.  Yes, David Mamet is the gold standard for macho posturing in modern screenwriting (the man wrote The Untouchables, for crying out loud!), but a man who's still thought of at least as much as a playwrite as a filmmaker has spent his career a world away from martial arts action movies.  Those two worlds collide in Redbelt, in which the sport of Mixed Martial Arts is more than just a backdrop for a Mametesque plot filled with con games and triple crosses.  The writer/director actually holds a purple belt in Jiu-Jitsu and has something to say about the conflict between martial arts intended for spiritual focus and self-defense and the sports empires that market them as a type of gladiatorial combat.  Redbelt's all over the map as it tries to do a little more than it's capable of in about a hundred minutes, but its' unconventional climax packs an wallop of manly sentiment.

Mike Terry (Chiwetel Ejiofor) is a Jiu-Jitsu instructor whose storefront studio trains all kinds of people to use the art for self-defense.  One of his students, police officer Dylan Flynn (Randy Couture) is put in an awkward position when tightly wound attorney Laura Black (Emily Mortimer) comes in looking for directions and accidentally fires the gun she carries for protection at him." MORE

10/25/07:  "These are dangerous times:  opportunistic politicians use the Global threat of terrorism as an excuse to attack our basic human rights.  And opportunistic screenwriters use those attacks as an excuse to trot out tired melodramatic cliches in the name of proving that We're All Connected.  Last year's Foreign Press darling Babel is the most famous example of this Soap Opera of Connection genre, but it ultimately had little to say other than that people who speak in subtitles are worthy of the same respect as Really Big Stars like Brad Pitt.  Now, along comes the Babelesque Rendition, which has a ton to say about terrorism, the Middle East, and a US Government-sanctioned torture program called Extraordinary Rendition.  Alas, it says it so softly, so hopelessly reverent of its' own importance, that even the converted may grow bored during the sermon.

Several stories are told at once.  Douglas Freeman (Jake Gyllenhaal) is a low-ranking government official assigned to an unnamed Middle Eastern country when the car he's traveling in goes through a square targeted by a suicide bomber.  Douglas is OK, but his superior is killed and a battlefield promotion puts him in charge." MORE

3/4/07:  "If there's nothing else a movie studio loves, it's a concept with a pre-existing audience.  It's for that reason that multiplexes are forever jammed with sequels, adaptations of novels, remakes, and movies based on old TV shows, videogames and toys.  And, of course, what has more of a built-in audience than taking the cast of a current TV series and giving them their own movie?  This rarely works, but everybody wants to give it a shot, the less-seen the series, the better.  I have never seen Comedy Central's wacky police sitcom Reno 911, and aside from a funny trailer I had little reason to be optimistic about their big-screen adventure, Reno 911:  Miami.  But that's why they play 'em:  Miami is a genuinely hilarious comedy, the kind of fine cinematic effort I haven't seen since Steve Guttenberg left the Police Academy series.

The Reno, Nevada Sheriff's department is not exactly a crack law-enforcement unit.  In fact, they're so pitiful they can barely catch a chicken loose on the road.  But they do have their own ongoing documentary series (a camera follows all the film's events) and they're invited to the National Police Convention in Miami because, well, everyone's invited.  So they load up the entire force (leaving the city either unprotected or better-off, depending on your point of view) in a bus and head across-country." MORE

7/28/07:  "For 5 months in 1965, US Air Force pilot Dieter Dengler endured starvation and torture as a Laotian prisoner of war.  Then, for 23 days, he battled his way through the jungle, sharing a single sole of a shoe with a fellow escapee and eating things you do not want to think about eating to survive.  I can't imagine how he did it, but thanks to Werner Herzog's Rescue Dawn, I can at least imagine what he endured.  It's one of the great immersive survival movies, and if it proves to be a little slow and to contain one really misguided performance, it also achieves a level of punishing realism one rarely experiences at the movies.

German immigrant Dengler (Christian Bale) grew up watching Allied bombers pummel is home and somehow ended up dreaming of joining them.  He got his wish as an Air Force pilot participating in the pre-Vietnam War bombing of Laos.  On his first mission, he's shot down and falls into enemy hands.  After much abuse, he's dragged to a makeshift prisoner of war camp with a few other inmates including Duane Martin (Steve Zahn) and Eugene DeBruin (Jeremy Davies).  To the man they are broken and fearful, but Dieter doesn't know the meaning of either word.  From the moment he arrives, he's plotting escape and slowly but surely wins everyone else over.  But a successful escape would only be the beginning." MORE

9/27/07:  "First, a Lost-style flashback:  I couldn't tell you exactly how old I was, but sometime in the 70's, at a single-digit age, a since-defunct UHF station decided to mix up their Saturday Afternoon Creature Double Feature and add to the usual run of black-and-white 50's monster movies Bob Clark's Children Shouldn't Play with Dead Things.  Watching this gruesome zombiethon at that age (with my parents, no less!) pretty much scarred me, if not for life, at least for a couple decades.  While I've developed a healthy appreciation of most kinds of R-rated horror as an adult, I've remained a tad wary of anything that rises from its' grave in large numbers to eat the flesh of the living.  So it is that I arrive late to the Resident Evil party.  I've never played any of the video games nor seen either previous chapter in the popular movie franchise based upon them.  But as Resident Evil:  Extinction arrived on the scene sporting a cool post-apocalyptic Las Vegas trailer, I figured, what the hell:  if things went too badly, I could always run screaming for the exits and give anyone who asked an assumed name.  I was rewarded with a movie light on the zombies and heavy on the Road Warrior, plus an outstanding Milla Jovovich as the hottest woman to ever slice off two heads in the same motion." MORE

9/1/07:  "Since being blown away by his little-seen debut feature Deterrence back in 1999, I've been fascinated by the career of film critic-turned-director Rod Lurie.  He's a real oddity in our pre-sold movie era:  a director interested primarily in stories about politics and ethics.  While it's brought him his largest audience and greatest popular acclaim, his fixation on getting a woman into the White House got him mired in the preachy, wonkish narratives of The Contender and the TV series Commander in Chief.  But I loved his passionately felt 2001 prison thriller The Last Castle.  Alas, it flopped, and it's taken another six years for him to direct his fourth feature, the boxing-flavored newspaper drama Resurrecting the Champ.  Like his other films, it wears its' heart on its' sleeve.  Unlike them, its' lens pans down below the concerns of Presidents and Generals to tell a story about the day-to-day battles we fight between facing the truth and hiding behind lies.  It's a steady, deliberate film filled with good performances and it packs a surprising emotional punch.

Erik Kernan Jr. (Josh Hartnett) coasts on his name as the son of a famous sportscaster, writing mediocre articles for a Denver newspaper edited by the disapproving Metz (Alan Alda)." MORE

9/14/08:  "De Niro.  Pacino.  Brand names for fans of a certain kind of movie and a certain school of acting:  if you think the 70's were Hollywood's greatest decade, you no doubt get a little misty whenever you think of their single scene together in the popular (albeit overrated) 1995 police thriller Heat.  For whatever reason, that was the only time the two icons had shared on screen in their long, legendary careers, until now.  Righteous Kill is a nicely tricky, above-average police thriller on the page that is kicked up several notches by at long last putting the two Greatest Actors of their generation together for long stretches in roles perfectly tailored to their personas.  While I loved just watching them do what they do together, the movie itself kinda snuck up on me, but by the time it's done playing all of writer Russell Gewirtz's clever cards, this is a genuinely engrossing and morally complex thriller that's a worthy addition to both men's formidable resumes.

Two Internal Affairs officers (Sterling K. Brown & Alan Rosenberg) watch a videotape of a Police Detective everyone calls Turk (De Niro) confessing to a series of murders.  The tape continues to serve as narration as we flash back to “how it all began”.” MORE

12/5/08:  "It's good to be cool, but not such an easy thing to achieve.  How often do we get 5 minutes into a movie and have to let out an internal sigh at the low energy level, the commitment to settling for killing time while stringing scenes together?  You can go too far the opposite way, of course, slamming away at the audience with camera tricks and self-consciousness until they put up a white flag and beg to be released back into the afternoon sun.  Somewhere in between lies Guy Ritchie's RocknRolla, which from its' opening shot is consistently snappy, light on its' feet and clever even though the mildly diverting plot never adds up to all that much.  I guess you'd say it's “pleasantly awesome”.

One Two (Gerard Butler) and Mumbles (Idris Elba) are London hoods (sadly, no one ever calls them “Villains”) who're looking to move up to nightclub owners.  No proper bank would lend them the money, of course, so they turn to Lenny Cole (Tom Wilkinson), the elder statesman of London Gangsters.  Lenny's got his fingers in pretty much everything, and that goes double for manipulating the zoning board, so out of simple spite he ensures that approval for their club is revoked after the money's been spent, putting the two men in a position where they NEED to pull off a job to pay him back. MORE

1/4/07:  "The Hero wins the big fight, gets The Girl, and the camera pulls back as we delight in the thought that they'll live Happily Ever After.  Oh, we may check back in on them once or twice in a few sequels, maybe The Girl will even be off-screen in a few of them, but we know everything will work out in the end.  Then, we never write, we never call, and The Hero does indeed live the hell out of the next few decades.  But surely there will come a time when the adventures are done, The Girl passes away, and he is left with nothing to do but to retell the tales of his victories again and again.  It is at this moment that Sylvester Stallone's extraordinary Rocky Balboa begins.

We all remember Rocky, the iconic rags-to-riches hero of the Oscar-winning 1976 classic and its' increasingly dismal sequels.  When we meet him again, he is in his late 50's, mourning the death of his beloved Adrian, struggling to retain some contact with his distant son (Heroes' Milo Ventimiglia), and probably wishing he had less with the increasingly bitter Paulie (Burt Young, as ever).  He tells those stories at his restaurant, Adrian's, and finds himself reaching out to Marie (Geraldine Hughes), a woman he once met as a child, and her son Steps (James Francis Kelly III) just looking for “a couple new friends”. MORE

11/14/08:  "“Loser.”  It is perhaps the most cutting and vicious insult known to man, bringing to mind an entire world full of people living up to their potential lined up, pointing and laughing at you.  Never mind that basically everyone fits someone's definition of the word:  we are all heavily invested, whether we want to admit it or not, in the notion that life is a game and the suspicion that we're losing.  Oh, sure, we could look at the glass as half-full and focus on the fact that each of us has found something in our lives that brings us joy, whether it meets with society's approval or not.  But that kind of sentiment just seems so... losery.  Hurray, then, to the minds (and they are many) behind the new comedy Role Models, a cheerfully vulgar, hilariously cynical tale that manges the near-impossible.  It makes being yourself, no matter how much of a loser you might seem to be, seem positively cool.

For Danny Donahue (Paul Rudd), life is a dead-end street.  Every one of life's little annoyances drives him crazier than the last, and the tenth anniversary of his job pitching “say no to drugs, say yes to Minotaur Energy Drink” to high schoolers fills him with despair for his unrealized potential.  His partner, the Minotaur mascot Wheeler (Seann William Scott) throws him a surprise party, but not even the presence of his girlfriend Beth (Elizabeth Banks) can brighten Danny's day." MORE

4/3/08:  "It's funny what an accent will do:  check your local theater listings and see where the British comedy Run Fatboy Run is playing.  Yeah, it's probably snuck into a multiplex or two, but if you've got a multi-screen art house in your area, I bet it's there.  And if your multiplex has an area set aside for “Select” films, It's probably it's one of them.  But it really does a disservice to this fun, rousing comedy to consider it an art flick because all but one of its' characters is English.  In fact, the feature directorial debut of Friends star David Schwimmer is pretty much the opposite of one:  it does a fine job of running a well-established underdog formula, offers very few surprises, and is pitched precisely at the ticket-buying Regular Joe.  Pity if they missed out on it because it comes labeled with that scary “A” word.

Five years ago, Dennis (Simon Pegg) made a bad decision.  A really, really, colossally awful decision to leave Love of His Life Libby (Thandie Newton) at the alter while she was carrying their child.  Everything he's done since has followed the course he charted that day and he's now got a crummy apartment, a crummy job, and he's not much of a father to Jake (Matthew Fenton), the one thing that keeps him connected to Libby." MORE

8/12/07:  "It's hard to remember after almost ten years, but when Rush Hour arrived in the fall of 1998, it was a breath of fresh air:  an old-school buddy cop comedy with a couple of exciting twists.  Neither role was played by a white actor, and the film provided the best ever showcases for motormouthed comedian Chris Tucker and the US film career of martial arts legend Jackie Chan.  And most exciting of all, it was really, really good.  Tucker and Chan's characters were as sympathetic and relatable as they were funny, and Jim Kouf and Ross LaManna's screenplay was above-average for a writing-challenged genre.  Three years later, director Brett Ratner reteamed with Tucker and Chan on Rush Hour 2, a film just as funny and action-packed, but also bloated and scattershot in that way that summer sequels tend to be.  It, however, looks like Lethal Weapon when compared with the hopelessly shoddy threequel the trio has delivered after a six-year hiatus.  Rush Hour 3 is virtually action-free, shot like a old episode of Mannix and dragged down by a Chris Tucker performance so out of character he'd might as well be wearing a T-Shirt that reads “Hi, I'm Chris Tucker and I used to play Detective James Carter”.  Yet Tucker and Chan still wield formidable chemistry and the movie works so hard to be fun that it's not nearly as awful as the sum of its' defective parts.” MORE