You know how in most romantic comedies, the best friends are nearly always more interesting than the actual leads we’re supposed to care about? The Break-Up doesn’t play that game. Vince Vaughn is the focus and the primary source of entertainment, which is all the more impressive when you consider…
When kids of all ages discuss comic books and superheroes, there is inevitably one question that comes up time and again: If that one guy and that other guy had a fight, who would win? Comics companies occasionally indulge these debates with special issues pitting Thing against Hulk, or Wolverine…
You know its hard out here for a screenwriter. Youve got a surefire hit on your hands — an adaptation of the runaway bestseller The Da Vinci Code — and yet its all about talking and solving cryptic riddles, which isnt exactly suited to the visual medium. Its also a…
The most important thing to know about the new movie Hoot, adapted from the children’s book by Carl Hiaasen, is that it’s co-produced by Jimmy Buffett, who also appears in a small role and provides new music for the soundtrack. Middle-aged drunks and boat owners might possibly rejoice at the…
Let’s say you’re a teenage boy dying of cancer. A well-known charity dedicated to helping people like you offers to make your fondest wish come true — as long as it’s something realistic, as opposed to, say, finding a cure for cancer. Would you choose a VIP pass to Disneyland…
It seldom fails. Every year, just in time for the Oscar deadline, a movie is released that doesn’t necessarily have a remarkable plot or director, but does feature an aging master (or mistress) thespian from the U.K., whom one might assume is an automatic shoo-in for an award nomination, ensuring…
If you’re a regular movie-goer with a gift for remembering unusual names, chances are you’ve started paying attention to Chiwetel Ejiofor, the black English actor with a chameleon’s talent for disappearing into a role. You may not have caught his breakthrough performance in Stephen Frears’s Dirty Pretty Things, but you…
Americano (MTI) Before he is due to take a high-powered corporate job, college graduate Chris (Joshua Jackson) heads off with two friends (Timm Sharp and Ruthanna Hopper) to Europe, where they end up in Pamplona for the running of the bulls. There, he encounters one of those saucy Latinas (Blade…
Believe it or not, The Benchwarmers is so lame that it can’t even lay claim to being the best Adam Sandler-produced movie not screened for critics in 2006; that dubious honor would go to Grandma’s Boy, which was by no means good, but at least featured a kung-fu chimp and…
Perhaps it’s just the inner drama geek talking, but there’s something extremely compelling about seeing hardened felons preparing to put on a classic play with the enthusiasm of giddy schoolgirls. Like many of us, these violent men undoubtedly considered Shakespeare highbrow and stuffy in the outside world, but in attempting…
It’s difficult to tell from the image on the poster for Take the Lead, but that’s not star Antonio Banderas dancing in blue silhouette. In fact, the movie isn’t even about Banderas dancing — it’s about Banderas teaching teenagers to dance. You’d think that might be a dream come true…
So wait. It’s a movie about the longest criminal trial in U.S. history, it’s directed by the legendary Sidney Lumet, and it stars…Vin Diesel in a wig? In a role originally intended for Joe Pesci? Can Lumet be serious? Actually, no. The characters may be based on real people, with…
It should be too early in the year to expect a good movie, yet here it is, the first — dare we use the term that’s been all but stripped of meaning by journalistic hacks — masterpiece of 2006. And from the director of 9 Songs, last year’s sex ‘n’…
According to the posters for V for Vendetta, the film is “an uncompromising vision of the future from the creators of The Matrix trilogy.” Uncompromising? It simply isn’t possible to translate Alan Moore’s multi-layered comic-book masterpiece into a two-hour movie without making cuts that oversimplify; and it’s certainly not feasible…
Those among you who are easily impressionable, be warned: Down to the Bone features irresponsible behavior that should not be duplicated at home. On Halloween night, as she preps her kids for costumed fun, Irene (Vera Farmiga) augments her own witch costume by . . .blacking out one of her…
If you’re a parent trying to teach your sullen teenage kids that movies with subtitles aren’t all bad, take them to see Night Watch (Nochnoi Dozor). Like Christophe Gans’s The Brotherhood of the Wolf or Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, it’s a foreign-language film that proves that geekdom observes…
If you have any awareness at all of the existence of Running Scared — no, not the Gregory Hines/Billy Crystal cop buddy comedy, but the new film written and directed by Wayne Kramer — chances are you have but one question: How in God’s name does anyone expect us to…
The best thing about Michael Haneke’s Caché (Hidden) is the way it draws on very contemporary fears without ever mentioning them. The War on Terror era has given us all new things to be afraid of; some fear being prey for terrorists while others fear the government’s response, but both…
Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (DreamWorks) Not since Finding Nemo has there been a movie so easy to recommend for all ages and tastes. But despite having crafted a near-perfect film, directors Nick Park and Steve Box second-guess themselves constantly on their audio commentary, as well as…
Let’s get right to the point: If you are the type of person who enjoys seeing attractive naked girls meet a hideously graphic demise, there’s a scene in Final Destination 3 that will wear out the “pause” and “rewind” buttons on your DVD remote a few months from now. Mega-stereotype…
January has earned its reputation as the month in which studios unload all their cheapie horror flicks, but February is the month when we invariably get yet another middle-of-the-road black-urban-professional romantic comedy. (It’s Black History Month, and Valentine’s Day falls in here, hence the logic.) In that regard, Something New…
Tommy Lee Jones’s feature directorial debut is probably much as you’d expect: a blast of nostalgia that nonetheless accepts the realities of modernity, which isn’t surprising coming from an actor who’s getting up there in years but has found more fame as an old man than as a young ‘un…
