Movie reviews

'The Twilight Saga: New Moon'

The novel demands that Bella and Edward be kept apart, robbing the movie of the crazy love that made 'Twilight' such a guilty pleasure. And about the director .... "This is the last time you'll ever see me," Edward Cullen says to Bella Swan. As if. Read more »

'The Blind Side'

Sandra Bullock retrieves much of the career momentum that "The Proposal" gave her and that "All About Steve" threatened to kill with "The Blind Side," a surprisingly smart and moving drama about a Memphis steel magnolia who doesn't truly bloom until she takes in a homeless teen and gives him a life. Read more »

'Planet 51'

How might a teenager protect himself from that dreaded fate described in legions of sci-fi movies -- the probe? If you weren't thinking "champagne cork," you were way off, according to the sci-fi kids cartoon "Planet 51." Read more »

'2012'

Nothing like a dandy evening's apocalypse to take the edge off recession, unemployment, Afghanistan and Glenn Beck. With "2012," Roland "Day After Tomorrow" Emmerich serves up World's End 4.0, with cataclysmic effects showcasing what volcanoes, tidal waves and earthquakes will do once that fabled Mayan calendar runs out on 12-21-12. Read more »

'Pirate Radio'

The new rock-saturated "Pirate Radio" proves life really is better when it's set to a '60s soundtrack. Read more »

'The Men Who Stare at Goats'

"The Men Who Stare at Goats" sounds like some ethnographic documentary about the bushmen of the Kalahari or the Bakhtiari herders of old Persia. Anyone expecting anything like that, or even a Disney family film like "Charlie, the Lonesome Cougar," is going to be surprised. Read more »

'Disney's A Christmas Carol'

This version of the Dickens' classic is appropriately dark, but a little human warmth would help The new Disney "A Christmas Carol" is another epic achievement in motion-capture animation, advancing the art form closer to photo-realism than "The Polar Express" or "Beowulf." Dazzling, ornate visuals take us to the snowy London of 1837, swooping over its digital rooftops and down its digital chimneys. Faces take on musculature, expression and detail. Read more »

'Precious'

The first 20 minutes of "Precious," the full title of which is "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire," are so intense and pitched so high, you may not feel like sticking it out. My advice: Stick it out. This is an exceptional film about nearly unendurable circumstances, endured. You will come out the other side of it a markedly enriched filmgoer. Read more »

'The Box'

In "The Box," which is fairly insane by the standards of most Hollywood packages, writer-director Richard Kelly takes the 10-page story "Button, Button" by Richard Matheson (who wrote "I Am Legend" and many other works adapted for the screen) and stuffs it so full of cockamamie speculative fictions, from magical lightning strikes to NASA projects to the metaphorical uses of Sartre's "No Exit," by the end you can only think: This guy needed a bigger box. Read more »

'Michael Jackson's This Is It'

How much of "Michael Jackson's This Is It" can we believe? Read more »

'Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant'

In the bizarre world of "Cirque Du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant," there's a war brewing over "portion" control. It seems the truce between those who sip, leaving humans a little weaker but none the wiser, and those who gorge, gluttons who leave death, destruction and no tip behind, has been on hold for a couple hundred years. Read more »

'Astro Boy'

Astro Boy is the latest Japanese TV cartoon to make it to the big screen. Lovely dollops of wit and warmth float through the big screen version of "Astro Boy," the latest Japanese TV cartoon to make it to the big screen. But the look, themes and slam-bang "Transformers" violence of that 1960s animated series make this every bit as dated as "Speed Racer," even if it is easier to watch. Read more »

'Amelia'

Hilary Swank stars as the famed aviator Amelia Earhart "Amelia" has magnificent period settings and airplanes and majestic aerial photography. It boasts the two-time Oscar winner Hilary Swank, perfectly cast as Amelia Earhart, with Richard Gere as Earhart's promoter-publisher husband, George Putnam. They even have nice on-screen chemistry. Read more »

'The Stepfather'

In this remake, Dylan Walsh takes over the title role from Terry O'Quinn and makes an equally chilling family man. "The Stepfather" is that rarity, an effective remake of a screen classic that can stand alone on its own considerable merits. Director Nelson McCormick and writer J.S. Cardone deftly reworked the 1987 original (written by Donald E. Westlake and directed by Joseph Ruben) while wisely adhering to the essence of the chilling original. Read more »

'Where the Wild Things Are'

Truly, I am madly, deeply in love with the film version of "Where the Wild Things Are." Not since Robert Altman took on "Popeye" a generation ago, and lost, has a major director addressed such a well-loved, all-ages title. This time everything works, from tip to tail, from the moment in the prologue at which director Spike Jonze freezes the action (Max, fork in hand, tearing after the family dog) to the final scene's hard-won reconnection between Max and his mother at the kitchen table. Warner Bros. Pictures should be applauded for such a nervy and breathtaking achievement -- the rare adaptation that goes deeper, not dumber, in its page-to-screen translation of a children's classic. Read more »

'Law Abiding Citizen'

A glib, brutal and preposterous revenge fantasy starring Gerard Butler "Law Abiding Citizen" is a glib, brutal and preposterous revenge fantasy, a take-the-law-in-your-own-hands rabble rouser that taps into a lot of fears and genuine gripes about the American legal system. It's the sort of movie that Mel Gibson or Clint Eastwood might have made back in the day -- a man survives the slaughter of his family by thugs and sets out to get even, and then some. Read more »

'Couples Retreat'

None of the couples in Couples Retreat is interesting enough to carry the Vince Vaughn film "Couples Retreat" was made because of its sunny, sandy location, scenic Bora Bora. Judging from the light, cast members slept late and took it pretty easy, even in the "We rise at dawn" scenes. Read more »

'Zombieland'

Zombieland, starring Woody Harrelson, is the funniest zombie movie since Shawn of the Dead In the months after the zombie apocalypse, brought on by a virulent mutation of Mad Cow Disease, America has ceased to be. Read more »

'The Invention of Lying'

In the world according to "The Invention of Lying," truth rules because no one has thought of the alternative. Bus advertisements for Coke keep it short and simple ("It's very famous"). First encounters are brutal affairs ("Hi. I'm threatened by you"), full of small talk and the sort of thing typically kept inside one's head. Read more »

'Whip It'

The whip is a slingshot-type maneuver in roller derby, where you're flung by a teammate straight into traffic and, with luck, past it. Raquel Welch got whipped a time or two in the 1972 vehicle "Kansas City Bomber," but in that film roller derby wasn't about athletic prowess or female empowerment; it was just an excuse for shoving Welch into one ogled, manhandled situation after another. Read more »

'Fame'

The classes in "Fame" include acting, singing and dancing. What the movie really needed is a class in screenwriting. This film has premises -- the schoolrooms, stages and cafeteria of the Professional Performing Arts School in Hell's Kitchen, New York -- but no premise. It simply plops a handful of aspiring entertainers and artists and a few teachers in front of the camera and samples their lives and work from audition day to graduation. And I do mean "samples": it's as if every bit of potential talent or conflict has been put through a digital synthesizer. Read more »

'Paranormal Activity'

'Paranormal Activity' is more fun than your average horror thriller, but not necessarly scarier Some movies are a more shared experience than others, and that's certainly the case with "Paranormal Activity," a micro-budget horror flick about things that go bump in the you-know-what in a nice new home. It's opening in select college towns, midnight-only showings, in a handful of theaters. The combination of the late hour and the horror-jazzed audience could make this minimalist chill-fest the new "Blair Witch Project," or so Paramount hopes. Read more »

'I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell'

I have no idea if they serve beer in hell. But I have some notion of what might be playing at the Hades AMC 20. It's "I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell," probably on a double bill with " All About Steve." Read more »

'The Informant!'

If only "The Informant!" was as giddy as its exclamation-point title, as jaunty as its corporate Muzak soundtrack -- or even as funny as its TV commercials. Read more »

'Jennifer's Body'

Clever one-liners don't cover the cruelty in Jennifer's Body Megan Fox, queen of cut-off jeans, lip gloss and hair toss, Fandango bait to the fanboys in the "Transformers" movies, makes a mess of herself in a teasing mess of a movie titled "Jennifer's Body." Read more »

'Love Happens'

Love Happens, but not in this sad attempt at a Jennifer Aniston comedy "Love Happens" is a comedy in mourning, a romance so sad that even Jennifer Aniston at her most engaging can't save it. The writer of the deadly Dragonfly has been promoted to writer-director for this one, and despite having the same template as a hundred screen romances, he can't make it work. Read more »

'Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs'

It's the latest unexpected delight from the folks who gave us Monster House and Surf's Up "Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs" is the latest unexpected delight from Sony Pictures Animation, the folks who gave us "Monster House" and "Surf's Up." A delicious farce and a backhanded slap at America the Obese, it may be the funniest animated film of the year. Read more »

'Sorority Row'

Despite the weak ending, Sorority Row is more fun than you might think The ending of "Sorority Row" is bad -- cheesy, worn-out, seen it in 78 horror movies before. It's almost awful enough to make you forget that the movie that came before it is -- as R-rated youth-horror films go -- kind of fun. It's all cheese, but at least this cheese, for the most part, doesn't stink. Read more »

'Whiteout'

"Whiteout" comes from a graphic novel by Greg Rucka and Steve Lieber, about a U.S. Marshal stationed in Antarctica, which we're told straight off is "the most isolated landmass on Earth." Oh, that Antarctica. A corpse is found on the ice, but it's not just another case of severe frostbite: It's murder, and the murderer (whom we see in action soon enough, with a pickax) has a motive that relates in some way (no spoilers here) to the Cold War-era prologue, in which we see an ill-fated planeful of Soviets guarding a mysterious crate containing ... what? Read more »

'9'

The animated sci-fi film "9" -- not to be confused with the non-animated sci-fi "District 9," or the non-animated non-sci-fi musical "Nine" -- is a perfect example of a thin idea stuffed and stuffed with filler until it loses much of its charm. Shane Acker's film is built on his 2005 short animation of the same title, an almost magical and mysterious little movie about animated rag dolls in a post-apocalyptic future struggling to "survive" the terrors of their ruined world. Read more »

'Extract'

The box office has already declared "The Hangover" the winner, but for my money, writer-director Mike Judge's "Extract" -- modest, no big deal but very savvy -- is the funniest American comedy of the summer. Read more »

'All About Steve'

There's nothing wrong with "All About Steve" that a rewrite couldn't fix, as long as the rewrite involved a different writer, a different character and a different story. The wanly conceived and persistently misjudged borderline stalker played by Sandra Bullock is a kissing cousin to Patton Oswalt's borderline-stalker character in the coming "Big Fan" (no rom-com, but a lot more interesting). The narrative aims of these two portraits are similar: The filmmakers want to creep us out and troll for our sympathy as the protagonists take their obsessions to the limit of acceptable behavior and beyond. Read more »

'Halloween II'

Rob Zombie's transition from scary heavy-metal maven to slash-and-splatter movie maker is completed with " Halloween II." The director of "House of 1,000 Corpses" and "The Devil's Rejects" is so mainstream he's a sequel sell-out now. No wonder he's moving on to "creature features" -- he announced this week he'll remake "The Blob." Read more »

'The Final Destination'

"Is it safe to sit here?" Read more »

'Inglourious Basterds'

Hollywood's two most indulged enfant terrible filmmakers have now made the worst two World War II movies of this millennium. With "Inglourious Basterds" Quentin Tarantino has topped Spike Lee ( "Miracle at St. Anna") in awfulness. Read more »

'Post Grad'

Alexis Bledel, the Gilmore Girl with the Traveling Pants, takes a baby-step into adulthood with a retro romantic comedy about looking for love and career fulfillment the minute you get out of college. Read more »

'Shorts'

Robert Rodriguez channels his inner 11-year-old with "Shorts," a childish but fun wish fulfillment-fantasy for kids that's equal parts boogers, big messages and product placement. Read more »

'Spread'

With "Shampoo" and "American Gigolo" now distant memories, the time evidently seemed ripe for another Hollywood stud movie. Despite Ashton Kutcher's believability as an older woman's kept boy, "Spread" isn't a patch on those previous films, squandering initial goodwill on a forced, desultory final act. Kutcher's name and some fairly hot action give this a viable shot at a theatrical fling, but staying power is suspect. Read more »

'District 9'

The newcomers are, in a word, gross. They showed up, a million of them, on South Africa's doorstep 20 years ago. And they won't go home. Read more »

'The Time Traveler's Wife'

Clare's jaw drops the moment she spies Henry, and it's not just love at first sight. Clare knows Henry, even if he doesn't recognize her. She's met him many times over the years. And his visits to the meadow on her family's estate turned him into her ideal man -- tall, dark and handsome. Read more »

'Bandslam'

"Bandslam," Summit Entertainment's "High School Musical"/ "Camp Rock" clone, is a movie about music and high school and guilt and fitting in. It's surprisingly not awful for something this over-familiar. Read more »

'The Goods: Live Hard * Sell Hard'

Hollywood's "Cash for Clunkers" program misfires with "The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard." It's a car-selling comedy that plays like a backfiring Bentley -- a shiny ride that runs in fits and starts, never quite hitting on all cylinders. Read more »

'Ponyo'

"Ponyo," the latest Japanese anime fantasy to gain American distribution, is the most broadly accessible movie of that genre to ever reach these shores. Charming, amusing and firmly anchored in a child's point of view, this movie from the master animator of "Spirited Away" makes a great introduction to that acquired-taste style of filmmaking. Read more »

'G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra'

Summer blockbuster season officially ends with the arrival of "G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra," another brainless popcorn picture built on an awful '80s TV cartoon. Read more »

'A Perfect Getaway'

How many times has it been said about a thriller that "nothing is what it seems"? Read more »

'Julie & Julia'

"Julie & Julia" is a gloriously frothy confection, a late summer delight built on Meryl Streep's hilarious impersonation of The French Chef, Julia Child. Read more »

'Funny People'

When Judd Apatow put his producer-promoter's hat on to publicize Jake Kasdan's very funny (and underrated) parody of biopics, "Walk Hard," he said that it was "fun to make fun of movies that reek of the filmmakers' belief that they were going to win the Oscar." Damned if he hasn't made that kind of movie himself. Read more »

'The Ugly Truth'

For an actress trying to escape her "Grey's Anatomy" rut and carve out a movie career, Katherine Heigl has been awfully quick to dive into another rut, this one on the big screen. Just three romantic comedies into her leading-lady status she's displayed a range that ventures from A as far as B, done two movies in which she's played TV producers and claimed that potty-mouthed-girl-next-door title all to herself. Read more »

'Orphan'

The scares are cheap, the laughs mostly intentional and the ending is a real lulu in "Orphan," the latest from the director of "House of Wax." Read more »

'G-Force'

For parents despairing of ever tearing "Cats and Dogs" and "Beverly Hills Chihuahua" out of the family DVD player, Disney gives us "G-Force," a comedy about talking pet-shop dropouts trained as government agents. Read more »