Movies

Review
Tease photo Selling Democracy

NO chronicles the rule of Augusto Pinochet, and how opponents marketed themselves like candy.

NO, an entertaining Chilean film directed by Pablo Larrain and nominated for best foreign film at this year’s Oscars, dramatizes the 1988 campaign to end Augusto Pinochet’s 15 years of dictatorship. Pinochet’s own constitution called ...

Tease photo Picks of the Litter

Our absolutely brilliant picks help prepare viewers as Oscar night looms.

The Golden Globes are behind us, and the Oscars are just a few weeks away (Feb. 24). I’ve looked at the nominations announced last week and done my best to give you a crib sheet ...

Tease photo Les Misérables

Sing Misery: Star-studded cast shows off powerful voices in remake of Hugo classic Les Misérables.

Les Misérables is a big, lavish Hollywood production of an equally extravagant Broadway musical. It looks and sounds phenomenal, and the sweeping story resonates on screen nearly as well as it does when viewed live. ...

Tease photo The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Searching for Bilbo: Anticipation builds as The Hobbit nears, and it’s a good reminder to channel your inner hero.

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit… ” is what Oxford professor J.R.R. Tolkien once absentmindedly scribbled on an exam book. When that line led him into his first book, The Hobbit, ...

Tease photo Lighthouse Presents

The independent movie house screens a winter’s harvest of holiday films and much, much more.

Holiday films have long earned a place in December’s occurrences of chorales and carols, Nutcracker dances and Christmas plays, traditional meals and shopping deals. In the rush to harness the tide, Century Cinemas has got ...

Tease photo Straight Up Rock

Climbing royalty Alex Honnold’s film highlights Reel Rock tour’s trip to Big Sur.

The video hit the Internet on June 11 and quickly went viral: Rock climber Alex Honnold, who has achieved widespread fame both inside and outside the climbing world for his fearless “free solo” ascents – ...

Tease photo Making Waves

BLUE Ocean Film Festival’s featured flicks run to the horizon. Here are several to prioritize.

There are more than 100 films ready to be spooled up – or, actually, inserted in Blue Ray projectors – in the ocean-deep line-up of the BLUE Ocean Film Festival and Conservation Summit. They’ll be ...

Tease photo On the Level

The Monterey Bay Film Festival bursts with leading minority and upcoming student filmmakers.

How many black filmmakers can you name? I can think of Spike Lee, Charles Burnett (check him out), Gordon Parks, Forest Whitaker, Tyler Perry, the Hughes Brothers, John Singleton. Um. That’s about it. Why does ...

Tease photo Life is Shorts

Hundreds of short films boil down to the Big Sur International Short Film Screening Series grand prize Sunday night at the Henry Miller Library.

For me, the Big Sur International Short Film Screening Series didn’t begin with the first public screening on June 6. It started April 4 with an email from Magnus Toren, Henry Miller Library’s director and ...

Tease photo Films, Unspooled

Cherry Center’s Backstory studies Robert Altman’s later successes.

Malcom Weintraub loves seeing, studying, reading and talking about film. For the next four weeks, he will indulge in showing them for the latest round of the Carl Cherry’s Backstory series, this one focused on ...

Tease photo Double Feature

A new Share a Movie with MoM plus the classic Films in the Forest spool superb films.

Two local film series launch within days of each other, and though they seem like similar animals, they have different stripes. Armed with a new projector and stereo sound in their 90-seat theater, the Museum ...

Tease photo Sound Tribute

The Hunger Games inspires a powerhouse list of top movie tracks.

The release of the hit film The Hunger Games and its accompanying soundtrack, including original tracks from artists as diverse as Arcade Fire and Taylor Swift, had some thinking about the history of pop music ...

Tease photo Diaspora Unraveled

Robust Jewish Film Festival features a documentary that tracks Holocaust survivors all the way to Monterey.

When Gabor Kalman returned home in 1945 after years of hiding, his ransacked house had become a Russian stable. But his family reunited and started over, and his parents got into the lumber business. It ...

Tease photo Friends with Kids

Baby Boomers: Friends With Kids explores the changing nature of friendship when offspring enter the picture.

Jennifer Westfeldt, the writer, producer and actress best known for her 2001 indie hit Kissing Jessica Stein, makes her directorial debut with another engaging but uneven romantic comedy, Friends With Kids. It is the third ...

Tease photo Ultimate Oscars

Categories need not apply with this best-of-the-best assessment of the Academy Awards.

When the first Academy Awards were handed out in 1929, there weren’t fixed categories. Warner Bros. received an Oscar for producing the first talking motion picture, The Jazz Singer, and Charlie Chaplin scored honors for ...

Tease photo Best Films for 2011

Art house and heavy punches top the list.

2011 was an overall solid year at the movies. It pushed boundaries, made us laugh, asked questions and, at its best, moved us to tears. But let’s start this list of the Top Ten movies ...

Tease photo Winter Watch

For the price of a ticket (popcorn money not included) here’s what to watch during the holiday season.

In the holiday classic A Christmas Story, Ralphie is warned that he will shoot his eye out if he gets his fondest wish – an official Red Ryder Carbine-Action Two-Hundred-Shot Range Model Air Rifle. While ...

Tease photo Twihards Rejoice

The next installment drops this week, and the one after that, next year.

Forget about Kate Middleton and Prince William. The wedding of the century took place in Squamish, Canada, when Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) tied the knot with vampire beau Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson). As fans of ...

Tease photo Just in Time for Halloween

Ten shockers we're guessing you haven't seen.

For the past ten years, Dr. Montag, Kato the Black Hornet and I have been bringing you the best lineup of wild, crazy and scary shockers at our disposal on Remo D.’S Manor Of Mayhem. ...

Tease photo Short Film Complex

Big Sur Short Film Series building to a climactic gala finish.


When it comes to Big Sur International Short Film Screening Series, even the popcorn is special. The organic kernels are popped fresh on a stove top with help from a combination of canola and extra ...

Tease photo Beats Rhymes & Life: The Travels of a Tribe Called Quest


Hip-Hop History: Beats Rhymes & Life tracks the rise of Tribe Called Quest.

Actor turned first-time documentarian Michael Rapaport mostly keeps himself off camera in this admiring portrait of the seminal ’90s hip-hop outfit A Tribe Called Quest. But his voice – an upper-register whine that pitches even ...

Tease photo Horrible Bosses

Like a Boss: Horrible Bosses thrives on a standout ensemble cast and a wacky screenplay.

A much more successful bromance comedy than The Hangover 2, Horrible Bosses benefits from the volatile comic mixture of chemistry between its actors and a genuinely quirky script. Contentious scenes between Jason Bateman’s corporate-climber Nick ...

Tease photo Silver Screen Sur

Jack Kerouac’s 'Big Sur' gets the Hollywood treatment from Kate Bosworth and company. 


Joining a list of movies filmed in Monterey County that includes Clint Eastwood’s Play Misty For Me, Turner and Hooch and Star Trek IV is an upcoming feature film adaptation of Jack Kerouac’s 1961 novel ...

Tease photo Winter in Wartime | Super

Winter in Wartime | Super

It seems Europeans will never run out of World War II tales. Too many people were involved, and the struggle transformed the entire world. The story refuses to go away. Martin Koolhoven’s Winter in Wartime, ...

Tease photo Scream 4

For Screaming Out Loud: 'Scream 4' leaves us Craven more than self-referential bloodshed.

Too self-referential for its own good by half, Scream 4 attempts to reboot the by-now-completely-overworked slasher franchise after an 11-year hiatus. It’s not a total embarrassment (that was Scream 3), but it’s also a film ...

Tease photo Screen Savers

Monterey Bay Film Festival lights up minds in Pacific Grove, at CSUMB World Theater.

Revolution is in the air at the fourth annual Monterey Bay Film Festival, which takes place this Friday and Saturday, April 8-9, with a diverse group of offerings from international filmmakers, teen film students and ...

Tease photo Amazing Race

A different sort of education documentary schools Carmel, then Monterey.

Documentary films on America’s flawed education system aren’t rare, but the recent momentum behind Bay-Area produced Race to Nowhere certainly is. Despite the fact that marketing for the film is purely online and word-of-mouth, the ...

Tease photo Carmel’s Coming Out

Carmel-by-the-Sea the movie finally makes its local debut at Sunset.

Local film director Lawrence Roeck is in the enviable position of being a go-to guy for the Eastwoods. Raised on the Peninsula from age 1, Roeck (pronounced “rock”) dreamed of making films as a teenager ...

Tease photo True Grit

True Grit includes beautiful performances but lacks pop.

It slips by almost unnoticed. Mattie Ross, relating her own tale of her adventures with U.S. Marshal Rooster Cogburn, mentions her sister twice… and calls her by two different names. First she is Victoria, then ...

Tease photo Gulliver's Travels

Black Out: Gulliver’s Travels doesn’t go much of anywhere.

As disinterested in itself as Gulliver’s Travels seems to be, it’s a wonder it ever came into existence at all. The film reveals little exertion made on behalf of the narrative, lackadaisical attention paid to ...

Tease photo The King's Speech

Stutter Stunner: The King’s Speech might be a quiet Oscar-talker.

In the winter of 1936, the rather strange King Edward VIII, ruler of the United Kingdom, Emperor of India, and so forth, announced his decision to abdicate the throne in order to marry Wallis Simpson, ...

Tease photo I Love You Phillip Morris

Con Bond: Jim Carrey and I Love You Phillip Morris break new ground beautifully.

In I Love You Phillip Morris (no relation to the tobacco company), writer-directors Glenn Ficarra and John Requa pull off something that until now hasn’t been done in mainstream American cinema: A story where the ...

Tease photo Little Fockers

Dumb Fockers: Little Fockers doesn’t make the most of its opportunities.

Apart from the smutty giggles that derive from the mere mention of the Focker family surname, this third entry in the now 10-year-old comedy franchise falls flat. Following Meet the Parents in 2000 and Meet ...

Tease photo Tron - Legacy

Despite its pedigree, Tron: Legacy does not impress.

I’m really starting to think they hate us, the masters of our so-called entertainment. At the very least they surely hold us in disdain, see us as inconvenient obstacles to their god-granted profits. If only ...

Tease photo Black Swan

Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan is powerfully and beautifully bewildering.

After 2008’s conventionally plotted, over-praised The Wrestler, Darren Aronofsky dives back into another competitive sport of sorts in the deliciously wackadoodle Black Swan. This drama-horror hybrid, set within a New York ballet company, strikes a ...

Tease photo The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader Sinking Ship

The latest Chronicles of Narnia flounders on the high seas.

The best thing one can say about The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader is that it’s not as painfully slow as the franchise’s last installment, Prince Caspian, in which after 140 ...

Tease photo The Warrior’s Way

East West Mashup: Director Sngmoo Lee unsuccessfully conjures Tarantino.

The Warrior’s Way is an odd one. Wedged somewhere between the furious imaginations of Tsui Hark and Sergio Leone, the feature is an idiosyncratic ode to pure screen heroism thwarted by the junky instincts of ...

Tease photo Wild Target

The preposterous yet poignant Wild Target hits the mark.

Didn’t get enough of Rupert Grint and Bill Nighy in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows? Or just need some relief from the unrelenting grimness of Part 1? Check them out – teamed up with ...

Tease photo Tangled

Disney delivers a surprisingly moving animated magic with Tangled.

One had to wonder – I certainly did – how Disney came to be telling a Rapunzel story. The original girl with the fantastically long and strong golden hair of folklore was no kind of ...

Tease photo 127 Hours

Hard Rock:

You’ve likely heard the expression “between a rock and a hard place,” but you’ve probably never thought about it the way it happens in 127 Hours. Or maybe you have: The film is based on ...

Tease photo Burlesque

Burlesque

Oh, cheese, glorious cheese! Christina Aguilera gets off a bus from Iowa – yeah, like she’s from Iowa – in Los Angeles with nothing but a coupla bucks in her pocket (which almost immediately get ...

Tease photo Fair Game

Doug Liman’s

Were it not for the fact that Sean Penn and Naomi Watts turn in a pair of top-notch performances as columnist/politico Joseph Wilson and his wife, Valerie Plame, a covert CIA field operative, Fair Game ...

Tease photo Not My Bag

Bag It takes an unlikely hero on an odyssey to extract plastic bags from his life.

Ice cream, Guinness, and babies don’t come in plastic, points out Bag It’s host Jeb Berrier. But it seems pretty much everything else does. Though he proclaims he’s an average guy, Berrier’s comfortable sense of ...

Tease photo Potter Pooper

Potter Pooper

It’s always been a given that fans of the Harry Potter books were going to enjoy the Harry Potter movies, whatever their faults as movies may have been. But it has also been the case ...

Tease photo Monsters

Gareth Edwards’ Monsters may just make all of its money back at the Osio.

On one hand, you’re thinking Monsters is nothing special. The plot is ho-hum, there’s a love story with decent acting and mediocre dialogue, and an infestation of unintelligent alien monsters ravages the northern third of ...

Tease photo Unstoppable

Run Away From This Train: Unstoppable wastes its strong leads and exhilarating ending.

Once Unstoppable does the obvious and actually, you know, involves its main characters in its story, it’s a solid action thriller. The problem is it takes an hour for this to happen, and by then ...

Tease photo Megamind

Dreamworks’

You know those trailers that give away the whole film? I hate them too… and it seems as if every trailer is that spoileriffic these days. Which is why I wasn’t so keen on Megamind, ...

Tease photo The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest

Buzz Worthy: The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest completes the trilogy with great acting and lots of answers.

Unfortunately, like good things, all good stories must come to an end. So it goes with author Stieg Larsson’s best-selling “Millennium” trilogy that started with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, progressed with The Girl ...

Tease photo Buried

Boxed In: Buried takes an impossible premise and transforms it into a hair-raising horror.

How did anyone dare to do this? How did anyone think they would get away with it? Most audacious of all, perhaps: Did anyone have any notion that such a recklessly bold premise for a ...

Tease photo Hereafter

Not Quite Dead: Hereafter neglects to address the big question at its core.

What is amazing about Hereafter is that in 129 minutes, nothing happens. Three separate storylines, location shooting in London, Paris and San Francisco, and nothing. For a movie that aspires to explore what happens after ...

Tease photo Howl

James Franco’s performance as Allen Ginsberg grounds a film about the Beat poem “Howl.”

A hallucinatory three part epic poem haunted by images of “angelheaded hipsters” and graphic homosexual acts, Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” broke some of poetry’s established conventions when it was published in 1956. Inspired by the poem, ...

Tease photo Freakonomics

An all-star team of documentary filmmakers come together for an adaptation of a best-selling book, Freakonomics.

Thought-provoking but not always persuasive, Freakonomics is essentially four video essays inspired by the 2005 nonfiction book Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything and directed by a team of some of ...

Tease photo Red

Red’s clever story and kick-ass cast deliver where other over-the-hill action flicks croaked.

Of all the washed-up, washed-out, over-the-hill, too-old-for-this-shit, action-hero movies we’ve had thrown at us this year – The A-Team, The Losers, The Expendables – Red is by far the most amusing, the most clever, the ...

Tease photo Secretariat

Pulling Up Lame: Secretariat lacks a little giddy-up and go.

There’s a reason more movies aren’t made about horses: they’re boring. Unless it is pitch-black and ridden by the Headless Horseman, there’s not much a horse can offer besides looking nice, running and eating hay. ...

Tease photo Never Let Me Go

Loose Grip: Never Let Me Go doesn’t seize its tremendous potential completely.

Early reaction to this filmed adaptation of Kazuo Ishiguro’s undeniably under-the-skin (but a mite overpraised) Never Let Me Go seemed to share a same basic – very American, I think – complaint. (You should stop ...

Tease photo Jack Goes Boating

Philip Seymour Hoffman stays afloat for his directorial debut.

Oscar-winning actor Philip Seymour Hoffman’s directorial debut, Jack Goes Boating, is adapted from a play by Bob Glaudini, who also penned the screenplay. Despite a quartet of interesting, if overly familiar, New York characters, Hoffman’s ...

Tease photo Missed It by That Much

The Virginity Hit whiffs because it’s dead unsexy.

“When the four of us entered high school,” teenaged filmmaker Zack notes sadly as The Virginity Hit opens, “we were all virgins.” Well, duh: You were 14 years old. I suspect that there’s meant to ...

Tease photo Too Greedy

Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps tries to do too much.

The inspiration behind Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps is intriguing: What happens when you take an icon – and some would say the icon – of the greed, power and excess of the 1980s and ...

Tease photo The Town

Ben Affleck thriller represents a stunning directoral coup.

Who’da thunk Ben Affleck would turn out to be one of the most enthralling American film directors of the early 21st century? Because now, with The Town, we have proof positive that his first film, ...

Tease photo Flipped

Rob Reiner revisits familiar coming of age territory in charming, if predictable, new flick.

That Flipped works at all is no small wonder, and if that sounds like a backhanded compliment, you’re right on the money. So is this: It’s Rob Reiner’s best film in a decade… but just ...

Tease photo Cairo Time

An ode to a city, as well as a passion.

Juliette (Patricia Clarkson), a busy magazine editor, has taken a break in her schedule to travel to Cairo to visit her husband, Mark (Tom McCamus), who is a United Nations official working in Gaza. When ...

Tease photo machete

Class Warrior: Machete provides a slice of surprisingly effective entertainment – and political commentary.

Remember that crazy-funny fake trailer for the nonexistent ’70s Mexploitation flick Machete that preceded the “Planet Terror” segment of Grindhouse a few years back? Gonzo indie filmmaker Robert Rodriguez whipped up that two-and-a-half-minute bit of ...

Tease photo the american

Clooney’s Shooting Blanks The American is a pretentious portrait of a hitman.

I didn’t think it was possible. I was certain that there was no movie that I could not endure if it meant I could gaze at George Clooney for two hours. I was wrong. I ...

Tease photo Exorcisim

The devil is in the details of a Blair Witch Project knock-off that has its own kind of eerie style.

Every generation gets the devil it deserves, and this faux documentary pulls few punches in its nihilistic depiction of religious belief versus religious disbelief amid the Spanish moss and ramshackle, moldering manses of southern Louisiana. ...

Tease photo Takers

Thieves Like Them: Takers is more fun when it focuses on the criminals than on the cops who are trying to catch them.

In heist movies, usually plots twist and turn and twist again only to have greed condemned for the sake of good. Been here, seen this. But ironically, it’s this expectation that makes Takers seem fresh: ...

Tease photo Lottery Ticket

Stereotypical ghetto “comedy” leaves laughs up to chance, and fails to deliver.

Kevin (rapper Bow Wow) doesn’t play the lottery, because he thinks it’s “designed to keep poor people poor by selling them false dreams.” So why does he buy a lottery ticket anyway? Because he couldn’t ...

Tease photo Life During Wartime

Todd Solondz’s latest film revisits his previous themes, with chilling portraits of pain.

Todd Solondz’s breakthrough feature, 1995’s Welcome to the Dollhouse was so lacerating in its depiction of humanity as a clot of pitiless predators and doomed prey that it practically required a field dressing upon exiting ...

Tease photo Winter’s Bone

Speed Kills: Cutting to the Winter’s Bone

“Never ask for what ought to be offered,” 17-year-old Ree Dolly (Jennifer Lawrence) admonishes her younger brother and sister. Despite their hunger and destitution, the Dolly clan will know the difference between right and wrong ...

Tease photo Scott Pilgrim vs. the World

Director Edgar Wright’s graphic novel adaptation is stylish but sexist.

Here comes male adolescent sexual angst as “an epic of epic epicness,” as the poster tagline informs us, and as the movie matches in attitude and action. It’s the indulgence of everything a not-quite-adult, no-longer-a-kid ...

Tease photo Kisses

Lyrical tale of two kids loose on Dublin’s mean streets.

Two little Irish kids flee their abusive homes on a bleak estate and ride a barge into the center of Dublin for a night of adventure and stark terror in Lance Daly’s captivating Kisses. Foul-mouthed ...

Tease photo The Other Guys

Will Ferrell brings out his inner dudeness in bromance dream team.

Just when it seemed like the once-robust buddy-cop action-comedy was going to require a do-not-resuscitate order, along comes Will Ferrell and Adam McKay to show ‘em how it’s done. Having successfully collaborated with director-writer McKay ...

Tease photo Dinner For Schmucks

Unlikely sidekicks Paul Rudd and Steve Carell display impeccable comic timing in Dinner for Schmucks.

Great comic pairings don’t come along often. Yet, Steve Carell and Paul Rudd strike a snappy chemistry as straight man Tim Conrad (Rudd) to funnyman Barry Speck (Carell) in this adaptation of Francis Veber’s Le ...

Tease photo Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore

Mediocre Menagerie: Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore is a spoof that lacks the talented Pixar touch.

Although it’s great fun for the under-8 set and for those of us monitoring the chaos theory that is Nick Nolte’s career of late, Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore is otherwise mediocre ...

Tease photo Cats&Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore

Mediocre Menagerie:

Although it’s great fun for the under-8 set and for those of us monitoring the chaos theory that is Nick Nolte’s career of late, Cats&Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore is otherwise mediocre and features ...

Tease photo Salt

Tasty Spy Stuff: Angelina has a Jolie old time in retro, but timely, flick about Russian double agents.

I had to snort with something like derision when I heard the premise: “Angelina Jolie is a Russian spy! Or maybe not!” Russian spies? What is this, 1982? Is this a missing James Bond movie? ...

Tease photo The Girl Who Played With Fire

Tattoo You: Second film adaptation of best-selling crime series is heavy on atmosphere, light on excitement.

“Played with fire” may be misleading, playfulness not being one of the leading characteristics of Lisbeth Salander, the black-leathered, dragon-tatted, hog-riding hacker – bisexual, to boot! – who has, almost improbably, beguiled an international legion ...

Tease photo Inception

Presents of Mind: Christopher Nolan gives the gift of another brainy blockbuster with

For weeks – nay, months – I played along with the coy refusals by writer/director Christopher Nolan and the cast members of Inception to reveal too much about its premise. I resisted the urge to ...

Tease photo Despicable Me

Totally Gru-vy: Despicable Me is an animated feel-good summer movie that delivers on its promise.

I’m still considering whether I’m ready to blaspheme… No, wait: I’m coming to a decision… Yes, I shall blaspheme: Despicable Me is better than Toy Story 3. There. I said it. Only a little bit ...

Tease photo Cyrus

Baby Love:

With Cyrus, the transition of the Duplass brothers (Jay and Mark) from their germinal Austin filmmaking roots into full-blown Hollywood filmmakers is complete – even though their new comedy will not be mistaken for any ...

Tease photo THE TWILIGHT SAGA - ECLIPSE

Bloodless Wonder: Bringing in a horror director still doesn’t make

They keep trying, the producers of the Twilight films; you’ve got to give them that. For 2008’s Twilight, they hired Catherine Hardwicke (Thirteen) to direct, suggesting they were aiming for edgy teen drama. Then they ...

Tease photo Knight and Day

I Spy a Dud: Knight and Day lacks thrills, story line, or decent performances, despite the presence of stars Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz.

Is it too much of a “spoiler” to “reveal” that a certain movie cannot be spoiled? That a movie has no big surprises on offer to blow you away? That a movie is absolutely, 100 ...

Tease photo Toy Story 3

We Are Family: Toy Story 3 soars on the wonderful heartbreak of intimate connection, a compelling account of the joys, and difficulties, of letting go.

“You’ve got a friend in me,” go the lyrics to the Randy Newman tune that has been crooned in all of Pixar’s magical Toy Story films, including the brand-new Toy Story 3. It’s a catchy ...

Tease photo Exit Through the Gift Shop

Artful Dodger: Exit Through the Gift Shop celebrates the antics, and the message, of the street art movement.

The documentary Exit Through the Gift Shop displays the tag “A Banksy film,” marking it a production of the enigmatic British street artist and political provocateur. The film shows Banksy and his accomplices steal a ...

Tease photo Short and Sweeter

Big Sur International Film Screening Series 2010 only improves on first four.

The roots of the Annual Big Sur International Film Screening Series took hold after Magnus Toren impulsively purchased a film projector on eBay from a preacher in Kentucky. “I don’t remember how I could have ...

Tease photo The Karate Kid

Enter the Draggin’: Remake of young Kung Fu classic packs a soft punch.

“Karate! Kung fu! Whatever!” Mom says. Exactly! Who cares what the Asian ass-kicking is called. Not important! The important thing is that the cute little American kid will teach the Chinese ignoramuses a thing or ...

Tease photo The City of Your Final Destination

Opulent Ruins: Despite being set in a sprawling jungle estate, James Ivory’s The City of Your Final Destination is nowhere to visit.

With three-time Oscar nominated director James Ivory (A Room With a View, Howards End) at the helm, The City of Your Final Destination can also boast of a powerhouse cast marked by the presence of ...

Tease photo Splice

Mommy Issues: Splice depicts sexual torture, but is also a pain to sit through.

Science fiction horror movies have long been informing us that there are realms in which Man Was Not Meant To Meddle. This warning usually comes via a solemnly silly overblown cautionary tale that revels in ...

Tease photo The Square

Crime Story: The Square combines a noir narrative with strong performances in a gripping tale about heavy duty evildoers.

This vicious little Australian suspenser debuted at the South By Southwest Film Festival ’09 and then failed to materialize on U.S. screens, a disappointment that’s thankfully been rectified by indie distributor Apparition (the company also ...

Tease photo Prince Of Persia - The Sannds Of Time

Jake Gyllenhaal shines in surprisingly entertaining video game remake from the Bruckheimer hit machine.

The words “video game adaptation” are enough to strike fear into the hearts of most moviegoers, and for good reason. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, however, has a better chance of success with ...

Tease photo Casino Jack and the United States of Money

Lying Low: Casino Jack and the United States of Money examines shady dealings of swindler/lobbyist Jack Abramoff.

The director of the 2008 Oscar winning Taxi to the Dark Side, filmmaker Alex Gibney is one of most important documentarians working today. His past films have included the Oscar nominated Enron: The Smartest Guys ...

Tease photo Shrek Forever After

Just Like Starting Ogre: Shrek Forever After throws out the films’ history – and it’s an improvement.

Many of us have suspected it all along, but with Shrek Forever After, it becomes official: The Shrek film series is actually a sitcom. Since time immemorial – okay, since the late ’70s – there ...

Tease photo Letters to Juliet

The latest remake of a classic romance, wastes talents of greats like Vanessa Redgrave in a pedestrian tale.

Letters to Juliet imagines, in its own way, what would have happened if star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet didn’t die, but merely went their separate ways. A cynic might say they saved one another years ...

Tease photo Robin Hood

Cate Blanchett, Max von Sydow shine in Russell Crowe vehicle, but saga lacks dramatic bite.

For as muddled as its medieval politics are, thanks to Brian Helgeland’s scattershot screenplay, director Ridley Scott’s cloud-covered history of Robin Longstride’s path to outlaw legend soars whenever Cate Blanchett takes the screen as Maid ...

Tease photo Babies

Natal Habitat: Babies observes cultural differences – and overly-precious cuteness.

In the new French-produced documentary Babies, the filmmakers attempt to observe the many unique cultural components of early childhood development and parenting by… Oh look at that one play with the goat! Isn’t that just ...

Tease photo Vincere

Springtime for Benito: Artful Marco Bellocchio biopic tells the hidden history of Mussolini’s first wife.

The long-scuttled tragic story of the lives of Ida Dalser, the first wife of Benito Mussolini, and their child, Benito Albino (Mussolini’s first-born), is brought to the screen with arresting style by Italian director Marco ...

Tease photo The Red Baron

Plane Truths: Account of von Richthofen’s air adventures sags in narrative, swoops in sky footage.

Before its German premiere, reports suggested that this glossy account of World War I air ace Manfred von Richthofen would be a rare example of postwar German cinema celebrating one of the country’s legendary wartime ...

Tease photo Out of the Fog

The landmark Street of the Sardine captures a little-seen Cannery Row to great effect.

Most people know Cannery Row as it stands today: gaudy, light-hearted and lined with tourist attractions and sweet confections by day; glimmering with lights and IMAX movies, and pulsing with music from Sly McFly’s and ...

Tease photo The Losers

A Soupçon of Snark: The Losers wins by not pretending to be anything more than featherweight fun.

You’re not too long into this wickedly wonderful little smashup of fluff – maybe 20 minutes or so – before you think, “Wait: Did this open with a ‘previously on The Losers’ segue?” It didn’t, ...

Tease photo Oceans

Oceans documents the captivating lives of marine animals.

This year, Earth Day (a day to “inspire awareness and appreciation for the Earth’s environment”) is marked by the release of Oceans, a lush documentary about the magnificent waters that cover more than 70 percent ...

Tease photo Kick-Ass

Watchman Babies: Geeks, freaks – and a lack of cinematic technique – in a ragged rip-off of a tale.

Who would win in a fight: Superman or Mighty Mouse? Where did the pocketwatch in Somewhere in Time come from? And why don’t ordinary people decide to be superheroes? These are questions geeks discuss among ...