Dear John
Dead Letter: 'Dear John' is a sentimental exercise in predictability.
Weepy tearjerker movies can be a tough watch, especially for guys who lack the patience or inclination to indulge in melodrama. I do my best to not be one of those guys, and because of ...
Extraordinary Measures
Medical Miracles: 'Extraordinary Measures' is a surprisingly effective melodrama about a little-known ailment.
In the surprisingly effective Extraordinary Measures, two action movie stars face an insurmountable foe, and just about every step they take is met with resistance and difficulty. For Harrison Ford (Indiana Jones) and Brendan Fraser ...
Everybody's Fine
Fine, Not Dandy: Robert De Niro stars as the patriarch of a troubled family in an in-depth portrayal of dysfunctionality and connection.
Everybody’s Fine, an oft repeated and rarely true idiom spoken by distant family and friends for the ease of unemotional conversation, is the perfect ironic title for a story in which nobody is fine. This ...
The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3
Train Wreck: A remake that goes way off the rails.
This shouldn’t surprise us, but somehow a movie about a subway hijacking ends with a car chase through New York City traffic. And it’s not even a good car chase. It’s action for the sake ...
Ghost of Girlfriends Past
Romancing the Clone: Michael Douglas steals the show from Matthew McConaughey in Ghost of Girlfriends Past.
Matthew McConaughey has his shirt on throughout Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. Are you ladies still reading? Good, because there’s a lot to enjoy in director Mark Waters’ (Mean Girls) saccharine sweet comedy, including a number ...
New in Town
Tiny Town: A Miami executive moves to a small Minnesota community in the romantic comedy New In Town.
There’s nothing new in New In Town, which is a bad thing for anyone who pays good money to see this so-so romantic comedy. The only thing remotely creative about the movie is that it ...
Four Christmases
Holiday Hell: Four Christmases will ruin your holiday cheer.
As a rule, holiday comedies should be funny and heartwarming, and Four Christmases is neither. What a dull, lifeless mess this is, a movie so bad it makes the 82-minute running time feel way too ...
Pride and Glory
Family Affairs: Pride and Glory follows a clan of policemen.
The blurry line between good cops and bad cops gets another shakedown in Pride and Glory, and the results are mixed. Solid performances highlight a visually grim picture with a predictable story that never gets ...
Nights in Rodanthe
Woman Hood: Nights in Rodanthe succeeds as a romantic tearjerker.
There’s no getting around the three-hanky, tearjerker appeal of Nights in Rodanthe, or the fact that the film is mere months away from a big debut on Lifetime. But make no mistake: This is a ...
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
Forgetting Sarah Marshall plays its protagonist’s exposed emotions for laughs.
How do you forget someone you can’t escape? You can’t. But Forgetting Sarah Marshall, for all its tortured breakup hardships and indecent exposures, makes us laugh long and hard enough to forget we’re watching a ...
Semi Pro
Will Ferrell whiffs with the basketball comedy Semi-Pro.
Will Ferrell fans, take note: the master buffoon has let us down in Semi-Pro, but it’s not for a lack of trying. Just the opposite, actually. We’re used to him doing absurd things for a ...
Set Piece
The magic in
Mr. Magorium’s Wonder Emporium is the ideal movie for children of the 21st century. After all, most of the movies that find box office success these days are visual effects spectacles that offer much more ...
El Cantante
El Cantante is a standard musician biopic.
The first time we see Hector Lavoe in El Cantante he’s in a heroin-induced stupor and can barely move. The year is 1985, and according to his wife Puchi it’s the best time of their ...
Back to the Future
Live Free or Die Harder injects a popular action franchise with more rip-roaring special effects.
Reluctant hero John McClane is back for a fourth time in Live Free or Die Hard, and once again he’s escaping from impossible situations with the help of jaw-dropping visual effects. This time, though, there’s ...
He Done It
In Fracture, we know who committed the murder, but we don’t know if he’ll be convicted of the crime.
It’s never a mystery whether or not Ted Crawford (Anthony Hopkins) shoots his wife. He does. We see him do it. He even confesses to it: “I shot her in the head. I knew it ...
Under Cover
Robert De Niro directs The Good Shepherd, a film about the beginning of the CIA.
Long on ambition but remarkably unspectacular, The Good Shepherd traces the origins of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) through the career of a man caught in the turbulent midst of it all. The grand intentions ...
Bad Fantasy
Bad Fantasy
A long time ago in a land far, far away, Eragon began production without any ideas to call its own and no sense of pride in what’s being created. The result is a movie that ...
The Christmas Story
A new film details the birth of Jesus.
For a movie 2,006 years in the making, The Nativity Story is unforgivably dull. Granted, the birth of Jesus Christ isn’t a very glitzy story to begin with, but it doesn’t help that director Catherine ...
Second String
Despite a likeable cast, Gridiron Gang is a predictable sports flick.
The desperate sentimentality in Gridiron Gang is commonplace in sports movies, but what separates this picture from its brethren of “adolescent n’er-do-wells find the meaning of life thanks to a tough-yet-caring authority figure” is an ...
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