Matt Damon

[7] Cameron Crowe (Almost Famous, Jerry Maguire) directs this family drama/comedy about a widower, played by Matt Damon, who buys a rural home that comes with a rundown zoo. Damon and his two young children help the ragtag team of zoo keepers, led by Scarlett Johansson, to bring the zoo up to code so that it can re-open to the public — and along the …

[8] I am not a fan of car racing. I couldn’t care less about it, really. But like so many other great sports movies, Ford v Ferrari isn’t really about the sport itself. It’s about the people engaged in the sport. And to that extent, director James Mangold (Logan, Walk the Line) hits a home run with this true story about two men who overcome …

[7] Matt Damon stars in writer/director Alexander Payne’s (Election, Nebraska) film about a man who undergoes a miraculous new “shrinking” process so that he can live in a miniature utopia where his money is worth more… a lot more. Unfortunately, the man’s wife (Kristen Wiig) gets cold feet and bails on the procedure after he’s already been shrunk. From thereon out, Downsizing is about finding yourself …

[8] A teenaged girl ropes an aging, alcoholic U.S. Marshall into helping her find justice for her father’s murder. In this age of sequels and remakes, it’s hard to believe one of them could actually be this good. The Coen Brothers take the John Wayne original (based on a book by Charles Portis), roll it in mud, fray the edges, and weave a telling that’s …

[6] In this period piece set in 1950s New England, Brendan Fraser stars as a high school quarterback who gets recruited to a prestigious preparatory school where he must hide the fact that he’s Jewish. School Ties feels desperate to cash in on the unexpected success of Dead Poets Society (they even hired the same composer), but it’s earnest enough to stand on its own, even if …

[6] Moderately entertaining supernatural drama from director Clint Eastwood. The film follows three separate story lines that come together in the end. Matt Damon plays a reluctant psychic who can commune with the dead; Cecile de France plays a news reporter who has a near-death experience in a tsunami that opens the film; and Frankie and George McLaren play twin brothers separated by death. The …

[6] Steven Soderbergh directs what is probably the most believable, realistic approach to a deadly epidemic movie that I’ve ever seen, but that doesn’t necessarily make it the best movie. The building action is the film’s strong point, and primarily because you can easily imagine these things happening — runs on grocery stores and banks, looting, people boarding up in their homes, states closing their …

[5] Titan A.E. is an awkward mix of 2D and 3D animation from director Don Bluth (Secret of NIMH, Anastasia). It’s not as attractive as Bluth’s other films, and it also suffers from a weak script. There are kernels of dramatic potential, especially with humanity being on the brink of extinction, but the film is more concerned with conjuring arcade-like action and music video moments. …

[7] Michael Douglas plays Liberace for director Steven Soderbergh in this fast-paced tragi-romantic-dark comedy about the famed pianist’s five-year relationship with a man forty years his senior. Matt Damon plays young Scott Thorson, the naive pretty boy who falls under Liberace’s spell. Their relationship is highly odd, sometimes disturbing, but often tender — definitely compelling enough to hang a movie on, especially when it’s so …

[8] Matt Damon carries this Ridley Scott (Blade Runner, Gladiator) film based on the book by Andy Weir. Half the film is practically a one-man show, with Damon playing a NASA astronaut feared dead and accidentally abandoned on Mars for several years. The other half of the run-time is split between Earth and the returning Mars spacecraft. Once NASA discovers Damon’s character is still alive, …

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