[5] A prim and proper lady discovers she is infertile and hires a street-smart gal to be her ‘Baby Mama.’ As much as I like everyone in the cast — from stars Tina Fey and Amy Poehler, to Steve Martin, Sigourney Weaver, Greg Kinnear, Holland Taylor, and Dax Shepard — Baby Mama comes off oddly restrained, never allowing Fey or Poehler to cut loose and …
[4] A dude (Matthew Perry) gets an opportunity to go back in time (where he’s played by Zac Efron) to better appreciate his life. I’m not sure what it would take to overcome a scenario as stale as the one at play here, but for a dug-up corpse, it’s not as rank as I thought it would be. Zac Efron shows (eating a little crow …
[3] The fourth Saw film isn’t nearly as clever as it tries so desperately to be, and the death traps for which the series is so famous are woefully uninspired. The movie also deflates the mystique of its central character, Jigsaw, by giving him a cheezy, cliched back story. Director Darren Lynn Bousman shows a knack for imaginitive scene transitions, but everything else about this …
[7] 28 Days Later is a bright feather in the multi-colored cap of director Danny Boyle, who also gave us Trainspotting, Sunshine, and Slumdog Millionnaire. Cillian Murphy wanders post-apocalyptic England after a virus has turned most of the population into zombies. Boyle’s twist on the zombie sub-genre is speed — the zombies move like lightning. 28 Days Later unfolds very nicely and builds to a …
[4] Sarah Michelle Gellar (TV’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer) stars as a woman who has visions of a murder, eventually coming to realize the murderer may be coming for her, too. This supernatural thriller is okay for the first half-hour, but then it completely reveals its hand when there’s still half the movie left to endure. For all the mysterious build-up, the concept turns out to …
[6] This story of a widower struggling to be a good father to his two boys refrains from indulging in too much sentimentality, but never fully shakes that “Lifetime Movie” feeling. Clive Owen and young George MacKay are very good, and the Australian setting makes for a beautiful backdrop — overall, the movie’s all right. It just isn’t anything we haven’t seen before. With Laura …
[8] A lonely writer falls in love with a singing, dancing courtesan in this bawdy musical that soars on the charms of co-stars Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor. The song numbers cannibalize lyrics from love songs over the past century, an approach you’re either going to love or hate. I think the musical sequences are the best part of Moulin Rouge!, whether it’s the Tex …
[6] Michael Moore’s latest isn’t as witty or well-crafted as his previous work, but it still provokes an interesting conversation about its subject matter, the dark side of capitalism. The most interesting (and horrifying) parts are a segment about blue chip companies taking out life insurance policies on their employees and naming themselves as the beneficiaries (ie, making money off their employees’ deaths), and the …
[7] Sam Rockwell plays a lone astronaut working at a lunar drilling station in Duncan Jones’ solid feature film debut, Moon. Moon is a story in the classic sci-fi tradition, spurred by Rockwell’s encounter with a mysterious stranger who shatters his understanding of reality. None of the concepts in Moon are especially original or groundbreaking, but Jones’ approach to the material is fresh and sure-handed, …
[4] This is the first miss for Judd Apatow, coming off a string of memorable comedy hits like The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up. Funny People features the usual array of wacky Apatow characters, but the personality and relationship patterns are disappointingly familiar. Funny People is obviously an attempt to make a deeper, more sophisticated film, but in the end, the only thing …
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