[4] Dennis Quaid and Ben Foster star in this sci-fi thriller about astronauts who awaken from hypersleep with total memory loss. The filmmakers are hellbent on keeping everything mysterious to the very end: where are we? who are we? what are we doing? I’m all for a good mystery, but you have to give me something or someone to care about while you leave me …
[6] [Warning: This review contains spoilers.] Spike Jonze directs this meta tale of a screenwriter losing his mind trying to adapt a book called The Orchid Thief. While his twin brother moves in and begins mirroring him in many ways, he decides he needs to find the author of the book to excavate its meaning. If you can’t already tell, Adaptation is a very hard …
[5] There’s a good concept at the core of this Wes Craven/Kevin Williamson (Scream) collaboration — a brother and sister coming to terms with the fact that they may be werewolves. But serious werewolf fans will bemoan the cheesy Hollywood setting and the sub-par computer-animated effects. I liked Jesse Eisenberg as the brother, but Christina Ricci and pretty much the rest of the entire cast …
[6] A small, isolated village of puritan-like people come under siege by a killer in their midst, as well as woodland monsters that may not be what they seem… Whether or not you like M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village ultimately hinges upon two big conceits (or twists, if you will). I’m okay with the first, as it comes organically from the hopes and fears of …
[5] Personally, I’m not sure when I’ll ever be “ready” to see any dramatizations of September 11th, 2001. I definitely don’t want to see those events sensationalized. Thankfully, Oliver Stone exercises restraint with the material, opting to show the film almost entirely from two characters’ points of view. World Trade Center is a claustrophobic survival story centered around real-life survivors John McLoughlin (Nicolas Cage) and …
[6] Ron Howard directs Cate Blanchett and Tommy Lee Jones in The Missing, an estranged father/daughter bonding flick by way of The Searchers. The story is set in motion after Blanchett’s eldest daughter is kidnapped by an evil Apache mystic who is collecting young women to sell at the Mexican border. Blanchett and Jones are reliably good, and Jenna Boyd is superb as the youngest …
[8] This version of Hairspray disarms you from the very beginning notes of “Good Morning, Baltimore” and builds to one of the most joyful finales of any movie in recent memory. The musical numbers are all superbly choreographed and staged by director Adam Shankman, but it’s the last half-hour of this movie that really seals the deal for me. The climactic performance of “You Can’t …
[5] This belated sequel gets by, for the most part, on good will and fond memories of the previous three installments. It’s light on memorable action scenes and heavy on silliness (the CGI mokeys and gophers are really, really hard to shake). What I really wanted were more special moments between Harrison Ford and Karen Allen. I mean, who didn’t always want to see Indy …
[7] James Cameron’s first film since Titanic is a supreme juvenile fantasy with a healthy sense of adventure and discovery. From its floating mountains to its bio-luminescent flora and fauna, the world of Pandora never stops unfolding before our eyes, and it’s a beautiful, trippy little place to visit. The core concept of Avatar — that of experiencing life through a separate host body — …
[5] How do you review a movie about a guy and girl with murderous mutant genitalia? In the hands of David Cronenberg, this could have been a truly disturbing, fascinating horror film. But in lieu of Cronenberg, we have Frank Henenlotter of Basket Case fame. Henenlotter, as always, takes the comedic route, which forces you to view the effort as one of those ‘so bad …
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