[8] It may be one of the most atypical Disney animated film, but I thoroughly enjoy The Emperor’s New Groove. It’s by far the funniest Disney flick I’ve ever seen, reminding me more of a Warner Brothers Looney Tune than anything Walt might ever have conjured. The irreverent script focuses on four very engaging characters, two good and two evil, and lets them run the …
[7] Two Boston detectives try to solve the mystery of a missing girl in this tight dramatic thriller from director Ben Affleck. Yeah, Ben Affleck. Who knew? Strong performances from Casey Affleck, Ed Harris, and Amy Ryan. I like how matter-of-fact Affleck’s approach is, and it definitely hooked me for a long while. But I liked it a bit less after the mid-point. The long …
[7] Ryan Gosling stars as Lars, a young man who begins seriously dating a life-size doll. His friends and family are instructed by a doctor to go along with it until they can figure out why he has engaged in this suspicious behavior. I love these types of movies — the ones that take ludicrous concepts, and then treat them very seriously. This is a …
[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] Megan Fox (Transformers) may never be put to better use than she is here, playing a stuck-up, conceited high school babe who gets possessed by a demon and starts eating all the boys in school. Amanda Seyfried plays her best friend… or enemy? Girls are complicated. The script by Diablo Cody (Juno) strives a little too hard to infect the zeitgeist (not every teen …
[7] Emile Hirsch and Kieran Culkin put in great performances in this odd coming-of-age film about best friends who are constantly rebelling against their Catholic school teacher, a one-legged nun played by Jodie Foster. I like that the characters, even Foster’s antagonistic one, aren’t one-sided. The film suggests the boys are out of control, but also that they have plenty to rebel against. I expected …
[5] While traveling through the desert, newlyweds pick up a car-wreck survivor who plunges them into a night of suspicion and suspense. Thomas Jane (The Mist, Hung) makes his directorial debut with Dark Country. On one hand, I admire his attempt to blend film noir with comic book aesthetics, but the movie relies on constant green-screen work that’s poorly executed. The script by Tab Murphy …
[7] While it lacks the pervasive chill that runs through The Silence of the Lambs, Red Dragon is a well-made thriller that engages from beginning to end, thanks to a briskly-paced script adaptation by Ted Tally (who won an Oscar for his treatment of Lambs). This is a prequel to the time Lecter met Starling, and also a re-make of Michael Mann’s stylish 1986 film …
[6] Jennifer Connelly plays a woman wrongfully evicted from her home. Before she can go through the proper channels to get it back, Ben Kingsley and his family have already moved in. That’s when The House of Sand and Fog turns into a tug of war between the characters that spirals quickly and tragically out of control. At first, I thought this was going to …
[8] Martin Scorsese unleashes this epic tale of 1860s New York City street battles, with Leonardo DiCaprio starring as a young man with a vendetta against the near legendary Bill the Butcher (Daniel Day-Lewis). See, DiCaprio’s character saw Day-Lewis’s character kill his father in the big opening battle scene, and then DiCaprio’s character goes away for a while. Once he’s of age, he comes back …
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