Movies: Capsule Reviews
Updated: 05/09/08 10:29 AM
BABY MAMA. Tina Fey, Amy Poehler and Greg Kinnear star in a comedy about a single and successful career woman who hires a surrogate mother. It's familiar territory, with even the story twists obvious. But in the comic hands of a solid cast of secondary characters led by Steve Martin, "Baby Mama' will leave you in stitches even if too many scenes are nothing more than a comedy sketch. 96 minutes. (Rated PG-13 for crude and sexual humor, language and a drug reference.) 2 and a half stars (Toni Ruberto)
THE BUCKET LIST. Jack Nicholson, Morgan Freeman, Sean Hayes, Beverly Todd and Rob Morrow in Rob Reiner's film about a couple of dying men who make a list of things to do before they depart. It was Jack Nicholson's turn. On the "bucket list' of half the stars in Hollywood especially those near age 70 has been, for years, "make a film with Morgan Freeman playing your faithful sidekick.' The trouble in this one is that Nicholson's role is more properly the sidekick role, but he hams it up mercilessly anyway by overelaborating every line. It's a bad performance by an insecure megastar in a movie that was never destined to be much more than sentimental slop. That won't stop you from misting up at the end, of course, but you know in advance where this movie is going every step of the way. 97 minutes. (Rated PG-13 for language.) 2 and a half stars (Jeff Simon)
COLLEGE ROAD TRIP. Starring Martin Lawrence, Raven Symone, Donny Osmond, Arnetia Walker, Michael Landes and Brianna Russo. When an overachieving high school student decides to travel around the country to choose the perfect college, her overprotective cop father decides to accompany her in order to keep her on the straight and narrow. 83 minutes. (Rated G.)
DR. SEUSS' HORTON HEARS A WHO. Jim Carrey, Steve Carell, Carol Burnett, Seth Rogen and Charles Osgood provide the voices for Jimmy Hayward and Steve Martino's animated adaptation of the much-loved Dr. Seuss classic about a protective elephant and a microscopic village of Whos. It's quite wonderful I thought like jazz, in that it takes all the stuff people remember from Seuss' original and then riffs and improvises on it all with great wit and powers of invention. Nor is it all Carrey and Carell doing the improvising either, though you can bet your skateboard they did more than their share. It's the writers here who knew how to make things delightful and the directors (who previously gave us "Ice Age'). Truth to be told, some of us find this more fun than, yes, "Ratatouille.' 88 minutes. (Rated G.) 3 and a half stars (Jeff Simon)
DRILLBIT TAYLOR. Starring Owen Wilson, Alex Frost, Matt Gallini, Troy Gentile, Nate Hartley. A down-on-his-luck soldier of fortune is hired to protect three high school freshman from a bully's reign of terror. 102 minutes. (Rated PG-13.)
88 MINUTES. Al Pacino, Alicia Witt, Amy Brenneman, Leelee Sobieski, William Forsythe and Neil McDonough in Jon Avnet's thriller about a forensic psychiatrist told via cell phone that he's got just 88 minutes to live. A soggy and truly awful thriller set in rainy Seattle in which, so help me, there's just as much suspense trying to figure out where Al Pacino's ridiculously fluffed-up forelocks will be on a shot-to-shot basis as there is figuring out who's going to do him in and how. None of the details add up in this movie, and none of the performances do either (pay particular attention to Leelee Sobieski's strange accent, which seems to vary from sentence to sentence the way Pacino's forelocks do from shot to shot). 108 minutes. (Rated R for violence, torture and a little nudity.) 1 and a half stars (Jeff Simon)
FOOL'S GOLD. Kate Hudson and Matthew McConaughey reunite in this lightweight yarn about the hunt for lost treasure. Donald Sutherland, Ray Winstone and Alexis Dziena co-star. The names Hudson and McConaughey are enough to get most people to any movie. Put them together and it's box office gold, even with lightweight material. What starts off as a genial movie with a dash of romance and some laughs, takes an unexpected violent turn that's enough to rub the shine off this adventure-comedy. 110 minutes. (Rated PG-13 for violence, language and brief nudity.) 2 and a half stars (Toni Ruberto)
THE FORBIDDEN KINGDOM. Jackie Chan and Jet Li star together for the first time in this martial arts fantasy. Michael Angarano plays the American teen magically transported to ancient China to save a fabled warrior. It's the "Karate Kid' meets the "Wizard of Oz' with the help of Yoda and Gandalf, as performed by the J&J Show. This family-friendly film overflows with stunning fighting sequences that are more artistic than violent. It's also quite funny with the silly Chan playing another drunken master; even Li cracks a joke and a smile. 106 minutes. (Rated PG-13 for sequences of martial arts action and some violence.) 2 and a half stars (Toni Ruberto)
FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL. Jason Segel is dumped by Kristin Bell and finds Mila Kunis behind a Hawaiian hotel's front desk in the newest sentimental sex comedy from Judd Apatow's freaks and geeks and losers factory. The blandest and most cliched but watchable sex comedy at your local multiplex. You have to give Apatow some credit for reinstalling the male sexual apparatus as a fit modern subject for audience guffaws but, other than that, this thing goes exactly where you think it's going to from the beginning. A few yucks are guaranteed, but it isn't a fraction as funny as a crueler movie about love and misery in the tropics that it remembles and that few people saw: the Farrelly Brothers' exact opposite take on some of this stuff in their unnecessary remake of "The Heartbreak Kid.' 112 minutes. (Rated R for language, sex and nudity, including the male frontal kind.) 2 and a half stars (Jeff Simon)
HAROLD AND KUMAR ESCAPE FROM GUANTANAMO BAY. Starring John Cho, Kal Penn, Eric Winter, David Krumholtz and Neil Patrick Harris. The stoner buddy duo returns, only to find themselves on the run from the government when they are mistaken as terrorists. 102 minutes. (Rated R for strong crude and sexual content, graphic nudity, pervasive language and drug use.)
IRON MAN. Robert Downey Jr., Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges and Terrence Howard in Jon Favreau's comic book fantasy based on one of the original Marvel comics super heroes. The movie summer has officially arrived, big time. As splendid as the special effects and computer graphics are, here they don't begin to have the oppressive deafening crunch of "Transformers' or the exhilarating action and surreal poetry of "Spider-Man.' But what this movie DOES have is, in its way, cooler: the hippest cast assembled for a comic book movie since Tim Burton's original "Batman.' Would you believe Robert Downey Jr. and Gwyneth Paltrow trying not to smirk their way through screwball comedy overlapping dialogue? And Jeff Bridges as the shaven-headed bad guy, a kind of Daddy Warbucks in perennial search of Annies to destroy. Big foolproof entertainment for any multiplex. 126 minutes. (Rated PG-13 for comic book movie action.) 3 and a half stars (Jeff Simon)
JUMPER. Hayden Christensen, Samuel L. Jackson, Diane Lane and Rachel Bilson in Doug Liman's sci-fi tale of the war between those who can teleport themselves anywhere and those sworn to kill them. How did a fantasy that sounds as cool as this one does turn out to be so annoying? Hard to say but dumbing down for teen audiences didn't help. It may sound way cool but when you're watching it, it's way dreadful. Few movies have quite the capacity to annoy that this one does. As teen movies go, it's like babysitting for the kid down the street with ADD whose parents have artfully neglected to give you a telephone number to call in case of problems. 88 minutes. (Rated PG-13 for violence and suggestions of violence.) 1 and a half stars (Jeff Simon)
LEATHERHEADS. George Clooney, Renee Zellweger, John Krasinski and Jonathan Pryce in Clooney's romantic comedy about a wisecracking reporter torn between a Princeton football hero and an aging pro football tramp in pro football's early days. The second profoundly wasted sports subject in the past few weeks. It's marginally better than Will Ferrell's ABA comedy "Semi-Pro' but it's so smothered in Once Upon a Time aura a la "The Natural' that it doesn't have enough reality to be truly funny. And Clooney spends so much time photographing himself for phantom layouts in Gentleman's Quarterly that the only real romance in the movie is between him and his mirror, not him and poor, pouty, peevish Renee Zellweger. There's a little funny stuff in the script but it all needed about 15 more minutes in the oven with a screenwriting pro. Clooney's been too good a director, thus far, not to have earned a misfire. This is it. 118 minutes. (Rated PG-13 for language.) 2 and a half stars (Jeff Simon)
THE LIFE BEFORE HER EYES. Vadim Perelman (The House of Sand and Fog) directs this adaptation of a novel by Laura Kasischke. Uma Thurman and Evan Rachel Wood star as older and younger versions of the same character in this movie about best friends confronting a gunman during a Columbine-style school massacre. The incoherent narrative is frustrating, but a trick ending shifts the perspective of the movie in an intriguing way. It may be a matter of opinion whether the clever puzzle justifies capitalizing yet again on a school shooting and scenes of dead students and teachers as just another artfully composed still life. 90 minutes. (Rated R for violent and disturbing content, language and brief drug use.) 2 and a half stars (Jean Westmoore)
MADE OF HONOR. Starring Patrick Dempsey, Michelle Monaghan, Kevin McKidd and Sydney Pollack. A man tries to disrupt the wedding of his best friend after he realizes he's in love with her. This lightweight romance is buoyed by the performances of Dempsey and Monaghan, who carry the film on their shoulders and do it well. Though the movie isn't necessarily well made, the duo is so charming and nice that we can forget how dull the rest of the movie and cast are as we dream about happily ever after. 101 minutes. (Rated PG-13 for language and sexual content.) 2 and a half stars (Toni Ruberto)
MISS PETTIGREW LIVES FOR A DAY. Starring Frances McDormand, Amy Adams, Ciaran Hinds and Shirley Henderson. An unemployed governess finds herself living the high life for a day when she poses as social secretary for an aspiring starlet. It may not be as giddy or as witty as the 1930s movies it evokes, but its themes of love lost and found are played more sincerely than any screwball comedy would dare. Beneath its froth and sequins, "Miss Pettigrew' has real heart. 95 minutes. (Rated PG-13 for brief nudity and sexual innuendo.) 3 and a half stars (Heather J. Violanti)
NIM'S ISLAND. Abigail Breslin, Jodie Foster and Gerard Butler star in this children's adventure tale, where a young girl and her scientist father live a fantasy life on an isolated island. Breslin plays Nim with bland enthusiasm and Foster is a small riot as the obsessive-compulsive author. A lot of fun for the preteen set, especially girls in need of a heroine. 96 minutes. (Rated PG for mild adventure action and brief language.) 2 and a half stars (Kenneth Young)
THE OTHER BOLEYN GIRL. Natalie Portman, Scarlett Johansson and Eric Bana star in a film about two sisters vying for the attention of King Henry VIII. This movie could be seen as History Lite, with sloppy grammar and short shrift paid to the larger implications of the Boleyn family's plotting most notably, Henry VIII's break with the Catholic Church. But it's so gorgeous to look at I found myself forgiving it. You have to admire Johansson for not looking her best, and allowing Portman, as Anne, to outshine her. Even better, at least the movie points out what a crud the king was. In the end, he's not glamorous or alluring. He's just a crud. 135 minutes. (Rated PG-13 for grisly images and sexual situations.) 3 stars (Mary Kunz Goldman)
PROM NIGHT. Starring Brittany Snow, Johnathon Schaech, Brianne Davis, Kelly Blatz and Jana Kramer. A horrible secret among a group of children comes back to haunt them in the form of a vengeful killer on their prom night. 88 minutes. (Rated PG-13 for violence and terror, some sexual material, underage drinking and language.)
REDBELT. Chiwetel Ejiofor, Tim Allen, Alice Braga, Joe Mantegna, Rebecca Pidgeon and Ricky Jay in David Mamet's movie about an idealistic L.A. jiujitsu master who tries to refuse to be suckered into fighting for money. Total horse puckey, but it's fun. Let's all be happy for David Mamet that he's gotten so much out of his five years in jiujitsu classes but that still doesn't mean that, given even half a chance, he remains the most shameless and cynical hack in American movies. A great writer? To be sure, when he wants to be, along with an increasingly agile filmmaker, but the end of this movie is pure nonsense. Its saving graces, along with watchability, are the performance of superb actor Chiwetel Ejiofor in the lead and the casting of Tim Allen in the role of corrupt Hollywood actor. 99 minutes. (Rated R for strong language.) 2 and a half stars (Jeff Simon)
THE RUINS. Starring Jonathan Tucker, Laura Ramsey and Jena Malone. Four friends vacationing in Mexico encounter a mysterious archaelogical dig, where something evil lives among the ruins. 97 minutes. (Rated R for strong violence and gruesome images, language, some sexuality and nudity.)
SHINE A LIGHT. Documentary on the Rolling Stones' concerts at the Beacon Theatre in New York in 2006. Directed by Martin Scorsese. "Shine A Light' does what so many concert-based films have failed to do: It places the viewer on the stage with the musicians, it employs editing like a great record producer manipulates a sonic mix, and it treats its subject matter as both deservedly iconic and warts-and-all human. 122 minutes. (Rated PG-13 for brief strong language, drug references and smoking.) 4 stars (Jeff Miers)
SMART PEOPLE. Dennis Quaid, Sarah Jessica Parker, Ellen Page and Thomas Haden Church in a comedy/drama where all the supposedly smart people are stupid and all the supposedly stupid people are smart. Don't feel bad if after 45 minutes of all this insipid indie movie "sensitivity' you begin to fantasize the arrival of Freddie Krueger of "Nightmare on Elm Street' and/or Leatherface of "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.' When it's over, you're not likely to have believed a single word of it, either, however much wit went into the screenplay and conviction went into the performances. Interestingly, the kind of elimination of conspicuous intelligence that this movie seems to suggest is the human ideal can only be sold these days in a supposedly "sensitive' and smart indie movie. Supposedly "dumb' TV "House,' "CSI,' etc. would have none of it. 95 minutes. (Rated R for language, drugs, alcohol and brief sex.) 2 and a half stars (Jeff Simon)
SPEED RACER. Emile Hirsch, John Goodman, Susan Sarandon, Christina Ricci and Matthew Fox in the Wachowski brothers' wild new version of the late-'60s Japanese TV series about a teen racecar driver and his speed-struck family. Leave it to those Wachowski brothers to try to remake the American children's movie. The world isn't likely to thank them for doing anything this radical part video game, part '30s melodrama, part kiddy Tom Stoppard and all of it filmed in slurpy candy store colors but the kids at the preview screening were with it, and so was I. Think of it, then, as a film for anyone who, in the immortal advice of the Talking Heads' David Byrne, has figured out how to enjoy themselves as they "stop making sense.' 136 minutes. (Rated PG-13 for language and intense action.) 3 and a half stars (Jeff Simon)
THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES. David Straitharn, Mary-Louise Parker, Freddie Highmore, Nick Nolte and Joan Plowright in Mark Waters' movie about a family that moves into a dilapidated old house haunted by goblins, hobgoblins and monsters. A juicy and scary kids movie in the old style part old-time Disney and part Spielbergian (when he was producing but not directing all manner of fantasies about broken families taking refuge from divorce in fantasy). If you're like me, you'll forgive this movie anything when you find out that its chief animated monster is voiced by Nick Nolte. If you're not just a little charmed by this movie at the midway point, you may need to have your capacity for whimsy checked. You're a quart low. 90 minutes. (Rated PG for some scares that may be tough on the littler ones.) 3 stars (Jeff Simon)
STREET KINGS. Keanu Reeves, Forest Whitaker, Hugh Laurie, John Corbett, Jay Mohr, Cedric the Entertainer and Common in director David Ayer and writer James Ellroy's movie about a rogue street cop who loses his partner in ambiguous circumstances and becomes a target for half of L.A. Don't look now but Keanu Reeves with the help of two of the toughest writers extant may have just made a purchase on a plausible adult career. The writers are David Ayer, who wrote "Training Day' and directed this, and James Ellroy, who is credited as a full co-screenwriter for the first time. Original it's not. And excessive it almost always is, in both writing and performance. But believe me, by the time it's over you're grateful for every inch over the top this movie manages to go. It's raw, grungy, absorbing and completely satisfying in a way that movies more stylish and restrained can never think of being. 107 minutes. (Rated R for language, nudity, pathologically anti-social personalities and a great deal of violence.) 3 and a half stars (Jeff Simon)
SUPERHERO MOVIE. Starring Drake Bell, Sara Paxton, Christopher McDonald, Pamela Anderson and Tracy Morgan. A costumed crimefighter spoof poking fun at the super-tights genre, from Batman to Spider-Man and Fantastic Four. Everyone can appreciate a creative, goofy over-the-top joke now and then, but its difficult to recognize "Superhero' as a film because it plays more like a bunch of aborted "Saturday Night Live' skits haphazardly stuck together rather than an actual story with an original plot, let alone a purpose. 85 minutes. (Rated PG-13 for crude and sexual content, comic violence, drug references and language.) 1 and a half stars (Molly Hirschbeck)
10,000 B.C. Steven Strait, Camilla Belle and Cliff Curtis in Roland Emmerich's fantasy of a pre-history where woolly mammoths, sabre-toothed tigers and survivors from the lost continent of Atlantis frolic in the deserts and jungles of fantasy-land. A rather terrible movie. Not a total loss, mind you, but awfully close. In fact, if it weren't for the occasional action and the digital animals a sabre-toothed tiger, a lot of woolly mammoths and some very angry archeoptoryxes (dinosaur birds) it would be unwatchable. If someone told you the script first made its way into the world from the back end of a woolly mammoth you wouldn't be a bit surprised. It's a lot of fun to see the animals on a huge screen, true, but far more sensible to watch this later on DVR or DVD where you can fast-forward through the hour-plus of garbage to get to the half-hour that's fun sort of. 100 minutes. (Rated PG-13 for intense action.) 2 stars (Jeff Simon)
21. Jim Sturgess, Kate Bosworth, Kevin Spacey and Laurence Fishburne in Robert Luketic's movie about a bunch of MIT whiz kids who go to Vegas and take the casinos for millions. A pretty good movie a pleasant cautionary tale, based on a true story, about a bunch of math prodigies whose favorite urbane professor turns them into a team for taking the Vegas casinos for very big bundles. Think of it as "Faust' in Vegas, or maybe "Paper Chase' turned upside down. The trouble is that Sturgess, the leader of the pack, has about as much charisma and dramatic impact as a box of Raisinets. You find yourself rooting for the bad/good guys Kevin Spacey and Laurence Fishburne just because they're the only ones in the cast to energize the movie. 122 minutes. (Rated PG-13 for language and some violence.) 3 stars (Jeff Simon)
VANTAGE POINT. Dennis Quaid, Matthew Fox, Sigourney Weaver, William Hurt and Forest Whitaker in Pete Travis' pedal to the metal action thriller giving us different views of the same presidential assassination at an anti-terrorism summit in sunny Spain. Forget Akira Kurosawa's classic "Rashomon,' the great movie everyone trots out when another movie tells us one tale from multiple points of view. This ultra-kinetic beauty is a wild, woolly and edge-of-the-seat "Bourne' movie by other means, with every new burst of non-stop action advancing the story a bit more and putting the narrative puzzle together at top speed. It's as if it were some sort of test of how rapidly a director can tell a complicated yarn and still have it make sense. The answer is "at an incredible breakneck pace' as long you don't expect it to mean anything at all once it's over. While you're watching it, though, it's as fast and enthralling as action thrillers get. 100 minutes. (Rated PG-13 for action, violence and some language.) 3 and a half stars (Jeff Simon)
THE VISITOR. Richard Jenkins, Hiam Abbass and Haaz Sleiman in Tom McCarthy's film about an aging professor's sudden espousal of the cause of immigrants caught in a deportation nightmare. The best new film, by far, of 2008. Don't let this movie's civility and quietude fool you. It has enormous emotional power. What you're watching here are people trying and for the most part succeeding to keep the lid on while truly terrible things are happening to them. This, says the movie, is how we sometimes treat those who love us the most after 9/11. At the same time, some of the most joyous scenes of burgeoning musicianship you'll ever see in a movie involve actor Richard Jenkins (the father on HBO's "Six Feet Under') being tutored by a Syrian immigrant in the art of beating a drum. This is writer/director Tom McCarthy's second film after "The Station Agent,' and he confirms here that he's one of the major independent film talents we've got. 108 minutes. (Rated PG-13 for language.) 4 stars (Jeff Simon)
WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS. Starring Cameron Diaz, Ashton Kutcher and Lake Bell. Strangers in Las Vegas awaken to discover they are bound by a quickie marriage and a large jackpot. Don't expect any seriously surprising twists and turns, or hope for any deeply romantic speeches. Instead, what makes the film work is the goofy yet charming chemistry between Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher. 99 minutes. (Rated PG-13 for some sexual and crude content, and language, including a drug reference.) 2 and a half stars (Molly Hirschbeck)
WHERE IN THE WORLD IS OSAMA BIN LADEN? Filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, of Super Size Me fame, travels to the Middle East and beyond on a new project: finding America's No. 1 enemy. Right off, Spurlock tells us that his search for "bin Hidin' (as Jon Spurney's title song calls him) is "motivated by concern about the safety of the world his impending first child will inherit,' and one can sense the genuineness of that concern, despite the tongue-in-cheekiness of his claim. The seriousness and silliness continue to alternate rather unsmoothly with the former sometimes prompting simplistic, "We're all basically alike' observations, and the latter abetted by humorous, well-done animation. The personable Spurlock has some memorable encounters and drops a few (too few) pertinent facts for viewers. It's hard to find fault with a guy who has Elvis Costello singing Nick Lowe's "What's So Funny 'Bout Peace, Love and Understanding?' over the end credits, and obviously shares its view. 93 minutes. (Rated PG-13 for language.) 3 stars (Jan Sandberg)
