Rating: 2.5 stars

Having seen Spike Lee’s Miracle at St. Anna, I now want to read the book. No, not because I loved the movie so much, I want the experience to linger, but because I feel like the book might fill in the gaps—in intent, tone, and character development.
Look, it’s safe to say that not all books were made to be adapted for the screen—and James McBride’s war novel may very well be one of them (McBride also wrote the screenplay).
Of course, it’s obvious why Lee did choose to adapt the novel which tells the story of a troop of black soldiers during World War II who penetrate enemy lines into Nazi-occupied Tuscany as white officers keep their safe distance via radio communication (and at first don’t even believe the soldiers made it). Lee has been quite public in his disapproval of Clint Eastwood’s World War II duo—Letters From Iwo Jima and Flags of Our Fathers—for not showing a single black soldier. This is his answer to Eastwood, as well as an attempt to make the first serious World War II epic told from an exclusively black...

Rating: 2 stars

Lakeview Terrace is the kind of movie that titillates you with a good premise, then sort of meanders around without actually going anywhere, and then ends in a burst of jarring melodrama.
Insert your own bad-sex joke here.
Too bad. Because all the elements are in place. Patrick Wilson and Kerry Washington play Chris and Lisa, an interracial young couple who move into a quiet suburb of Los Angeles. Samuel Jackson, perfectly cast, plays the tightly wound LAPD officer who lives next door with his two teenage children. At first, Jackson’s Abel just seems like a strict task master, an old school dad who grounds his children and insists they use proper grammar. But when he sees his new neighbors, something in him seems to snap, and he becomes truly menacing.
There’s an interesting concept at the heart of this story: Wilson’s Chris has a bit of anxiety about being married to a black woman. Her own somewhat supercilious father (Ron Glass) clearly doesn’t approve of their relationship and Chris feels both self-conscious and inadequate. Chris keeps hoping...

Rating: 1 star

One can only imagine that the producers of The Women were dancing for joy when Sex and the City became the surprise hit of the early summer. “Hey, that movie is about a group of 40something gal pals and so is ours,” they must’ve thought. “We can’t miss!”
So let me make this perfectly clear: I’ve seen Sex and the City and The Women is no Sex and the City.
For starters, one of the great things about Sex and the City was that we believed in the friendships. The felt lived in, genuinely intimate, and therefore, we were invested in them.
By contrast, you watch The Women and think: How are these characters even acquaintances, let alone friends? How is that aspiring fashion designer and do-gooder Mary Haines (Meg Ryan) is BFFs with materialistic editor Sylvia Fowler (Annette Bening) who is sisters with ditzy stay-at-home-mom Edie (Debra Messing) and close with tough-talking lesbian Alex Fisher (Jada Pinkett Smith)?
Of course, Sex and the City had five years of a television series to establish these bonds, but...

Rating: 2.5 stars]

Will The House Bunny finally be the movie that makes Anna Faris a star? I’ve watched this young actress with interest since she did a spot-on Cameron Diaz impression in Lost in Translation, waiting for her to catch fire. Since then, she’s been a fixture in that moronic Scary Movie franchise (playing the clueless blonde in distress) and had supporting parts in second rate comedies like Just Friends and My Super Ex-Girlfriend. But she hasn’t had a major breakthrough.
If The House Bunny becomes even a middling hit, it’ll be because of Faris, who is adorable, game for anything, and has pitch-perfect comic timing. She’s a natural.
Here, she plays orphan-turned-Playboy Bunny Shelley Darlington, who luxuriates in the stable sense of home that the Playboy Mansion provides. All that is taken away when she receives a note from Hef telling her to vacate the premises—at 27, she is no longer the D-cup of the month.
Like Reese Witherspoon’s Elle Woods in Legally Blonde, Faris’s Darlington is unfailingly sunny...