Rating: 3.5 stars

Several weeks ago, Bill Maher had his favorite sparring partner, conservative political pundit Andrew Sullivan, on his HBO show, Real Time With Bill Maher. Sullivan was exasperated with what he perceived to be Maher’s complete intolerance of religion. It’s true, when Maher, an avowed agnostic, discusses religious people, he tends to be both derisive and dismissive. Not an ideal guy, then, to do a probing and comedic documentary on faith and religious devotion, right?
Actually, he’s just the guy. For starters, Maher is drawn to the very subjects our society deems taboo—and there’s no subject more tiptoed around than religion. Also, he’s smart as a whip and naturally inquisitive. As he goes around in his documentary, interviewing various evangelicals and Passion Play participants and Muslim clerics, he wants to simply  see what they see. A born skeptic, he keeps challenging people’s assumptions, their leaps of logic, the very foundations of their faith. To his credit, he never comes across as rude, just intellectually curious (and a bit befuddled).

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Rating: 2.5 stars

Flash of Genius is probably better than any movie about the guy who invented intermittent windshield wipers deserves to be. That’s not to say it’s a great film—it’s far too earnest to be truly entertaining (it’s very excited about patent law)—but it does have a certain shaggy charm.

Greg Kinnear plays Bob Kearns, an engineer who notices the inadequacy of his car’s wipers on a rainy day and becomes obsessed with improving them. Kearns pitches his idea to the Ford Motor Company. At first they don’t believe he’s done it (their own team of crack inventors has come up empty), then they buy his invention. Then they promptly steal it.

Of course, it’s easy to share Kearns’ zeal for taking on the greedy corporation and exposing them as the thieves they are. But when Kearns’ obsession with justice becomes all consuming—he ends up in a mental facility—it’s hard to get behind him, especially when Ford is offering him a megabucks settlement that he piously refuses.

In a way, Greg Kinnear, who has an ability to disappear into the role he’s playing, is the...

Rating: 2 stars

Eagle Eye acts under the assumption that if a film gooses us with enough explosions and car chases, we won’t notice how proposterous it is.
It assumes wrong.
Here’s the premise: The same day that our n’er do well hero Jerry (Shia LeBeouf) buries his seemingly perfect twin brother, he comes home to find that his apartment is filled with military grade weapons and explosive devices. A calm female voice calls him on his cell phone: “The FBI is about to arrive. You have 45 seconds to vacate the premises.” The FBI arrests him, assumes he’s a terrorist, and the omniscient voice—who seems to have control over every computer-operated device in Washington— somehow helps him escape.
From there, the voice leads him to a car driven by distraught mother Rachel (Michelle Monaghen), who has been instructed by that same voice that her 10-year-old son will die if she doesn’t obey her commands.  So these two strangers are thrust together, following commands that seem to turn them into enemies of the state.
Cool enough, right? And I give credit where credit is due—...

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...