RATING:
Hope and Crosby. Abbott and Costello. Martin and Lewis. What do these comedy teams all have in common? Well, they’re all dudes, for one thing. In fact, I can’t think of a single all-female comedy duo for the ages. Until now.
Okay, so it may be a bit premature to suggest that Tina Fey and [...]

RATING:
The director Thomas McCarthy clearly is interested in people who hold the world at arm’s length, who wallow in a convenient kind of misanthropy, and who are inexorably touched by a friendship with an unlikely stranger. His message sounds corny—heck, it’s a hair’s breath away from “people who need people are the luckiest [...]

RATING:
Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle was really less of a stoner film and more of a clever sendup of cultural stereotypes (okay, and a stoner film). Throw in a now-legendary Neil Patrick Harris cameo, and you’ve got all the makings of a cult classic. (Indeed, while the film did middling box [...]

A nerdy accountant (Ewan McGregor) is swept into a world of illicit sex and high-stakes intrigue by a charismatic stranger (Hugh Jackman). The film almost qualifies as a guilty pleasure—Hitchcock for Morons—until it completely derails in the final act. Just when there should be snappy “gotchas!” and satisfying confrontations, the film pauses for an unnecessary [...]

It’s hard to say what’s more glaring: Al Pacino’s fake tan or the enormous plot holes in this inept thriller.
Pacino plays Jack Gramm, a cocksure forensic psychiatrist who specializes in the serial killers. The film starts with a bit of torture porn—a masked killer slowly slices up one scantily clad twin while the other watches [...]

I can’t deny it. I love the Judd Apatow comedy revolution. About six years ago, we had the emergence of the so-called Frat Pack, which includes the likes of Vince Vaughn, Will Ferrell, Owen Wilson, and Jack Black. Those guys are all funny, to be sure, but there is always a slightly mocking, detached quality [...]

So you want the good news first or the bad news?
Okay, the good news: The Forbidden Kingdom is a surprisingly entertaining and fast-paced tale of Jason (Michael Angarano), a kung-fu obsessed teenager who gets miraculously transported through time to Ancient China, where he learns martial arts from two masters (Jet Li and Jackie Chan) and [...]

It started with the white, beat-up Saab. That was the first character note we got on college professor Lawrence Wetherhold (Dennis Quaid)—he drove it in the first scene—and I thought, “Hmmm, a bit of a cliché.” But I was willing to forgive it on grounds of, well, accuracy. (Have you checked out the employee [...]

Do you ever have that moment while watching a movie when you realize that the mind-thuddingly obvious plot twist is supposed to be the film’s big secret? I had that moment quite early on in Street Kings. Keanu Reeves plays Tom Ludlow, a corrupt LAPD cop (is there any other kind?), but he’s the best [...]

Luckily, there’s complicated South American politics at the center of The Year My Parents Went on Vacation. Otherwise, we’d certainly be treated to a mawkish American remake of this film, which focuses on the unlikely relationship between an abandoned little boy and a cranky village elder.
It’s 1970 Brazil and the parents of 12-year-old Mauro (Michel [...]