After 2007, which was quite simply the best year for movies in recent memory, 2008 almost had to be a letdown. It was, especially for me, since I didn’t jump on the WALL-E or the Rachel Getting Married bandwagon.
That being said, it was a great year for superhero movies, with Iron Man dazzling us with [...]

RATING:
It’s hard to convince people that Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon, a fictionalized account the historic interview between British chat show host David Frost and disgraced American president Richard Nixon, is as edge-of-your-seat riveting as any good sports movie. But it is. Of course, the dry title doesn’t help. Maybe, Smackdown! Frost/Nixon would’ve been better.
The beauty [...]

RATING:
“I was born under unusual circumstances,” says our hero at the beginning of David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. This massive understatement introduces us to Benjamin (Brad Pitt), not just the unusual circumstances under which he was born, but the matter-of-fact way in which this extraordinary man views his life.
You see, Benjamin [...]

RATING:
Seven Pounds is a riddle, wrapped in an enigma, cloaked in a really crappy movie.
How best to describe this clunker? Let’s put it this way: Seven Pounds isn’t just bad—it’s historically bad; deserves to be mocked on Mystery Science Theater 3000 bad; “I can’t believe what I just saw” bad. I’ll give my man [...]

RATING:
What will Jim Carrey be forced to do next? In Liar, Liar, he played a lawyer who, after being put under a spell, couldn’t tell a lie. In Yes Man, he plays an anti-social loan officer who makes a covenant with a self-help guru to embrace the power of yes. So what will [...]

RATING:
What possessed Keanu Reeves to accept the role of Klaatu, the alien who arrives with his giant robot buddy on the planet Earth with big plans to save our planet by annihilating its inhabitants? Hasn’t Keanu heard enough times in his career that his acting is flat and robotic? Does he really want to [...]

RATING:
Nothing Like the Holidays delivers on its promise: It’s an overstuffed, warm-hearted holiday movie about a Puerto Rican family, with lots of family melodrama, a few group hugs, a healthy dose of ethnic humor, and not a single untelegraphed moment. Chekhov it ain’t, but it has a certain comfort-food-like appeal (only in this case, [...]

RATING:
Believe the hype: Danny Boyle’s rags-to-riches fable about an Indian slumdog (street urchin) who makes a fortune on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire is one of the most captivating, ingenious and heartwarming films you’ll ever see. It mixes the gritty realism of a film like City of Men with a plucky, Dickensian hero [...]

RATING:
Cadillac Records, about the trailblazing black blues musicians of 1950s Chicago and the Jewish white man who supported—and possibly exploited—them, is almost great.
It sure gets the music right—it’ll have you stomping your feet and howling along with the blues and early rock classics.
And it casts some great actors to depict these musical legends. Jeffrey [...]

RATING:
When Harvey Milk (Sean Penn) moved to San Francisco’s Castro district in the early ’70s, he had no desire to become a politician. He had just come out of the closet, had a dishy new boyfriend (James Franco), and was simply content to open a modest camera store and live a quiet life. Politics [...]