Â
RATING:
Robert Zemeckis’ 3-D animated Disney's A Christmas Carol is clearly a labor of love and, like so many labors of love, it feels slightly ill-advised.
Yes, the motion-capture animation is gorgeous—saturated, detailed, almost hyper real. But Zemeckis seems strangely intent on showing us just how real it can be.
In one of the opening scenes, an [...]

RATING:
When I saw the trailer for The Men Who Stare at Goats, I got pretty excited. A military satire based on a true(ish) story about a secret branch of the army that tried to develop human super powers, staring Jeff Bridges as its baked commander and George Clooney as a wild-eyed true believer? Count [...]

Â
RATING:
After seeing Amelia, you can only assume one of two things: That Amelia Earhart herself was an insipid, uninspiring woman or that filmmaker Mira Nair just blew it.
I think we can all draw the same conclusion.
How did this film go so far afoul? You have a talented director (I loved Nair’s The Namesake), a [...]

Â
RATING:
The trials of Job in 1950s Midwestern Jewish suburbia. That might be the best way to describe the dark comedy A Serious Man, which many are saying is the Coen brothers most personal film to date.
What, then, to make of the film’s protagonist, Larry Gopnik, played by New York theater vet Michael Stuhlbarg, and [...]

RATING:
It just makes sense that Spike Jonze, whose imagination is seemingly limitless and who always manages to bring a sense of off-kilter joy to his films, would be the perfect director to adapt Maurice Sendak’s beloved children's book, Where the Wild Things Are.
In the opening scenes, we meet Max (iconically adorable Max Records), a [...]

Â
RATING:
I had something of a revelation about Michael Moore during  his latest, Capitalism: A Love Story: The man just can’t help himself.
Many of us watch Moore’s films and think: If only he’d be a little more temperate, if only he would lay it on a little less thick, if only he could avoid the [...]

RATING:
I think we can all agree that Drew Barrymore is one of the most lovable human beings on the planet. Not only is she totally BFF-approved, but she’s overcome a well-documented childhood-from-hell to become a major Hollywood player, both as actress and producer—all without losing her giddy flower girl charm.
I think the thing I [...]

RATING:
After the brilliant Shaun of the Dead (and the decidedly less than brilliant Zombie Strippers!, among others), I figured the zombie spoof genre had played itself out.
Zombieland proved me wrong. The genius of the film is that it’s more buddy flick than horror spoof. And director Ruben Fleischer keeps things fresh with a freewheeling, [...]

Â
RATING:
Ricky Gervais’s The Invention of Lying is sneakily subversive. It starts out as a very clever science fiction comedy: We’re in an alternate universe where lying doesn’t exist. As such, there is no fiction, and total truth in advertising.
“A Sad Place for Hopeless Old People,” reads the sign on the entranceway to an old [...]

RATING:
You know what has changed the most since Fame, Alan Parker’s beloved 1980 film about a New York performing arts high school? The nature of fame itself. Today, fame is a reality TV show, viral video, or testy town hall meeting away. The question isn’t who gets to be famous? It’s who doesn’t [...]