7 HOME MOVIES REVIEWS
'Bolt' goes astray
11/21/2008 | REVIEW | Harmless as a puppy, "Bolt" comes bounding into theaters, stumbling over its big, goofy paws, wagging its fluffy tail and begging to play ball. It's sweet and eager to please but, sadly, nothing terribly special: Girl finds dog, girl loses dog, girl gets dog back.
'Twilight' should strike right tone for loyal fans
11/21/2008 | REVIEW | You can almost feel the anticipation in the air for "Twilight." Fans have devoured the novels by Stephenie Meyer with a blood lust. They also have burned up the Internet with good and bad comments.
'What Just Happened' shows Hollywood's underbelly
11/21/2008 | REVIEW | It's not until the last few minutes of "What Just Happened" that the film's title is posed as a question, not by the protagonist but by his ex-wife.
'Thousand Years' explores relationship in Spokane
11/14/2008 | REVIEW | With the quiet, understated "A Thousand Years of Good Prayers," Wayne Wang has come full circle, returning to the small, intimate films like "Chan Is Missing," "Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart" and "Eat a Bowl of Tea" that established the Hong Kong-born Chinese American writer-director, best known for his deft screen adaptation of "The Joy Luck Club."
'Quantum' explores dark side of Bond
11/14/2008 | REVIEW | Battered and embittered, James Bond is back. Having earned his license to kill and lost the love of his life in "Casino Royale," Daniel Craig's 007 picks up the action where that film left off, scarcely pausing to reload.
Demme best when focused
11/7/2008 | REVIEW | Jonathan Demme is a director of tolerance. That's not just a description of him politically (although it's hard to imagine another white director so interested in the problems of Haiti, or so at ease directing "Beloved").
'Soul Men' tribute to Mac's genius
11/7/2008 | REVIEW | We know we've lost Bernie Mac. And it takes only about 10 minutes of his next-to-last screen appearance, in "Soul Men," to show us just what we've lost.
Jolie carries 'Changeling'
10/31/2008 | REVIEW | Clint Eastwood knows all about powerful emotions. The cold fire of revenge. The slow smoldering of greed. The unquenchable flames of rage. But they're nothing measured against a mother's love.
'Zack and Miri' unites unlikely comic pair
10/31/2008 | REVIEW | The extreme opposites within Kevin Smith's filmmaking personality coexist in "Zack and Miri Make a Porno," to hit-and-miss effect. Yes, there is a ton of sex as the title would suggest, including one scene that is so incredibly wrong, words don't even begin to describe it.
Sensation over sense
10/24/2008 | REVIEW | The Tierneys have given a lot to New York. A father, who slowly rose up the uniformed ranks of the police. Two sons and a daughter's handsome husband all of whom put on the blue and the badge, too, and still go out every morning to keep the peace.
'Senior Year' not quite as memorable
10/24/2008 | REVIEW | Someday, Troy and Gabriella will actually open their mouths when they kiss. Someday, Sharpay won't have backup dancers magically appear out of nowhere during her self-glorifying production numbers.
'W' uses convention, not dirt
10/17/2008 | REVIEW | All he wanted to do was watch baseball and drink beer all day. Sounds like a reasonable request. Instead, George W. Bush ended up being chosen as leader of the free world.
'Bees' worth buzz
10/17/2008 | REVIEW | The thing about honey is that it's not just sweet, but awfully gooey. That goes for the new film "The Secret Life of Bees," too.
'The Express' not as memorable as Davis
10/10/2008 | REVIEW | Ernie Davis was the first African-American to win football's Heisman Trophy. The passage of time and the brevity of his career and life have made him a forgotten figure, something the workmanlike football drama "The Express" aims to change.
The most worthwhile in the genre
10/10/2008 | REVIEW | Several movies have tackled the war on terror, but nobody has wanted to see any of them, either because the topic is too daunting or too much of a downer, or it's simply still too soon after 9/11.
'Blindness' lacks vision
10/3/2008 | REVIEW | A driver suddenly stops at an intersection, unable to see. A prostitute loses her sight and is abandoned, naked, by her client. One by one, a cosmopolitan city is filled with sightless doctors, thieves, secretaries, children all stumbling about, groping aimlessly toward they know not what.
Nick, Norah and near-perfect love
10/3/2008 | REVIEW | "Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist" is one of those magical, near-perfect youth romances, a film that so vividly reminds you of the glories of young love that you wish you were 18 again, full of hope, not jaded by life and love lost.
The price of overkill
9/26/2008 | REVIEW | Far-fetched, fast-moving, locked and overloaded, "Eagle Eye" is what happens when you give the people who made a success of the modestly budgeted "Disturbia" a blank check.
Lee's ambition backfires
9/26/2008 | REVIEW | In Spike Lee's long and eclectic career, "Miracle at St. Anna" is easily his most technically ambitious film. But he might not have been ready for the enormity of such a project.
Lane, Gere pull off comforting love story
9/26/2008 | REVIEW | "Nights in Rodanthe" is another one of those bare-bones tests: a love story, two characters and a fairly simple, mostly single setting. It's familiar territory, which makes it comforting but runs the risk of clichι.
A comedy that comes alive
9/19/2008 | REVIEW | "Ghost Town" serves as a very nice vehicle for the comedy stylings of Ricky Gervais, the Brit originator of "The Office" and showbiz-savvy (not really) star of "Extras."
A neighborhood war; an animated bore
9/19/2008 | REVIEW | Aside from sapphire swimming pools, there is no water in sight of Lakeview Terrace, a tidy cul-de-sac development in suburban L. A. Instead, just beyond the drop-off, there are canyons of tinder-dry scrub and distant, growing wildfires.
To the other extreme
9/12/2008 | REVIEW | They have made violent thrillers, screwball farces, classic remakes and literary adaptations, but look at nearly 25 years of Coen brothers' movies and you see essentially two types. There are bloody dramas that pause for offbeat comedy. And there are offbeat comedies that are interrupted by bloody drama. And all that changes is the proportion of laughs to violence.
All the boutiques, none of the bite
9/12/2008 | REVIEW | With her remake of George Cukor's 1939 cat fight "The Women," based on the play by Clare Booth Luce, Diane English has applied all the lighthearted instincts of her sitcom background and seemingly none of the insights of the source material.
McConaughey's torso carries watery surf flick
9/12/2008 | REVIEW | In "Surfer, Dude," Matthew McConaughey plays a shy, brooding physicist whose revolutionary work in the field of quantum mechanics earns him a Nobel Prize. Just kidding, brah!
