Archive By Section - Movies
Review: 'The Last Song'
Now that Miley Cyrus is 17, it's about time she played a 16-year-old. That she does fetchingly in "The Last Song," and wins the heart of a beach volleyball champion a foot taller than she is. Well, actually 12.5 inches. She also learns to love her dad, played by Greg Kinnear, whose aura suggests a man easier to love than, say, Steve Buscemi. She does this on an idyllic island paradise offshore from Savannah, Ga., ...
Review: 'Hot Tub Time Machine'
If you had a hot tub that could transport you to any era in time, would you really make a beeline for the 1980s? That's where the filmmakers headed with "Hot Tub Time Machine," a not-so-excellent, dude-where's-my-youth adventure that's occasionally amusing but mostly is as lazy, self-involved and garish as that chintzy decade itself. The '80s make an easy target, and casting John Cusack, one of the most enduring stars to rise from that decade, ...
Review: 'How to Train Your Dragon'
Some movies seem born to inspire video games. All they lack is controllers and a scoring system. "How to Train Your Dragon" plays more like a game born to inspire a movie. It devotes a great deal of time to aerial battles between tamed dragons and evil ones, and not much to character or story development. But it's bright, good-looking and has high energy. Kids above the easily scared age will probably like the movie.
Review: 'Diary of a Wimpy Kid'
I t is so hard to do a movie like this well. "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" is a PG-rated comedy about the hero's first year of middle school, and it's nimble, bright and funny. It doesn't dumb down. It doesn't patronize. It knows something about human nature. It isn't as good as "A Christmas Story," as few movies are, but it deserves a place in the same sentence. Here is a family movie you ...
Review: 'Repo Men'
"Repo Men" makes sci-fi's strongest possible case for universal health care. In a world of the near future, where they still drive current cars, a giant corporation named the Union will provide you with a human heart, kidney, liver or other organ. Let's say a pancreas costs you, oh, say $312,000. No, it's not covered by insurance, but the sales guy says, "You owe it to yourself and your family." For a guy in need ...
Review: 'The Bounty Hunter'
I'm on the brink of declaring a new entry for Ebert's Little Movie Glossary: No comedy not titled "Caddyshack" has ever created a funny joke involving a golf cart. The only thing preventing me is that I can't remember if "Caddyshack" had golf cart jokes. In any event, if there is a golf cart, it will sooner or later drive into a water hazard. The funny angle here is that the filmmakers went to all that trouble because they trusted the audience to laugh.
Review: 'The Runaways'
"The Runaways," chronicling the rise and fall of Joan Jett's first band, easily could have degenerated into a movie-length music video, with Kristen Stewart and Dakota Fanning merely glam-rock poseurs.
Review: 'Remember Me'
"Remember Me" tells a sweet enough love story, and tries to invest it with profound meaning by linking it to a coincidence. It doesn't work that way. People meet, maybe they fall in love, maybe they don't, maybe they're happy, maybe they're sad. That's life. If a refrigerator falls out of a window and squishes one of them, that's life, too, but it's not a story many people want to see. We stand there looking ...
Review: 'Our Family Wedding'
One enters a movie like "Our Family Wedding" bracing for cheesiness. As a genre, wedding films are typically about as cloying as two-hours worth of kitten videos on YouTube. Add in the equally checkered history of stridently ethnic movies, and you might want to start asking moviegoers to remove their belts before entering the theater. But as Rick Famuyiwa's "Our Family Wedding" - which combines both elements - moves along, the fingers in front of ...
Review: 'Green Zone'
"Green Zone" looks at an American war in a way almost no Hollywood movie ever has: We're not the heroes, but the dupes. Its message is that Iraq's fabled "weapons of mass destruction" did not exist, and that neocons within the administration fabricated them, lied about them, and were ready to kill to cover up their deception.
'Hurt Locker' best picture; Bullock, Bridges top actors; Bigelow director
LOS ANGELES (AP) - The Iraq War drama "The Hurt Locker" won best picture and five other prizes Sunday at the Academy Awards, its haul including best director for Kathryn Bigelow. Bigelow is the first woman in the 82-year history of the Oscars to earn Hollywood's top prize for filmmakers.
Review: 'Alice in Wonderland'
As a young reader, I found "Alice in Wonderland" creepy and rather distasteful. Alice's adventures played like a series of encounters with characters whose purpose was to tease, puzzle and torment her. Few children would want to go to Wonderland, and none would want to stay.
Review: 'Brooklyn's Finest'
Three cops, three journeys to what we suspect will be doom. No good can come of the lives they lead. They aren't bad guys, precisely, but they occupy a world of such violence and cynicism that they're willing to do what it takes to survive. In the kind of coincidence provided only by fate or screenplays, each one will mean trouble for the other two.
Review: 'Cop Out'
Jimmy and Paul are cops hunkered down across the street from a stakeout when they see a mysterious figure run across rooftops and break into a house. Seconds later, he can clearly be seen in an upper window, sitting on a toilet and reading a magazine.
Review: "The Crazies'
"The Crazies" is a perfectly competent genre film in a genre that has exhausted its interest for me, the zombie film. It provides such a convenient storytelling device: Large numbers of mindless zombies lurch toward the camera and the hero, wreaking savage destruction, and can be quickly blown away, although not without risk and occasional loss of life. When sufficient zombies have been run through, it's time for a new dawn.
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