Film.com Movie Reviews

Review: The Dark Knight Is Exceptional

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 03:38:00 -0500

Grading a film like The Dark Knight is tough because it's immediately clear that Christopher Nolan is much, much smarter than your average filmmaker. Judging him, and criticizing what is clearly a masterwork, leads to all sorts of dangerous self-evaluation. Would I have said, "Ah, well, Michelangelo's David could have been a little more defined," or "Sure, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet was nice, but what about that silly second-act pacing?"

No, I don't think I would have. I think I probably…

Review: Mamma Mia! Haunts My Dreams

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 05:02:00 -0500

Mamma Mia! has to be an inside joke, as in, how much can we blow on what's clearly a terrible film? The answer: Whatever the budget is here. This thing is merciless. The singing, the dancing, the uber-cheesiness, the plot in general -- hell, even the concept as a whole is clearly meant to inflict pain.

I liked Dreamgirls. I'm a fan of Chicago too. Moulin Rouge? Sign me up. So it's not like the musical genre completely misses me. But Mamma Mia! suffers from the same problem Across the Universe d…

Review: Space Chimps Proves Monkeys Are Pretty Much Always Funny

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 11:45:00 -0500

As every schoolchild knows, the world's first astronauts were animals. After all, you can't just go sending humans into the unknown reaches of space! You need to try it out on a monkey first, to make sure it isn't deadly. If it had been around in the 1950s, PETA would have been apoplectic with rage (which is just another reason to keep doing it, in my opinion), but that's how things worked in those days.

The first monkey in space, way back in 1961, was a chimpanzee named Ham.…

Review: Hellboy II is Miserable

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 10:25:00 -0500

The film starts with a young Hellboy in the 1950s. It's a mildly cute, visually interesting scene that sets up the initial premise while attempting to establish a broad and pointless comedic tone. Sure, Hellboy's mouth doesn't really move well with the dialogue, but you guess that it's iffy CGI or poor make-up. No big deal. Then the rest of the movie happens. Walking out of the theater, disoriented and miffed, you realize that the whole opening scene was a harbinger of the bad news to come.…

Review: Prepare for a Shock: Meet Dave Is Terrible

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 10:23:00 -0500

Meet Dave is bad, obviously. You can tell from the trailer, and from the fact that it stars Eddie Murphy (in a dual role!), and from its director being Brian Robbins, whose previous crimes include Hardball, The Perfect Score, The Shaggy Dog and Norbit. As a critic, you never want a film to be bad -- you do have to sit through it, after all -- but let's be honest: The shocker here would have been if it were any good.

The film's concept is actually promising, as far as sci-fi comedies go. It's…

Review: Journey to the Center of the Earth Is a Ride You Might Want to Think About Taking

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 10:30:00 -0500

Brendan Fraser has a special gift that most actors, even the best ones, don't have. He makes bad movies palatable and sometimes even entertaining. In fact, Fraser has built a career out of this gift, with a long string of so-so movies like Encino Man, Airheads, George of the Jungle, and the spectacularly silly Mummy/Mummy Returns franchise. Brendan Fraser was the best part of each of these movies. Personally, I think this should make him the most valuable acting talent in Hollywood. Instead, he…

Review: Hancock isn't Very Good But You'll Probably Dig It Anyway

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 15:33:00 -0500

They say that the best storytellers make difficult choices. I think that's what they say, anyhow -- I'm vaguely recollecting it from the hit film Wonder Boys. The moral of that story was that you had to take some risks to create anything worthwhile; you couldn't just throw a bunch of elements into a stew and hope for the best. Which leads me to Hancock. Unfortunately, that's all the film is. Element stew.

Now then, those elements are kind of fun. Superhero! Drunken anti-hero! Jason Bateman! Charl…

Review: Kit Kittredge: An American Girl Is a Lot Less Annoying Than the Toy Store

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 14:04:00 -0500

To be honest, all I knew about the American Girl franchise before I picked up the press notes for Kit Kittredge: An American Girl is this: Every time I hit the outdoor mall here in Los Angeles, little monster kids dashing into and out of the American Girl store like to "accidentally" swing bags stuffed with American Girl dolls into my legs and then run off without saying "excuse me." Oh, and whenever my girlfriend talks about having kids, she mentions how she'd want her girls -- because she…

Review: WALL-E Is Another Home Run for Pixar

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 13:34:00 -0500

Pixar's latest computer-animated masterpiece, WALL-E, is so full of technical innovation, risk-taking, and awe-inspiring imagination that you can get wrapped up in those elements and forget how flat-out entertaining it is. Or, conversely, you could enjoy the immensely satisfying story, the sympathetic characters, and the inventive humor and not even notice how daring the film is, how it raises the bar yet again on the standards for animation, and how it is possibly the first robot chick-flick…

Review: Wanted is Excessive in a Very Good Way

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 04:31:00 -0500

Excess gets a bad rap in our culture. Excessive force will cost you your badge. Excessive speed will jack your insurance rates up. But sometimes, as Wanted proves, having too much of something is a great thing. Wanted is too bloody, too over the top, too silly, and too special effects driven. It's also excessively entertaining and fun.

The story is a mash-up of V for Vendetta, The Matrix, and Fight Club. Is it as good as that pedigree? Yes, at times for certain. No, it doesn't have the smarts…

Review: Get Smart Worth a Sunday Matinee

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 10:21:00 -0500

The main thing Get Smart has going for it is that it's not The Love Guru. Whatever else you hear on this site, know that Guru has pee and poop jokes by the bushel and is worthy of only our scorn and derision. That film IS not good news for fans of comedy, but it IS good news for a little title named Get Smart. After all, they've proven that attractiveness isn't based upon anything more than who you're surrounded by. This is why I normally travel around with a pack of gargoyles. You should too.

…

Review: Most Critics Hate The Love Guru. What's Wrong with Us?

Fri, 20 Jun 2008 10:18:00 -0500

I had absolutely no expectations that Mike Myers' latest comedy opus, The Love Guru, would be any more entertaining than watching my neighbors argue about hummus through their living room window (happened last night, no joke). So imagine my surprise when, as the movie's credits rolled, I found myself glad I had actually shown up for the press screening I'd seriously considered skipping about 22 times that day. Now I'm not saying I'd just witnessed the Second Coming here, but I did laugh quite a…

Review: The Incredible Hulk is a Solid Flick

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 08:54:00 -0500

I think one can't help but compare this film to Iron Man. There's The Avengers connection, of course, and the salient release-date-proximity equation. Norton and Downey Jr. are more alike then I would have thought at first blush; both actors lend a humanity to the central character that's worthy of some love. Both films do have slight problems -- but as it turns out the problems are in very different places.

Frankly, it's going to be much easier for me to compare the two than to judge The…

Review: The Happening Continues Shyamalan's Downward Spiral

Fri, 13 Jun 2008 16:48:00 -0500

I still remember the first time I saw writer-director M. Night Shyamlan's The Sixth Sense, if only because I couldn't help but feel like I had just witnessed the grand introduction of cinema's next great commercial director -- in other words, my generation's Steven Spielberg or Alfred Hitchcock.

It was 1999 and the movie had built up substantial buzz since its release, though astonishingly enough, nobody was giving away the now-infamous twist ending. Hell, twist endings were still such a novel…

Review: Kung Fu Panda is Big Fun

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 07:34:00 -0500

As the world's most influential movie critic I carry a heavy burden on my broad and chiseled shoulders. If I choose to cast a movie down into a vast, desolate darkness it could potentially cost the studio billions of dollars. Grim casualties of my dismissal would be the stars and starlets who would almost certainly be thrown out of their homes in the hours following the publishing of my scathing review. I imagine the SEAL foreclosure team creeping up in the dead of night, printed internet page…

Review: You Don't Laugh Much at the Zohan, Either

Fri, 06 Jun 2008 09:49:00 -0500

Adam Sandler has entered a new era of social consciousness and mature thought. Granted, he demonstrates this with jokes about sex and poop, but nonetheless, the ideas are there. First he starred in the post-9/11 drama Reign over Me, then in last year's anti-homophobia comedy I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, and now in You Don't Mess with the Zohan, an occasionally baffling, occasionally funny, frequently bizarre comedy about the tensions between Israel and Palestine.

Seriously. I'm not just…

Review: Sex and the City Shows the Love

Fri, 30 May 2008 11:24:00 -0500

One might wonder how Sex and the City: The Movie could further the story, when the show ended on a high note, each woman finding her place in the world. Well, further the story it does. These women are five years older and five years wiser, and still the best of friends. We find that Miranda Hobbes (Cynthia Nixon) and Charlotte York-Goldenblatt (Kristin Davis) seem to have found domestic bliss in their respective marriages; Samantha Jones (Kim Cattrall) has moved out to Los Angeles; Carrie…