Zap2it.com - Movie Reviews

'(500) Days of Summer'

editorial@zap2it.com — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

For a lot of casual filmgoers in their teens and 20s -- the ones yet to encounter a Charlie Kaufman script such as "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" or who haven't seen the bittersweet 1967 "Two for the Road," written by Frederic Raphael, or have yet to dive into a Milan Kundera novel -- the structural mind games played by the romantic comedy "(500) Days of Summer" may throw them, happily, for a loop.

'Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince'

editorial@zap2it.com — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

A small vial of "liquid luck" (lovely concept, one of many in J.K. Rowling's universe) plays a supporting role in "Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince," No. 6 in the franchise. (The two-film edition of " Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" will be released in 2010 and 2011, respectively.) But luck, really, has little to do with the way these films turn out. After getting my head caught in the blender that is "Transformers 2" I found it especially gratifying to get back with the Hogwarts crew. The latest, meticulously atmospheric and wonderfully acted Potter adventure lands happily---broodingly, but happily---near the top of the series heap, just behind Alfonso Cuaron's "Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban."

'Brüno'

editorial@zap2it.com — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

"Brüno" , Sacha Baron Cohen's shock-and- ach du lieber follow-up to "Borat," is a miss-or-hit mockmentary aimed at turning another of his "Ali G Show" guises into a pop cultural phenomenon. But "Borat" was such a hit that it's a struggle to find people gullible enough to not recognize the star. And in many "bits" developed for this gay Austrian fashionista's assault on Fashion Week in Milan, the Middle East, clueless cogs in LA's dream machine and rural America's rube-eoisie, the strain shows.

'I Love You, Beth Cooper'

editorial@zap2it.com — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Blessed with a good-size beak -- I have one too, so I can say this -- Paul Rust seems like promising casting in the role of the brainy but socially maladroit geek at the center of " I Love You, Beth Cooper." But a funny thing happened to Larry Doyle's 2007 debut novel on the way to the multiplex. It turned into its own ring of coming-of-age comedy hell.

'Public Enemies'

editorial@zap2it.com — Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

You don't go to a Michael Mann movie for realism. You go for the sleek, threatening glamour of crime and punishment. From "Thief" to "Heat" to "Collateral" to another vein of wrongdoing in "The Insider," his films ruminate, beautifully, as they place their characters in settings of insinuating darkness, hunter versus the hunted, brothers under the skin.

'Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs'

editorial@zap2it.com — Wed, 1 Jul 2009 00:00:00 -0700

The blockbuster "Ice Age" movies have, to a one, left me cold. Toons reliant on a large cast of critters (Happy Meal friendly) with famous voices making sitcom wisecracks as their impromptu "herd" makes its way through the frozen (but melting, in the last film) landscape of the distant past, the films seem like Fox imitations of the Dreamworks style -- verbal and scatological, with a message shoe-horned in as an afterthought.

'Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen'

editorial@zap2it.com — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

As big, dumb summer "entertainments" go, they don't get much bigger or much dumber than " Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen." The briefly amusing mash-up/crunch-up of a couple of summers back has been recycled into an epic two and a half hours of explosions, ponderous cartoon history, veiled racism and inept geography.

'My Sister's Keeper'

editorial@zap2it.com — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

"My Sister's Keeper" is a horror movie for parents and a righteous weeper that earns its tears.

'The Proposal'

editorial@zap2it.com — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

Sandra Bullock may be aging out of her the years when Hollywood sees her as "Miss Congeniality," but not without one last fling. "The Proposal" has her playing the icy boss who blackmails her younger assistant into a sham marriage to save her Green Card. It's a performance with real comic juice, a woman acting her age and matched by a co-star whose comic timing complements her own -- the very face of big-screen sarcasm, Ryan Reynolds .

'Year One'

editorial@zap2it.com — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700

"Year One" is more or less indefensible, but I'll gladly defend parts of it. It's the knockabout biblical lark Mel Brooks never got around to making, with Jack Black and Michael Cera playing Zed and Oh, outcast members of a Paleolithic tribal village whose wanderings bring them into contact with Cain and Abel and Abraham and Isaac and Sodom and Gomorrah and poop jokes and pee jokes and some pretty funny circumcision jokes. "What's with all the genital mutilation--" asks Oh, a sensitive gatherer (as opposed to hunter), upon hearing the circumcision action plan put forth by Hank Azaria's Abraham. Don't worry, the bearded one says. "It's a very sleek look."