Family Rated PG
“…suggests you can still live happily ever after even if the frog doesn’t turn into a prince.”
As Akeelah Anderson, the 11-year-old spelling prodigy at the center of Akeelah and the Bee, Keke Palmer has a studied air of concentration that keeps not just her character but the entire movie on track. Without Palmer’s no-nonsense demeanor, this would have been the sort of wholesome slice of family entertainment that’s hard to swallow.
Drama Rated R
The marketing campaign for 21 Grams – a series of posters asking variations on the question, ‘How much does life weigh?’ – is more artful than the movie, because the film itself is anindulgent exercise that could use some of the streamlining a poster demands. With flair and pretension, director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu follows three
Everyone’s favorite ogre couple sets off to meet her parents, where an image-is-everything attitude will put their blind love to the test. The precious theme of the original is more explicit this time, yet the jokes come just as fast and furious. (This is the only kids’ movie I can think of that could get
Based on the highly suspect autobiography of Gong Show host Chuck Barris, George Clooney’s assured directorial debut explores the dark side of the American dream. Barris (a squirrelly Sam Rockwell) pioneered reality television, was consequently skewered by cultural critics and despised himself for all of it. Clooney’s lively, inventive style makes this feel more fun
24 Hour Party People works best as a snapshot – a brief, busy glimpse at the new wave music that was born during the late ’70s and early ’80s in Manchester, England. Our eager host is Tony Wilson (Steve Coogan), the television reporter turned music promoter who nurtured the Happy Mondays, Joy Division and others.
Comedy Rated PG-13
Another farce involving skittish dentist Nicholas “Oz” Oseransky (Matthew Perry, desperately flailing) and goofy hit man Jimmy “The Tulip” Tudeski (Bruce Willis, not nearly embarrassed enough), The Whole Ten Yards is like a morgue for laughs. Dead jokes are lined up across the screen.
“Another great imitation of a great movie from Paul Thomas Anderson…
Comedy Rated R
Dignity is the last thing you would expect to find here, yet that is the defining quality of this vehicle for Steve Carell, in which he plays a nerd whose buddies make it their mission to have him deflowered. In between the raunchy male talk and disastrous dates, he stumbles into a tentative romance with
William H. Macy’s true gift hasn’t been the way he perfectly embodies life’s losers but the way he has made such sorry schlubs interesting. That quality isn’t on display in The Cooler, in which Macy plays a luckless gambler employed by a second-rate casino owner (Alec Baldwin) to cool off tables with hot streaks. This
