At the movies: Reviews of recently released flicks

Review: Anna Faris makes 'House Bunny' more fun

The entire purpose of this late-summer comedy is to be a showcase for Anna Faris, star of the "Scary Movie" franchise, whose sunny disposition and solid comic timing make " The House Bunny" a whole lot more enjoyable than it ought to be.

Movie review: Politically incorrect bits pack 'Hamlet 2'

Dead Poets Society, Dangerous Minds, Mr. Holland's Opus, all great movies about great teachers inspiring their students to achieve great things — all movies referenced lovingly by Steve Coogan's inspiring teacher in Hamlet 2. All are slandered mercilessly in this demented profanity of a comedy from South Park writer Pam Brady.

Age is only a number in love story Elegy

Ah, the male fantasy: Older men and younger women ( Cary Grant- Grace Kelly, Fred Astaire- Audrey Hepburn, Harrison Ford- Anne Heche) have been commonplace in cinema for about 100 years, and no one was supposed to think twice.

Movie review: 'Longshots', Durst's first, is a game effort

The Longshots is a certifiable crowd pleaser.

Movie review: 'Death Race' remake all about hoods, classy chassis

Of all the Z-movies in the Roger Corman catalog, they had to remake Death Race 2000.

The Rocker needed a bit more Rainn

The Rocker, a School of Rock clone set in the hedonistic, hard-drinking, hotel-room-trashing world of rock, gets misty-eyed over the idea that every loser deserves a second chance at glory.

Tropic Thunder an expensive goof

My favorite gag in " Tropic Thunder" comes just before "Tropic Thunder" itself, in a movie trailer touting a fake movie called "Satan's Alley."

'Henry Poole Is Here' avoids cynicism

"Everything happens for a reason," the devoutly Catholic Esperanza tells the new guy who has just moved in next door.

Woody Allen's Vicky Cristina Barcelona surprises

Vicky Cristina Barcelona continues Woody Allen's recent cinematic tour of Europe with another morality play. Barcelona is likable, beautifully acted, scenic and sexy, ingredients that have been missing from his films since, oh, Everyone Says I Love You (1996).

Man on Wire: High above New York, a life is on the line

Philippe Petit may be the only high-wire walker in history famous enough to have groupies. In 1974, the French street performer enlisted the help of several friends and random oddballs to undertake a death-defying and completely illegal stunt: walking between the quarter-mile-high World Trade Center towers. Petit's performance — part prank, part personal obsession and wholly a work of beauty — briefly made him a celebrity and forever connected him to the buildings that met their doom on 9-11.

Oddly drawn to 'The Clone Wars'

Leave it to George Lucas to visualize Jabba the Hutt's "uncle" as an English-speaking, hookah-puffing blob voiced by a Truman Capote impersonator.

'Bottle Shock' a bit fruity but has smooth aftertaste

Bottle Shock probably should have been released on the Fourth of July, since it's hooked to such a patriotic moment in American history: the 1976 blind taste test in Paris, at which California winemakers beat those self-satisfied Frenchies at their own alcoholic game. But seriously: Directed by Randall Miller, from a script by Miller, wife Jody Savin and Ross Schwartz, Bottle Shock begins with floundering expatriate wine seller Steven Spurrier ( Alan Rickman) looking for publicity and a Sonoma winemaker Jim Barrett ( Bill Pullman) looking for some customers.

Movie review: 'Fly Me to the Moon' missing right stuff

Every movie studio out there wants a piece of that Pixar- DreamWorks computer-animation pie. Even start-ups like Summit Entertainment covet some of the millions that parents fork over to send their little darlings to this week's child-safe/family-friendly cartoon.

'Baghead' marks a pleasing progression from 'Puffy Chair'

It would be best to simply recommend "Baghead" without any description so its surprises could remain intact. Nevertheless ....

MOVIE REVIEW

Review: 'Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2'

In the current popular culture, female friendships -- at any age -- are generally considered secondary to life's "important" relationships, the romantic bonds between men and women.

MOVIE REVIEW

Review: 'Pineapple Express'

It's been almost a year since the screenwriting team of Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg braved the summer-pic sinkhole of August with "Superbad," a deceptively trashy hit comedy about two joined-at-the-hip teens named Seth and Evan coping with the pain of imminent separation.

'Hell Ride' has violence! Nudity! But it's still lousy

Does it count against you when you actually set out to make an awful movie?

'American Teen' documentary on teens is too slick for its own good

It's early yet, but Nanette Burstein's ultra-slick American Teen just may win the Frat House award this year for a documentary so highly worked, so packed with high dramatic incidents among classic character types that a skeptical viewer may well wonder just how freely direction and editing sculpted real life into something more like ... well, The Real World.

Movie review

'Sixty Six' is thin but surprisingly nourishing

PLOT A British boy’s bar mitzvah falls on the same day as England’s unlikely entry into the World Cup Final.

'Swing Vote' plays America's civic complacency for laughs

Will a complacent America that doesn't vote show up for a comic civics lesson about that complacency?

Reanimation can get boring in 'Mummy'

The modern mummy movies seem like cheap plastic knockoffs of Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Cancel your 'Brideshead' revisit

You say stately, I say stagnant. The lush big-screen version of Brideshead Revisited is mummified by good taste, swathed in so many layers of posh art direction and somnolent performance that its life force all but flickers out. A languid, melancholy teacup drama, it should be ingested only by fervent Anglophiles or when Seconal is unavailable.

John C. Reilly is always striving to surprise his audience

It was love, or something danged near like it, at first sight.

Review: 'The Dark Knight' is a dark perfection

Having memorably explored the Caped Crusader's origins in Batman Begins, director Christopher Nolan puts all of Gotham City under a microscope in The Dark Knight, the enthralling second installment of his bold, bracing and altogether heroic reinvention of the iconic franchise.

Mamma Mia! hopes audiences can be had for a song

Mamma Mia! is a pajama party of a musical romp. It gets by on the featherweight golden oldies of Abba and the treat of seeing and hearing some golden oldies of the cinema break character and belt out a song.

Savage Grace shows Julianne Moore's mastery

A story about awful people doing unspeakable things to one another, Savage Grace is at times as viscerally discomforting as it is emotionally engrossing.

Brazilian film Alice's House has sad life nailed

Alice, a manicurist in her 40s, lives in a small apartment in Sao Paulo, Brazil, with her husband, her elderly mother and her three teen sons. Her husband cheats on her with very young girls, one of her sons is a hustler and another is a thief, and her lonely mother — whom Alice's husband wants in a nursing home — is losing her eyesight.

'Space Chimps' delivers chuckles for young kids

If you're old enough to read this review, you aren't the target audience for Space Chimps.

'Hellboy II: The Golden Army' offers some fun with the funky

There's a precision to the visual ornateness of Hellboy II: The Golden Army that exceeds even that of its predecessor.

Brendan Fraser brings refreshing humanity to CG-heavy 'Journey to the Center of the Earth'

From space travel to submarines, the writings of French sci-fi pioneer Jules Verne predicted much of what would be discovered and invented in coming years. But Journey to the Center of the Earth was uncharacteristically wrong about ... well, everything, but especially the Earth's interior, which Verne imagined as a realm of dinosaurs and secret oceans, and a maze of natural phenomena.

'Before the Rains': A pat, pretty affair not worth remembering

The emotionally charged mysteries of his breakthrough feature, The Terrorist, have given way to laborious narrative convention in Santosh Sivan's latest, the period piece Before the Rains. The tale of an idealistic local caught in the crossfire of an illicit affair is too pat and pretty.

In 'Hancock,' we need a superhero who can battle villains and straighten out the economy

So far this summer, I've had my brain pummeled by Robert Downey Jr. flying around in a techno-suit, Adam Sandler as an invincible (and priapic) former Mossad agent, Steve Carell as a nerdy indestructible super spy, Harrison Ford as a Teflon 60-year-old archaeologist, Edward Norton as the incredibly angry green dude — which I admit I missed but saw the ads.

'Wanted' showcases Angelina Jolie's pistol-packing prowess

Cheekbones, eye shadow, tattoos and lips — that's the essence of Angelina Jolie.

'WALL-E's' great green story

WALL-E, a savvy sci-fi comedy, has almost no dialogue. But with images and sound effects alone, it touches, teaches and tickles. It's the best Pixar film since Finding Nemo.

In 'Roman De Gare,' serial killer, writer have connection

A popular crime novelist whose works may have been ghostwritten by a serial killer is one of the main characters passing through Claude Lelouch's fanciful Roman De Gare (Crossed Tracks), a glossy melange of suspense and romance, sports cars and speedboats and stories within stories.

"A Jihad for Love": Muslims on gay life, faith

Parvez Sharma's A Jihad for Love looks at the plight of gays still faithful to their Muslim beliefs, even as the majority who share that faith are explicitly opposed to homosexuality. Same-sex acts, socializing or even vaguely defined offenses like "debauchery" are criminalized and punishable by fines, whipping, jail — even execution. The predicament of the victims makes the documentary kin to 2001's Trembling Before G-d, about gay Orthodox Jews. Both films share the same fascination and limitation. Their subjects' bravery is impressive, their situation moving, but so few are willing to speak, and the cultures they come from so unwilling to accept them, that a certain repetitiousness soon settles in.

'Get Smart': Too much of the original gets lost

In changing the tone of the original NBC sitcom, Peter Segal's Get Smart creates a more endearing Max. Scripters Tom J. Astle and Matt Ember have concocted an origin story that tells how Maxwell Smart became the man he was: Rather than the Inspector Clouseau-esque, oblivious-to-insult, hero played by Adams, Carell's Max is an eager, sincere, sensitive, efficient analyst for the mysterious U.S. espionage agency CONTROL.

'Incredible Hulk' won't be all the rage

That money-minting movie machine, Marvel Studios, trots out its superhero formula for the second time in two months with The Incredible Hulk. Unfortunately, the proximity to Iron Man robs it of whatever novelty it might have had.

'The Happening': Shyamalan hits bottom with zombie flick

If water naturally gravitates toward the lowest point, then perhaps M. Night Shyamalan has reached his true depth as a filmmaker with The Happening.

'The Promotion': Clever comedy is a job pretty well done

Week after week movies come and go, and too many sound and look as if they were written by committee, or a robot, or one of the aliens in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

'The Children of Huang Shi': Love, war and Jonathan Rhys Meyers in '30s China

A decadent, exotic city, the brink of war, the sweep of history, a gang of scruffy urchins, the lips and eyes of Jonathan Rhys Meyers — these are the main ingredients in Roger Spottiswoode's The Children of Huang Shi, a small-scale, would-be epic about an inexperienced British journalist whose accidental arrival in Japanese-occupied Nanking leads to the heroic rescue of 60 Chinese orphans.

'You Don't Mess With the Zohan': Adam Sandler: From spy to blow-dry from spy to blow-dry

There's a spirit of avant-garde goofiness to the new Adam Sandler movie that sets it apart from his usual sophomoric work. Sprung from the fertile comic imaginations of Robert Smigel (the voice of Triumph the Insult Comic Dog) and Judd Apatow (The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Knocked Up, Forgetting Sarah Marshall) it exists in a slap-happy parallel universe.

The whole family will get a kick out of 'Kung Fu Panda'

Po is a panda who dreams of being a great martial artist, if only he could break free of his dad's noodle shop. He can take a licking, sure. But he'd rather be licking a noodle bowl, dipping into the dim sum. He's into Kung Fu, but he's even more into kung pao.

'Sex and the City's' girlie cocktail loses a bit of its fizz

The clothes! The shoes! The magical depiction of Manhattan and the promise of finally finding true romance!

'The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian': First film improved on with surging, old-school action and romantic appeal

Adapted from the second of C.S. Lewis' seven books in the series, The Chronicles of Narnia:Prince Caspian returns the four Pevensie children to the magical realm more than a millennium, in Narnian terms, after they helped vanquish the White Witch to become kings and queens themselves.

'Son of Rambow' a sly comedy about junior filmmaking

Son of Rambow is an adorable, indie-edgy comedy from England set in the 1980s. It's about that coming-of-age moment when a child first falls in love with the cinema.

'Bra Boys' shows roots of Aussie surf gang

Bra Boys, a documentary about a blood-splattered Australian "surf tribe" 10 miles beyond Sydney, is easily dismissible as Bloods vs. Crips at sea. There's poverty, single moms, alienated teens and casual violence.

'Paranoid Park': Gus Van Sant unravels bleak, artful mystery

Youth and death meet again in Gus Van Sant's Paranoid Park, a gorgeously stark, mesmerizingly elliptical story told in the same lyrical-prosaic style that has characterized his latest films. Based on a young-adult novel by Blake Nelson, it's a study in angst and guilt made visible by the dreamy camera work of Christopher Doyle (and co-cinematographer Rain Kathy Li) and otherwise palpable by Van Sant's charged, simple direction.

By Todd McCarthy: 'Speed Racer': Matrix directors don't make you feel the need for this Speed

With its thinly developed narrative, dully functional dialogue, paramount devotion to family cohesion, and somewhat cheesy, albeit expensive, CGI-against-green-screen look, Speed Racer reminds you of nothing so much as Robert Rodriguez's Spy Kids movies.

'What Happens in Vegas': Entertaining comedy

Some trend-conscious wags won't be able to resist describing What Happens in Vegas as Judd Apatow Lite, since it's about a self-involved slacker who becomes more directed and/or responsible as a result of his relationship with a more mature woman. But, really, that setup already had whiskers long before Apatow became a brand name.

'Then She Found Me': Helen Hunt finds directorial success in midlife-crisis drama

Gaunt, grim and wound as tight as a ukulele's string, April Epner ( Helen Hunt), the elementary schoolteacher undergoing the mother of all midlife crises in Then She Found Me, is a stern challenge to an audience's collective sympathy.

Tormented writer searches for true peace, love in 'Fugitive Pieces'

Hopscotching time on film is never easy, but Canadian writer-director Jeremy Podeswa handles it with skill and care in Fugitive Pieces, his lovely, absorbing adaptation of Anne Michaels' lauded novel about a circumspect writer haunted by his traumatic past.

'A Four Letter Word': More of the same from 'Slutty Summer'

Director and co-writer Casper Andreas and co-writer and star Jesse Archer revisit characters from the previous Slutty Summer in the gay romantic comedy A Four Letter Word.

'Redbelt': There's no art to Mamet's incoherent mixed-martial action

It sounds like a great idea: David Mamet, the playwright famous for brutal dialogue (Glengarry Glen Ross) and fiendish plot twists (House of Games), brings his formidable brain to the usually brainless genre of martial-arts action flicks.

'Made of Honor' starts strong, loses steam

Made of Honor starts out as a tribute to When Harry Met Sally and steadily backslides into a remake of My Best Friend's Wedding. Fortunately, this star vehicle for Patrick "McDreamy" Dempsey earns enough goodwill in a long, clever and sexy opening act to carry through to a less-than-honorable ending.

'Jellyfish' has many parts, few connections

Unspooling in Tel Aviv, where the sea constitutes a place of refuge and jellyfish serve as a metaphor for people whose destinies are beyond their control, the endearing Jellyfish juggles four main characters and several supporting ones. Their paths cross, but not all interact with one another.

'Iron Man': Downey Jr., other strong talents equip superhero movie with arsenal of polished style

Having an actor as supercharged as Robert Downey Jr. at the center of the tech-oriented Iron Man is a huge plus in this classy refitting of an overworked format.

'Baby Mama' fertile ground for humor

The role of Kate Holbrook, a bright, accomplished and attractive career woman who feels a sudden need to have a baby, seems so perfectly suited for Tina Fey that it will be widely assumed that she wrote the script herself, as she did for Mean Girls. In fact, the movie is the handiwork of writer and first-time helmer Michael McCullers, a co-scenarist on the two Austin Powers sequels, who worked with Fey, Amy Poehler and producer Lorne Michaels on Saturday Night Live some years back.

'Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay': Dopey sequel is not without its high points

The poster for Harold & Kumar Escape From Guantanamo Bay is the best thing about the movie, depicting the brainy potheads in orange prison jumpsuits staring in disbelief from behind a wire-mesh fence.

'Deception': Jackman, McGregor drama sexily lures you into an anticlimax

It isn't the deceit that sells Deception, an intriguing new thriller that ends in a messy and unsatisfying finale. It's watching Hugh Jackman turn some of his lethal charm loose on a smooth, sexy, seductive and dangerous villain who wears a suit a little too well to be trusted.

'The Visitor': Quirky beat propels quiet story

The title The Visitor is nothing special. Richard Jenkins, best known as Nathaniel Fisher on Six Feet Under, isn't a household name. But Jenkins and The Visitor make lovely music together. It's a case of a veteran character actor slipping on a leading role like the most comfortable pair of pants in the world.

'My Blueberry Nights' explores love, relationships

Wong Kar-wai has managed to become one of the world's most influential directors by being more than a little operatic, and by throwing narrative out the window.

'Young@Heart': Documentary captures the ageless appeal of music

The premise of the new documentary Young@Heart makes it sound like some sort of bizarro-world American Idol.

'Forgetting Sarah Marshall': Apatow's latest romantic comedy is worth remembering

Reprising his successful Knocked Up formula of uninhibited bawdiness and chick-flick sweetness, with side orders of slapstick and showbiz satire, producer Judd Apatow scores another hit.

'88 Minutes': Al Pacino thriller clocks in as his career nadir

88 Minutes easily snatches from Revolution the prize as Al Pacino's career worst. Nineteen producers, including director Jon Avnet, ensure that every aspect of the film, from the script to the star's haircut, is ludicrous in the extreme.

Humor gets lost in 'Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden?'

With about as much documentary credibility as Borat, Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden? combines low comedy, high production values and the Middle East for what will surely be a hit, even as it delivers nothing new — let alone the world's most elusive terrorist.

'Smart People': Quaid, Parker are forced in dull romantic comedy

Smart People's Lawrence Wetherhold ( Dennis Quaid) is a widowed English-lit professor at Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon. He's bored with teaching and contemptuous toward students, and has had his latest tome turned down by the usual academic publishers.

'Street Kings': Reeves, Whitaker crime drama is like 'Training Day' with training wheels

Keanu Reeves tries his best in the wild and woolly, slack and silly thriller Street Kings. It's Training Day with training wheels.

'Flawless': Michael Caine is rock-solid in decent diamond heist flick

In Flawless, the quality of Demi Moore's old-lady makeup in the prologue and epilogue nearly sinks the picture. (You expect some sort of Mission: Impossible aha! reveal.)

'Stop-Loss': War's effects

The opening minutes of Stop-Loss crackle with energy as director Kimberly Peirce and ace lenser Chris Menges employ variegated film stocks to create faux home videos supposedly shot, edited and scored by U.S. troops in Iraq (a fact-based conceit they sporadically reprise throughout, with steadily diminishing effect).

'Sleepwalking' a bit sluggish

In Sleepwalking, Charlize Theron, who also co-produces, plays Joleen Reedy, a tightly wound ne'er-do-well left homeless by a boyfriend's drug bust.

'21' draws caper tale on real-life MIT students

Sporting a reasonably convincing Boston accent, Brit up-and-comer Jim Sturgess (Across the Universe) makes a mostly winning impression as Ben Campbell, a brilliant, boyishly cute but awkwardly shy math-and-science whiz who wants to attend Harvard Medical School after completing his senior year at MIT. Trouble is, neither he nor his widowed mom (Helen Carey) can afford tuition.

'Run Fatboy Run' doesn't deliver enough laughs

There's often a touch of the touching in the comedies of Brit Everyman Simon Pegg. Shaun of the Dead had its moments of sentiment, in between dispatching zombies.

Driver takes a very wrong turn in 'Taxi to the Dark Side'

The self-mocking signpost at Bagram Prison in Afghanistan reads "Sodom and Gomorrah, 22 paces." Dr. Terror's House of Horrors might have been more like it.

'Drillbit Taylor' made for Owen Wilson

Every generation needs its My Bodyguard, a come-of-age/face-your-bullies comedy about boys being boys being beaten up by other boys.

'Horton Hears a Who' has big voices, tiny script

A story of Horton, and people called Who — but how many movies? It seems to be two! There's one that's quite Seussical, gentle and charming. The other stars Jim Carrey, brash and alarming! What audiences will attend? Who has what it takes? Wee innocent children — and moms with headaches!

'Caramel' is a sweet mix of acting, heart

Another beauty salon comedy? Yes and no.

'Funny Games': Remake's jarring violence played with no purpose

European director Michael Haneke's almost shot-by-shot remake of his 1997 chiller Funny Games is as shocking and deliberately manipulative as the original and — some may reckon — even more pointless. Transposed from Europe to Long Island, with English rather than German dialogue, the film is robbed of some of its art-house distance.

'Never Back Down': A 'Fight Club' for today's teens

Never Back Down is an ultra-sleek mixed martial arts teen drama shot and set in Orlando. It's Fight Club for the viral-video generation. Although it's as predictable as a pro wrestling match, what it lacks in originality it makes up for in the nervous energy of youth and testosterone.

70 years later and 'Miss Pettigrew' hasn't aged a day

Winifred Watson's 1938 novel Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day still provides enough charm and feeling to sustain a film version 70 years later.

'The Other Boleyn Girl' lost in melodrama

Showtime's sordidly oversexed soap opera The Tudors migrates to the big screen in the lovely period piece The Other Boleyn Girl. It's better cast and much more handsomely mounted than The Tudors. But, like principal villain Henry VIII, the film suffers from a wealth of promises it fails to keep.

'Bonneville' a sentimental yet predictable journey

Bonneville is a sentimental, daffy and dawdling road picture about people who have some mileage on them. Well cast, with a couple of Oscar winners and a sometime Oscar contender at its core, it's a journey of self-discovery that takes place in a 1966 Pontiac Bonneville convertible.

'Semi-Pro' with Will Ferrell is only semi-funny

A bout 45 minutes into the Will Ferrell comedy Semi-Pro, Monix ( Woody Harrelson) jabs a knife into a basketball.

Movie review: Rush Hour 3 is just more hacking from Hackmaster Brett

If The Bourne Ultimatum is the best of the summer threes, Rush Hour 3 is easily the worst.

'The 11th Hour' lacks the conviction of Truth

"Tragedy" may be the most overused word in the lexicon of mass media, but as portrayed in The 11th Hour, our looming environmental disaster is positively Greek: We know what's happening, and we know what to do. If we don't prevent calamity it will be because of pride, greed, sloth and willful stupidity. And a failure to vote green.

'Eastern Promises' resembles director's last movie

David Cronenberg's A History of Violence was one of the best recent movies that, by today's saturation standards, next to nobody saw. It starred Viggo Mortensen as a clean-living family man who guns down two thugs in his diner and inadvertently exposes a cautiously concealed past.

'No End in Sight' is well-argued indictment on Iraq

In No End in Sight, political scientist Charles Ferguson rounds up a passionate chorus of government insiders and political analysts to explain how we got to wherever it is we are in Iraq. It's the most potent filmed indictment of the "stuff happens" approach to American foreign policy to emerge since the Saddam statue was toppled.

'Death Sentence' suffers from awkward execution

Death Sentence takes the pulp revenge thriller to the edge. And then falls off.

'Shoot 'Em Up' raises the bar on action films

Shoot 'Em Up is a spaghetti western without the pasta, but with plenty of red sauce.

'3:10 to Yuma' saddled with too many themes

Fifty years ago, 3:10 to Yuma was a lean, mean morality tale that featured movie good-guy Glenn Ford as a villain, a desperado guarded by a poor farmer (Van Heflin) on their way to a train that will take the bad man to prison or the end of a rope.

Zombie's 'Halloween' a treat

Halloween has everything you could want in an updated slasher movie, as long as you're not a homicidally slavish purist.

'In the Valley of Elah' is a compelling tale of war and loss

With some actors, characters emerge through the eyes or the walk. With Tommy Lee Jones, they seem to flow from the lines in his face.

'The Brothers Solomon' can't find it's funny bone

The peals of silence destined to greet The Brothers Solomon, the not-funniest comedy of the year so far, are doubly depressing because the film squanders several funny performers.