Write your own reviewAlice's House is actually a crowded Sao Paulo high-rise apartment where Alice (Carla Ribas) suffers the indignities of her adulterous cab-driving husband (Zecarlos Machado), keeps the peace between her three rambunctious sons (Vinicius Zinn, Ricardo Vilaca and Felipe Massuia) and tends after her aging mother (Berta Zemel).
Write your own reviewTake the exclamation mark in the title of Mamma Mia! as a warning. In practically every scene of this glossy, saucy adaptation of the Broadway musical, the actors talk to each other at such a high pitch, you wonder if every line in the script ended like this! Or this!! Or this!!!
Write your own reviewIs computer animation still such a novelty that it will pull moviegoers into theaters? Do wisecracking critters still push children's joy buttons? Is Space Chimps really necessary?
Write your own reviewThe Dark Knight is such a moody, dramatic, dead-serious affair that it feels more like a noirish crime thriller than a superhero movie. Everything in the movie is played straight and aimed at grown-ups (or at least older kids). There is no geeky joy in Gotham City, no trace of the gee-whiz wonder most comic-book pictures trade on for effect. At times, when Batman pops up onscreen in all his high-tech gothic regalia, you wonder, ``What's that clown doing here?''
Write your own reviewThere are two ways to see Journey to the Center of the Earth: In plain old two dimensions and, in theaters equipped with the proper projectors, in 3-D format. The second option is definitely the way to go.
Write your own reviewThe title of Hellboy II: The Golden Army makes the movie sound like something intended primarily for people who saw the first Hellboy movie -- which was OK but not exactly memorable -- and can get excited about another one. It's a dry, mundane title. It's also the only thing about the film that doesn't blow your mind right out of its comfortable, I've-seen-all-this-before rut.
Write your own reviewLife has not been kind to Nazneen, a watchful immigrant woman living with her husband and daughters in a London neighborhood. At 17, she left behind her beloved sister in Bangladesh for a cold new country and an arranged marriage. Her first-born child, a son, died in his crib. Her world is as cramped and claustrophobic in England as it was lush and glorious back home when she was happy.
Write your own reviewKerala, South India, in 1937, was the wild frontier for English colonialists, a land rich in resources for the taking and restless natives.
Write your own reviewWalking in to see Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, I was unaware the movie was spun off from a popular line of toy dolls -- more than 14 million of them have been sold. Nor did I know about the anticipation and excitement many little girls have for the movie, which is the fourth in the series (the previous three, made for TV, are available on DVD).
Write your own reviewNo one complains about collateral damage when Superman tries to confound Lex Luthor's schemes. The residents of Gotham never file lawsuits against Batman if he bangs up a few cars in pursuit of the Joker. For Hancock, though, fighting crime is a different story, possibly because he tends to fly to the rescue clutching a bottle of whiskey.
Write your own reviewThe idea for WALL-E, the ninth and arguably best film from Pixar Animation Studios, was born during a 1994 brainstorming session in which the company's founders knocked around ideas for follow-up movies to their upcoming debut, Toy Story, which was nearing completion.
Write your own reviewOnce upon a time -- a thousand years ago, in fact -- a clan of weavers banded together to form an assassins club and, presumably, knit some nice sweaters in their down time. They do not kill randomly. They take their orders from a magical loom of fate. If your name pops up via the loom's secret code, consider yourself dead.
Write your own reviewIn Roman de Gare, French filmmaker Claude Lelouche throws down the gauntlet to viewers who can spot any plot twist, no matter how illogical or impractical. Never seen a murder mystery you couldn't outwit? Here is your movie.
Write your own review''Do not scorn a weak cub,'' reads a proverb at the start of Mongol. ``He may become a brutal tiger.'' Genghis Khan, of course, is more than brutal; he will eat tigers for breakfast. The legendary 13th century conqueror, who controlled a fifth of the world at the height of his power, has been the protagonist of two previous Hollywood films. In one, he was played by John Wayne; in the other Omar Sharif. Neither film is remembered today, for good reason.
Write your own reviewWhen did it happen, this moment at which Mike Myers morphed from Minor Annoyance Who Used to Be Funny to Officially Unbearable Bore? Was it on the third journey to the Shrek well, or the fourth? The first Austin Powers sequel or the we're-barely-even-trying-here Goldmember? Or -- most likely -- did he get lost somewhere in the smug, smarmy chaos of Cat in the Hat, a film as charming and delightful as a hairball in your morning coffee?
Write your own reviewGet Smart turns out to be a much more entertaining movie than its tedious trailers suggest. It's not going to redefine comedy as we know it, but it's amusing and briskly paced, busy with an engaging mix of supporting actors. Most crucially, Steve Carell (The Office) works out fine as this more appealing Max, more an eager bumbler than an inept know-it-all.
Write your own reviewThis documentary starts off seeming as if it's just about the use of anabolic steroids in sports, told from the point of view of director Chris Bell, who, along with his two brothers, has had a lifetime devotion to bodybuilding and powerlifting. But the fascinating Bigger Stronger Faster* is so much more than that, as it balances the Bells' emotional struggles against the backdrop of an America in the throes of major body-image and performance-anxiety issues.
Write your own reviewBased on the memoir by British writer Blake Morrison, When Did You Last See Your Father? uses its title to pose a penetrating question. When did you last see the man when he was himself -- not sick, not fading but healthy and vibrant? How you answer largely determines how you will respond to this gloomy little movie, which is frustratingly stagnant at times but ultimately a moving story about a dying father and the son who must come to terms with him.
Write your own reviewIt's easy see why The Foot Fist Way snared a cult following at the 2006 Sundance Film Festival. The low-budget comedy, the first release from Will Ferrell and Andy McKay's Gary Sanchez Productions, is unpretentious and crudely funny. It focuses on a clueless Taek Kwon Do instructor who runs a school in a North Carolina strip mall and suffers from delusions of grandeur that crumble when he learns of his wife's indiscretions.
Write your own reviewCareful not to repeat the past, The Incredible Hulk does a lot of things Ang Lee's 2003 The Hulk didn't: It's lighter and faster-paced, it's funnier and it embraces (instead of ignoring) the 1970s TV series that furthered the character's popularity. Even the requisite (and often tiresome) business of recounting the hero's origin is dispensed with over the opening credits. When the movie proper starts, it already feels like you're into the second chapter of the story.
Write your own reviewWith The Happening, writer-director M. Night Shyamalan bounces back from the turgidness of The Village and the idiocy of Lady in the Water. The movie has a great, Shyamalan-esque hook: One otherwise normal morning in Central Park, everyone starts to commit suicide, and then the behavior starts to spread, as if it were airborne, throughout the Northeast.
Write your own reviewHollywood comedies have been so loud and broad for so long now that when a quieter one comes along, audiences often don't know how to respond. That's what happened to 2005's The Weather Man, the melancholy comedy about a TV weather man juggling family and career written by Fort Lauderdale native Steven Conrad: The film was rarely obvious in its humor, and it was not afraid to occasionally edge into sad or even dark territory.
Write your own reviewThe epithet ''based on a true story'' has got to be a film director's dream. It's so freeing. It virtually invites self-indulgence. You can't argue with a true story, after all, because ''It's true!'' Like Titanic. Fact, in the movies, is a lot like a license.
Write your own review''A hair-homo'' is what one of the Zohan's old friends calls him after bumping into him on the streets of New York. Once revered as Israel's butchest, most unstoppable Mossad agent, Zohan (Adam Sandler) faked his own death and moved to New York, adopting the new name Scrappy Coco and setting out to fulfill his life-long dream of making people ``silky smooth.''
Write your own reviewMovies about the Iraq War haven't exactly been luring audiences to the multiplex, and a documentary focusing on the Abu Ghraib photographs depicting prisoner abuse and torture is inevitably going to be an even harder sell.
