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MOVIE CRITIC

Rene Rodriguez
Rene Rodriguez has been The Herald's movie critic since 1995. He studied film criticism and filmmaking at the University of Miami. Before being named movie critic, he was an arts writer for The Herald and also worked on the city desk.

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  • Mongol (R) *** | Russian director gives face to Mongolia's mythical leader

    ''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.

  • DVD SCANS

    It's been a long wait for `Before the Rain'

    BY RENE RODRIGUEZ ''I believe that once the work is completed, the artist has nothing more to say,'' reads a statement from director Milcho Manchevski on the DVD of his 1994 debut film Before the Rain (Criterion Collection, $40). But the Macedonian filmmaker then admits he is going to go ahead and talk at length about his film anyway, ``simply to keep a few things from being forgotten.''

  • Screen Gems | Coming this week on TV and at the movies

    SMALL SCREEN Hopkins 24/7 (10 p.m. Thursday, ABC) -- You shouldn't watch this six-part peek inside Baltimore's Johns Hopkins Hospital just because network documentary units are dying out and this might be the last chance you ever get to see one in action. You should watch it because it's fascinating and dramatic stuff: The family of a comatose little girl struggles with the decision to disconnect life support. A young doctor punctures a patient's lung during a routine procedure. And a top brain surgeon...

  • MOVIES

    Director of 'The Promotion' deftly balances humor with pathos

    Foreclosure, divorce, the economy and the workplace may not sound like the building blocks of a riotous comedy. But as filmmaker Steven Conrad points out, just because you're trying to make people laugh doesn't mean you can't sneak in a little drama, too. In The Promotion, the directorial debut of the screenwriter of The Weather Man and The Pursuit of Happyness, Conrad incorporates all of the less-than-amusing subjects above -- and still manages to be funny.

  • Screen Gems | Coming this week on TV and at the movies

    SMALL SCREEN Penn & Teller's Bull- - - -! (10 p.m. Thursday, Showtime) -- America's most hilariously debauched investigative report returns for a sixth season, with erstwhile magicians Penn and Teller screaming insults (well, Penn screams; the silent Teller makes faces) and ruthlessly pranking their interview subjects as they trample on conventional wisdom and sometimes even human decency. (I exaggerate not; they actually trashed Mother Teresa one week.) On the season opener, they bash censorious...

  • 'The Incredible Hulk' takes a second stab at the angry Marvel hero

    Having produced a series of box-office smashes that redefined their respective genres (The Terminator, Aliens, Armageddon, Terminator 2: Judgment Day) has given Gale Ann Hurd considerable clout in Hollywood.

  • The Incredible Hulk (PG-13) ** ½ | Bruce Banner gets a fresh start

    Careful 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.

  • The Promotion (R) *** | It's really funny, seriously

    Hollywood 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.

  • The Happening (R) *** | Troubling look at how we lose it when end is near

    With 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.

  • MY KIND OF TOWN

    Stifler 'promotes' new flick in South Beach

    Since becoming a movie star for playing the lewd and crude Stifler in the American Pie movies, Seann William Scott has traveled the world over. But aside from a brief visit during the taping of an MTV special in 2003, the actor hadn't spent any time in Miami until this week.

  • Screen Gems | Coming this week on TV and at the movies

    SMALL SCREEN Army Wives (10 p.m. Sunday, Lifetime) -- In the final scene of last summer's surprise hit, the air was full of smoke, screams and body parts as an explosion rocked the unfortunately named Hump Bar, where the show's characters hang out. As the second season kicks off Sunday, we learn if anybody survived or if the screen will just stay blank for 19 weeks in a row. Hey, David Chase tried it, and people are still talking about the end of The Sopranos.

  • You Don't Mess With the Zohan (PG-13) *** | He's still Sandler, only with more style

    ''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.''

  • Standard Operating Procedure (R) *** | Exploring Abu Ghraib's dark secrets

    Movies 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.

  • MOVIES

    Kung-Fu Panda (PG) *** | Giddy panda fu packs a solid kick

    The succinctly named Kung-Fu Panda delivers exactly what its title promises: Lots of kung-fu and lots of panda. The movie has the same lean, to-the-point simplicity, which is refreshing in an era when so many films take needlessly bloated, talky routes into their story (for more on this, see Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull).

  • DVD SCANS

    Off-stage, the comedians will really crack you up

    One of the funniest moments in Vince Vaughn's Wild West Comedy Show (New Line, $30), a documentary following four stand-up comics and some famous actors on a month-long bus tour across the American heartland, happens not onstage but inside the bus.

  • Meet the people behind Abu Ghraib photos

    The old saying claims a picture is worth a thousand words. But in his new documentary Standard Operating Procedure, Oscar-winning filmmaker Errol Morris argues that a thousand words aren't always enough.

  • Screen Gems | Coming this week on TV and at the movies

    SMALL SCREEN In Plain Sight (10 p.m. Sunday, USA) -- Watching this new crime drama about the federal witness protection program, you can pretty much toss a coin about who you want to root for: the lousy murderous scum trying to hide out under new identities or the lousy murderous scum trying to kill them for squealing. Well, there is that nice Mary McCormack (from The West Wing) playing a U.S. marshal. OK, problem solved.

  • The Strangers (R) ** | It's frightfully disappointing

    ''What you are about to see is based on true events,'' warns a stern, ominous voice at the start of The Strangers -- a voice that sounds eerily like the one heard during the opening credits of TV's Law and Order. The movie that follows is entirely a work of fiction -- to be clear, none of this ever happened -- but first-time writer-director Bryan Bertino, who is gunning for a raw, unforgiving horror picture in the style of 1970s shockers, knows that claiming his story is true is automatically going...

  • The Fall (R) ** | Despite its fantastic images, story falls flat

    In 2000's The Cell, the directorial debut of filmmaker Tarsem Singh (or, as he prefers to be called, just Tarsem), Jennifer Lopez chased down a serial killer by walking through a series of elaborate sets best suited for a Bjork music video.

  • DVD SCANS

    At least this time you'll have fast-forward

    The Will Ferrell basketball comedy Semi-Pro was a box-office disappointment when it was released in February, leading many to wonder whether it was the R rating that cut into the film's audience or if Ferrell had simply gone to the Anchorman/Talladega Nights/Blades of Glory well once too often.

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