http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/index.html http://media.miamiherald.com/images/logos/rss_sitelogo.gif http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/index.html 140 25 News, sports and entertainment from MiamiHerald.com en-us Copyright 2008 MiamiHerald.com Movie Reviews 60 Sun, 05 Oct 2008 11:59:58 EDT http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss McClatchy Interactive's PubSys miamifeedback@miamiherald.com http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/713931.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/713931.html Sun, 05 Oct 2008 11:57 EDT In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, director David Zucker said distributor Vivendi Entertainment did not screen An American Carol in advance for reviews because 'those [who] don't like the politics will tend to label the film as `not funny.' '' The implication, of course, is that movie critics are a pitchfork-and-torch mob of raging leftist liberals who will tear down anything that opposes their personal ideologies. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/709845.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/709845.html Fri, 03 Oct 2008 03:01 EDT It's the first day of school and Greg Kinnear, as a college engineering professor, writes the word ''ethics'' on the blackboard for his students to ponder. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/709832.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/709832.html Fri, 03 Oct 2008 03:01 EDT Essentially a buddy movie in which the cops tote shotguns and travel on four legs instead of four wheels, Appaloosa takes the traditional notion of a lone lawman fighting injustice and turns it successfully on its head. Based on a spritely western by detective novelist Robert B. Parker, creator of the Spenser series, the film follows the exploits of Virgil Cole (Ed Harris) and Everett Hitch (Viggo Mortensen), gunslinging partners in a ''peacekeeping'' business who are hired by town officials to keep... http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/709847.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/709847.html Fri, 03 Oct 2008 03:01 EDT Early on in the documentary Religulous, stand-up comedian/political commentator Bill Maher states his thesis -- ''Religion is detrimental to humanity'' -- and then spends the rest of the movie hopping around the world, trying to prove it. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/709819.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/709819.html Fri, 03 Oct 2008 03:01 EDT The heavy-handed allegory Blindness suggests that society teeters on the edge of chaos, and that not much is required to shove us into anarchy and lawlessness. In the case of this inexplicably tedious film, based on the bestselling novel by José Saramago, the event is a sudden, unexplained epidemic of vision loss that affects the population of an unnamed city. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/709928.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/709928.html Fri, 03 Oct 2008 03:01 EDT Toby Young's memoir about climbing up -- and then sliding rapidly down -- the ladder at Vanity Fair makes an engaging transition to the screen, thanks to a lively adaptation that embellishes greatly on Young's story but preserves the central fish-out-of-water theme and biting commentary on celebrity obsession. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/709834.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/709834.html Fri, 03 Oct 2008 03:01 EDT The problem with most movie romances -- the thing that makes so many of them tough to sit through -- is that you're usually just waiting for the couple to get on with it and realize they're made for each other, so you can go home and continue about your business. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/709830.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/709830.html Fri, 03 Oct 2008 03:01 EDT Only the meanest of grouches can resist a talking-animal movie. But no one, absolutely no one, is immune to the charms of a talking-dog picture. Even a film as shabby and humdrum as Beverly Hills Chihuahua, which never musters up the wit and beauty of a single frame of Lady and the Tramp, is not without its pleasures. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/700718.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/700718.html Fri, 26 Sep 2008 03:01 EDT Towelhead, the film directorial debut of Alan Ball, is just as provocative and disquieting as his previous work (he wrote American Beauty and created HBO's Six Feet Under and True Blood). It may even be more unsettling. Right from the opening scene, in which a man helps his 13-year-old stepdaughter with a bit of personal hygiene he has no business whatsoever conducting, the movie rattles you, makes you squirm in your seat. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/700735.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/700735.html Fri, 26 Sep 2008 03:01 EDT For further proof that actor Shia LaBeouf is a Hollywood superstar in the making, check out Eagle Eye, a ridiculous wrongly-accused-guy-on-the-run thriller in which the actor spends most of his screen time running, and yet still manages to hold the movie together. Barely. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/700723.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/700723.html Fri, 26 Sep 2008 03:01 EDT In Spike Lee's long and eclectic career, Miracle at St. Anna is easily his most technically ambitious film. But he might not have been ready for the enormity of such a project. Miracle at St. Anna is wildly unfocused in terms of tone and, at two hours and 40 minutes, it is unjustifiably overlong. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/700739.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/700739.html Fri, 26 Sep 2008 03:01 EDT Lady Georgiana Spencer was the great-great-great-great (or so) aunt of Diana, Princess of Wales, but whether that family tie is sufficient reason to dedicate an entire movie to her remains questionable. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/700731.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/700731.html Fri, 26 Sep 2008 03:01 EDT In The Lucky Ones, three returning Iraq War veterans find themselves on an improbable cross-country journey. The word ''lucky'' in the title of the film has a relative meaning. The soldiers -- Colee (Rachel McAdams), TK (Michael Pena) and Cheever (Tim Robbins) -- were injured in the war. Colee has a wounded leg, TK caught a piece of shrapnel in his private parts, which aren't working, and Cheever had a porta-potty fall on him, giving him a bad back. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/700745.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/700745.html Fri, 26 Sep 2008 03:01 EDT While I've never read a Nicholas Sparks' novel, in the films made from his books, his characters inevitably experience The Big Contradiction. Namely, that love is fleeting -- and it is eternal. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/702861.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/702861.html Fri, 26 Sep 2008 13:39 EDT Choke is the sunny, funny version of a Chuck Palahniuk movie. The insurgent novelist's only other book that's been brought to the screen is Fight Club, though. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/690845.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/690845.html Fri, 19 Sep 2008 03:01 EDT No one is quite so gifted a portrayer of the modern boor as Ricky Gervais, and in Ghost Town he plays Bertram Pincus, DDS, with his usual delectable, sneering grace. To say that Bertram is standoffish is to miss the point. Bertram hates most people. He wants nothing to do with them, but a dentist actually must touch his patients. Fortunately he is also allowed to stuff cotton in their mouths, which keeps their attempts at chatting to a minimum. If only we all could avail ourselves of such a luxury... http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/690834.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/690834.html Fri, 19 Sep 2008 03:01 EDT Has Neil LaBute lost it? The writer-director of merciless provocations such as In the Company of Men and Your Friends and Neighbors and The Shape of Things is suddenly one movie away from hack status. In his last film, a remake of The Wicker Man, he had Nicolas Cage running around slugging women in the face while dressed in a bear suit. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/690847.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/690847.html Fri, 19 Sep 2008 03:01 EDT Stealing America: Vote by Vote begins with a quote from founding father Thomas Paine: ``The right to vote . . . is the primary right by which other rights are protected.'' http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/690842.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/690842.html Fri, 19 Sep 2008 03:01 EDT Igor must be what director Tim Burton's nightmares look like after he has eaten an extra large pizza with peanut butter and sardines. The bizarre and the weird exist in a world that is strange and freakish. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/690852.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/690852.html Fri, 19 Sep 2008 03:01 EDT Here's a cool movie about a cold case. The story begins eight years after the murder of Margot (Marie-Josee Croze), the beloved wife of Alex (Francois Cluzet), a gentle Parisian pediatrician. The killing was ascribed to a maniac who was active in the area. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/687284.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/687284.html Mon, 15 Sep 2008 14:12 EDT The first time Robert De Niro and Al Pacino acted in the same movie (The Godfather Part II), they never appeared onscreen together. The second time they co-starred in a film (Heat), they shared just one meaty scene. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/681454.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/681454.html Fri, 12 Sep 2008 03:01 EDT Filmmaking brothers Joel and Ethan Coen have always liked to sprinkle a dash of misanthropy into their comedies, taking more than a little delight in the dire dilemmas of their protagonists, mired in circumstances usually of their own idiotic making. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/681443.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/681443.html Fri, 12 Sep 2008 03:01 EDT As the star of the Czech tragicomedy I Served the King of England, Ivan Barnev resembles a blond, eastern European Roberto Benigni. He's less grating because he's not overexposed, and has never made the insane mistake of annoying audiences worldwide by trying to play Pinocchio at 40-plus. http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/681450.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/681450.html Fri, 12 Sep 2008 03:01 EDT The women in The Women are wealthy New Yorkers who spend their days shopping, getting their nails done, gossiping, having lunch -- wait, does any of this sound scarily familiar? Writer-director Diane English (from TV's Murphy Brown) spent 13 years trying to get this remake of the 1939 George Cukor satire off the ground, and she managed to do it the same year Sex and the City became a movie. How's that for bad timing? http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/681435.html http://www.miamiherald.com/entertainment/movies/reviews/story/681435.html Fri, 12 Sep 2008 03:01 EDT In Surfer, Dude, Matthew McConaughey plays a shy, brooding physicist whose revolutionary work in the field of quantum mechanics earns him a Nobel Prize.