Movies New On DVD

Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian 12/1/09

Jack Taylor — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 14:42:03 +0000

Ben Stiller wrestles with extinct beasts, historical figures, and meddling monkeys in Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, the sequel to the popular 2006 special-effects extravaganza. This time, the ancient Egyptian tablet (the one that brings all the exhibits at New York’s Museum of Natural History to life at night) is being shipped off to the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.–which, as the movie diligently tells us, is the largest museum in the world. Naturally, former museum guard Larry Daley (Ben Stiller) heads down to rescue it (and, by extension, keep his magical museum friends alive). He ends up fighting with a nasty pharaoh who talks like Boris Karloff (Hank Azaria, The Simpsons) and falling in love with Amelia Earhart (Amy Adams, Enchanted). All the old gang are along for the ride, including Dexter the monkey; much face-slapping and special effects ensue. There aren’t many surprises, but Battle of the Smithsonian is cheerful enough to entertain everyone who enjoyed the first movie. Extras include commentaries by the director and the writers, the usual self-congratulatory making-of featurette, deleted scenes that are actually as good as the rest of the movie, an alternate ending, and an entirely pointless second disc about Crystal, the capuchin monkey who plays Dexter (the monkey disc has less than a half-hour of material, including two mediocre games). The great supporting cast from the first movie returns, including Owen Wilson, Steve Coogan, and Robin Williams. –Bret Fetzer

RATING: 6.0/10

Shorts 11/24/09

Jack Taylor — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 14:19:48 +0000

A fantastical story, relayed in the form of short vignettes by director Robert Rodriguez, Shorts is the story of a magic wishing rock and kids’ imaginations gone wild. The film plays a lot like the The Little Rascals (Our Gang) films from the 1920’s-1940’s: it’s made up of short, comical episodes that focus on kids adventures and how imagination drives their play. When a magical rainbow rock falls from the sky and lands in the middle of tech-town Black Falls, a young boy Toe (Jimmy Bennett) discovers that the rock has the power to grant his every wish. The victim of constant bullying, Toe wishes for friends as unusual as himself and ends up with a posse of aliens who protect him while seriously complicating his life. As narrator, Toby quickly stops the film, explaining that his experience is really the middle of the story, and then rewinds repeatedly to relate various encounters between neighborhood kids and the magic rock. Each short is its own journey into a kid’s imagination where wishes for everything from a treasure hunt, to a fortress guarded by crocodiles, a super smart baby with telepathic powers, and a booger monster grown from one boy’s booger are immediately granted. These fantastical wishes wreak havoc on the entire Black Falls community: the children, the technology obsessed, disconnected Black Box employees, and the tyrannical Black Box boss Mr. Black (James Spader). In the end, the magic rock is a catalyst for change, encouraging kids and adults to work together and inspiring serious reflection regarding one’s wishes, dreams, and goals. Rodriguez does a great job of portraying the wildness of kids’ imaginations and viewers that delight in over-the-top ridiculousness and the overtly gross will laugh hysterically throughout the film. Unfortunately, those who demand restraint may find it overdone. (Ages 10 and older) –Tami Horiuchi

RATING: 4.7/10

Funny People 11/24/09

Jack Taylor — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 14:13:47 +0000

Funny People pulls off quite a feat: it examines the sources of comedy and manages to be knockout funny. Adam Sandler plays George Simmons, a successful comedian of Adam Sandler proportions who is diagnosed with a fatal blood disease. Faced with impending death, he recognizes that he has no friends and decides to make a best friend out of an aspiring young comedian named Ira (Seth Rogen, Knocked Up). This lopsided relationship gradually takes on aspects of true friendship as Ira forces George to try to reconnect with the people in his life, including his ex-girlfriend Laura (Leslie Mann, 17 Again). But forging real relationships conflicts with all the impulses that feed George’s comedy: can he truly re-create his life? Funny People has enough raw, no-inhibitions comedy to satisfy Sandler fans, but the core of the movie is far more complex and compelling–and significantly, Sandler rises to it. He, Rogen, and Mann all deliver superb performances, as does the supporting cast (including Jonah Hill, Superbad; Jason Schwartzman, Rushmore; and Eric Bana, Munich). Funny People fits into the ranks of such classics as Hannah and Her Sisters andTerms of Endearment: movies that blend sadness and joy into a vibrant picture of life. –Bret Fetzer

RATING: 7.2/10

The Shawshank Redemption

Jack Taylor — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 15:52:22 +0000

When this popular prison drama was released in 1994, some critics complained that the movie was too long (142 minutes) to sustain its story. Those complaints miss the point, because the passage of time is crucial to this story about patience, the squeaky wheels of justice, and the growth of a life-long friendship. Only when the film reaches its final, emotionally satisfying scene do you fully understand why writer-director Frank Darabont (adapting a novella by Stephen King) allows the story to unfold at its necessary pace, and the effect is dramatically rewarding. Tim Robbins plays a banker named Andy who’s sent to Shawshank Prison on a murder charge, but as he gets to know a life-term prisoner named Red (Morgan Freeman), we realize there’s reason to believe the banker’s crime was justifiable. We also realize that Andy’s calm, quiet exterior hides a great reserve of patience and fortitude, and Red comes to admire this mild-mannered man who first struck him as weak and unfit for prison life. So it is that The Shawshank Redemption builds considerable impact as a prison drama that defies the conventions of the genre (violence, brutality, riots) to illustrate its theme of faith, friendship, and survival. Nominated for seven Academy Awards including Best Picture, Actor, and Screenplay, it’s a remarkable film that signaled the arrival of a promising new filmmaker–a film that many movie lovers count among their all-time favorites. –Jeff Shannon

RATING: 9.2/10

Angels and Demons 11/24/09

Jack Taylor — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 15:33:15 +0000

If the devil is in the details, there’s a lot of wicked fun in Angels & Demons, the sequel (originally a prequel) to The Da Vinci Code. Director Ron Howard delivers edge-of-your-pew thrills all over the Vatican, the City of Rome, and the deepest, dankest catacombs. Tom Hanks is dependably watchable in his reprised role as Professor Robert Langdon, summoned urgently to Rome on a matter of utmost urgency–which happens to coincide with the death of the Pope, meaning the Vatican is teeming with cardinals and Rome is teeming with the faithful. A religious offshoot group, calling themselves the Illuminati, which protested the Catholic Church’s prosecution of scientists 400 years ago, has resurfaced and is making extreme, and gruesome, terrorist demands. The film zooms around the city, as Langdon follows clues embedded in art, architecture, and the very bone structure of the Vatican. The cast is terrific, including Ewan McGregor, who is memorable as a young protégé of the late pontiff, and who seems to challenge the common wisdom of the Conclave just by being 40 years younger than his fellows when he lectures for church reform. Stellan Skarsgard is excellent as a gruff commander of the Swiss Guard, who may or may not have thrown in with the Illuminati. But the real star of the film is Rome, and its High Church gorgeousness, with lush cinematography by Salvatore Totino, who renders the real sky above the Vatican, in a cataclysmic event, with the detail and majesty of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. –A.T. Hurley

RATING: 6.8/10

My Sister’s Keeper

Jack Taylor — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 15:06:30 +0000

Grab a box of tissues and settle in for a heart-wrenching exploration of illness, morality, and familial bonds in this excellent screen adaptation of bestselling author Jodi Picoult’s My Sister’s Keeper. When parents Sara (Cameron Diaz) and Brian Fitzgerald (Jason Patric) find out that their daughter Kate (Sofia Vassilieva) has leukemia, they make the difficult choice to utilize the advancements of modern medicine and impregnate Sara with a child genetically ensured to be a donor match for Kate. Throughout the many years of dealing with Kate’s illness, the needs of individual family members–including Kate’s parents, her brother Jesse (Evan Ellingson), and her sister Anna (Abigail Breslin)–are largely ignored in light of Kate’s more serious needs. Still, Kate’s sister Anna rarely complains about helping Kate, even when it involves undergoing painful bone marrow aspirations. Recently, however, Anna has had a change of heart and has decided to stand up for her right to have a say in medical procedures involving herself: she’s enlisted a lawyer, Campbell Alexander (Alec Baldwin), to help her sue her parents for medical emancipation. The issue is highly emotional and the familial strife is further compounded by the fact that Kate is quickly failing and needs an immediate kidney transplant for even a chance of continued survival. The emotional struggle of dealing with serious illness while trying to meet one’s own needs permeates the film, as do the staggering moral dilemmas inherent in the advances of modern medicine. While Picoult’s readers may be disappointed that the film doesn’t delve as deeply into Anna’s and Jesse’s characters as the book does, My Sister’s Keeper is nonetheless an intensely powerful film bursting with emotion and moral quandary that leaves viewers pondering what lengths they might go to in a similar situation. –Tami Horiuchi

RATING: 7.4/10

Bruno

Jack Taylor — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 15:01:23 +0000

The brilliant British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen dips into his stable of pre-existing characters and comes up with a big-screen vehicle for Brüno, a gay Austrian fashionista. Brüno is blond, fame-hungry, and prone to wearing unexpected combinations of lederhosen and hot pants. But it’s his runway disaster with an all-Velcro suit that gets him barred from the Milan fashion scene and leads to the cancellation of his TV show. (”For the second time in a century, Austria had turned on its most famous man,” he complains.) Clearly, he needs to go to America and share his philosophy–or at least become a celebrity in whatever way possible. Brüno rolls out in a fashion similar to Borat, a combination of a scripted through-line interspersed with scenes of Baron Cohen improvising with people who don’t realize they’re being set up, Candid Camera-style. About half the time, this reaps some healthy laughs: a sequence with Brüno sitting down for a conversation with a “de-programmer” who claims to cure people of their homosexuality is on-topic, and there’s a wild series of interviews with parents so desperate to get their kiddies into showbiz they’ll agree to all manner of dangerous and irresponsible childcare. A lot of the humor isn’t about Brüno’s gayness at all; Baron Cohen is at his best when displaying freakish comic bravery (sitting across from a terrorist, he advises that “Your King Osama looks like a dirty wizard”). But the other half of Brüno simply misses the movie’s best targets–homophobia and celebrity culture–by miscalculating the nature of ambush comedy. When Baron Cohen gets former Presidential candidate Ron Paul in a hotel room and begins to undress, Paul isn’t showing bigotry by storming out (except in his language); he’s understandably reacting to obnoxious behavior in a supposedly professional situation. Too many set-ups fall short of the mother-lode pay dirt that Borat so frequently hit, leaving this a distinctly lesser item in the Baron Cohen portfolio. –Robert Horton

RATING: 6.6/10

Spread

Jack Taylor — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 16:00:12 +0000

Director David Mackenzie trades the Scottish Highlands for the Hollywood Hills in this darkly comic fable about a male hustler. While Julia Roberts famously portrayed a hooker with a heart of gold, Nikki (producer Ashton Kutcher) suffers from Tin Man Syndrome: he doesn’t seem to have a heart at all. As he boasts in his opening narration, “I don’t wanna be arrogant here, but I’m an incredibly attractive man.” (He has a point, but those suspenders have gotta go.) With his finances in disarray, he sets his sights on Samantha (Anne Heche), a high-powered attorney with an amazing abode overlooking Los Angeles. For such a sophisticated woman, she’s surprisingly quick to fall for his patter. Aside from attending to her physical needs, Nikki cooks, runs errands, and makes himself so indispensable he gains the use of her Amex and Mercedes. Then he meets the more age-appropriate Heather (Margarita Levieva), who doesn’t find his talk quite so cute, but she gets him in a way Sam doesn’t because she’s a player, too. Through Heather, Nikki finds his heart, but a real relationship proves far more challenging than a fake one. If the characters in Mackenzie’s first American feature, much like the gang on TV’s Gossip Girl, are too vain to inspire much sympathy, they’re still fun to watch. Kutcher’s ladies’ man may not be as iconic as the studs in Midnight Cowboy and American Gigolo, but then Mackenzie (Young Adam, Mister Foe) isn’t going for tears or fears, but rather for escapism with a sexy, slightly cynical edge. –Kathleen C. Fennessy

RATING: 6.1/10

The Ugly Truth

Jack Taylor — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 15:45:02 +0000

Katherine Heigl stars as a lovelorn television producer who’s made to run a gauntlet of romantic exploits by a pig-headed morning-show host (played by Gerard Butler) as a way to prove whose romantic methods are more accurate. Legally Blonde’s Robert Luketic directs from a script by Karen McCullah Lutz, Kirsten Smith, and Nicole Eastman. – Jeremy Wheeler

RATING: 6.6/10

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince 12/8/09

Jack Taylor — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 15:23:59 +0000

The sixth installment of the Harry Potter series begins right where The Order of the Phoenix left off. The wizarding world is rocked by the news that “He Who Must Not Be Named” has truly returned, and the audience finally knows that Harry is “the Chosen One”–the only wizard who can defeat Lord Voldemort in the end. Dark forces loom around every corner, and now regularly attempt to penetrate the protected walls of Hogwarts School. This is no longer the fun and fascinating world of magic from the first few books—it’s dark, dangerous, and scary.

Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) suspects Draco Malfoy (Tom Felton) to be a new Death Eater recruit on a special mission for the Dark Lord. In the meantime, Professor Dumbledore (Michael Gambon) seems to have finally removed the shroud of secrecy from Harry about the dark path that lies ahead, and instead provides private lessons to get him prepared. It’s in these intriguing scenes that the dark past of Tom Riddle (a.k.a. Voldemort) is finally revealed. The actors cast as the different young versions of Riddle (Hero Fiennes-Tiffin and Frank Dillane) do an eerily fantastic job of portraying the villain as a child. While the previous movies’ many new characters could be slightly overwhelming, only one new key character is introduced this time: Professor Horace Slughorn (with a spot-on performance by Jim Broadbent). Within his mind he holds a key secret in the battle to defeat the Dark Lord, and Harry is tasked by Dumbledore to uncover a memory about Voldemort’s darkest weapon–the Horcrux. Despite the long list of distractions, Harry, Ron (Rupert Grint), and Hermione (Emma Watson) still try to focus on being teenagers, and audiences will enjoy the budding awkward romances. All of the actors have developed nicely, giving their most convincing performances to date.

More dramatic and significant things go down in this movie than any of its predecessors, and the stakes are higher than ever. The creators have been tasked with a practically impossible challenge, as fans of the beloved J.K. Rowling book series desperately want the movies to capture the magic of the books as closely as possible. Alas, the point at which one accepts that these two mediums are very different is the point at which one can truly enjoy these brilliant adaptations. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is no exception: it may be the best film yet. For those who have not read the book, nail-biting entertainment is guaranteed. For those who have, the movie does it justice. The key dramatic scenes, including the cave and the shocking twist in the final chapter, are executed very well. It does a perfect job of setting up the two-part grand finale that is to follow. –Jordan Thompson

RATING: 7.5/10