November 2009

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

Published on: 22nd November, 2009

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 [...]

Shorts 11/24/09

Published on: 22nd November, 2009

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 [...]

Funny People 11/24/09

Published on: 22nd November, 2009

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 [...]

The Shawshank Redemption

Published on: 15th November, 2009

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 [...]

Angels and Demons 11/24/09

Published on: 15th November, 2009

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 [...]

My Sister’s Keeper

Published on: 15th November, 2009

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 [...]

Bruno

Published on: 15th November, 2009

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 [...]

Spread

Published on: 8th November, 2009

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 [...]

The Ugly Truth

Published on: 8th November, 2009

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. – [...]

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

Published on: 8th November, 2009

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 [...]