Film.com Movie Reviews

Review: Public Enemies is Built to Last

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 09:48:00 PDT

"Effectively explores our culture's fascination with outlaws ..."

Public Enemies has a certain grace to it, a pacing that's all at once a bit slow (for the times we live in) and a nice throwback to how the movie magic trick used to transpire. In the hands of Michael Mann the film looks great, feels deliberate, and effectively explores our culture's fascination with outlaws. While I don't think I'd hand it an Oscar or go door-to-door to sell it to folks, I'd say it's a nice…

Review: Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs -- The Franchise Begins to Cool

Wed, 01 Jul 2009 09:10:00 PDT

"The film serves its target audience well enough and offers a series of pleasant smiles if not a lot of gut-busting laughs."

To answer the obvious question, the makers of Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs are well aware that the dinosaurs came and went long before the film takes place. What happened, though, is that some of the dinosaurs survived in a huge, cavernous world underneath the ice, and in this sequel our mammalian heroes stumble across them. So it's not a "dawn of the…

Review: Woody Allen's Whatever Works, Works

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 09:54:00 PDT

"The screenplay may be old, but it's been suitably freshened up with modern zingers."

Of all the actors Woody Allen has recruited to play "the Woody Allen role" in his films, has there ever been a more inspired choice than Larry David? As a writer for Seinfeld, and now in his own Curb Your Enthusiasm, David's caustic, neurotic misanthropy fits with Allen's own nebbishy pessimism like onions fit in a knish. The only surprise in Whatever Works is that the collaboration didn't…

Review: My Sister's Keeper is a Real Weeper

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 01:37:00 PDT

"Once the bizarre premise is established, all the movie can do is spin its wheels and wait for the story to play out."

The premise of the two-hankie dying-daughter melodrama My Sister's Keeper is so preposterous that taking it seriously proves a difficult task. The gist: 11-year-old Anna Fitzgerald was conceived for the sole purpose of being a genetic match for her older sister, Kate, who has leukemia. All her life, Anna has been a donor of blood, marrow, and other necessities,…

Review: Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen -- Heavy on Explosives, Light on Smarts

Tue, 23 Jun 2009 14:02:00 PDT

"Is this where we're at? Are the rest of our screenplays to be written in crayon?"

When I walked out of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, I was frustrated. About five guys on Earth have access to the kind of budget Michael Bay does, yet all the man does is offer up slow-motion explosion after slow-motion explosion. OK, sure, he throws in a scantily-clad Megan Fox in for effect, too. Super. But plot? No. Logic? Negative. Any semblance of a coherent story whatsoever? Nope. But…

Review: Year One -- Is That on a Scale of One to Ten?

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 03:45:00 PDT

"If you can't take this premise and these actors and come up with anything funnier than Jack Black eating poop, then you have no business making comedies."

How does this happen? How does Year One, a movie with so much raw talent behind it, turn out so lousy? Look at the cast: Jack Black and Michael Cera are the stars, with supporting roles by David Cross, Paul Rudd, Kyle Gass, Oliver Platt, McLovin from Superbad, Hank Azaria, Bill Hader, and Paul Scheer. It was directed by Haro…

Review: The Proposal Can't Be Saved by Bullock and Reynolds

Fri, 19 Jun 2009 03:39:00 PDT

"Borrowing heavily from mediocrity is no way to handle business, but that's clearly what transpired here."

Sloppy, rushed, and typical. These are the words that come to mind after watching The Proposal, the latest fish-out-of-water romantic comedy to come floating on down the river. The setup is typical, the archetypes are industry standard (a foul-mouthed Betty White? Hysterical!), and the resolve could have been written by a fifth grade class fresh from watching Pretty Woman.…

Review: Away We Go: A Sweet, Strange, and Sentimental Journey

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 09:51:00 PDT

"A pleasurable, gentle, touchingly sincere journey."

How to scare yourself when you're expecting: Take a plane-train-and-automobile tour of your friends' dysfunctional child-rearing skills.

That's exactly what longtime, thirty-something couple Burt (The Office's John Krasinski) and Verona (SNL ex, Maya Rudolph) decide to do in the new Sam Mendes-driven joy ride Away We Go. Though their intent is to find a place to raise their firstborn near the support of loved ones, rather than…

Review: Pelham 123 Is As Generic as A-B-C

Fri, 12 Jun 2009 08:46:00 PDT

"A pretty ordinary action movie ..."

People who have seen both the 1974 version of The Taking of Pelham One Two Three, a workmanlike thriller with Walter Matthau and Robert Shaw, and the numeralized remake, The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, a generic thriller with Denzel Washington and John Travolta, will probably wonder why this is described as a "remake" at all. The basic concept -- terrorists hijack a New York City subway train -- is all that remains, and it's not like it's a…

Review: Land of the Lost Is a Trip, All Right

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 00:47:00 PDT

"This is a wildly bizarre and frequently hilarious adventure that appears to be whacked-out by design, not out of sloppiness."

Oh, what a weird movie this is. Land of the Lost was a fairly strange TV show to begin with, and now the movie version has kept all of the built-in goofiness -- the slow-moving reptilian Sleestaks, the race of monkey people, the dinosaurs -- and added more. It's a sci-fi/fantasy comedy full of special effects, yet it also has Will Ferrell and Danny…