Film

n went nuts over when he was a sprout, I like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles best. Come on, they were fun. Now they’re back and this time, slightly more serious. They still have to defeat a super-villain and his minions “? that’s a big part of the fun “? but they also have to […]

Reviewer grade: C   Work builds character. Family is important. It’s better to give than to receive. If such truisms strike you as fresh and exciting, there’s plenty more where that came from in “The Ultimate Gift,” the latest offering from 20th Century Fox’s faith-based division. But this treacle is more dispiriting than spiritual.   […]

  2006Magic gets the girl in this romantic Vienna-set period piece staring Edward Norton as illusionist Eisenheim. Written and directed by Neil Burger (“Interview with the Assassin”), this film is paced and ambient enough to seem truly magical. Eisenheim works his charm to woo Sophie (Jessica Biel), a well-off woman from his childhood, from the […]

 2006With the past few years having witnessed a renaissance in socially conscious documentary filmmaking, “Cocaine Cowboys” marches to its own politically incorrect drummer. Director Billy Corben (“Raw Deal”) zeroes in on the cocaine trade that flourished in Miami throughout the late Seventies and early Eighties, an era when that city’s murder rate skyrocketed right along […]

2006 After seeing “Borat” in theaters, I thought it was one of the five funniest movies I’d ever seen. But at home? Still one of the five funniest movies I’ve ever seen.   Fresh off an Oscar nomination, “Borat” still plays like a brave and ballsy (sometimes literally) work of guerilla comedy. Sacha Baron Cohen […]

2006 This tongue-in-cheek actioner didn’t do so well in theaters. I think its mix-master editing put a lot of people off “? “Domino” didn’t do well, either, and it has the same feel of everything happening at once.   Jason Statham, the best pure action hero going right now, is Chev Chelios, a hit man […]

2005 If you wondered about the level of expectation for Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s follow-up to the critically adored “The Office,” it’s right there in the title of a behind-the-scenes featurette: “The Difficult Second Album.” A show doomed to failure before most had even seen it, the choruses of “overrated” were considerable, but somehow, […]

2006 If you love this kind of silliness as much as you should, “Snakes on a Plane” is more fun than any of summer 2006’s overproduced blockbusters. Just don’t ask it to make sense.   Director David R. Ellis (“Final Destination 2,” “Cellular”) seems to be fashioning a career out of turning highly implausible material […]

  2006   Oliver Stone seemed a peculiar choice to direct a movie about 9/11, but “World Trade Center” proves the skeptics wrong. Stone’s most restrained work to date, the film details with poignancy the true tale of two Port Authority police officers (Nicolas Cage and Michael Pena) who were in the Twin Towers when […]

2006   Director Kevin Smith isn’t aging gracefully so much as slowly realizing that his “dick and fart jokes” don’t have the resonance at 30 as they did at 20. “Clerks II” has a stale, reductive air about it that can’t be shaken “? from its hey-look-at-me celebrity cameos to its obligatory, inane musical montage, […]