Sinbad is awesome, spectacular, gorgeous and thrilling — though my praise carries this caveat: You have to go into this movie without any preconceived notions. If you want a cartoon laugh riot, this isn’t for you. Sinbad has a few giggles, but no cuteness whatsoever. From start to finish, it’s a mythic adventure story in […]
I’d like to start this review by offering my apologies to my viewing partner. Granted, he didn’t see but the last 45 minutes, but he did make it in time to see the movie’s “big” musical number. Never have I seen a human being in such a state of slack-jawed disbelief, and I fear he […]
It’s big, loud, dumb, colorful and largely incoherent – and, I’m ashamed to say, entertaining. On any serious level, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle has virtually nothing to recommend it, beyond glossy Hollywood professionalism. In short, it’s junk. But there’s garbage and then there’s playfully amusing garbage — and about 90 percent of this film is […]
It has perhaps the worst title in the history of film (“Hey, is this the sequel to the Sandra Bullock movie?”). It occasionally suffers from the inherent limitations of shooting on digital video. The script has a couple of problems. And it’s undeniably derivative of a raft of earlier movies. But all that said, Danny […]
There’s some slight chance that I liked The Man on the Train (L’Homme du Train) more than I might have simply because I saw it about 30 minutes after my potentially life-threatening exposure to From Justin to Kelly. This is just the sort of movie Kelly Clarkson thinks critics are supposed to like; it’s probably […]
No, it’s not a remake of the Hitchcock film, though it does have suspense aplenty — even if it’s not the kind you might expect, and maybe not the kind first-time filmmaker Jeffrey Blitz intended. I’m not sure whether anyone watching Spellbound is likely to care too much about who wins the spelling bee at […]
This movie has more alternate titles than Liz Taylor has last names: Pikachu Movie 5, Pokemon 5, Pokemon Heroes: Latias and Latios or (my favorite) Guardian Spirits of the Water Capital: Latias and Latios. By any name, though, it’s another Pokemon movie. And I found it no better or worse than any of the others. […]
You were expecting maybe Crouching Bixby, Hidden Ferrigno? Blessedly — and despite a cameo by Ferrigno as a security guard and variants on “You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry” — this film is about as far removed from the campy TV show as you’re likely to get. Viewed strictly from the standpoint of a […]
Move over, Mariah Carrey, there’s a new kid in town, and she’s got a movie that out-Glitters Glitter. Almost two years ago, 20th Century Fox gave the musical film a badly needed shot in the arm by releasing Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge!. As if determined to undo not only all the good they did, but […]
Cute, safe and very, very boring. Kate Hudson (Almost Famous) is one of the most adorable and talented actresses onscreen today. So why does Rob Reiner (When Harry Met Sally), one of the most inspired directors in Hollywood today, put this wonderful woman in this snoozer of a film? Worse, why does he partner her […]
reviewed by Ken Hanke Alexander Sokurov’s Russian Ark accomplishes the not inconsiderable feat of being both fascinating and tedious at the same time. Conceptually, the film is brilliant. Technically, it’s a marvel. Dramatically, it’s about as much fun as an evening with an insurance salesman. By now you probably know the idea: a film in […]
reviewed by Marci Miller Combining two of Nickelodeon TV’s most popular cartoon ensembles — the Rugrats and the Thornberrys — is an idea that could have worked, bringing siblings of different ages into the theater to enjoy different elements of the same flick together. Alas, this good idea on paper fails miserably onscreen. In fact, […]
reviewed by Ken Hanke Yeah, it’s pretty bad, though not unwatchably so. Hollywood Homicide is not without its entertainment value, though a lot of that comes in the form of “What were they thinking?” It’s easy to see why this film went down badly with test audiences; what’s maybe not so easy to figure is […]
reviewed by Ken Hanke Having seen the original Dumb and Dumber, I harbored the same kind of enthusiasm for the further cinematic adventures of Harry and Lloyd that I would have evidenced had someone announced a Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis reunion. The problem is we don’t even get the Dean and Jerry of the original; we […]
reviewed by Ken Hanke Anyone going to Neil La Bute’s The Shape of Things expecting a film in the mold of his 2002 offering, Possession, is in for a shock — and perhaps a disappointment. The expansive, literary-minded, good-humored, and utterly romantic Possession is worlds away from The Shape of Things — a film La […]
2 Fast 2 Furious — and 2 hours of my life I won’t get back. I sustained hope for this sequel to the immensely popular The Fast and the Furious when I learned it had been directed by John Singleton. But from the moment the Universal Pictures globe transformed into a wheel being changed on […]
reviewed by Ken Hanke While I have nothing particularly against the horror sub-sub-genre that dotes on the dire doings of inbred hillbilly cannibals (which probably goes back to the H.P. Lovecraft short story “The Picture in the House”), my initial reaction to Wrong Turn is that it makes Rob Zombie’s defiantly odd House of 1000 […]
reviewed by Marci Miller Finding Nemo is a whale of a tale, and every little minnow will flip over it. Which is not to say it’s just for the small fry. Pixar Animation Studios follows its winning tradition of the Toy Story films, A Bug’s Life and Monsters, Inc., creating in Nemo a story that […]
With X2: X-Men United I’m faced with a potentially thorny problem, causing me to offer what amounts to two reviews in one. The first and by far easier review concerns the movie on wholly a surface level, as a rousing action-adventure comic-book blockbuster. On that score, X2 is that rarest of rarities: the sequel that […]
reviewed by Ken Hanke Confession: Despite stout efforts, I have yet to make it all the way through the original Matrix. This is less the fault of the film than it is that the quickest way to get my mind (usually followed by other body parts) to wander is to load up a movie with […]
The Lizzie McGuire Movie is a brainless, frothy-fairy tale for young girls (though parents won’t feel tortured if they have to see it, too). The film is not going to do anybody any harm and will probably do the Italian Tourist Board a lot of good. In this movie version of the Disney TV series […]
