During World War II, a Nazi officer (David Thewlis) receives a promotion and moves his wife (Vera Farmiga), teenage daughter (Amber Beattie), and eight-year-old son Bruno (Asa Butterfield) to a remote country house. Almost immediately, Bruno spies through his bedroom window a nearby “farm” where the workers wear “striped pajamas.”…
Stephenie Meyer’s wildly popular novel, Twilight — the first in a four-book series about a 17-year-old girl who falls in love with the hunky vampire who sits next to her in biology class — bored me silly, but that’s clearly a minority opinion. In the novel, Bella and her cold-to-the-touch…
If the dream of every comic is to have his humor live on long after he has left the stage, then the late Bernie Mac has exited this world on a high note. Soul Men, a comedy completed shortly before Mac’s untimely death in August, is no classic, but the…
“You’re a woman scorned with no prenup. That’s a recipe for good livin'” is just one of the zingers Kathy Bates gets to deliver as Charlotte Cartwright, a rich Southern matriarch whose son (Cole Hauser) is having an affair with Andrea (Sanaa Lathan), the social-climbing daughter of Charlotte’s Bible-waving best…
Despite his reputation as the rarest of creatures — a Hollywood intellectual — new evidence suggests Steve Martin reads … prepare yourself … thrillers and spy novels. Or at least that’s the only conclusion one can draw from the “Story by” credit the comedian receives on Traitor, an uneven yet…
Hollywood’s Endless Superhero Summer rolls on with the arrival of Hellboy II: The Golden Army, from Pan’s Labyrinth director Guillermo del Toro, but before this review goes any further, I must confess — head hanging low in shame — I haven’t read a comic book since I was 12 years…
Explosions, pratfalls, and robots; heroes, aliens, and blondes — it must be summertime at the movies. Beyond the flash, though, it’s striking to note just how many movies will require us to actually think this summer — aren’t we supposed to save thinking for the fall? Maybe it’s the election,…
Obsessed with gaining the profitable favor of King Henry VIII (Eric Bana), the Duke of Norfolk’s original plan was to have niece Anne (Natalie Portman) become Henry’s mistress and give him the son — and heir — that his wife, Katherine of Aragon (Ana Torrent), has not. After Anne overplayed…
As one of what novelist Stephen King calls his Constant Readers, I was as jazzed as every other monster-lovin’ geek when word came that filmmaker Frank Darabont was making a movie of King’s classic novella The Mist. Cynics suggested that after tanking big time with his Frank Capra homage, The…
There have already been critical rumblings about the extreme violence in Shoot ‘Em Up, but it’s difficult to get too worked up about a film whose very title announces its maker’s intent, and which opens by raking the New Line Cinema corporate logo with machine gun fire (a gesture long…
It is as you’ve always suspected: Rob Zombie’s house is way cooler than yours. For one thing, the punk/metal god turned filmmaker has a 12-foot stuffed polar bear in his living room. (Zombie to dumbstruck interviewer: “I know, right? How fuckin’ big is that bear?”) The bear presides over dozens…
Chris Tucker still believes in Michael Jackson. You can tell, because in the very first scene of Rush Hour 3, the actor-comedian squeals melodically, grabs his crotch, and throws his arms up to the heavens. All that’s missing is a giant offstage fan to make Tucker’s shirt billow out behind…
Feast isn’t the least bit artful, but it is gleefully gruesome, which might be all one can ask of a no-budget monster movie. As the film opens, a freaked-out stranger bursts into an isolated desert tavern to warn the dozen or so people inside that man-eating creatures, possibly from another…
