Once (Fox) Easily the year’s most perfect pop album — damn good movie, too, the finest “musical” of the past 20 years. The disc’s making-of refers to it as a “modern musical,” but Once is as old-fashioned as it gets: Boy (Glen Hansard) meets girl (Markéta Irglová), they fall in…
As an actor, John C. Reilly is the opposite of Mr. Cellophane. He doesn’t disappear into a role; roles disappear onto him — the unlikely porn sidekick of Boogie Nights, the inadequately adequate family man of The Hours, the cutup cowboy of A Prairie Home Companion, all stamped and imprinted…
During its early moments, Jason Reitman’s second feature threatens to choke on its quotation-marks catch phrases — like when The Office’s Rainn Wilson, cameoing as a convenience-store clerk, tells Ellen Page’s 16-year-old Juno MacGuff that her positive pregnancy test is “one doodle that can’t be undid, home skillet.” Or when…
The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Volume Two — The War Years (Paramount) Alien Apocalypse (Anchor Bay) Balls of Fury (Universal) Black Moon Rising (Anchor Bay) Boy Eats Girl (Lionsgate) Braveheart: Special Collector’s Edition (Paramount) Bring It On: In It to Win It (Universal) Cinderella II: Dreams Come True Special…
The Bourne Ultimatum (Universal) The final installment in the Bourne-again trilogy is the one in which the CIA assassin’s true identity is revealed. It’s the origin story in reverse — how brilliant. But solving the mystery (and misery, for Jason Bourne is among the most tormented action heroes of all…
There are two momentous performances in the Darwinian horror fable I Am Legend. One is by the movie’s star, Will Smith — but more about him in a minute. The other is by the movie’s visual effects — not the ones that bring to life a nocturnal army of shrieking,…
There are comedies of discomfort, and then there’s Margot at the Wedding, Noah Baumbach’s scalding followup to The Squid and the Whale. An immersion in sibling malice and simmering resentment, with one of the most infuriating characters in recent movies holding us under, Margot tramples the commandment that only the…
For any high-fivin’ “Movies for Guys Who Like Movies” bros hoping for the Guy Ritchie of yore, Revolver disappoints. It’s no return to rock, but rather Ritchie’s soporific, proggy-conceptual Film of Ideas, with Vivaldi interludes, fussbudget set design, recurrent references to chess, and a hit man inexplicably got up as…
Beverly Hills 90210: The Third Season (Paramount) Big Love: The Complete Second Season (HBO) Born Killers (Lionsgate) The Boston Red Sox 2007 World Series Collector’s Edition (A&E) The Conscientious Objector (Cinequest) Dave Attell: Captain Miserable (HBO) Dirt: The Complete First Season (Buena Vista) Flight 29 Down: Volume Three (Discovery Kids)…
Casting Nicole Kidman as The Golden Compass’s glacial, intractably smooth megalomaniac Mrs. Coulter is no less inspired for being obvious. Indeed she was the one and only choice for director Chris Weitz, who adapted this first installment of Philip Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” trilogy. Despite the book’s description of the…
Can-do pep is the resonant key in this profile of six individuals, spread across three continents, working to provide relief in western Sudan. Featured are a sheik displaced by internecine warfare, International Criminal Court prosecutor Dr. Luis Moreno-Ocampo, a young L.A.-based activist, and … Don Cheadle. The film tarries briefly…
Battlestar Galactica: Razor (Universal) The Best of Crank Yankers (Paramount) Bob Hope: MGM Movie Legends Collection (MGM) Erik the Viking: The Director’s Cut (MGM) Exiled (Magnolia) The Flash Gordon Collection (Passport) Tyler Perry’s House of Payne (Lionsgate) Ingmar Bergman: Four Masterworks (Criterion) Lady Chatterly (Kino) Law & Order: Special Victims…
The Girl Next Door (Anchor Bay) If the horror of Saw were a poblano pepper, this here is a habanero. Derived sometimes word-for-word from Jack Ketchum’s infamous novel — itself based on a true story — Girl Next Door is a sort of Hostel meets Stand by Me: A group…
Re-reading Ian McEwan’s Atonement last weekend, my first thought was: I hope to God that Joe Wright — whose broadly grinning Pride & Prejudice made a mess of Jane Austen two years ago — doesn’t screw up this wonderful novel about lust, love, loss, and what art can do to…
Although he plays a college professor in his latest film, Robert Redford was, by his own admission, never much of a student, consistently more interested in what was going on outside the classroom window. But there’s one moment from Redford’s academic past that burns brightly in his memory. The year…
Fresh from creating domestic cyber-anarchy in this summer’s Live Free or Die Hard, Timothy Olyphant goes global as top-flight international assassin Agent 47 in producer Luc Besson and director Xavier Gens’s bargain-basement adaptation of the titular videogame. Cut loose by his Orwellian parent organization (known only as “the organization”) following…
Bratz (Lionsgate) Drunken Angel: The Criterion Collection (Criterion) Elvis: Blue Suede Collection (Warner Bros.) ESPNU Honor Roll: The Best of College Football (ESPN) Happy Days: The Third Season (Paramount) Hot Fuzz: 3-Disc Collector’s Edition (Universal) The Land Before Time: The Wisdom of Friends (Universal) Laverne & Shirley: The Third Season…
Hot Rod (Paramount) Andy Samberg, best known for stuffing his dick in a box on Saturday Night Live, is Rod Kimble, a wannabe stuntman with very little “man” in him. He lives with his mom (Sissy Spacek, not kidding) and a stepdad (Ian McShane) who needs a new heart at…
Something about that movie though, well I just can’t get it out of my head. But I can’t remember why I was in it or what part I was supposed to play. — Bob Dylan, “Brownsville Girl” Literally speaking, Bob Dylan isn’t “there” in Todd Haynes’s staggering mixtape biopic I’m…
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…
The premise had promise: Characters from a “vintage” Disney movie suddenly find themselves thrust into our world. But somewhere between conception and execution, what could have been so much smart, sharp fun turned decidedly pedestrian. Julie Andrews (awww) narrates the opening animated sequence about a girl named Giselle (voiced by…
Angel-A (Sony) The Batman: The Complete Fourth Season (Warner Bros.) Bill Maher: The Decider (HBO) Broken (First Look) Chappelle’s Show: The Series Collection (Paramount) CSI: Crime Scene Investigation The Complete Seventh Season (Paramount) Eric Clapton: Crossroads Guitar Festival 2007 (Rhino) Gene Simmons Family Jewels: The Complete Season 2 (A&E) Hairspray…
