Movie Reviews

Avatar was much better than good. Cameron has now set the bar so high that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas will spend the rest of their careers trying to reach the planet Pandora.

It's Complicated gives us Meryl as the ex-wife of a philanderingly attractive Alec Baldwin, married to the hot young woman he dumped her for.

I didn't feel as that 162 minutes had elapsed by the end. But, then again, I didn't feel much of anything before, during, or after the movie.

Even the ham-fistedness of Avatar's message is part of its charm: few writer-directors other than Peter Jackson get the chance to make a $250 million movie.

Los Abrazos Rotos sounds so much more romantic, and reflects better, to this non-Spanish speaker, the complicated story that this movie tells than Broken Embraces.

This annual list does not include expensive but unoriginal films based on comic books, video games, graphic novels, old movies that were bad, old movies that were good or sequels.

Fantastic Mr. Fox the film is about realizing that you can't run from who you are. But like Where the Wild Things Are, the movie has an uneven tone thanks to its adapters and intended audience

Over the five-day Thanksgiving weekend, Old Dogs made $24 million -- once this "film" is finished stealing from us, it might actually make a little cash.

Here's what happens in New Moon. Three teenagers spend nearly two hours frowning and moping and not screwing. Also, there's a tremendous amount of male shirt removal.

The Host is a well-constructed homage to classic monster movies that hits all the right notes, but never truly feels transcendent.

Fincher's brilliant fusion of style and substance created a thought-provoking, bloody experience that was worshiped and criticized for its takes on movies, manhood, violence and corporate culture.

Simultaneously a dark, sometimes surreal examination of the US military's foray into psychic warfare, and a comedy with some nuggets of alleged truth.

Spike Jonze does a great job of evoking the weird and making it normal, but he's never quite pulled off believable emotion. Ultimately, that's what sinks Where the Wild Things Are.

The Men Who Stare At Goats is a collection of tonally tin-eared, quirky setpieces that strain believability and almost completely ignore the human cost of the Iraq War, during which the movie is set.

Is Dennis Hill a nut case for boarding people-eating cats in his backyard? Or is Dennis merely a genuine individualist doing his thing?

My theory is that Hollywood decided to remake Ishtar. The reason, I can only guess: global warming. It's causing everything else these days.

Michael was at home on stage. He commanded it. He walked it, owned it, like a panther stalking prey. He knew every inch of the stage. It was his, and there's no denying it.

And the main reason is because hatred/fear of gays is running neck-and-neck with hatred/fear of government for the most defining, unifying characteristic of the "modern" republican party.

The second part of my interview with Daniel Ellsberg, the true American hero who leaked the Pentagon Papers in 1971.

The remarkable film, Amreeka, the first feature length work of a young Palestinian-Jordanian American, marks an introduction to the Arab immigrant experience in post 9-11 America.

I was enthralled by The Most Dangerous Man in America, and when I was told that Ellsberg would be in Los Angeles for a week in late September and would be available for an interview, I jumped at the chance.

The Coen universe is so meticulously crafted that the absence of an inherent order seems almost impossible. How could something of such exquisite function arise from something so absurd and meaningless?

An excoriating critique of America's economic ideology, Capitalism may go down as one of the most timely and subversive films in movie history

The Exorcist's head spinning, green vomit, and shots of demonic shapes aren't going to make a Clinton-era cable-watcher rush from his living room in fright.