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Review: The Men Who Stare at Goats

Bleating hearts tame Goats
Here’s a subject that really could have used a Stanley Kubrick or a John Frankenheimer or a Robert Altman. But are there any great cinematic satirists left, auteurs with the knack for black comedy and cold-blooded irony?

By PETER KEOUGH | November 06, 2009

Review: Michael Jackson's This Is It

Is this it?
The Star Wars –style titles that begin Kenny Ortega’s hastily assembled Michael Jackson tribute documentary explain that the film has been whittled down from 100 hours of behind-the-scenes video shot between last April and June during rehearsals for the King of Pop’s planned 50-date “This Is It” London concert series.

By BRETT MICHEL | November 04, 2009

Review: Disney's A Christmas Carol

State-of-the-art technology allows actors to reach new heights of hamminess
Charles Dickens made a mint with readings of A Christmas Carol , but a century and a half of technological progress has not been kind to the property.

By PETER KEOUGH | November 03, 2009

Review: The Fourth Kind

Creepy, but clumsy
If the “actual footage” used in this film is real, then there’s something going on up in Alaska even more frightening than the rise of Sarah Palin.

By DAVID WILDMAN | November 04, 2009

Review: The Boondock Saints II: All Saints Day

This is bullshit.
You’d think Troy Duffy would have learned something in the decade since he blew his golden ticket with The Boondock Saints .

By BRETT MICHEL | November 02, 2009

Review: Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant

Harry Potter it ain’t, but it’s fun all the same.
You’ve seen it all before: a boy with a special destiny tangles with the occult and gets sucked out of his normal life and into the twilight realm of the supernatural, in the process setting the stage for paranormal war between good and evil.

By SHAULA CLARK | October 28, 2009

Review: Saw VI

Surprisingly timely
Jigsaw (Tobin Bell), the self-righteous serial killer of the long-toothed franchise, may have succumbed to cancer a few films back, but he remains very much alive in plot and presence.

By TOM MEEK | October 30, 2009

Review: Amelia

Plane bad
The hallowed formula for an Oscar Best Picture nomination — legendary figure, pat rise and fall scenario, overproduced visuals and music, a showboating performance from a name actor, reassuring platitudes — falls flat in what is Mira Nair’s worst picture.

By PETER KEOUGH | October 29, 2009

Review: The Stepfather

Remake fails to get any blood flowing
If you call a film The Stepfather , then your title character should have the decency to marry into that perfect little family that he’s predisposed to butcher and kill.

By BRETT MICHEL | October 21, 2009

Review: Astro Boy

Partisan politics rain down like meatballs
Five-year-olds who attend MoveOn.org rallies in between tee-ball and bath time are sure to love the new David Bowers–directed interpretation of Osamu Tezuka’s flagship character.

By CHRIS FARAONE | October 21, 2009

Review: Where the Wild Things Are

Jonze, Eggers, and Sendak aren’t kidding around
I can’t speak for the kids, but I would rate Spike Jonze & Dave Eggers’s adaptation of Maurice Sendak’s 40-page children’s picture book up there with Up and Wall•E as topping the recent renaissance in children’s movies. If pressed, I’d rank it close to The Wizard of Oz .

By PETER KEOUGH | October 19, 2009

Review: Couples Retreat

Couples (and everyone else), retreat.
This movie has the power to make any date feel as endless and soul-sucking as the lifetime’s worth of defective, hateful marriages that doom the film’s protagonists.

By SHAULA CLARK | October 14, 2009

Review: More Than a Game

More than a LeBron James showcase, too
Most know about the rise of LeBron James from impoverished Ohio roots (fatherless and raised in public housing) to mega-millionaire and NBA phenom, so why make a documentary?

By TOM MEEK | October 14, 2009

Review: Chelsea on the Rocks

Abel Ferrara paints an affectionate portrait
Manhattan’s Chelsea Hotel has been the roost of artists, writers, musicians, actors — and a lot of wanna-bes.

By BETSY SHERMAN | October 14, 2009

Review: Earth Days

Did you know Nixon once signed progressive eco-legislation?
Those who worry that the eco-movement seems incapable of getting beyond its white upper-middle-class base will be disturbed anew by Robert Stone’s Earth Days , where every talking head is a well-bred Caucasian.

By GERALD PEARY | October 07, 2009

Review: Paranormal Activity

More than cheap thrills
The "normal" puts the chills in Paranormal Activity .

By Peter Keough | October 15, 2009

Review: No Impact Man

Green documentary does make its point
As an eco-idealist living in New York City, Colin Beavan made a media splash when he declared that he and his family would live 100 percent green for a year.

By TOM MEEK | September 30, 2009

Review: Surrogates

Philip K. Dick-ian premise deserves better
Some day in the future — or is it right now? — people will be replaced by surrogate robots, superhuman automatons who live out big-screen fantasies while their hosts, with their greasy hair and bad skin, sit back in wired-up La-Z-Boys.

By PETER KEOUGH | September 30, 2009

Review: Zombieland

Young actors need to make a living too.
Does it mean anything that Jesse Eisenberg's follow-up to Adventureland is Zombieland and that it also includes a theme park?

By PETER KEOUGH | October 05, 2009

Review: The Boys Are Back

We're supposed to root for this guy?
Director Scott Hicks ( Shine ) returns to warm hearts with the saga of Joe Warr, a journalist (based on real-life columnist Simon Carr, and played by Clive Owen) whose second wife (Laura Fraser) dies of cancer, leaving him a single father with a hands-off parenting style.

By SHAULA CLARK | September 30, 2009

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