Movies

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: Good Hair

Chris Rock will make your head itch to know more
According to Chris Rock, this documentary directed by Jeff Stilson was born when his young daughter asked him: “Daddy, how come I don’t have good hair?”

By SHAULA CLARK | October 26, 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: Law Abiding Citizen

Kind of fun, if you can ignore its politics
If a thousand BostonHerald.com commenters chained to a thousand typewriters produced a movie script, it would probably read an awful lot like F. Gary Gray’s vigilante-revenge thriller.

By SHAULA CLARK | October 16, 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: St. Trinians

Earns a passing a grade
Some out-of-work A-list British actors end up at Hogwarts. Others must settle for St. Trinian’s.

By PETER KEOUGH | October 15, 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

Interview: Colin Beavan

It's not easy going green
"In my twenties, I was really concerned with global warming. In my thirties, I was really focused on being a writer."

By TOM MEEK | October 02, 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: 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: 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: 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