Search for 2009

Dancing along a line just shy of the edge of brilliance, In the Loop possesses an incisive, take-no-prisoners comedic style that offers plenty of solid laughs while making a point about the stupidity, selfishness, and lack of awareness that exists ...

Under the control of a different director, The Informant! might have been a reasonably straightforward thriller. With Steven Soderbergh at the helm, however, this has become a whimsical, semi-comedic romp, complete with a score by Marvin Hamlisch ...

People suck. Life sucks. And when you get to the top, you realize that everything is hollow and pointless. That sums up Bret Easton Ellis' philosophy as well as the central themes of the latest downer of a movie based on one of his novels. The ...

With Inglourious Basterds, Quentin Tarantino has made his best movie since Pulp Fiction. He has also made what could arguably be considered the most audacious World War II movie of all-time. If you think there are rules for this sort of motion pi...

With a premise as potentially rewarding as that of Inkheart, one can be forgiven for being a little disappointed by the final result. When placed alongside other PG-rated fantasy adventure tales, this one struggles to capture the imagination. Par...

The International possesses the look and feel of a thriller, but not the heart or soul of one. With a cold, clinical precision, director Tom Tykwer establishes the complex narrative and weaves in a few extraneous action sequences, but it's an exerc...

It's Ghost Town all over again. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, especially for those who enjoyed Ricky Gervais' previous feature, but The Invention of Lying feels a little too much like a wasted opportunity. In many ways, it's a similar anima...

With the election of Barack Obama, we have apparently entered a kinder, gentler world in which films about racial harmony and goodwill to all men are becoming commonplace (at least during awards season). How else to explain the presence of both Th...

For Nancy Meyers, whose Hollywood career began with screenplay and producer credits for Private Benjamin and whose first stint behind the director's chair occurred in 1998 with the Lindsay Lohan remake of The Parent Trap (back when Lohan was still ...

Jennifer's Body mixes, matches, and crosses three popular genres: horror, comedy, and teen angst. Unfortunately, it fails at all of them - and "fails" might be too kind a term. This movie is a spectacular disaster, the kind of thing a cat might b...