Search for 2007

The Lookout is an effective little thriller that almost works from taut beginning to unspectacular end. The premise is interesting and the story is developed in such a way that the viewer is engaged throughout. The opening scene hooks us and the ...

The novel Love in the Time of Cholera is a meditation on love in its many forms. It is a serious work from Nobel Prize winning author Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The movie Love in the Time of Cholera is a misstep of nearly epic proportions. As adapt...

Like most movies concerned to one degree or another with the subject of gambling, Lucky You addresses the themes of obsession and redemption. The film loosely follows the trajectory of an "addiction movie," although it's less grim than pictures of...

Ang Lee's follow-up to Brokeback Mountain is Lust, Caution. The film's receipt of an NC-17 by the MPAA was dutifully noted by the mainstream media, as was the distributor's (Focus Features) decision not to appeal the rating. NC-17 movies aren’t r...

It's always the case that when a director does something that attracts notice (or, in some cases, notoriety), his or her next project is awaited with a degree of anticipation. This is the case with Noah Baumbach, whose The Squid and the Whale, whi...

Martian Child wants to make us cry. It nearly made me gag. This is an exercise in shameless and inept emotional manipulation. The film doesn't try to hide what it's doing. If you don't cry, it hasn't worked. There's not a single genuine human e...

It's tempting to label Meet the Robinsons as just another in a long line of recent computer animated kid-traps, but it deserves a more upbeat description. Thankfully, we're not subjected to the new staple of the big-screen cartoon - anthropomorphi...

I define a "boo!" moment as an instant in a movie when there is a loud sound, usually accompanied by a musical stinger and occasionally in concert with the fast pass of an unidentifiable object across a portion of the camera's field of view. The i...

When it comes to motion pictures, there are essentially two kinds of thrillers: visceral thrillers, which rely on action to generate tension and excitement, and intellectual thrillers, which burn more slowly but are often more satisfying in the end...

Most world renowned people have achieved that status as a result of something accomplished during their lives. Unfortunately, Daniel Pearl was among the few who became famous as a result of his death. Pearl's kidnapping and subsequent death at the...