Movies with cinematographer Michael Barrett

I don’t understand how certain films are selected for remakes. Take Overboard, for example. The original, a 1987 production starring Goldie Hawn and Kurt Russell and directed by Frank Marshall, was a mostly failed screwball comedy that worke...

The original Ted was an engagingly ribald comedy that worked in large part because the gimmick was fresh. After all, Teddy Bears, even on those rare occasions when they talk, don't normally curse, smoke weed, and engage in sexual pantomime. At th...

It would be inaccurate to claim that A Million Ways to Die in the West is devoid of humor. It isn't. However, Seth MacFarlane's hit-and-miss spoof of Westerns has far more "misses" than "hits" and the actor-director-writer (Ted) doesn't seem to rea...

About Last Night, a remake of the 1986 Edward Zwick film which was in turn an adaptation of David Mamet's play, Sexual Perversity in Chicago, manages the difficult task of being faithful to the original while taking things in a new direction. The t...

Ted is essentially a one-joke movie. Okay, it's a very funny joke, but it's still only one joke. As a short, this could have been brilliant - hilarious, irreverent, and blisteringly satirical. I laughed a lot during the first half hour, not as much...

Making an entertaining Christmas movie - at least one that can be enjoyed by anyone having gone through puberty - has become a lost art. I'm not referring to a title destined to take its place among the timeless classics, but merely something that ...

Zookeeper is no Mall Cop. The 2009 comedy, Paul Blart: Mall Cop, may have been one of the most unexpectedly pleasant movie-going surprises of the past few years. It was better than it had a right to be and convinced audiences that, in addition to f...

As their careers develop, many comedians yearn to cross over into serious dramatic roles, if only on occasion. This has happened with John Cleese, Steve Martin, Robin Williams, Tom Hanks, Jim Carrey, and Adam Sandler. Some are more successful than...

Takers is a standard-order heist flick that stays mostly true to its B-movie roots until the end, when director John Luessenhop attempts to inject a little seriousness (there's some slow-motion and even an operatic score) into an otherwise unpreten...

Watching You Don't Mess with the Zohan is a little like watching an episode of the TV show of which Adam Sandler is an alum: Saturday Night Live. Zohan feels like an extended collection of skits tied together by a flimsy umbrella story. It feature...