Longtime Cinerina readers well know that I am no Shrek fan. Oh sure, the first movie was full of sly digs at Walt Disney animation studios and various corporate America icons - but funny? A little. Not better than Pixar’s Monsters Inc., which it inexplicably beat for the first ever Animated Feature […]

I didn’t really want to see this movie. Generally, I have liked the Spider-Man movies more than many of the other comic book adaptations, but I had zero interest in a third go-round. Seventy-five minutes into it, I check my watch and groaned, realizing from the preview that we haven’t even introduced all […]

When I walked out of the theatre, I felt satisfied, as if I had sat down to a good meal at a new restaurant. I thought I had a lot of nice story things to chew on and appreciate…and then I forgot all about it. Signs of age or deceptively shallow filmmaking? […]

Jim Carrey has made many brave choices, as do so many comedians who parlay their comic skills into acting, and The Number 23 is one of them. I am a noisy advocate of his dramatic work, and this first time he attempting a psychological thriller is a departure from his previous excellent choices. […]

As my companion dourly noted, “I just paid $30.00 to see Star Wars.” (And yes, that’s matinee pricing and all I had was a water.) As you have probably heard by now, the book on which the movie was based was written by Christopher Paolini when he was 15 years old. Now, […]

Eric Schlosser’s non-fiction book Fast Food Nation is a dense but fascinating (and nightmare inducing) read, an in-depth dissection of the many elements that feed and influence the fast food machine in the U.S. I have to confess I couldn’t get all the way through it - about half way through the chapter […]

Had the lushly shot opening sequence not utterly ruined the film (dramatic irony serves no narrative purpose here except to foment impatience), I think I would have enjoyed this movie much more than I did. I don’t want to ruin it for you (even as I accuse the filmmakers) since maybe you’ll catch it […]

Well, if you liked Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, you’ll probably love Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby. I keep having great hopes for Will Ferrell. He entices me in a way most of the frat pack does not, drawing me in despite his track record with me (Elf and Bewitched, he was […]

How can Robots be so good and both Ice Age movies be so lame? Sure, both Ice Age movies have good attention to detail insofar as biology and various species-specific jokes, but when the best part of both movies is the non-verbal interstitial episodes of Scrat trying to get his walnut, maybe you should […]

One mistake one should never make is seeing a movie like this right after seeing a movie like Munich. It will scramble your communication skills completely. Taking advantage of the Ricky Gervaise-inspired craze of comedy through self-immolation (metaphorical), Albert Brooks directs his self-penned trip to a land of self-immolation (literal) to see what […]