There are some actors who excel at playing a wide range of eclectic roles, high or low status, mighty or feeble, comic or tragic. There are some few of these who can do so and yet still can shape a character into a thing that could only have been played by themselves. Kevin Kline is [...]

San Diego Comic-Con was a huge love fest for this, director Edgar Wright’s latest movie. (Previous beloved outings: Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz.) Some may complain of Michael Cera fatigue, but Scott Pilgrim gives Cera’s tender appeal some post-punk juice. This movie makes full use of Brian Lee O’Malley’s graphic novel source material (graphic [...]

After zillions of cop movies, buddy and lone-wolf, comedic and dramatic, the type of action that movie cops get up to has evolved into big, loud boom boom and total disregard for administrative aftermath. Even TV procedurals skip over a lot of the procedures as an act of mercy to the story. The Other Guys [...]

While I always try not to read or hear any critical buzz about a movie before I see it, some movies crawl into the cultural consciousness and become unavoidable. I had heard that enthusiasm for this movie was overblown because of its “lurid” subject matter, or its “unconventional” relationships. I find that kind of commentary [...]

The premise of Inception is difficult to convey, but worth the effort to ken. A technology exists, called “shared dreaming,” that allows two or more people to enter the same dream, and therefore the subconscious of the source of that dream. From there, the guest(s) in the dreamer’s world can access info, plant idea, build [...]

Did you see Spy Kids? Sky High? Kick-Ass is most assuredly not those movies. I expected some comedy, some teen angst, some great stunts, and I got them. Oh yes, I got them. I did not expect mob bosses, crazed double crosses, intense and squibbulous violence, a classic revenge plot, and a pretty decent little [...]

Dreamworks has been hit and miss for so long with their animated movies that I am always hesitant to be optimistic when I see them. Dragon was more than just watchable, it was great, a real winsome, fun, sweet movie. Jay Baruchel (Tropic Thunder) voices Hiccup, a puny runt in a village of strapping Vikings [...]

Gregory (Zachary Gordon), the lead and narrator of this film, starts the movie out with a cheer, uncomfortable fakeness, near to the unlikeable stench of Disney Channel sitcoms. My spirits sank, thinking I was about to endure a feature-length The Suite Life of Zack & Cody. Before long, though, the film’s self-consciousness shook itself off [...]

In March 2003, all of America was worked up into a lather – half slavering to bomb Iraq and the other half struggling to restrain the first half. On the ground, soldiers did what they could and the facts trickled slowly into our consciousness back home. Green Zone benefits from seven years of hindsight and [...]

Leaving aside that this is a French film with subtitles, when you settle in to watch it, you first feel as if you’re indulging a precocious nephew’s elaborate and logic-impaired make-believe. A lower-tech stop motion even than Robot Chicken, A Town Called Panic’s characters are common children’s toys, complete with green bases and sloppily manufactured [...]