Zach Helm (writer of the delightful Stranger Than Fiction) writes and directs this film, one that is, by discussions I have had, either going to be a massive classic or vanish into obscurity. From these two works of Helms, it is clear that he loves the notion of inanimate objects being more in tune […]

Neither as terrible as it could be nor as funny as it should be, with that cast, Fred Claus is a painless way to catch a new holiday movie this season without getting into a fight about what part was the lamest. The premise is interesting - Fred is the never-measures-up older brother of […]

Bee Movie is smarter than it is funny. That’s not to say there isn’t funny stuff in there, it just means that Jerry Seinfeld and his writers probably had very little intention of dumbing down their writing for animation purposes. And thank heavens for that! There is plenty of kid-movie slumming in […]

Rendition is the latest filmic attempt to draw attention to what’s already numbing us in the news. In this case, we have a citizen who is, um, renditioned on the way home to the US for a crime about which he is utterly ignorant, never mind culpable. Writer Kelley Sane seems to want […]

Two journalists in Baghdad in 2003 and 2004 started to notice some trends in the Iraqi response to American troop presence, trends they thought were not being fully explored by their press colleagues. Steve Connors and Molly Bingham proceeded to obtain unheard of access to private footage and on-the-ground action. They wove that […]

Actor Annabelle Gurwitch was fired from a play by Woody Allen. While there are many ways to suffer indignities and setbacks, hers was one that appears to have opened her eyes to other people getting fired. Now that she has endured this most painful of slights, she undertakes to hear about others’ tragic […]

The adrenaline-fueled previews for Michael Clayton had me all aquiver after Clooney’s last masterpiece, Good Night and Good Luck. I was anticipating a big Oscar-montage speech from an impassioned Clooney, maybe about some aspect of right and wrong I had never considered. This topic would be either new to me or something I […]

I confess it is very difficult to comment on this movie. Was it well crafted? Indeed; Ang Lee is a consummate perfectionist and always seems to have a true love affair with his filmic subjects. Was the story interesting? Yes, for the most part - a group of young politically fervent […]

The Kingdom begins with a visually dynamic (almost TV commercial style) narrative of a brief history of 20th century US involvement in the Middle East, specifically the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia itself. It’s common knowledge, but the sort that gets swept away for being too morally ambiguous for the color coded terror system or […]

Jack Finney’s 1956 Collier’s magazine serial Invasion of The Bodysnatchers is as vital an original work as George Romero’s first zombie movie in 1968. It’s imminently adaptable and re-adaptable, tweaking it ever so slightly for a whole new metameaning depending on society’s anxieties of the day. In 1956, the story couched its thinly […]