Past Stories
Vacancy
Puttering down a rural road past midnight, Amy and Dave (Kate Beckinsale and Luke Wilson) think the worst is behind them: they’ve lost their son and let grief shatter their marriage. But after their car breaks down, the s...
Bobbies Gone Wild!
The biggest difference between England and the US? Bruce Willis. In the last 30 years, the UK hasn’t made a single action hero cop movie. Here, Willis alone has starred in a dozen. Face it, bobbies just ain’t cool. ...
Cheeto Nation
It seems like lately we’re constantly being bombarded with advertising campaigns that proclaim “Zero Grams Trans Fat!” or “Now with Omega-3s!” But why do these things truly matter, you ask, if the ...
SING NOW OR FOREVER HOLD YOUR PEACE
Fifteen years after their crooning of Phil Collins’ “Take Me Home” rocked their college campus, this seven-man acapella group—now on the wrong side of 35—have managed, mostly, to stay tight. They&r...
Raymond Carver Crossed with Oprah
A Raymond Carver short story is a straight-arrow shot through the forest that is human behavior. They’re economical tales—some nearly all dialogue—and they whiz by and hit the gut, leaving you with a vague sen...
Detangled Web
Into a decade glutted with superhero flicks comes a new first: a franchise that improves with every installment. Has a three-quel ever been the best film in a series? Not Terminator 3, not Godfather 3, not Superman 3, Rocky 3,&...
GEORGIA RULE
Lilly (Felicity Huffman) and her daughter Rachel (Lindsay Lohan) are a mess—a pair of Californian boozehounds who throw temper tantrums like clockwork. But that’s nothing that irritatingly wholesome grandma Georgia ...
Zombies, Schmombies
We’re in Year Six of Hollywood’s zombification of our horror movies—a reign of moderate terror—that peaked with Dawn and Shawn of the Dead, and it’s gotten steadily sillier. Hopefully this head-sla...
Hot, Throbbing Ogre
With two directors and eight writers, Shrek the Third proves the value of comedy-by-committee. That many cooks would make a terrible soup, but here they stuff a solid piece of ham. Fun, if inconsistent, this threequel seems a b...
THE LAST TIME
Salesman Ted (Michael Keaton) rakes in more cash for the struggling Bindview Corporation then everyone else in his division combined and doubled. Which gives him license to act like a real asshole. Strutting down the cubicles l...
Perfectly Executed!
Global arms-manufacturing corporation Palisades Defense—the McDonald’s of weaponry—enjoys making big claims. Their land mines, assault rifles, and missile launchers aren’t ethically questionable, they&rs...
BUG
Exorcist director William Friedkin lays a smotheringly expressionist blanket over Tracy Lett’s skin-crawling play about a battered meth freak desperate for company. Aggie (a heartbreaking Ashley Judd) is vulnerable and a...
She’s Having Two Babies
If the vomit scene in The 40 Year Old Virgin didn’t scare you off nookie for good, here comes Knocked Up, Judd Apatow’s latest blow to premarital promiscuity.
Ben (Seth Rogan) is a jobless beerbarian. Broke, stoned,...
CRAZY LOVE
Linda Riss, a 21-year-old beauty from the Bronx, wasn’t impressed when gawky lawyer Burt Pugash ran up five decades ago and professed his love. But when her mercenary grandma heard about his nightclub, powder-blue Cadilla...
SURF’S UP
The risk with animation is that what’s hip in the executive boardroom is totally played out by the time every last pixel has been painstakingly placed. Aim for cool, and two years later you’re embarrassingly pass&e...
The Cool Kids Club
If you sat through Ocean’s Eleven and Twelve, you might have a dim sense by Ocean’s Thirteen that George Clooney is supposed to be Danny and Brad Pitt is named Rusty. Character is secondary; the franchise coasts by ...
BLACK SHEEP
Big-bucks rancher Angus (Peter Feeney) thought genetic engineering was a brilliant idea until his sheep turned into carnivorous zombies. One bite to a man, and he starts looking suspiciously like Jon Heder; four hours (and four...
Unholy
Steve Carell has several rare skills: squaring his shoulders, smiling broad, acting sincere, and acting like he thinks we think he’s sincere when he’s not. He’s got the face of a gerbil and the soul of...
So You Want Quality Health Care, Eh?
The good news is Californians are almost as close to a universal plan as ever: Bill SB 840, sponsored by Senator Sheila Kuehl (who, FYI, used to play Zelda on Dobie Gillis) proposes a single-payer system that would give all&hel...
Strange Medicine
</p>OnOn May 9th, California native Edith Isabel Rodriguez was refused by Martin Luther King/Drew Hospital in Los Angeles because the emergency room staff wrote her off as a hypochondriac and uninsured. As she wri...
LIVE FREE OR DIE HARD
John McClane’s latest smash-up struggle to save America kicks off with the aging detective (Bruce Willis, bald and beautiful) in decline, his contribution to securing our borders from terrorism limited to making sure no b...
When Marketing Departments Attack!
For 12 years, Michael Bay has been a juggernaut who rakes in more summer cash than sunscreen. Yet it was only six films ago that he was shooting softcore Playboy specials and documentaries on Wilson Phillips. While the suits ma...
RESCUE DAWN
German-American Navy pilot Dieter Dengler survived five plane crashes, which so impressed director Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man, Aguirre the Wrath of God) that he’s filmed his story twice. Dieter’s first and worst dis...
Friendly Fascism
Harry Potter hasn’t died (yet), but the giddy naïf whose eyes twinkled when he waved his wand is long in the grave. Five films into the franchise, he carries his magic stick like it’s made of concrete, not phoe...
INTERVIEW
It’s not a puff piece when journalist Pierre Peters (Steve Buscemi, who also wrote and directed) sits down with starlet Katya (Sienna Miller). It’s a knife fight. Pierre is a “serious journalist,” only h...
SUNSHINE
Danny Boyle’s latest heart-stopper takes us on a quest at once incredibly epic and impossibly lonely. The eight-person international crew of the Icarus II must restart the sun to save life on earth. Onboard their ship is ...
Gagging On Fumes
“In Baltimore,” belts Tracy Turnblad (Nikki Blonsky), “every sound is like a symphony.” Not exactly. Charm City—in this kitschy musical as created by John Waters, adapted for the stage by Mar...
I NOW PRONOUNCE YOU CHUCK & LARRY
A widowed fireman named Larry (Kevin James) and Chuck, his horndog coworker (Adam Sandler, aging fast), sidestep an insurance snag as preposterous as anything Michael Moore could skewer by pretending to be domestic partners, or...
