|
Mega Movie Guide 2005
(E through J)
Elizabethtown (PG-13)
Director: Cameron Crowe. With Orlando Bloom, Kirsten Dunst, Susan Sarandon. (123 min.)
Drew Baylor (Bloom) is a shoe designer whose latest, botched creation, is about to hit the stores. As an added bonus, Drew's girlfriend dumps him, and he gets word that his father has suddenly died in his hometown of Elizabethtown, Ky. Jetting in to plan the funeral, he encounters an attractive flight attendant (Dunst). "Elizabethtown" is scaled big but is curiously uninvolving.
Grade:
C-
- P.R.
Sex/Nudity: 2 scenes of innuendo and implied sex.
Violence: 1 scene of attempted suicide.
Profanity: 11 expressions, some harsh.
Drugs/Alcohol: 9 scenes with drinking.
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (Not rated)
Director: Alex Gibney. With Bethany McLean, various Enron executives. (110 min.)
Spellbinding documentary about the rise and fall of Enron, which aspired to be the world's leading business until it was sabotaged by its leaders' outrageous financial fraud. As real-life stories go, this is as riveting - and as revealing about the dark side of American business - as they come.
Grade:
A
- P.R.
Sex/Nudity: 1 instance.
Violence: 1 instance.
Profanity: 23 instances.
Drugs/Alcohol: 1 scene of smoking.
Everything is Illuminated (PG-13)
Director: Liev Schreiber. With Elijah Wood, Eugene Hutz. (96 min.)
Liev Schreiber, one of the finest actors of his generation, has chosen to adapt the sprawling Jonathan Safran Foer novel about a young Jewish-American's journey to a Ukrainian village to seek out the woman who saved his grandfather from the Nazis. The presentation has verve. But the story is confusingly told - everything is not illuminated - and, as the seeker, Elijah Wood is a blank.
Grade:
C+
- P.R.
The Family Stone (PG-13)
Director: Thomas Bezucha. With Diane Keaton, Sarah Jessica Parker, Rachel McAdams. (102 min.)
Could we please declare a moratorium on funny-sad movies about dysfunctional families, especially families that come together for the holidays? Writer-director Thomas Bezucha practically turns the Stones into the Addams family. Diane Keaton, as the family matriarch, does her considerable best to add some flesh tones to her Crayola role.
Grade:
C
- P.R.
Sex/Nudity: 5 instances of innuendo.
Violence: 1 scene.
Profanity: 21 expressions.
Drugs/Alcohol: 4 scenes of drinking, 1 scene with drugs.
Fantastic Four (PG-13)
Director: Tim Story. With Jessica Alba, Michael Chiklis. (106 min.)
The Human Torch, The Invisible Woman, The Thing, and Mr. Fantastic himself join forces for the Marvel Comics tale of astronauts who gain exotic powers from a radiation storm in outer space. It's fun to watch superheroes who aren't quite at ease with their abilities, but "The Incredibles" - last year's similarly themed animated film - is livelier and funnier.
Grade:
C
- D.S.
Sex/Nudity: some mild innuendo.
Violence: 20 scenes.
Profanity: 17 profanities.
Drugs/Alcohol: 3 scenes with drinking.
Flightplan (PG-13)
Director: Robert Schwentke. With Jodi Foster, Peter Sarsgaard. (98 min.)
Foster is convincing enough as a newly widowed mother who awakens to find her daughter missing from her plane seat. We're so off-balance about whether or not Kyle has imagined boarding with her daughter - a child no one else on the plane can remember seeing - that we never work up any sympathy for a character who may simply be a delusional nuisance.
Grade:
C
- J.A.
Sex/Nudity: 1 innuendo.
Violence: 10 scenes.
Profanity: 12 instances.
Drugs/Alcohol: None.
Fun With Dick and Jane (PG-13)
Director: Dean Parisot. With Jim Carrey, Téa Leoni. (90 min.)
This update of the 1977 George Segal-Jane Fonda comedy stars Jim Carrey as an executive at an Enron-style company who, faced with bankruptcy, goes on a crime spree with his peppy wife, played by Téa Leoni. Most of it plays out as sub-medium-grade farce but Carrey has some funny calisthenic bits where appears to have the pliability of a rubber toy. Director Dean Parisot, who made the hilarious sci-fi spoof "Galaxy Quest," ladles on too much socially-conscious sauce. In what is basically an airhead romp, he goes in for way too much nudging about Bush-era corporate malfeasance. Even Ralph Nader makes an appearance!
Grade:
C+
- P.R.
The Girl From Monday (Not rated)
Director: Hal Hartley. With Sabrina Lloyd, Bill Sage. (84 min.)
One of the few truly independent filmmakers with an ongoing career, Hartley dives into science-fiction allegory with this story about a future when consumerism is the law and counterrevolutionaries want to fight it any way they can. There's heavy influence from the "Brave New World" brand of dystopian fantasy, but engaging performances and a stylized visual approach lend it originality.
Grade:
B
- D.S.
Going Shopping (PG-13)
Director: Henry Jaglom. With Victoria Foyt, Rob Morrow. (106 min.)
In this witty follow-up to director Henry Jaglom's "Eating" and "Baby Fever," Foyt plays a dress designer who has 24 hours to raise three months rent or lose her boutique. Meanwhile, she's coping with a doltish boyfriend, a precocious daughter, and unwelcome advice from her overbearing mom. The whole thing is as frantic as a two-hour bargain-basement sale.
Grade:
B-
-
M.K.T.
Sex/Nudity: 2 instances of innuendo.
Violence: 1 instance of slapping.
Profanity: 39 instances (1 strong).
Drugs/Alcohol: 2 scenes with drinking, 1 with smoking.
The Great Raid (R)
Director: John Dahl. With Benjamin Bratt, Connie Nielsen. (132 min.)
Bratt, doing a commendable Clark Gable, must lead a once-ragtag-now-crackerjack team of Army Rangers into the Philippines to rescue 500 American soldiers imprisoned on the Philippines during World War II. Overheated acting and bulked-up direction are a lot older than even John Wayne, whose spirit casts a none-too-gentle shadow over the film.
Grade:
B
- J.A.
The Greatest Game Ever Played (PG)
Directors: Bill Paxton. With Shia LeBeouf, Stephen Dillane. (120 min.)
No one but Harry Vardon has ever won the British Open six times. But at the 1913 US Open in Brookline, Mass., Francis Ouimet, an amateur who had only caddied at the club and who idolized Vardon, beat him. This charming film is rich in humor and period detail, and amazingly suspenseful considering we already know the outcome.
Grade:
B
- M.K.T.
Sex/Nudity: None.
Violence: 1 scene.
Profanity: 3 mild.
Drugs/Alcohol: 10 scenes with alcohol, 11 scenes with smoking.
Green Street Hooligans (R)
Director: Lexi Alexander. With Elijah Wood, Charlie Hunnam. (109 min.)
Shaking off the hairy foot of the hobbit for the jackboot of the football (don't call it "soccer") fan, Wood plays a student who goes to London only to be seduced by the violence of the football hooligan. The film has a convincing performance by Wood as a meek kid out of his element for whom the group provides something larger than himself.
Grade:
B
- J.A.
Grizzly Man (R)
Director: Werner Herzog. With Timothy Treadwell, Werner Herzog. (103 min.)
Documentary about a highly peculiar nature enthusiast who lived in the woods with bears and recorded his close encounters on video, until one decided to eat him. As revealing about Herzog as about his subject, the movie is brilliant, poetic, and utterly unique.
Grade:
A
- D.S.
Happy Endings (R)
Director: Don Roos. With Lisa Kudrow, Maggie Gyllenhaal. (128 min.)
A sleazy filmmaker, a woman who gave her child up for adoption years ago, a wealthy father, and his rock-singer mistress are among the many characters of this comedy-drama about intertwined lives, some heterosexual, others not. There are marvelous moments and dull ones. The best asset is first-rate acting; the worst liability is Roos's overuse of cinematic gimmicks.
Grade:
B
- D.S.
Sex/Nudity: 17 scenes.
Violence: 4 instances.
Profanity: 83 instances.
Drugs/Alcohol: 18 drinking, smoking, and drug use.
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (PG-13)
Director: Mike Newell. With Daniel Radcliffe, Ralph Fiennes, Emma Watson. (157 min.)
Now in his fourth year at Hogwarts, Harry is mysteriously made a participant in the dreaded Triwizard Tournament, a competition that involves tasks such as evading a ferocious dragon. Equally harrowing, in some respects, is the student's Yule Ball, where for the first time we are made thunderously aware that Harry and the carrot-topped Ron and Hermione are, well, adolescents. The film has the tension and velocity of a good thriller.
Grade:
A-
- P.R.
Sex/Nudity: 2 instances of mild innuendo.
Violence: 21 scenes of violence.
Profanity: 7 mild expressions.
Drugs/Alcohol: 4 scenes of drinking.
Heights (R)
Director: Chris Terrio. With Glenn Close, Jesse Bradford. (93 min.)
A young actor, a middle-aged actress, a snoopy journalist, a rising photographer, and her possibly gay fiancé are among the diverse characters of this psychological comedy-drama, which unfolds in New York in a 24-hour period. There's much subtle beauty in the last movie completed by Merchant Ivory Productions before Merchant's untimely death.
Grade:
A
- D.S.
Herbie: Fully Loaded (G)
Director: Angela Robinson. With Lindsay Lohan, Matt Dillon. (95 min.)
A teen who yearns for car-racing glory (Lohan) outwits her worried dad and leaves a smirky rival in the dust with the help of Herbie, the Volkswagen with a mind of its own who became a movie star in 1968 in "The Love Bug." Utterly predictable, but pleasant enough for youngsters.
Grade:
C
- D.S.
Sex/Nudity: 1 innuendo.
Violence: 7 comic scenes.
Profanity: 4 profanities.
Drugs/Alcohol: None.
Hide and Seek (R)
Director: John Polson. With Robert De Niro, Dakota Fanning. (101 min.)
After his wife's violent death, a psychologist moves to a new country home with his daughter, who starts playing very sinister games. The acting is excellent in this gory psychological thriller.
Grade:
B
- D.S.
A History of Violence (R)
Director: David Cronenberg. With Ed Harris, Viggo Mortensen. (96 min.)
"A History of Violence" ranks high on the Cronenberg scale as one of his more disturbing forays into depravity. Mortensen - he of the heroic jaw - plays the proprietor of a small-town diner whose idyllic family life is shattered when he kills two robbers during a holdup. Things, as usual, are not what they seem - they are much worse.
Grade:
B+
- P.R.
Hitch (PG-13)
Director: Andy Tennant. With Will Smith, Eva Mendes, Kevin James. (118 min.)
Smith is terrific as a "date doctor" who teaches klutzy men how to woo women. But the screenplay is silly and the comedy is much too long. Nice work from James, perhaps inspired by Smith's refusal to let the material drag him down.
Grade:
C
- D.S.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (PG)
Director: Garth Jennings. With Martin Freeman, Zooey Deschanel. (110 min.)
An ordinary man is beamed to safety by an interstellar friend just before Earth is demolished by aliens who need room for their new hyperspace highway. This movie adaptation of the late Douglas Adams's book, TV, and radio franchise is surprisingly bland. Die-hard fans should enjoy it, though.
Grade:
D
- D.S.
Hostage (R)
Director: Florent Siri. With Bruce Willis, Michelle Horn, Kevin Pollak. (113 min.)
A former hostage negotiator faces two awful situations at once. He has to rescue youngsters held by thugs in a fortified house and also save his own family from kidnappers. The action is dynamically filmed and Willis is at his best. Suspense is soon hijacked by outright gore and grisliness, though.
Grade:
C
- D.S.
House of D (PG-13)
Director: David Duchovny. With David Duchovny, Téa Leoni. (97 min.)
Duchovny makes his film-directing debut with this comedy-drama about a man recalling his troubled adolescence, including his relationships with his unstable mom, a mentally challenged janitor, and a prostitute who hollers advice to him from a window in a Greenwich Village house of detention. The package rarely seems genuine.
Grade:
D
- D.S.
House of Wax (R)
Director: Jaume Serra. With Elisha Cuthbert, Paris Hilton. (105 min.)
This remake of the 1953 classic brings a group of college kids to a haunted town where wax rules, along with terror, derangement, and other nasty things. As a frightfest it's better than average.
Grade:
B
- D.S.
Howl's Moving Castle (PG)
Director: Hayao Miyazaki. With voices of Emily Mortimer, Christian Bale. (119 min.)
Miyazaki outdoes his flamboyant "Spirited Away" with this fantasy about a vain prince, a fireplace with a talkative flame, and a girl trapped in an elderly body by a wicked witch. The story doesn't always make sense, but the visuals are dazzling.
One version in English with subtitles, the other dubbed into English. Grade:
A
- D.S.
Sex/Nudity: None.
Violence: 12 action scenes.
Profanity: None.
Drugs/Alcohol: 1 scene of smoking.
Hustle & Flow (R)
Director: Craig Brewer. With Terrence Howard, Taryn Manning. (116 min.)
Small-time pimp and drug pusher DJay (Howard) is given to philosophizing, but he can't rationalize his lowly lifestyle. When an old schoolmate takes him to a recording session in a church, DJay catches the vision of a better life. Viewers who can wade through the thicket of sordidness and foul language will find this indie film a labor of love and hope.
Grade:
B+
- M.K.T.
The Ice Harvest (R)
Director: Harold Ramis. With John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton. (88 min.)
"The Ice Harvest" pays homage to the usual noir tropes - the femme fatale, the heist gone bad, the dark bars - but it's freshly conceived. Cusack plays Charlie Arglist, a mob lawyer in Wichita, Kan., who has just embezzled more than $2 million from a local boss on Christmas Eve. Charlie wants to cut out of town with sultry Renata, who runs the Sweet Cage strip club.
Grade:
A-
- P.R.
Sex/Nudity: 11 instances, some graphic.
Violence: 14 instances, some very graphic.
Profanity: 151 (90 strong).
Drugs/Alcohol: at least 15 instances.
Ice Princess (G)
Director: Tim Fywell. With Michelle Trachtenberg, Kim Cattrall. (98 min.)
Should our high-school heroine stick with physics, which everyone says is her calling, or become a figure skater, which entices her when she tries to work out its aerodynamics in scientific terms? Trite but nice, this enjoyable comedy drama has good-spirited warmth toward almost all its characters, from the domineering moms to the daughters beginning to find themselves.
Grade:
B
- D.S.
In Good Company (PG-13)
Director: Paul Weitz. With Dennis Quaid, Topher Grace, Scarlett Johansson. (109 min.)
A middle-aged businessman (Quaid) gets demoted when his company is acquired by an international media mogul, and things get worse when his embarrassingly young new boss (Grace) starts dating his daughter (Johansson). Lively acting and timely humor are the main assets of this garden-variety comedy.
Grade:
B
- D.S.
Sex/Nudity: 2 suggestive scenes.
Violence: 3 scenes including a fistfight.
Profanity: 32 profanities, occasionally harsh.
Drugs/Alcohol: 4 scenes with drinking.
In My Country (R)
Director: John Boorman. With Samuel L. Jackson, Juliette Binoche. (104 min.)
Jackson plays a skeptical American journalist covering Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings after the fall of apartheid in South Africa, where he meets a white South African writer (Binoche) who hopes the proceedings will help her country heal. Boorman treats this subject with restraint, tact, and candid views of horrors suffered by the nation.
In English and Afrikaans with subtitles. Grade:
B
- D.S.
Innocent Voices (R)
Director: Luis Mandoki. With Carlos Padilla, Leonor Varella. (120 min.)
Chava is an 11-year-old boy caught up in the civil war in 1980s El Salvador in "Innocent Voices," which is partly based on the childhood of its screenwriter, Oscar Torres. As an almost daily ritual, Chava and his fatherless family dodge bullets in their cardboard shack as they attempt to maintain a semblance of sanity in a village turned battlefield. The actors, all of whom seem too posed, are not accomplished, and director Mandoki lacks the visual imagination to bring the story to a boil.
Grade:
B
- P.R.
The Interpreter (PG-13)
Director: Sydney Pollack. With Nicole Kidman, Sean Penn. (123 min.)
Kidman plays a UN interpreter who says she overheard a death threat against an African tyrant - whom she turns out to have reasons for hating - and Penn plays a Secret Service agent determined to head off the deadly embarrassment of an assassination in the UN building. The thriller is swiftly told and smartly acted.
Grade:
B
- D.S.
The Island (PG-13)
Director: Michael Bay. With Ewan McGregor, Scarlett Johansson. (127 min.)
The year is 2019, the heroes are escapees from a clonemaking operation, and the villains are sinister agents tracking them down. The first half is high-quality science fiction, the rest is a high-tech chase adventure with a gleeful yen for destructive thrills.
Grade:
C
- D.S.
Sex/Nudity: 5 scenes.
Violence: 23 instances.
Profanity: 11 profanities.
Drugs/Alcohol: 6 scenes with drinking.
Into the Blue (PG-13)
Director: John Stockwell. With Paul Walker, Jessica Alba. (110 min.)
Four friends searching for a sunken shipwreck in the Bahamas get mixed up with a drug cartel. The film poses ethical dilemmas, but leaves the viewer annoyed when characters continually make foolish decisions. Full of scantily clad women and gore, its only redeeming value is Sam's (Alba) sense of morality amid the corruption.
Grade:
C
- Jennifer Moeller
The Jacket (R)
Director: John Maybury. With Adrien Brody, Keira Knightley. (102 min.)
Accused of murder, a veteran of the Persian Gulf war with amnesia lands in a hospital for the criminally insane where a psychiatrist subjects him to bizarre experiments. While the time-bending story is ambitious, Maybury is more interested in striking images than in top-drawer performances from his cast.
Grade:
B
- D.S.
Sex/Nudity: 4 scenes, including nudity.
Violence: 12 scenes.
Profanity: 26 harsh profanities.
Drugs/Alcohol: 4 scenes of drinking, 6 scenes with smoking.
Jarhead (R)
Director: Sam Mendes. With Jake Gyllenhaal, Peter Sarsgaard, Jamie Foxx. (123 min.)
"Jarhead" is a minimalist epic - a grunt's-eye view of the 1991 Persian Gulf War that follows the brief military career of the 20-year-old marine recruit. In the framework of the movie, basically a portrait of masculine ritual - i.e. men behaving badly - politics are irrelevant. More perplexing, it doesn't draw any parallels to our current cauldron in the Middle East. The film raises the question: Why was it made?
Grade:
B-
- P.R.
Sex/Nudity: 10 scenes including nudity and sex .
Violence: 15 scenes, including torture.
Profanity: 332 profanities.
Drugs/Alcohol: 10 scenes smoking, 4 scenes with drinking.
Junebug (R)
Director: Phil Morrison. With Embeth Davidtz, Amy Adams. (107 min.)
A sophisticated art dealer travels to the South with her husband to check out a half-crazy "outsider" painter, meeting her eccentric in-laws and making unexpected friends in the process. This low-key drama is a miracle of mood, atmosphere, and sensitivity.
Grade:
A
- D.S.
Just Friends (PG-13)
Director: Roger Kumble. With Ryan Reynolds, Anna Faris. (96 min.)
Chris, a former fat kid who blossoms into a handsome music executive, returns to "Jersey" to woo his dream girl. On the way, the story breathes new life into tired topics such as high school sweethearts, sibling rivalries, and ditsy celebs. Director Roger Kumble wisely picks a brisk tempo from the get-go and never breaks cadence for long gags or gushiness.
Grade:
A
- M.B.
Sex/Nudity: 12 scenes of innuendo and frank talk about sex.
Violence: 1 slapstick scene.
Profanity: 69 expressions.
Drugs/Alcohol: 6 scenes with drinking.
Just Like Heaven (PG-13)
Director: Mark Waters. With Reese Witherspoon, Mark Ruffalo. (95 min.)
David Abbott (Ruffalo) sublets a San Francisco apartment, only to find it occupied by a phantasm named Elizabeth Masterson (Witherspoon). Early on, the movie is a well-executed comedy with David trying to figure out if he's crazy, if she's really dead, and whether a few ancient spells might cast out the squatting spirit. But it has a weighty, bordering-on-morbid, subtext.
Grade:
B
- J.A.
Sex/Nudity: 3 scenes of innuendo, 1 scene of partial male nudity.
Violence: 2 instances
Profanity: 22 fairly mild profanities.
Drugs/Alcohol: 10 scenes of drinking.
|
RSS feed
