Serenity
First, let me say that I enjoyed Serenity. But I think writer-director Joss Whedon is a big baby. He originally wrote Buffy the Vampire Slayer as a feature film, but when it fizzled at the box office, he blamed the studio for screwing up his vision and then took his creation to network TV, where it became the hit he… read more!
Sin City
You won't get any argument from me that Sin City, pseudo-iconoclastic filmmaker Robert Rodriguez's adaptation of Frank Miller's cult comic book series, isn't "eye popping". Part Dick Tracy, part Pulp Fiction, part Rumble Fish, part Batman, this film is a fanboy's delight. Rodriguez found so much inspiration in Miller's stark black and white visuals that he apparently used the Sin… read more!
The Squid and the Whale
In The Squid and the Whale, set in 1986, Jeff Daniels and Laura Linney play a pair of selfish writers/professors whose casual attitudes toward raising their two sons (Jesse Eisenberg as Baumbach's arrogant teenaged alter ego and Owen Kline as his lost-soul younger brother) prove to be shockingly ineffectual after they announce their divorce and are incapable of helping their… read more!
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
The cult surrounding Star Wars makes people believe in things that aren't true. I'm not talking about light sabres and little green Yodas. I mean things like, "Episode III is way better than the last two films! This is the real Star Wars prequel we've been waiting for!" Folks, stop deluding yourselves. True, nothing can be worse than Jar Jar… read more!
Syriana
Mercilessly complicated thriller about oil, politics, money, terrorism, and how they all relate. At the core of this patchwork quilt of a story is a merger between two major US oil companies, a squabble over the rights to oil drilling in Kazakhstan, a conspiracy to "liberate" Iran, and a plot to assassinate the heir apparent to an anonymous oil-rich nation… read more!
Thank You for Smoking
Aaron Eckhart plays Nick Naylor, a smarmy lobbyist for the tobacco industry and self-described "merchant of death" whose job it is to convince Americans that cigarettes won't kill you. During the first few zippy minutes of Thank You for Smoking, Naylor is at the top of his game – smooth talking and quick thinking. Soon, though, as he tries to… read more!
Thumbsucker
Admirable Sundance-style indie film about a 17-year-old loner named Justin (appealing newcomer Lou Pucci) who quite literally still sucks his thumb. His well-meaning but frustrated parents (Vincent D'Onofrio and a sublime Tilda Swinton) determine that he suffers from some form of hyperactivity, so they get him hooked on Ritalin, which turns the sullen Justin into an aggressive speech and debate… read more!
Unknown White Male
In July 2003, a 35-year-old Englishman named Doug Bruce, living in New York City as a photography student, woke up on the subway one morning with a case of total amnesia. Not knowing his name, where he lived, or any of his friends, he turned himself into the police and wound up in a mental hospital until a girlfriend's mother… read more!
Walk on Water
Eyal (Lior Ashkenazi), a crack agent for Mossad, Israel's secret service, comes home from a successful assassination attempt on a Hamas leader only to find that his wife has committed suicide. His supervisor, fearing that the stoic Eyal may be secretly traumatized, keeps him off the tough jobs and assigns him a "simple" assignment: word has it that an infamous… read more!
War of the Worlds
Are we all in agreement that the best things about these "aliens invade Earth" flicks are the scenes of death and destruction on a massive scale? That's why audiences will always flock to a good disaster movie: because people dig watching things go boom. (Don't tell me that Titanic is the highest-grossing film of all time just because of the… read more!