A White Christmas For a Black Sheep
There's a chill in the air and the leaves have finally begun to change, but the surest sign of the impending holiday season is the exploitative children's fare we've come to expect in the months...
View ArticleSister Soldiers On the Homefront
The affection that the director Noah Baumbach feels for his characters often surpasses the affectations he burdens them with. His best films make audiences care about tightly wound, self-involved...
View ArticleWhen You Wish Upon a Skyscraper
Most fantasies don't have the stamina to withstand the demands of the real world, but Disney's new film "Enchanted" defies expectations by creating a sweet fairy tale for the modern era. Starting in...
View ArticleBuilding a Hero To Tear Him Down
Translating unspoken thoughts to the screen is a difficult task, one that Andrew Wagner's new film, "Starting Out in the Evening," attempts with the best of intentions. But like the thesis that is...
View ArticleBlown Up in Translation
The new Japanese action film "Midnight Eagle" has a certain artistry, but its distaste for the bounds of believability is astounding. Underdeveloped action films, it seems, know no language barrier....
View ArticleThe Problem Child
The predicament of unwed teenage mothers is not supposed to fill the populace with warm, fuzzy feelings. But first-time screenwriter Diablo Cody has written a new role model for teenage girls one who...
View ArticleThose Aren't the Voices of Reason
The perennial staying power of high, squeaky voices singing along to popular music is astounding. Alvin and the Chipmunks have been singing helium-voiced odes to Top 40 songs for nearly 50 years....
View ArticleMother of the Bridesmaids
Katherine Heigl may have been the sleeper hit of 2007. The buxom blonde managed to position herself as a model young spinster by helping Hollywood to avoid the unpleasantness of having to watch an...
View ArticleSomeone Wake Up Woody Allen
The entirety of Woody Allen's new film "Cassandra's Dream" is spent in dire anticipation of the fate that will befall his two main characters. The relentless monotony of the film's inevitable...
View ArticleMaking Picks for Draft Day
The specter of involuntary military service strikes fear in the hearts of men across our country but mostly upper-middle-class white men between the ages of 18 and 35. And filmmakers. The actual...
View ArticleStay Warm, or Look Good Trying
PARK CITY, Utah It stands to reason that even the most style-conscious among us would put fashion on the back-burner when the mercury dips well below the freezing mark. But when you're guaranteed to...
View ArticleRomania and a Hard Place
Communism in practice takes the first half of its slogan "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" to the vicious extreme. Cristian Mungiu's new film "4 Months, 3 Weeks...
View ArticleDocs Lift the Light & the Heavy
PARK CITY, Utah The competition to get noticed at Sundance can be steep. Taking on a big topic, or a big name, can provide much-needed attention, but with the documentaries on offer here this year,...
View ArticleThis Development Can't Get Itself Arrested
With the writers' strike stretching on and little to watch on television other than reality programming and game shows, a new network show with an ensemble cast of familiar faces offers hope for a...
View ArticleHe'll Never Have Paris
In the grand tradition of female makeover films, from "She's Out of Control" to "The Princess Diaries," Tom Putnam's "The Hottie and the Nottie" stars a perfectly adorable girl in the role of the...
View ArticleMaybe Too Much Information
Just in time for Valentine's Day comes a film about the restorative powers of divorce. "Definitely, Maybe," from the producers of "Love, Actually" and "Notting Hill," steals a comma splice from one of...
View ArticleDifferent Ties for Different Binds
Thoughtful and beautifully executed, Brazil's entry for the 2008 Academy Award for Best Foreign Film, "The Year My Parents Went on Vacation," tells the story of a young boy exiled from his own life....
View ArticleMoney, Fate & the Root of Evil
The now familiar vocabulary of concentration camps on movie screens comes with so much baggage that it can stifle a film before it has even begun. But "The Counterfeiters," this year's Austrian...
View ArticleThe Duchess of Look But Don't Touch
Jacques Rivette's new film, "The Duchess of Langeais," is an exercise in delayed gratification that may entice the director's fans, but will leave a few viewers sleeping in their seats when it opens...
View ArticleFerrell Pleases The Court
If the trailer for "Semi-Pro" leaves you with that odd feeling of familiarity, it's not your fault. With all the overgrown children that Will Ferrell has brought to the big screen, at this point it can...
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