Starring:
Kendall "Wink" Rivers, Scott Roberts
Review:
A star is born. Her name is Kimberly Rivers Roberts. Your never heard of her. Not yet. Roberts didn't write or direct Trouble the Water, the behind-the-camera artistry in this wallop of a movie is handled by the extraordinary team of Tia Lessin and Carl Deal. Trouble the Water is a documentary, an unforgettable one. It's an account of Hurricane Katrina from the inside. Kimberly Rivers Roberts and her husband Scott Roberts were stuck in New Orleans, without the money to get out. So they stayed and helped their neighbors and shot footage of Katrina as she attacked, footage like you've never seen, jaw-dropping scenes of the city before, during and after Katrina struck. The heroism on view here is indisputable. You never see fear as Kimberly, 26, rushed to help her friends and...
Rating: 3 Stars

Starring:
Chris Pine, Alan Rickman, Bill Pullman
Review:
Be on the lookout for Bottle Shock, a hugely entertaining movie that scored at Sundance and the film festival circuit. It's a winner. And not just for oenophiles. Director Randall Miller, who co-wrote the script with his wife Jody Savin, keeps the plot brimming with spirit and wit. The focal point is a historic 1976 blind wine tasting in Paris in which wines from California's Napa Valley scored a shocking victory over France's noble varietals. The resemblance to the indie smash Sideways is purely in the grapes. Miller is spinning delightfully on the true story that put Napa on the wine map. The architect of that victory is Steven Spurrier (Alan Rickman), a British wine snob based in Paris who travels to Napa to test the underdog vineyards. Rickman is deliciously good as this...
Rating: 3 Stars

Starring:
Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Scarlet Johansson
Review:
Woody Allen goes latin (you heard me), and the romantic, richly comic result — powered by a dream cast — is his sexiest movie ever. Shooting in Spain has loosened up the Woodman. You want plot? Two American girls, Vicky (Rebecca Hall) and Cristina (Scarlett Johansson), spend the summer at the Barcelona hideaway of Vicky's pals, Mark (Kevin Dunn) and Judy (the ever-glorious Patricia Clarkson). No sooner do the girls spot Juan Antonio (Javier Bardem), a bedroom-eyed painter, than he's hitting on both of them. So far, so predictable. What sparks the movie is Penélope Cruz as Maria Elena, the painter's ex-wife, a fireball given to strong emotions — hell, she once stabbed Juan Antonio during an argument. You haven't lived till you've heard Cruz and Bardem trading Woody Allen o...
Rating: 3 Stars

Starring:
Steve Coogan, Catherine Keener
Review:
Don't expect a night with The Bard. This cuckoo farce asks: Can an L.A. actor stuck doing ads for herpes cures find happiness by moving to Tucson and teaching drama to high schoolers? Probably not. But you'll be wearing a happy face for two hours watching the brilliant Brit comic Steve Coogan play him. Him being Dana Marschz (pronounced Mars-chhh-zzz by those who dare), a sterile recovering alcoholic who gets slagged regularly by a snotty kid critic for staging movies (Dead Poets Society, Erin Brockovich) as plays. "He fisted us," cries Dana. Pumped by the addition of Latin students to his class of whitey Christians and closeted gays, Dana rouses himself — not with his wife (the dry, dazzling Catherine Keener), who's boinking their friend (David Arquette), but by creating an original...
Rating: 3 Stars

Starring:
Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr., Steve Coogan, Jay Bar...
Review:
Think of all the ways you can hurt yourself laughing, as in fall down, split your sides, bust a gut, blow your mind. You get it all in Tropic Thunder, a knockout of a comedy that keeps you laughing constantly. It's also killer smart, lacing combustible action with explosive gags. Major props to Ben Stiller, the director, co-producer, co-writer and co-star, who shows us Hollywood at war with its own ginormous ego during the making of a megabudget Vietnam War movie with an uproariously inept cast and crew. Stiller took flak for the other three movies he's directed: 1994's Reality Bites was allegedly too soft, 1996's The Cable Guy too dark, 2001's Zoolander too airy-fairy. Confession: I liked them all. And I'm nuts about Tropic Thunder, with its dynamite script by Stiller, Justin Theroux and...
Rating: 3 Stars

Starring:
Brendan Fraser, Jet Li
Review:
The new Mummy is, how can I put it? Just freakin' awful. The computerized action travels beyond cheese to the realm of the tackiest Velveeta. The first two Mummy movies were awful as well, but they were hits and rode on the unfakable charm of Brendan Fraser as Indiana Jones-in-training Rick O'Connell. The 2008 Mummy, directed by Rob Cohen, still has Fraser, though he looks understandably baffled. It's 1946 and suddenly he has a college-age son. Rick is still married to the feisty Evelyn, but now she's played by Maria Bello instead of Oscar winner Rachel Weisz. No one says a word. The location now is China, how timely given the upcoming Beijing Olympics. Listen, I can't go on. The plot is idiotic and everyone acts like major tools. The one star I plopped on this clunky...
Rating: 1 Stars

Starring:
David Duchovny, Gillian Anderson
Review:
Being suitably paranoid about the paranormal, I wanted to believe that X-Files creator Chris Carter, having had six years since the TV show went off the air to craft a humdinger of a plot, could conjure up something with more ding and less (ho) hum than The X-Files: I Want To Believe. What I believe, hell, what I know is that if I toss spoilers into this review, X-Philes will come to haunt me. So I'll say three things and no more. 1. David Duchovny is back as Fox Mulder and Gillian Anderson joins him as Dana Scully. That is the best news about this movie. No screen lovers have ever gotten more sizzle out of withholding. Forget carnality. Any Internet porn flick can show you penetration. Mulder and Scully get inside each other's heads. Now that's sexy. Duchovny, bless him, is...
Rating: 2 Stars

Starring:
Hannah Bailey, Colin Clemens, Megan Krizmanich, Jake Tusing
Review:
Reality tv, welcome to the multiplex. If The Hills went back to high school and developed wit, perception and a conscience, it might play something like Nanette Burstein's wallop of a doc. Burstein (The Kid Stays in the Picture) did total immersion with a handful of seniors at the only high school in Warsaw, Indiana, which we're told is "mostly white, mostly Christian and red state all the way." It's not all condescending; a church sign announces, "Get an Afterlife." Camera in hand for more than 10 months, Burstein waited patiently for character types out of a John Hughes movie to shake off their clichéd shells — the prom queen (Megan Krizmanich), the star athlete (Colin Clemens), the band geek (Jake Tusing), the arty rebel (Hannah Bailey). The fact that they do, sometimes by happy...
Rating: 3 Stars

Starring:
Will Ferrell, John C. Reilly, Mary Steenburgen, Richard Jenkins, ...
Review:
Starting at infantile and regressing hysterically from there, Step Brothers flies on the comic chemistry of Will Ferrell and John C. Reilly. They riffed on the baby Jesus in Talladega Nights. Now they're goofing on grown men who stay babies. Are you ready to see Ferrell rub his hairy nut sack on Reilly's drum set? You better be. Step Brothers, directed by Adam McKay from a story by McKay, Ferrell and Reilly (so you know who to hold responsible), pushes its R rating to the merry max. I'd better explain. Ferrell plays Brennan Huff, 39, a sleepwalker and chronic masturbator who lives with his divorced mom (Mary Steenburgen). Reilly plays Dale Doback — even more of a slacker, since he's a year older — who lives with his widowed dad (Richard Jenkins). When the parents marry, Brennan...
Rating: 2 Stars

Starring:
James Franco, Seth Rogen, Gary Cole, Rosie Perez, Danny R. McBrid...
Review:
Add about seven years to the ages of the kids in Superbad, toss in bullets, bongs and assassination squads, and you get some idea of the hot box of crazy that is Pineapple Express, a buddy movie stoned on its own shitfaced silliness. You'll go limp from laughing as process server Dale Denton (Seth Rogen) buys the wacky weed of the title from pot dealer Saul Silver (James Franco). "Smell it, smellll it," raves Saul, his eyes glazed with mellow joy. "It's like God's vagina." The plot kicks in when Dale eyeballs drug lord Ted Jones (Gary Cole, slime personified) and crooked cop Carol (Rosie Perez, totally butch) executing an Asian rival. Dale runs like hell, dropping a roach that Ted immediately IDs as pineapple express. That marks Dale for death, also Saul and his middleman Red, played by...
Rating: 3 Stars

Starring:
Meryl Streep, Pierce Brosnan, Colin Firth, Stellan Skarsgard, Jul...
Review:
Meryl Streep can do anything: sing, dance, do splits, act her heart out. She (almost) saves this clumsy, overwrought film version of the Abba musical that's been running on stages from Broadway to Barcelona since 1999, grossing over $2 billion and luring more than 30 million ticketbuyers to hear Abba songs by Sweden's Björn Ulvaeus and Benny Andersson shoehorned into a plot where they don't really fit. Who can argue with that kind of "money, money/Always sunny/In a rich man's world success?" I can, at least where the movie is concerned, because the three formidable women responsible for the show — producer Judy Craymer, writer Catherine Johnson and director Phyllida Lloyd — let the magic slip through their fingers on the treacherous trip from stage to screen. The ...
Rating: 2 Stars

Starring:
Eddie Murphy, Elizabeth Banks, Gabrielle Union, Judah Friedlander...
Review:
Eddie Murphy — was that Oscar nominated performance in Dreamgirls just something I imagined? — continues to trash his very real talent with bottomfeeding material. In Meet Dave, Murphy limits himself to two roles (none human). He plays a pint-sized alien from outer space and the spacecraft he rode in on. If you think I'm going to explain that lame premise, think again. But know this: Murphy, teaming again with his Norbit director Brian Robbins, is assuming we'll all line up for lazyass toilet jokes and pay for the privilege. Prove him wrong, people, please.
Rating: 1 Stars

Starring:
Brendan Fraser, Josh Hutcherson, Anita Briem
Review:
Remove a star from the rating if you take this Journey without wearing 3-D glasses. That's where the real fun comes in. Otherwise you have a family-friendly retelling of Jules Verne's 1864 novel (best remembered is the 1959 movie with an overqualified James Mason, a shirtless Pat Boone and a gorgeous Arlene Dahl) in a romp that is lazily content to connect the dots instead of breaking new ground. Brendan Fraser is Indiana Jones stalwart and goofily charming as Trevor Anderson, a science prof who retraces the steps of his brother, who died searching for the center of the earth. With his 13-year-old nephew (Josh Hutcherson) in tow, along with a Icelandic babe (Anita Briem) in the role of guide, Trevor finds his way by carrying a copy of the book Verne wrote 144 years ago (score one for...
Rating: 2 Stars

Starring:
Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones, Jeffrey Tambor, Ladislav Be...
Review:
Granted, Guillermo del Toro's sequel to his 2004 Hellboy is not a work of art like his Oscar-winning Pan's Labyrinth. But his latest spin on Mike Mignola's vividly drawn Dark Horse comic series sure is a surprise package of fun, fright and untamed imagination. If you're looking for a creature feature, you've found nirvana. Things that go squish in the night? Del Toro's got a million of them, and I mean that literally. There's a scene at the Troll Market that almost equals the cantina scene in Star Wars, the first one when George Lucas still knew how to do it. "I'm not a baby, I'm a tumor," sasses something being coddled in a mother's arms. Yowsa! Then there's the cigar-chomping, crimefighting superfreak Hellboy himself, played again by Ron Perlman with face red, fist massive and horns that...
Rating: 3 Stars

Starring:
Ron Perlman, Selma Blair, Doug Jones, Jeffrey Tambor, Ladislav Be...
Review:
Granted, Guillermo del Toro's sequel to his 2004 Hellboy is not a work of art like his Oscar-winning Pan's Labyrinth. But his latest spin on Mike Mignola's vividly drawn Dark Horse comic series sure is a surprise package of fun, fright and untamed imagination. If you're looking for a creature feature, you've found nirvana. Things that go squish in the night? Del Toro's got a million of them, and I mean that literally. There's a scene at the Troll Market that almost equals the cantina scene in Star Wars, the first one when George Lucas still knew how to do it. "I'm not a baby, I'm a tumor," sasses something being coddled in a mother's arms. Yowsa! Then there's the cigar-chomping, crimefighting superfreak Hellboy himself, played again by Ron Perlman with face red, fist massive and horns that...
Rating: 3 Stars

Starring:
Francois Cluzet, Kristin Scott Thomas, Marie-Josee Croze, Andre D...
Review:
Don't you hate it when critics review mystery movies and give away all the plot twists? I do. So I won't reveal diddly about Tell No One, except to say that the young French director Guillaume Canet — channeling Hitchcock's masterpiece Vertigo while working from an American mystery novel by the uber-clever Harlan Coben — has fired off one terrific, twisty thriller. Hot-blooded, haunting and packed with the pleasures of the unexpected, Tell No One will pin you to your seat. Francois Cluzet is a marvel as Alex, the widower pediatrician who is jolted to learn that his wife Margot (Marie-Josée Croze), believed murdered eight years ago, might just be alive. The acting is uniformly first-rate, with special props going to Kristen Scott Thomas as a lesbian married to...
Rating: 3 Stars

Starring:
Will Smith, Charlize Theron, Jason Bateman, Adam Del Rio, Jameson...
Review:
Would you buy Will Smith as John Hancock, an amnesiac, grab-­ass, booze-swilling superhero who flies under the influence and disdains the punk-ass citizens of Los Angeles for thinking he's a superasshole? Trust me, you will. There also exists in L.A. a publicist, Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman), committed to making the world a better place. Now, that's pushing it. Director Peter Berg has a feel for guys who screw up (see Very Bad Things), and he mines the herky-jerky script for every toxic glint of macho posturing. It's all hugely entertaining until the final reel, when the film tries for a tragic dimension it can't handle. Leave that to The Dark Knight. The actors save the day. Bateman doesn't make a false move, and a stellar Charlize Theron springs her own bolts from the blue as Ray's wife....
Rating: 3 Stars

Starring:
Fred Willard, Jeff Garlin, Sigourney Weaver, John Ratzenberger, K...
Review:
First image: the Earth as a garbage dump, a future reduced to ruins. For the past 700 years, what's left of humanity has been cruising the skies in a spaceship. Only a tiny robot, WALL-E (for Waste Allocation Load Lifter: Earth class), scoots around on urban terra firma compacting trash into piles that grow into skyscrapers. First sound: a voice lifted in song: "Out there/there's a world outside of Yonkers." The tune is "Put On Your Sunday Clothes," a merry ditty from the forgotten 1969 movie version of Hello, Dolly with Barbra Streisand. WALL-E, his eyes like binoculars (hell, they are binoculars!), watches an old, muddy video tape of Dolly with the same yearning we see in Michael Crawford, who plays a young store clerk at the turn of the 20th-century, warbling about...
Rating: 4 Stars

Starring:
Gary Hart, George McGovern, Jann Wenner, Jimmy Buffett, Jimmy Car...
Review:
The good doctor is family around these parts, so cheers to Alex Gibney (Oscar winner for Taxi to the Dark Side) for not screwing up this mesmerizing documentary about the people, places and substances that altered the mind and battered heart of the Kentucky-born inventor of gonzo journalism. Johnny Depp, who paid for the 2005 funeral in which Thompson's ashes were fired out of a cannon, narrates with just the right mix of awe and impertinence. Tom Wolfe, illustrator Ralph Steadman and Rolling Stone editor and publisher Jann S. Wenner check in on navigating the blurred line between fact and fiction that marked Thompson's landmark writing. Family, including son Juan, fill us in on life with the man who declared, "I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence or insanity to anyone, but they've...
Rating: 3 Stars

Starring:
James McAvoy, Morgan Freeman, Angelina Jolie, Terence Stamp, Thom...
Review:
Angelina Jolie is packing heat, and she's going to show James McAvoy how to load a phallic pistol and shoot his wad. What's not to like? Wanted is what I'd call a guilty pleasure. Translation: It's trash, but I love it anyway. Brutal, sexy, built to thrill and minus a scintilla of redeeming social value, the movie — based on a series of comic books by Mark Millar and J.G. Jones — explodes like summer fireworks. And the detonator is Timur Bekmambetov, a Kazakhstan-born director whose Night Watch and Day Watch are huge hits in Russia and who is determined to hit Hollywood with the same pizzazz. Not a timid soul, Bekmambetov, who cut his teeth in the ad game, knows how to get a story going without pesky preliminaries. In the first scene, a professional assassin kills a few dozen...
Rating: 3 Stars