March 4, 2010
Alice Kingsleigh has nightmares. Or, as she puts it, she has “only one,” the same bad dream again and again: she’s falling down a dark hole, then landing hard in a woodsy place where she meets strange creatures -- a dodo bird, a smiling cat, and a rabbit in a waistcoat. When she’s just six (and played by Mairi Ella Challen), her father (Marton Csokas) comforts her, assuring her that even if she has lost her mind, “All the best people have.” Thirteen years later,[…]
February 11, 2010
Like many high school students, Percy (Logan Lerman) is restless. He feels distracted in class, especially because his dyslexia makes reading a chore, frustrated that his mother, Sally (Catherine Keener), endures verbal abuse by her husband, the ignominiously named Gabe Ugliano (Joe Pantoliano). He’s also tired of Sally telling him, “Some day it’ll all make sense.”[…]
January 22, 2010
Primarily, The Tooth Fairy is an occasion for The Rock to wear a pink tutu. A thin premise for a movie -- even a family movie that's being dumped to theaters in January -- it is somewhat buoyed by Dwayne Johnson's considerable charms. He plays Derek Thompson, an almost-hockey star now serving as the "enforcer" for a team in Lansing, Michigan. Whenever he's called out onto the ice, he's supposed to knock down an opponent ("Find a dark jersey and hit it!" commands his coach). It's not exactly an image[…]
January 14, 2010
By all appearances, Bob (Jackie Chan) lives a dull life as a pen importer. Little do the kids next door—Farren (Madeline Carroll), Ian (Will Shadley), and four-year-old Nora (Alina Foley)—know that he is in fact a superspy from China, on loan to the CIA. Because they think he’s a “nerd,” the children are unhappy that he’s dating their mom, Gillian (Amber Valetta), and quite horrified when the topic of marriage comes up. Conveniently, so does Gillian’s father’s[…]
December 22, 2009
Having conquered the pop music industry in their first movie, the Chipmunks in The Squeakquel go to high school. This plot is advanced by Dave (Jason Lee), who believes they need "a normal life" after all the previous hubbub. Problem number one: Dave breaks just about every bone in his body during the first scene, when Alvin causes a stage accident. Dave thus remains in traction in Paris -- mostly absent from the movie except by phone calls -- while the "boys" head back to L.A. Here their caretaker[…]
December 18, 2009
As this not-so-new plot takes shape over 160-some minutes, Jake and Grace jump back and forth between the lab and the forest. This allows for comparisons between the two realms imagined and constructed by Cameron, in both 3D and IMAX. Reportedly, he's been working on the concept -- and especially the technology -- since he was king of the world via Titanic, 12 years ago. And that technology is frequently awesome, as the Na'vi zoom around aboard their flying beasties or jump from tree to[…]
December 10, 2009
Tiana (voiced by Anika Noni Rose) has a dream. More than anything, she wants to have her own restaurant in New Orleans, an ambition inspired by her hardworking, gumbo-loving dad (Terrence Howard) and encouraged by her seamstress mother (Oprah Winfrey). After years of waiting tables at two different cafés, she almost has enough money saved up in cans she keeps in her one-room apartment, when she runs into a problem: at a costume party thrown by her best friend, the very rich, very white Charlotte[…]
November 23, 2009
Less a movie than a series of clamorous set pieces and clumsy jokes, Old Dogs begins with that most banal of plot points, the male midlife crisis. Dan (Robin Williams) and his business partner Charlie (John Travolta) are about to seal a big deal with a Japanese company, when he's visited by an ex-wife, Vicki (Kelly Preston). It appears that a brief, alcohol-inspired marriage produced twins seven years ago, and now she needs a sitter for two weeks. Though it interferes with the presentation[…]
November 19, 2009
Planet 51 begins with a clever layering of spoofs. In the first scene, a young couple is scared first by an alien attack, and then by a military unit who attacks the attackers (called "humaniacs"). Not only are all of these characters aliens -- green skinned with googly eyes and rubbery, four-fingered limbs-- but when the camera pulls back to show they are all characters in a movie within the movie, you see that the audience members are all aliens too. When, some minutes later, a unknown[…]
November 12, 2009
Mr. Fox (voiced by George Clooney) is definitely foxish. Perpetually restless and inherently sly, he likes to break into chicken houses and dig holes, scurry over hill and dale and cause trouble. In Fantastic Mr. Fox, Wes Anderson's marvelous expansion of Roald Dahl's perfectly lovely 1970 book, this behavior is cast as immature, as Mrs. Fox (Meryl Streep) hopes to rein in her husband's scampishness, a point she makes clear as the film starts, when, in the middle of a chicken house caper,[…]
