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If there is a particular movie you are looking for, click the link on the right side of this page that says "Alphabetical List". This will give you a directory of every film that we have a review (or at least an entry) for.
Check these out!
CLOUDY WITH A CHANCE OF MEATBALLS (trailer #2) - JUST ADDED!!! - coming 9/18 - added 7/2
PLANET 51 - JUST ADDED!!! - coming 11/20 - added 7/2
CARRIERS - JUST ADDED!!! - coming 9/4 - added 7/2
THE INFORMANT! - JUST ADDED!!! - coming 10/9 - added 7/2
INGLORIOUS BASTERDS (intl. trailer) - JUST ADDED!!! - coming 8/21 - added 6/30
DAYBREAKERS - JUST ADDED!!! - coming 1/18/2010 - added 6/28
AMELIA - JUST ADDED!!! - coming 10/23 - added 6/28
THE INVENTION OF LYING - JUST ADDED!!! - coming 9/25 - added 6/28
THE BOX - JUST ADDED!!! - coming 10/30 - added 6/28
2012 - coming 11/13 - added 6/18
FINAL DESTINATION 4 - coming 8/28 - added 6/5
Here are the top-grossing films for the weekend of June 26-28, 2009. Clicking on the movie title will take you to the trailer and/or review.
Films being released this week:
PUBLIC ENEMIES (Wed.) Films being released next week:
BRUNO
I LOVE YOU, BETH COOPER
 Review by Eoin O’Faolain With the summer usually filled with entertaining blockbusters that focus more on fun than anything deeper, it comes as a surprise to see this month see the release of Public Enemies, the story of infamous gangster John Dillinger. But is the film a real insight into a criminal whose reputation lasted far beyond The film sees two of Directed by Michael Mann, the film feels like either an overlong and restrained action film, or a dramatic thriller that lacks depth. As the former, the film only succeeds in part. Mann has a habit of obsessing over the minutiae of shootouts while avoiding huge explosions or slow-motion (see Heat). One scene in particular works, in which Dillinger and his cohorts try to flee from the Feds through a forest at night. But most of the time they drag on, the clacking of tommy-guns soon wearing our patience thin. And as a drama the film completely fails, for it is unable to provide any sense of life beneath any of its characters. Depp make a true effort to give a dramatic performance, as opposed to being one of his many one-dimensional characters, but in his attempt he conflated underperforming with not performing at all, and what we see is a rather stony face that suggests nothing. The same goes for Bale, who hasn’t been able to shed his Batman growling. He spends the film stuck with a stiff jaw and a scowl on his face. The script barely attempts to make either character sympathetic in any way. Dillinger claims he doesn’t give up his bank-robbing life because he enjoys it so much, but we never see him enjoy it. Equally, with Purvis, the point of his story is that he begins to realise the fine line between criminals and crime-busters, but we never see him feel them, and instead have to rely on a text screen at the film’s end to truly realise how FBI life affected him.
Even in Dillinger’s supposed relationship with Billie, we don’t get to see their passion for each other. Dillinger meets her, tells her who he is and that he wants her, we cut to a brief sex scene, and then suddenly she disappears for 30 minutes, appearing for a second to say he lives a dangerous life, and then she suddenly dedicates herself to him. This sparse summary of their relationship fails to justify her love for him, and she comes across as naïve if not stupid, while Dillinger just can’t melt (At one point in the film, Dillinger breaks down, but it’s far too late to save our sympathy for him). And there’s plenty of dramatic material. For example, Dillinger was a man of the public, he loved the media attention and walked about in public. Yet this is only referenced in the film, and never fully explored. Neither is his obvious dismay at being rejected by the crime bosses because his way of life involved too many risks.
The film is shot using HD cameras. It’s a brave move for a Public Enemies is a film that doesn’t know what it wants to be. It thinks it’s realistic, but there’s no sense of life back then. It tries to have action, but it just isn’t invigorating enough. And it tries to be a smart drama but the dull performances prevent us from caring about what happens. And in its half-baked attempts, it falls into a black hole of cinema, aspiring to be everything and achieving nothing. 2 / 5 stars Review by Patrick Hodges Gangster movies – or, to be more specific, movies set in the pre- and post-Capone era in Chicago – have been a Hollywood staple for over half a century. Back in a time when bank robbers were glorified in the newspapers and treated like rock stars on the big screen, being a young, charming scofflaw with a brazen attitude and chiseled good looks were enough to make one a celebrity. Public Enemies tells the story of 1930’s gangster John Dillinger, one of the premier bank robbers of the era (and assigned the honor of being “Public Enemy #1"), as well as the taskforce assigned to bring him to justice. If you want charisma, then you probably couldn’t have made a better casting choice than Johnny Depp, who imbues Dillinger with more than enough charisma to carry the film. On the other side of the coin is Melvin Purvis (Christian Bale), who is given the job of leading the taskforce by FBI director J. Edgar Hoover (Watchmen's Billy Crudup). The film was directed by Michael Mann, who, if you have seen Miami Vice, Collateral or the now-classic Heat, you’ll know is probably the best helmer out there for gritty crime dramas; he knows how to get in the trenches as far as getting into the characters’ heads, and there are few better than he at choreographing shootout scenes. And in Public Enemies, there is a However, all of those films took place in the present day, and Mann’s first stab at a historical drama, for a reason that I can’t quite put my finger on, falls a little flat. Perhaps it was the characters; oh, sure, Depp was magnificent as Dillinger, but there were moments when his charisma crossed the line into overweening arrogance. Maybe that’s how the real Dillinger was, I don’t know, but it made him less likeable to me. Bale was also fine, if a little stiff, as Purvis, but I’ve come to expect that from Bale as of late. There is also a love story in this movie, between Dillinger and a French beauty named Billie (played by La Vie en Rose Oscar winner Marion Cotillard), a poor girl who falls under Dillinger’s spell early on. Again, the story was acted well enough to be convincing, but even if you don’t know the history behind the characters, you can pretty much figure out how it’s going to end (very few people in that line of work live to be old men, if you get my meaning). The scenes with the most action – the robberies, the shootouts, the chase scenes, etc. – are well-realized, but everything apart from that just feels like filler. There is little or no character development, and barely enough of a story to keep me interested. In fact, I was bored quite a few times during the film’s nearly 2 ½- hour running time. Dillinger robs banks, gets caught, escapes, robs some more, gets caught again, blah blah blah. Perhaps Public Enemies could have taken a few tips from Brian De Palma’s 1987 gangster film The Untouchables. It could have been more entertaining if Dillinger could have been a little more over-the-top like Robert DeNiro’s Capone, or if Purvis could have been a little more of an optimistic Boy Scout-type like Kevin Costner’s Eliot Ness. Then maybe I would have cared a little more about the eventual outcome. Maybe. In short, Public Enemies may have been historically accurate (or not, I’m really the wrong guy to ask), but if it was, historical accuracy doesn’t always make for the best story. There was enough good performances there to warrant the price of admission, but not much else. 2 ½ / 5 stars
 Review by Patrick Hodges When any series of films – that aren’t adapted from a series of literary works or had been determined well in advance to be a trilogy – reaches its third installment, we go into the theater expecting certain things. We want enough of the familiar characters and elements from the first two parts to feel comfortable, yet enough new stuff to make it exciting and fresh, rather than the feeling that it’s just the voice talents cashing a paycheck. To that end, Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs does succeed. All of the characters from Ice Age: The Meltdown are back. Manny, the gruff-but-kind mammoth (Ray Romano) is expecting his first child with Ellie (Queen Latifah), and you know what that means: the IQ level of all males in the vicinity drop to equal the ambient temperature (and it’s the Ice Age, do the math). Also back is Diego the saber-toothed tiger (Denis Leary), who has grown restless and is worried that he may be losing his edge, and Sid (John Leguizamo), the dim-witted sloth who longs to start a family of his own. A mishap causes Sid to fall through the ice, where he finds three large eggs, which he adopts as his own. But when the eggs hatch into baby T-Rexes, things get chaotic, especially when their none-too-pleased mother comes looking for them. Mama scoops up Sid and her children, taking them underground to what appears to be an entire ecosystem, which has survived untouched for eons. On a quest to find Sid, Diego, Manny, Ellie, and her two possum pals Crash and Eddie (Seann William Scott and Josh Peck), venture underground to rescue him. There, they meet some very large, angry reptiles, not to mention a one-eyed weasel dino-hunter named Buck (Simon Pegg), who is helpful (and very eccentric, if you get my meaning) in helping them acclimatize. And, of course, there’s the comic relief, the prehistoric squirrel Scrat, who continues his seemingly interminable quest to retrieve his beloved acorn. The writers, who absolutely delight in torturing him, this time give him a love-interest/nemesis in the form of Scratte, a female of his species. The film’s more hysterical moments, as usual, are when the “camera” focuses on them. This film is, of course, meant more for kids than adults, so a fair amount of juvenile humor is unavoidable. I didn’t find a lot of the jokes funny, but the youngsters around me did, and I must admit, I found myself laughing out loud on more than one occasion. And the animation, naturally, is fantastic: maybe not up to Pixar’s level, but then, no one’s is. And for a “Part 3”, really, could one ask for more? Dawn of the Dinosaurs will probably not be a film that one will want to see over and over again, and in ten years, very few will likely remember it. I don’t know how many more times our favorite pre-historic herd can take the field, but as long it’s entertaining in the now, I won’t object. 3 ½ / 5 stars
 Review by Mark Lengieza Back in 2007, I saw the film at a packed I think the writers of the film just got way too lazy with Revenge of the Fallen. They knew that it was going to be a sure-fire hit, so they decided that rather making sharp dialogue and a proper story, they catered to the mass audiences. The film is just so filled with stupid humor. When I go to an action movie, I am not looking to laugh. Now I will say this: the humor from the first film is one of the reasons it was so enjoyable for me. It made the characters likeable. I thought it was handled very well. Here it was just the opposite. Some of the jokes worked (John Turturro was outstanding again, probably the best part about the film) but most did not. Most were simply stupid gags that only 10-year olds would find funny (or, ya know, the people that made Paul Blart a huge hit). There were even two characters that made me utter the words “These guys are the Jar Jar Binks” of the Transformers franchise. (I’ll let you figure out who I mean.) The action in the film was outstanding. The explosions, the special effects, the visuals were superb. 3 ½ / 5 stars |
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