“Rain Man” might be most remembered for Dustin Hoffman’s brave and remarkable performance as autistic savant Raymond Babbitt, but the film’s greatest strength lies elsewhere: its sense of humor. At first, you’re inclined not to laugh at Raymond’s oddities and especially not at the way his brother Charlie (Tom Cruise) treats him, but as the [...]

“Inglourious Basterds” is many things, but one thing it is not is a World War II drama. The setting is an alternate version of history, where Nazi-occupied France becomes the wild west for another of filmmaker Quentin Tarantino’s Sergio Leone-inspired pulp action movies where various Jews can carry out their revenge fantasies on assorted members [...]

“Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” is a horror movie for epileptics, a 2.5-hour exhibition of a hurricane in a hardware store, a relentlessly loud first movement in a symphony of destruction. It is a summer blockbuster on steroids: you’d like to laud the accomplishment, but it feels like cheating. In other words, “Fallen” appears to [...]

If you’re familiar with Charlie Kaufman’s work, then you understand that “Synecdoche, New York” is going to tell a story that’s abstract, that feels normal but is completely out of the ordinary, and rarely feels like it’s making sense. Now that he’s directing his own film this time, Kaufman, the brilliant but challenging writer behind [...]

Hayao Miyazaki has captured the imagination of audiences young and old across the globe, and his most recent cinematic work of art is “Ponyo,” a children’s fairytale borrowing on story elements from The Little Mermaid. Of course like other Miyazaki classics such as “Spirited Away” and his last film, “Howl’s Moving Castle,” “Ponyo” is full [...]

Carjacking is generally a good time, but Dominic Sena manages to make it unexciting in “Gone in Sixty Seconds,” a remake of the 1974 film. Aside from a good final chase, this film spends more time talking about stealing cars than actually doing it. At the least you’d expect a two-hour showcase of some beautiful [...]

It was only a matter of time before WWII/Holocaust drama and Edward Zwick found each other. “Defiance” is the perfect little-known underdog war story that perfectly fits Zwick’s (“Glory,” “The Last Samurai,” “Blood Diamond”) tastes. Historical war drama with a heavy action slant as per usual, “Defiance” has all the elements that anyone who’s enjoyed [...]

For yet another indie relationship drama without a straightforward plot and more than one central character, David Gordon Green makes something of a quiet masterpiece out of “Snow Angels,” based on the 1994 book by Stewart O’Nan. Although the film begins with us overhearing two gun shots and then backing up to show us their [...]

Though there have been a few attempts to quickly turn over a good film about the Iraq War or a similar conflict (“The Lucky Ones,” “In the Valley of Elah,” “Jarhead,” “The Kingdom”), none achieve on so many levels and try to capture the true experience of today’s soldiers like “The Hurt Locker.” Former embedded [...]

The height of Akira Kurosawa’s career as a masterful Japanese filmmaker might have been in the ’50s with “Roshomon” and the epic “Seven Samurai,” but “Ran” represents a consummation of sorts in the director’s career and lifetime. At age 75, Kurosawa puts his own style into Shakespeare’s “King Lear,” the descent of a once great [...]

In a post-9/11 era, moviegoers are no longer fazed by the idea that the government can utilize technology to the fullest extent in tracking and monitoring citizens. We also understand that this (debatably) infringes upon our civil liberties. Since then, dozens of films have warned us of the dangerous extent that technology can take us [...]

A spoof is never a bad idea, but it requires wit and the Wayans brothers don’t have it. Think back to the films that made the spoof a genre (“Airplane” and “The Naked Gun”) and there you have a commitment to nonsensical but witty humor and most of all — subtlety.  “Scary Movie” might make [...]

Alien invasion stories can often seem a bit far-fetched, but making a great action movie with a compelling story for just $30 million shouldn’t. If “District 9″ scores at the box office, maybe it will drive home to Hollywood that eternal but oft forgotten message that great films come from great stories. “District 9″ is [...]

Pregnancy and eventually the bond between mother and child is a powerful thing. Hormones, attachment, sometimes postpartum depression — even the mystery of what’s growing inside — Roman Polanski channels all these things into storytelling elements of suspense and paranoia in his superbly written “Rosemary’s Baby.”

Minus the gratuitous male genitalia jokes, “Funny People” is about as far from anything Judd Apatow has directed or produced since he hit it big with “The 40-Year-Old Virgin.” Finally collaborating with longtime friend Adam Sandler, Apatow takes the creative license that his reputation as comedic master of the decade has afforded him and makes [...]