Kino

Starring:
Bernie Mac, Isaac Hayes
Review:
There’s a shining moment in this uneven spin on Grumpy Old
Men when Bernie Mac and Samuel L. Jackson, playing feuding
backup singers on an R&B comeback tour, stop in the desert to
change a flat tire. Instead, they break into an impromptu version
of the soul classic “I’m Your Puppet,” riffing off each […]

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Starring:
Paul Rudd, Seann William Scott, Elizabeth Banks
Review:
Sometimes a shamelessly stoopid, proudly profane R-rated comedy
is all you want out of life. Role Models more than fills
the bill. It’s killer funny. Cheers to Paul Rudd — he should
be a star by now — who takes just the right wry comic tone as
Danny, an L.A. misanthrope […]

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Starring:
David Thewlis, Vera Farmiga, Asa Butterfield
Review:
You may not buy into actors playing Nazis with high-toned Brit
accents, but the power of this Holocaust tale sneaks up and floors
you. Writer-director Mark Herman has adapted John Boyne’s novel
with admirable restraint.
Eight-year-old Bruno (Asa Butterfield) isn’t pleased when he and
older sister Gretel (Amber Beattie) are forced to leave […]

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Starring:
Paris Hilton
Review:
The idea of the director of Saw II, III and IV
going at Paris Hilton seems like just revenge for her punishable
assaults on acting. In this atonal, faux-arty rock opera about a
futuristic bull market in internal organs, Hilton is suitably
clueless as Amber Sweet, the daughter of an aria-singing mob boss
(Paul Sorvino). Amber trades […]

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Starring:
Seth Rogan, Elizabeth Banks, Jason Mewes
Review:
If there is such a thing as a stroke flick for your funnybone,
then Zack and Miri is it. Writer-director Kevin Smith is
back on comedy terra firma, after Jersey Girl drowned in
goo and Clerks II defined backsliding. For those who
wonder what happened to the Smith of the first Clerks […]

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Starring:
Phillip Seymour Hoffman
Review:
Does everything work in this mind-bender from Charlie Kaufman,
the screenwriter of Being John Malkovich,
Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless
Mind? No way. Synecdoche, New York is exhilarating
and exasperating in equal doses. But Kaufman, making his directing
debut, is focused on something you don’t find at multiplexes
overrun with chihuahuas and violent escapism: That […]

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Starring:
Lena Leandersson
Review:
With True Blood on HBO and the film version of
Twilight on the horizon, vampires are the new zombies.
Bloodsuckers are hot, baby. Stick your neck out for this Swedish
horror show. It’s a winner, full of mirth and malice, plus a young
romance you’ll never see on the Disney Channel. Eli (Lina
Leandersson) shows up just […]

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Starring:
Kristen Scott Thomas
Review:
Want a master class in film acting? Check out Kristin Scott
Thomas as Juliette, a doctor just out of prison in this spellbinder
from writer-director Philippe Claudel. Juliette has been invited by
her sister, Léa (Elsa Zylberstein), to share her home in
France, along with Léa’s husband, Luc (Serge Hazanavicius),
their two adopted Vietnamese daughters and […]

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Starring:
Zac Efron, Vanessa Hudgens, Ashley Tisdale
Review:
If you’re gay and/or eight years old, HSM3 is the movie
event of the year. From the first leering close-up of Zac Efron
shaking off sweat on the basketball court before bursting into
sappy song, the movie — like the two TV movies that preceded
it — is a nonthreatening sexual marshmallow. […]

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Starring:
Ed Norton, Colin Farrell, Jon Voight, Noah Emmerich, Jennifer
Ehl…
Review:
Yes, it’s a police drama, but not the kind that clogs up TV with
bullets and clichés. Pride and Glory, directed with
grit and grace by Gavin O’Connor (Tumbleweeds,
Miracle) from a probing script he wrote with Joe Carnahan
(Narc), may be the perfect election-era indictment.
Ostensibly about a steadily […]

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