A pleasantly restrained Martin Lawrence voices the likable grizzly bear hero of this computer-generated feature. Raised by a ranger, he’s lost when exiled to the woods, thanks to a wild-eyed mule deer (Ashton Kutcher, channeling Donkey from Shrek). As is usual in computer animation, the film’s look is overbright, its…
Lewis Black: Red, White & Screwed (HBO) Like many other Daily Show success stories, Lewis Black is a comedian made for these times; his facial contortions and verbal tics are expressions of the Bush-era phrase “outrage overload.” But unlike other big names in political stand-up right now (David Cross, Bill…
Avenger (Warner Bros.) Calvaire: The Ordeal (Palm) Cedric the Entertainer: Taking You Higher (HBO) Changing Times (Koch Lorber) Confidence (Lionsgate) Deadfall (Lionsgate) Edmond (First Independent) The Greatest American Hero: The Complete Series (Anchor Bay) Harvey Toons: The Complete Collection (Sony Wonder) Humphrey Bogart: The Signature Collection, Volumes 1 & 2…
The sex is real in John Cameron Mitchell’s Shortbus; only the setting — an animated New York cityscape, benignly watched over by a fluorescent Statue of Liberty — is fake. To an extent, that describes the movie: a sexually daring, dramatically timid roundelay that employs unsimulated twosomes, threesomes, and even…
Watching The Guardian, you will learn that the U.S. Coast Guard’s rescue swimmers rank among the bravest and least heralded of military personnel, selflessly hurling themselves into raging currents or hurricane swells to save a single human life. But I doubt that even these knights in neoprene armor could rescue…
Feast isn’t the least bit artful, but it is gleefully gruesome, which might be all one can ask of a no-budget monster movie. As the film opens, a freaked-out stranger bursts into an isolated desert tavern to warn the dozen or so people inside that man-eating creatures, possibly from another…
The Big Animal (Milestone) It’s a simple yet lesser known law of comedy: Camels are always funny. There are the jaws that drool and chew side to side, the front legs that move like a human’s, the humps — but mostly it’s the eyes: There’s something of Buddha in a…
Beowulf & Grendel (Anchor Bay) The Book of Daniel: The Complete Series (Universal) Bratz: Passion Fashion Diamondz (Fox) Con Man (Docurama) Curious George (Universal) Danger Mouse: The Final Seasons (A&E) Daniel Boone: Season 1 and Season 2 (Goldhil) Dark Shadows: DVD Collection 26 (MPI) Dracula: 75th Anniversary Edition (Universal) Drop…
One would never confuse the work of writer-director Todd Phillips with that of the late Robert Hamer, whose filmography includes the essential Kind Hearts and Coronets. Hamer’s movies had a gentlemanly quality, no matter the cruelty that skulked beneath their prim exteriors; one always believed that the characters in his…
According to its publicity, bringing Robert Penn Warren’s 1946 novel All the King’s Men to the screen again has always been “a cherished dream” of executive producer James Carville — suggesting a lurking sense of payback frustration with the insubstantial legacy of the real populist Southerner whom Carville himself helped…
Sweet, crazy, and tinged with sadness, Michel Gondry’s new feature, The Science of Sleep, is a wondrous concoction. The tricksy romantic narrative — in which Gael García Bernal plays a hapless, Chaplinesque madman — might be reminiscent of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which Gondry directed from Charlie Kaufman’s…
Just as Arnold Schwarzenegger passed the action-hero torch to the Rock in The Rundown, Muay Thai star Tony Jaa gets the nod here from a similarly qualified veteran making an unbilled cameo. Jaa has the skills for the job and shows them off in numerous fight scenes; it’s just a…
The Proposition (First Look) There’s an old saying about Ginger Rogers, who did everything Fred Astaire did — but backward and in heels. This Australian western seems to be saying something similar about gritty American westerns: You think that’s hard? Try living in the Outback. The Proposition mucks about in…
After Sex (New Yorker) Bob & Tom Radio: The Comedy Tour (Image) The Boris Karloff Collection (Universal) Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul (Strand) 8th & Ocean: The Complete First Season (Paramount) Fabulous! The Story of Queer Cinema (Wolfe) Gilmore Girls: The Complete Sixth Season (Warner Bros.) Go for…
Directed by Brian De Palma from the novel by neo-noirist James Ellroy, The Black Dahlia is a true-crime policier unfolding in late-Forties Los Angeles somewhere between the neighborhoods of Chinatown and Mulholland Drive. The premise involves one of L.A.’s most notorious unsolved homicides. In early 1947, the naked corpse of…
Those twentysomethings, poor dears, can never catch a break in the movies. First this maligned generation is told, in countless gritty indies and perky studio comedies, they’re rowing through life without oars. Now director Tony Goldwyn’s admirably understated handling of dispiritingly slender material suggests if you’re pushing 30, you’re likely…
Ludicrously named hit man Chev Chelios (Jason Statham) awakens to the news that he’s been injected with a deadly poison, the effects of which can be staved off by cranking his adrenaline up to insanely high levels. Naturally his reaction is to turn the city of Los Angeles into his…
I Am a Sex Addict (IFC) Caveh Zahedi has made a movie of our times — a strange mix of self-absorption, shamelessness in the pursuit of fame, and sex. Most shocking of all is that it works. Part fiction and documentary, confessional and comedy, the film traces the history of…
Ballets Russes (Zeitgeist) The Batman: The Complete Second Season (Warner Bros.) Beavis and Butt-head Do America: Special Collector’s Edition (Paramount) Bottoms Up (Sony) Disney Princess Stories, Volume 1: A Gift From the Heart (Disney) The Girls (New Yorker) Goal! The Dream Begins (Disney) Grey’s Anatomy: Season 2 Uncut (Buena Vista)…
A number of pregnant mysteries arise with the new remake of Robin Hardy’s 1973 cult-remembered genre work — namely what’s in this kind of malarkey for gender combat provocateur Neil LaBute, and why was such a high-profile film tossed into theaters without letting critics see it first? The two simple…
If Superman Returns attempted to resurrect the Man of Steel as mythic hero, the season’s other Superman movie wants to disabuse us of any such childish illusions. Glamorously adult, Hollywoodland purports to part the veil on the circumstances by which George Reeves, the actor who embodied the superhero on Fifties…
Connoisseurs of le cinema de Broken Lizard can take modest consolation that this ode to “cold, fresh joy” marks a distinct rebound for the Colgate University-spawned comedy troupe from the dregs of Club Dread and The Dukes of Hazzard. A pair of brewsky-loving brothers (Paul Soter and Erik Stolhanske) travel…
