Archive for July, 2008

Courtney Hunt’s somber film “Frozen River” ventures deep into the trenches where hard-working Americans struggle to put food on the table.

Based on the acclaimed graphic novel. IWatchmenI is set in an alternate 1985 America in which costumed superheroes are part of the fabric of everyday society, and the Doomsday Clock which charts the USAs tension with the Soviet Union is permanently set at five minutes to midnight. When one of his former colleagues is murdered, the washed up but no less determined masked vigilante Rorschach sets out to uncover a plot to kill and discredit all past and present superheroes.

Clueless, directionless and altogether pointless, “America the Beautiful” will outrage only those who have spent the last 50 years in suspended animation.

Painfully unbalanced, iDragon Emporeri takes itself too seriously in the drama department and not seriously enough when it comes to humor and action. I had hoped for a movie that would hold my interest and kept me laughing as much as the original. Instead I got lukewarm eye-candy that had me checking my watch every five minutes.

The film contains bits of Capra-esque, everyman fantasy and bits of gritty and realistic rural drama, but the balance never works out to create a coherent or compelling story. Its good to see Costner doing comedy again, but hell need a better vehicle before he stages a real comeback.

As the population inexorably grows older, will there be more movies about aging?

Starring: Brendan Fraser, Jet Li Review: The new Mummy is, how can I put it? Just freakin' awful. The computerized action travels beyond cheese to the realm of the tackiest Velveeta. The first two Mummy movies were awful as well, but they were hits and rode on the unfakable charm of Brendan Fraser as Indiana Jones-in-training Rick O'Connell. The 2008 Mummy, directed by Rob Cohen, still has Fraser, though he looks understandably baffled. It's 1946 and suddenly he has a college-age son. Rick is still married to the feisty Evelyn, but now she's played by Maria Bello instead of Oscar winner Rachel Weisz. No one says a word. The location now is China, how timely given the upcoming Beijing Olympics. Listen, I can't go on. The plot is idiotic and everyone acts like major tools. The one star I plopped on this clunky... Rating: 1 Stars

RATING: (POLITE APPLAUSE) Swing Vote: Comedy-drama. Starring Kevin Costner, Madeline Carroll, Kelsey Grammer and Dennis Hopper. Directed by Joshua Michael Stern. (PG-13. 100 minutes. At Bay Area theaters. For complete movie listings and show times, and to buy...

TitleWhat it's aboutAdvisory RATED G Space ChimpsWhen a costly space probe gets sucked into a wormhole, well-trained chimps are sent to retrieve the spacecraft.None.WALL-EA lonely trash-compacting robot, who adores "Hello, Dolly" and collecting things, meets...

RATING: (WILD APPLAUSE)XXY: Drama. Starring Inés Efron, Ricardo Darín and Martín Piroyansky. Directed by Lucía Puenzo. (In Spanish with English subtitles. Not rated. 91 minutes. At the Lumiere and the Shattuck in Berkeley.) Lucía Puenzo's "XXY," which won the...