Fundamentally speaking, the appeal of Tom Cruise in the last few years doesn’t make any sense. Just as soon as he took Katie Holmes hostage and started parading her and her ‘too scared for escape’ look around the world, people seem to have become disinterested in anything he has to do professionally; or so they say. Sure he was great in Tropic Thunder, but I’m talking about the movies he has had to carry on his own. Everyone seems to talk a big game but with the exception of last year’s Lions for Lambs, you have to go all the way back to Magnolia, almost a decade ago, to find a film he starred in that didn’t gross at least $100M domestically. So much for disinterest. Maybe he just has mind control over all of us too.

Keep in mind, these aren’t secrets I am exposing for the first time, so why his pick for his latest project was a big budget WWII Hitler assassination movie is beyond comprehension. For a man so caught up on selling his image, it stands to reason that there would be better ways to spend his time. It ended up being much worse than it appeared on the surface. The release date for Valkyrie moved so many times nobody cared when it was really coming out and as soon as the trailers came out the backlash was already in full effect [...]

In 1977, just a few years removed from the only resignation by a U.S. President in the history of our country, Richard Nixon agreed to be interviewed by a moderately successful British TV personality, David Frost. Over the course of 28 hours of interviews, Nixon eventually apologized for the scandals of his administration. Not before or since has Nixon publicly addressed the issues surrounding Watergate.

Take a second to let that sink in. It’s only been 30 years since the interviews but the way we get our news today has changed so drastically that a news event like this would be impossible to achieve in today’s news environment. The advent of the internet and the 24-hour cable news channel has completely changed the way we get our news. But in 1977, when network anchors ruled the news on the Big Three, a foreign journalist against the odds scored what is still today considered the most important political interview ever.

Frost/Nixon was adapted from the 2007 Broadway play of same name that focused on the interviews and the preparation leading up to them. The outcome of the interviews is what made them as successful as they have become, but any time you have a movie based on actual events, the conclusion ends up being irrelevant. Since that element is removed as the dramatic driving force, the filmmakers had to rely on good old fashion storytelling and performances to push the film [...]

On a personal level, I consider Charlie Kaufman the most talented working screenwriter in Hollywood. I don’t think I am alone in this thought. His resume is one of impressive and envious of anyone in the past however many years you want to use to quantify it. It is one thing to craft a story with intelligent structure and dialogue. It is another thing altogether to create entire universes that have a distinct taste and smell to them. When you sit down to watch a Kaufman scripted film, there is an expected level of chaos and disorder. Being John Malkovich, Adaptation, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind — all of these films have a wildly imaginative subject and scope, which is exactly the reasons we love them so much.

Synecdoche, New York marks Kaufman’s directorial debut and to the general movie-going public it will amount to little more than a confusing movie with a confusing title. Fans of his work will draw pretty much the same conclusion. On one hand it is an almost unapproachably pretentious movie with a title that is difficult to pronounce (‘si-NEK-duh-kee’, by the way). On the other hand it is a movie that sort of transcends explanation. That’s not a movie critic cop-out, it just has many, many layers beyond its face value [...]

Any comedian will tell you the secret to a good joke is to make it accessible, have a good setup, and kill with the punch line. I don’t know that there is necessarily a golden formula but this seems like pretty sound advice on a general level. I suppose variations of the same thing can be said about making movies. Director Oliver Stone had nothing if not a golden setup. A movie about the exiting President of the United States, while he is still in office, mere days before the election that would remove him from power, and with just enough time to reflect on his last eight years in office. Stone, being no stranger to controversy or films of historical significance, seemed to be in a perfect position to move in for the kill. Instead we got what those in retail refer to as the old ‘bait and switch’.

W. does show us what we expected to see from this movie; that George W. Bush (Josh Brolin) grew up as a hard partying man of privilege who rarely had to deal with consequences for anything he did or said. He was an irresponsible, womanizing, carousing, spoiled little rich kid who wouldn’t and couldn’t hold a job. Any trouble he got into was fixed by a phone call from his father, George H.W. Bush (James Cromwell). It also told how Dubya fell ass-backwards into politics and eventually became the leader of the free world. It would almost be an inspiring “little engine that could” type story, if not for knowing the details about how everything actually turned out. The pre-release posters and trailers suggested the movie would be a caustic illustration of the rise and fall of the 43rd President of the United States. Turns out, W. shows a surprising lack of poignancy, political or otherwise [...]

How to Lose Friends & Alienate People reminds me of a dog I had when I was a kid. It was this huge Great Dane that would lumber around and trip all over himself and destroy anything in the process. Anyone who saw him for the first time would be scared to death of him, but he was dumb as a bag of hammers and just a harmless. That’s pretty much where the comparison stops because I loved that dog and still have fond memories of him. On the other hand, I saw the movie late last night and can barely remember it enough to write this review.

a British celebrity rag and makes a living pissing people off; crashing celebrity parties to get close to people more famous than him and patting himself on the back when he is successful at doing so. In his pocket he proudly keeps a laminated photo of himself in the wrong end of a Clint Eastwood headlock. He’s that guy [...]

Before a single scene was ever filmed, the movie Choke was at a disadvantage. Whether or not the film would be any good was of little relevance. It was already handicapped by two inevitable comparisons: to the Chuck Palahniuk novel the movie was based on and to the David Fincher‘s Fight Club, also adapted from a Palahniuk book. They are comparisons are fair for obvious reasons but in the interest of continuing that fairness I watched this movie with two thoughts in mind. One, this wasn’t going to be Fight Club. Choke didn’t have the director, stars or the budget to even come close to competing. Two, and most importantly, the books are always better. Saying you didn’t like a movie adapted from a book because it wasn’t as good as the book is like saying you didn’t like Star Wars because you don’t like science fiction. I’m not saying it’s not possible or that some films haven’t come close, it’s just a stupid thing to say [...]

As many of the episodes of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia as I have seen, and as many of them as I have reviewed for this site, I have always enjoyed them with bated breath. They are generally pretty funny in their own right but I can’t help that little whispering voice in the back of my head warning me that the other shoe is bound to drop. For a show with no real direction that can be described as controlled chaos at best, I have complained in previous reviews that the show was beginning to rely too much on a shock and awe approach rather than creating their own mythology that could carry the show through weaker episodes. I went back and watched a handful of old episodes on DVD before I previewed the first two episodes of season four: ‘Mac & Dennis: Manhunters’ and ‘The Gang Solves the Gas Crisis’. What I found out was that in their avoidance of being stuck with a label, they have created that mythology by default. They have taken Seinfeld’s mantra — “Nobody learns, nobody hugs” — to unforeseen heights [...]

I don’t know where this stuff starts. For months I had heard about this movie, the darling of the festival circuit, and had been interested in its premise. Two British lads inspired by a bootlegged copy of the movie Rambo: First Blood set out to make their own version of the film to try and win a young filmmaker competition. Sounds promising but there’s only one small problem: It was boring as hell.

I sat down to watch Son of Rambow one evening and fell asleep halfway through it. I woke up a couple hours later and finished it. Feeling I didn’t give it a fair shake, I waited until the next day and re-watched it in its entirety. What conclusions did I draw the second time around? That I was right the first time.

I know it’s supposed to be cute and endearing to watch kids do things usually reserved for adults but I just didn’t care about these kids or their actions. You’ve got your basic buddy story setup. Lee Carter (Will Poulter), the most misbehaved kid in school, bullies classmate Will Proudfoot (Bill Milner) into hanging out with him. Wouldn’t you know, along the way they grow into actual friends. Neither kid seems to have any real guidance around him at home…

I will preface this review with an admission of guilt that I am more than happy to announce as loud as it will take for anyone to hear it: I can’t stand Ellen Page. In my humble opinion Juno was just alright and my distaste for the movie rests solely on the shoulders of its star. I found myself defending my position during the film’s release more than I felt necessary and the singular argument that came from the other camp was that if I like her in Hard Candy (I did) and hated her in Juno, then I must have disliked the character Juno more than the person acting as her. That wouldn’t be a bad argument if it weren’t completely wrong. On the timeline of this longstanding debate, Smart People may have dealt the death blow for the opposing side. But let me back up just a touch.

As a film critic, I would like to think I am subjective enough not to let a singular performance ruin an otherwise decent movie. It hasn’t always held true (see: Juno), but I was bound and determined not to let it happen here. In other words, I went into it with an open mind. I am proud to say that I did not find Smart People to be a bad movie because of Ellen Page. No, this time it was a group effort.

This country loves its parody, doesn’t it? The National Lampoon brand made a career out of it, Saturday Night Live is in its 34th season, and late night talk shows — a staple of which is poking fun at current events — have been around for over half a century. As much as people would sometimes like to turn their nose up and scoff at the audacity of the envelope being pushed, the market has been thriving almost as long as the medium has existed. So it always baffles me when these rights activists get their draws in a bunch over something that, even in the wildest stretches of imagination, was never meant to be taken seriously.

Tropic Thunder is a Hollywood movie making fun of Hollywood making movies. On the set of “the most expensive war movie ever made,” first-time director Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan) can’t pull his lead actors from their pools of self-absorption, costs are spiraling out of control, and the studio threatens to shut down production for good. He decides that he will set the actors loose in the jungles of Southeast Asia (and into the path of some real local mercenaries) to find their way back, all while the actors think they are still filming their Vietnam movie. The story itself isn’t terribly original or complicated — it tastes almost exactly like a dish I had years ago called The Three Amigos — but the point of the movie isn’t in the premise, which only exists to drive the story, it is in the parody.

Benjamin Burtt, Jeff Garlin, Elissa Knight, Fred Willard, and John Ratzenberger provide the voice cast in this latest Disney/Pixar animated feature from writer/director Andrew Stanton.

Adam Sandler and Rob Schneider star in this comedy written by Sandler, Judd Apatow, and Robert Smigel and directed by Dennis Dugan.

Kathleen Turner, Ricki Lake, Matthew Lillard, and Sam Waterston star in this 1993 John Waters film, out now on a Collector’s Edition DVD.

Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Richard Gere, and Heath Ledger all appear as Bob Dylan in this biopic from Todd Haynes.

Jason Segel, Kristen Bell, and Mila Kunis in this Judd Apatow-produced R-rated comedy from director Nicholas Stoller.

Jonathan Tucker, Laura Ramsey, and Jena Malone star in this horror flick from director Carter Smith.

Jim Sturgess, Kevin Spacey, Kate Bosworth, and Laurence Fishburne star in this Vegas movie based on true events.

Three freshmen singled out by a high school bully hire a homeless man to be their bodyguard to protect them in this comedy starring Owen Wilson.

Jason Statham stars in this Roger Donaldson-directed bank heist based on true events.

Will Ferrell, Woody Harrelson, and Andre ‘Andre 3000′ Benjamin star in this sports comedy from director Kent Alterman.