Newspaper columnist Dan Burns (Steve Carell) dispenses advice to families in his column, but his own personal life is in shambles. The widowed father of three girls is afraid of letting go and letting his kids grow up. He's so consumed with their lives that he has no time to live his own.
Video: 2
Audio: 3
Extras: 4 The Last King of Scotland isn’t the first film to weave a fictional story around real-life people and events, but I struggled with this one’s questionable dramatization of some actual events. As a piece of fiction, though, it’s a gripping tale of a young Scotsman who becomes Ugandan president Idi Amin’s personal physician and witnesses Amin’s transformation from visionary to madman.
Video: 3
Audio: 3
Extras: 4
Acclaimed Spanish director and art-house fave Pedro Almodvar adores women—all women—and once again celebrates the female in his latest offering, Volver, a stylish comedy/noir that poignantly unravels the emotional complexities of womanhood.
Video: 4
Audio: 4
Extras: 2
In 1981, a struggling, self-employed medical-supply salesman (Will Smith) must cope with unemployment, his wife leaving him, and caring for his young son, Christopher, (played by Smith’s real-life son Jaden) in this movie inspired by a true story. As Chris Gardner, Smith excels in bringing to life the soul of a man hanging on by a thread yet continuing to have faith in his talents and that he’ll be able to earn enough to get by.
Video: 2
Audio: 3
Extras: 3
Wouldn’t it be nice to jet off to an exotic location the moment your life turned sour? The Holiday, directed by Nancy Meyers (Something’s Gotta Give, Baby Boom), takes on this idea. As Iris (Kate Winslet) and Amanda (Cameron Diaz) simultaneously reach crossroads in their love lives, they find each other on a home-exchange Website and swap houses—and countries—for two weeks. While both women think they’re vacationing from love and all its disappointments, it ends up finding them anyway.
Video: 4
Audio: 4
Extras: 2
In the world of magic, nothing is as it seems. It’s only fitting that the same would be true of The Prestige, a film about two rival Victorian-era magicians determined to learn each other’s secrets, regardless of the cost to those around them. Based on a novel by Christopher Priest, the film has been carefully crafted by screenwriters Jonathan and Christopher Nolan to be its own magic trick. Even if you believe (as I did) that you’ve figured out the trick halfway through the film, Chris Nolan’s artful direction—or, more appropriately, misdirection—cleverly toys with you, pulling your attention elsewhere without ever losing its grip on the story.
Video: 4
Audio: 4
Extras: 4
For those who thought the world wasn’t ready for a fair-haired James Bond, Daniel Craig acquits himself extremely well in this twenty-first entry in the franchise, which plays fast and loose with the series’ chronology to show the super spy as a newly minted double-0. Cool, steely-eyed, and, above all, physically and emotionally vulnerable, this Bond can actually love a woman, although we learn in short order why he stopped doing so. In this installment, Bond infiltrates an arms financier’s high-stakes poker game staged to win back clients’ lost money. While the story line doesn’t hold up to close scrutiny, we get to see the evolution of the shaken vodka martini and the spy’s signature line of introduction.
By and large, dragons have had a tough time of it in Hollywood. Past attempts from Pete’s Dragon, to Dragonslayer, to Dragonheart—heck, even Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story—have failed to set the world on fire. Enter Eragon (based upon the popular book by Christopher Paolini), the latest cinematic tale of winged, flame-belching lizards and the humans who befriend them. There’s nothing really new in this sequel-ready fantasy/adventure: an evil king and his minions; the brave underdog resistance; a young hero who loses everything before coming of age. It all borrows a lot from the original Star Wars trilogy, while looking much like Lord of the Rings.
Video: 4
Audio: 4
Extras: 2
If you think this is a story about a horse, you’re only halfway there. On the surface, Flicka is a film about a wild horse that is accidentally found by Katy (Alison Lohman), a headstrong, horse-loving teenager, while she tries to escape the confines of her father’s expectations—and a mountain lion. The parallel between the struggles of Katy and Flicka—man trying to contain nature—is typical at best. But, for this horse enthusiast, it works.
Video: 3
Audio: 4
Extras: 3
I might lose your respect for this, but I enjoy The Rock. Even when his material is lacking (which it often is), I find that The Rock rises above it all and makes something solid (pun sadly intended). Gridiron Gang continues to prove my theory, telling a “true story” that manages to combine troubled inner-city kids finding guidance and a football team rising above the odds. It’s a very conventional movie, complete with montages, but Dwayne Johnson makes it tolerable.
Video: 4
Audio: 4
Extras: 3
The log line “Will Ferrell hears narration” can conjure up a number of scenarios in one’s mind, some glorious, but most misguided and painful. Thankfully, Stranger Than Fiction turns out to be a rather subtle and charming “meta” comedy. Ferrell plays Harold Crick, a straight-laced, borderline-obsessive-compulsive IRS auditor who begins hearing the dulcet tones of narration. This sets in motion a chain of events that covers the broad spectrum of life, death, love, loss, and all creative endeavors, fictional and non.
Video: 2
Audio: 2
Extras: 1
The world is full of idiots, and we’re only getting dumber. That’s the premise behind Mike Judge’s Idiocracy, a sly satire on the state of our collective intelligence. Luke Wilson plays an average soldier who’s frozen in an experiment and wakes up in the year 2505. There, he is the smartest man on the planet. This is the launching pad for jabs at corporate culture and the dumbing down of America, most of it spot on, all very funny.
The Spider-Man film franchise has millions of satisfied fans, which is quite an accomplishment by the filmmakers, considering the persnickety nature of comic-book devotees and the quality of most sequels. These fans must be confused by the apparent eagerness to modify one of the great superhero movies of all time, but they need not fret. Sony Pictures’ re-edited Spider-Man 2.1 preserves everything we enjoyed theatrically and on DVD in 2004, plus it offers about eight more minutes of footage, every second of it enjoyable in its own right.
Video: 2
Audio: 4
Extras: 3
On the surface, M. Night Shyamalan’s latest appears to tell a bedtime story concerning a creature called a narf that lives in a pool and how she affects the lives of those in the apartment building around her. But, underneath it all, I saw a story about how a director can surround himself with people afraid to say no to him. The ego shines far beyond the story, I’m afraid to say.
Video: 4
Audio: 3
Extras: 0
Angsty teenagers and other assorted characters end up in a desolate, New Mexico trailer park called Dreamland—some are living there, while some are just passing through. It’s an earnest film that tries hard but misses. John Corbett of Sex and the City heads the cast and shines as a long-suffering widower who finds at least a little bit of solace inside of a bottle. He’s also the father of Audrey (Agnes Bruckner), who receives college acceptance letters yet hides them so she can stay and care for her dad. Then there’s her friend (Kelli Garner), who’s stricken with multiple sclerosis and gets involved with a newcomer to the area: a rehabbing basketball player (Justin Long from Dodgeball), who also likes Audrey.
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