Mar 05, 2010 11:04AM

Brooklyn's Finest

Unfortunately, good intentions don't always make for good screenwriting, and strong work from a cast can't overcome a screenplay hampered by cliches and obvious twists. There's a reason it's taken over a year for Brooklyn's Finest to come to theaters

Mar 05, 2010 01:01PM

Alice in Wonderland 3D

Burton's movie avoids the impossible task of creating a real story out of Carroll’s book by ditching it entirely. This Alice is not an adaptation of Carroll’s novel, at least not exactly. Instead the classic Alice you have swimming around in your head is used as back story.

Mar 03, 2010 04:56AM

Alice in Wonderland

"Too much" is what Alice in Wonderland is in nearly every way-- too much color, too much scenery, too much busy plot, too much exposition. The only thing there's not too much of is characters worth caring about-- in fact, there's none of those at all.

Feb 25, 2010 10:44PM

Cop Out

There’s talent here, too much for Cop Out to be truly terrible, but it’s talent wasted on a bad idea which probably never should have been made. This script doesn’t deserve these people and even if it did, they’re sitting in the wrong chairs.

Feb 25, 2010 02:50PM

The Crazies

While Breck Eisner's take on the original George A. Romero film doesn't do much to reinvent horror or paranoid thrillers, it's surprisingly entertaining and even a little smart. Whether it's because of that politically tinged plot or the sheer fact that it's a horror movie about grown-ups, The Crazies refuses to talk down to its audience

Feb 24, 2010 04:33PM

The Yellow Handkerchief

The Yellow Handkerchief. Who came up with that? There is nothing stimulating about that title. Forgiveness could be granted if this so-called yellow handkerchief had a defining moment in the film, but no. In fact, the yellow handkerchief’s 15 seconds of fame could have been easily replaced by something much bolder. Perhaps hoisting a yellow sail on a small boat? Just like the unnecessary inclusion of the yellow hanky, director Udayan Prasad makes the film tiresome by searching for meaning in vague places when the film works best in its simplicity.

Feb 24, 2010 04:25PM

Harlan - In The Shadow of Jew Süss

Many are well aware of Veit Harlan and the incredible effect films like Jew Süss had on the Third Reich. The infamous German propagandist's films were mandatory viewing for S.S. troops during World War II, and even today much of his work is banned throughout the world. Harlan is long gone but he’s left behind far more than his notorious reputation; a vast bloodline remains. It’s one thing to point a finger at an evil historical figure, but the situation becomes relatable when examined by his relatives in Harlan: In The Shadow of Jew Suss, an interesting but only partially satisfying documentary about the filmmaker’s legacy.

Feb 18, 2010 05:33PM

The Ghost Writer

while Roman Polanski's film occasionally plays well with dramatic tension and right well by its skilled lead actors, more often it feels limp and overblown, a take on modern political intrigue from a guy who's been in exile for decades. He clearly knows how it all ought to work, but doesn't quite have the right language any more.

Feb 18, 2010 02:19AM

Shutter Island

Martin Scorsese knows something about surprise endings which twist meisters like M. Night Shyamalan seem to have forgotten. The twist doesn’t matter if you haven’t already told a good story. By the time Shutter Island gets to its twist, it has already told such a tale.

Feb 12, 2010 12:44AM

Percy Jackson and the Olympians

As a movie Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief is the perfect advertisement for the books on which it’s based. Unfortunately at times it feels like nothing more than an advertisement. The best thing you can say about director Chris Columbus’s adaptation is that he’s incapable of destroying whatever magic and wonder it is in those books that has kept kids coming back for more. But it’s not for lack of trying.

Feb 11, 2010 05:24PM

Valentine's Day

Clearly someone conceived this as the American answer to Love, Actually, and being American, they made it bigger, louder, uglier and more ungainly than the original. We're the country that made It Happened One Night. We're better than this.

Feb 10, 2010 04:31PM

The Wolfman (2010)

Behaving like a kid with a giant effects budget and no idea how to use it, Johnston gives us The Wolfman as a rambling, pseudo-Freudian house of horrors, with lots of things to jump out of us and look creepy but virtually nothing that's truly scary.

Feb 06, 2010 01:55AM

Frozen

There’s something immensely enjoyable about trying to put yourself in the place of a horror movie character and imagining how you’d fair in their situation. What’s the best part of this fantasy scenario? It’s fake. But Frozen makes it feel so real that it’ll keep you from hitting the slopes anytime soon.

Feb 05, 2010 02:01AM

From Paris With Love

From Paris With Love is kind of like Lethal Weapon meets The Hurt Locker, and when those two distinctly different sensibilities collide, it’s not a good thing. Directed by Pierre Morel, whose talent for unflinching violence worked so brilliantly on Taken last year, this isn’t the action movie it ought to be.

Feb 04, 2010 04:56PM

Dear John

I understand that according to the press notes, Dear John is not in fact a four-hour epic. But when I was in that theater, watching Channing Tatum and Amanda Seyfried make virginal moony eyes at each other, I swear to you I felt time stop.