Movies playing in town

Movies playing in town10,000 B.C. (PG-13, 109 minutes) Roland Emmerich (Stargate, Independence Day) directs this big-budget SPFX extravaganza. It’s, well, 10,000 B.C., and a hairy, mammoth-hunting hero (unknown Steven Strait) is prevailed upon to rescue his tribe from a civilization of pyramid-dwelling slavers. Omar Sharif is in there, doing his best prehistoric work since The […]

Knowing the Drill

After writing, directing and/or producing a four-year string of comedy hits (Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Knocked Up, Superbad, Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story), Judd Apatow could be forgiven for taking a little break, if for no reason other than to preserve the […]

Movies playing in town

Movies playing in town 10,000 B.C. (PG-13, 109 minutes) Roland Emmerich (Stargate, Independence Day) directs this big-budget SPFX extravaganza. It’s, well, 10,000 B.C., and a hairy, mammoth-hunting hero (unknown Steven Strait) is prevailed upon to rescue his tribe from a civilization of pyramid-dwelling slavers. Omar Sharif is in there, doing his best prehistoric work since […]

One Seuss, two Seuss

Now that we’re all safely outside the biohazard zone created by 2000’s Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas and 2003’s Dr. Seuss’ The Cat in the Hat, I think we can all agree that live-action versions of Dr. Seuss books are just wrong, wrong, wrong. It’s of some comfort, then, that the 2008 feature […]

Sinking and soaring

There’s something wonderful about painter-turned-filmmaker Julian Schnabel’s impressionistic biopic The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. But there’s also something vaguely frustrating in this soft-focus ode to imagination and French joie de vivre. Perhaps it’s simply a byproduct of the subject at hand, real-life Elle magazine editor Jean-Dominique Bauby, who suffered a massive stroke, became completely […]

Movies playing in town

Movies playing in town10,000 B.C. (PG-13, 109 minutes) Roland Emmerich (Stargate, Independence Day) directs this big-budget SPFX extravaganza. It’s, well, 10,000 B.C., and a hairy, mammoth-hunting hero (unknown Steven Strait) is prevailed upon to rescue his tribe from a civilization of pyramid-dwelling slavers. Omar Sharif is in there, doing his best prehistoric work since The […]

Stick to the game plan

Over the last decade or so, Will Ferrell has dug himself a very comfortable Hollywood niche. In his films, he invariably plays some sort of enthusiastic, well-meaning doofus toiling away on the lower echelons of some random career ladder. Ferrell surrounds himself with a collection of comic friends, all of which add their own improvisational […]

Movies playing in town

Movies playing in town10,000 B.C. (PG-13, 109 minutes) Roland Emmerich (Stargate, Independence Day) directs this big-budget SPFX extravaganza. It’s, well, 10,000 B.C., and a hairy, mammoth-hunting hero (unknown Steven Strait) is prevailed upon to rescue his tribe from a civilization of pyramid-dwelling slavers. Omar Sharif is in there, doing his best prehistoric work since The […]

At a disadvantage

Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 film, Rashomon, features one of the most borrowed/refigured/ripped-off/homaged plot structures in the history of movies. In it, a heinous crime is committed. Four people have witnessed the crime. Each one tells their own version of events. Each person has a different perspective on things. In the end, which version, if any, is […]

Movies playing in town

Movies playing in town27 Dresses (PG-13, 107 minutes) Jane (Katherine Heigl) is always a bridesmaid never a bride. Literally. She’s served as bridesmaid at 27 weddings. Now she’s being forced to do the duty at her own sister’s wedding. The worst part? Sis is marrying the man (Ed Burns) that Jane secretly loves. Yes, that […]