Capsule reviews

An American Carol (PG-13, 83 minutes) Director David Zucker of Airplane! fame and Scary Movie 3 infamy helms this tale of a Michael Moore-ish filmmaker (Kevin Farley) who crusades to abolish our July 4 holiday and is visited by spirits who try to persuade him that he’s an idiot. With Jon Voigt as George Washington […]

Dark comedy that goes down easy

One thing that may not have occurred to you about the Heimlich Maneuver is that, during a crisis, it is at the very least a reliable way of being held. That’s how Choke’s Victor Mancini (Sam Rockwell) sees it, anyway. And just because Victor is a fatherless, sex-addicted med school dropout who solicits bankable pity […]

New kids on the block

“The Mentalist” Tuesday 9pm, CBS Simon Baker is drop-dead gorgeous, and he’s got a sexy accent. But for whatever reason, he can’t quite make the A-list thing happen. He starred in the short-lived lawyer drama “The Guardian,” had a supporting role in Ray Liotta’s megaflop caper show “Smith,” and now he’s giving TV another try […]

Capsule reviews

Babylon A.D. (PG-13, 90 minutes) It’s the dystopian future. Michelle Yeoh is a nun looking after a young woman who might have a deadly virus, and Vin Diesel is a mercenary looking after himself. Many explosions may change that. Playing at Carmike Cinema 6 Bangkok Dangerous (R, 110 minutes) Danny and Oxide Pang remake their […]

Burnin’ down the house

You can take the movie’s title in a number of ways. As spy jargon, of course—an order to protect top secret information by ensuring that no eyes but your own ever will see it. Or as a spectacular critical rebuke, to a document so aggressively disposable that the disposal itself should be aggressive, punitive, scorching. […]