Movie Review: She’s Out Of My League

She’s Out of My League, directed by Jim Field Smith, is not an original concept in young adult, comedy, or romantic comedy film genres. It is the quintessential story of the geek who gets the girl. Read more

Movie Review: Remember Me

As a shameless contraption of ridiculously sad things befalling attractive people, the engorged romantic tragedy Remember Me stands tall between those towering monuments to teen-oriented cinematic misery, Love Story and Twilight: Beginning with a shock of urban violence set on a subway platform in 1991, then moving forward to a balmy New York City summer a decade later, the movie is one part ”Love means never having to say you’re sorry” and one part 
 Edward’s warning to Bella: ”If you’re smart, you’ll stay away from me.” Read more

Movie Review: Green Zone

In Green Zone, Matt Damon plays a hero who’s one part 24’s Jack Bauer and two parts good soldier. Wearing standard combat gear accessorized with an Arab kaffiyeh knotted around his neck, Damon is U.S. Army chief warrant officer Roy Miller, who’s stationed in Baghdad at the start of the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq in 2003. Miller’s squadron is on a mission to find weapons of mass destruction, since the highly reliable intelligence confirming Iraqi president Saddam Hussein’s deadly stash of WMD is what persuaded Congress to authorize George W. Bush to invade the country in the first place. But there are no WMD to be found. And Miller, a serious man, has begun to wonder: Why is the intel so bad? Read more

Movie Review: Alice In Wonderland

Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, first published in 1865, is the sort of fractured-reality fairy tale that’s designed to strike adults much differently than it does children. For anyone old enough to know, the Queen of Hearts is a savage parody of a certain autocratic breed of political high haughtiness; for kids, she’s just a witchy lady with a frighteningly big and ugly head. Carroll’s classic, of course, is far from the only kiddie fantasia that operates on levels children can’t see. What’s unique about it is that an adult’s raised-eyebrow smirk is built into the very tone and structure of the story. Read more

Movie Review: Cop Out

“Cop Out” marks indie hero Kevin Smith’s first attempt to direct a script he did not write and given the absence of his garrulous dialogue and sweetly obscene sensibilities, the shortcomings of his craft are made all the more apparent. Smith’s directorial style is far too slack for this material, which aims to be an homage to populist ’80s classics like “48 Hrs.” and “Lethal Weapon,” but only winds up resembling one of the bargain-bin knockoffs that floundered in those films’ wake. Read more

Movie Review: The Ghost Writer

Ewan McGregor plays a writer who tackles and difficult — and possibly deadly — assignment.

“The Ghost Writer” is a deviously intriguing thriller about a British politician, his brittle brilliant wife and a strictly-for-hire memoirist who finds out more about his subject than he’d bargained for. Read more

Movie Review: Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief

Greek mythology gets a modern update in “Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief,” yet another kidlit adaptation hoping to steal some of Harry Potter’s thunder. Loosely based on book one of Rick Riordan’s five-volume series, “Thief” introduces Poseidon’s half-human love child, who battles a Minotaur, Medusa and a five-headed Hydra to avert a global gods-must-be-crazy crisis. With Chris Columbus at the helm, “Lightning” strikes many of the same notes as his earlier “Potter” efforts (outsider hero, episodic plotting, high-energy finale). Read more

Movie Review: Valentine’s Day

As gooey and lacking in protein as a chocolate holiday bonbon, “Valentine’s Day” plays like a feature-length commercial produced by the Friends of the Valentine Promotional Society. Almost every scene is larded by talk of flowers, gifts, cards, restaurants and other ways to spend gobs of money on a single day, all delivered by a raft of attractive stars or semi-stars rotated on and off by director Garry Marshall. Never was there a film more release date-targeted than this one, which only means that, once opening weekend is gone, so will be the audience. Read more

Movie Review: Dear John

Channing Tatum, who always seems to be looking off in the distance for a better career opportunity — vainly — is John, a Special Forces hero come home for some R&R. Amanda Seyfried, who looks like a slightly evil angel, is Savannah, a saintly dream girl (her one flaw? she “thinks” dirty words, when she gets angry), also home for spring break. Read more

Movie Review: From Paris With Love

From Paris With Love is a ”fun trash” movie that’s more trash than fun. Its key attraction is seeing John Travolta cackle and badass his way through the role of Charlie Wax, a rogue American spy with a shaved head, a matching goatee and beetle brows, a passion for saying ”motherf—er,” and a tendency to blow away suspects first and not bother to ask questions later. Read more

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