Movie Review: The American

Let’s say this upfront: The American is not an audience movie in the generally recognized sense of the term.

It is not an action movie.

It is not a thriller in any conventional sense.

Forget about the TV commercials and theatrical trailers that make it look like George Clooney is playing some Jason Bourne-like character, mowing down every bad guy who gets in his way. Read more

Movie Review: Takers

A group of smooth-acting criminals (Paul Walker, Idris Elba, Chris Brown, et al.) rob banks. A pair of worn-out cops (Matt Dillon and Jay Hernandez) try to stop them. Read more

Movie Review: The Last Exorcism

Any movie with the word exorcism in the title is inviting you to compare it to a movie that a great many people consider the scariest horror film ever made. That’s a hook, commercially — but it also raises the bar for shivers mercilessly high. The image of Linda Blair as a leering, ranting, head-swiveling, pea-soup-spewing harpy demon-child in The Exorcist (1973) struck an unholy fear even in those who thought that they didn’t believe in the devil. The movie was a blasphemous nightmare for a jaded, skeptical time; it shocked the secularity right out of you. So let’s say this much for The Last Exorcism, a low-budget fake-documentary horror film that tries to raise a little hell in the jittery-cam this is really happening! spirit of Paranormal Activity and The Blair Witch Project: It’s nothing if not clever about toying with your expectations. Read more

Movie Review: Nanny McPhee Returns

The Nanny McPhee movies may be principally for kids, but make no mistake about it: They are, quite literally, a parent’s dream.

Overwhelmed single parents with unruly kids are rescued by a magical nanny who seemingly appears out of nowhere. And at no cost! For some older moviegoers escorting little ones, this premise might be impossibly alluring.

“Nanny McPhee Returns” is the sequel to 2005’s “Nanny McPhee.” Both were written by Emma Thompson (who stars as the nanny in question) based on Christianna Brand’s Nurse Matilda books, which were published in the 1960s and `70s. Read more

Movie Review: The Other Guys

If the mismatched-buddy cop movie seems egregiously overdone, the idea of a parody of that genre would seem especially needless — which is what makes “The Other Guys” such a wonderful surprise.

On paper, this could have been painfully lame. Will Ferrell is doing a variation on his tried-and-true film persona: the overly earnest guy who’s totally confident and oblivious to his buffoonery. Mark Wahlberg, meanwhile, is playing with his screen image as a tough guy and a hothead, doing a version of his Oscar-nominated role in “The Departed.” And the joke you see in the TV commercials — in which Ferrell blasts Little River Band’s mellow ’70s hit “Reminiscing” on the way to a crime scene — is good for a laugh but it makes you wonder, is that the best they’ve got? Read more

Movie Review: Dinner for Schmucks

“Dinner for Schmucks,” directed by Jay Roach (“Meet the Parents”) and based on a 12-year-old French movie known in English as “The Dinner Game,” is in some ways an exemplary modern Hollywood comedy. It treads a careful boundary between nasty and sweet, balancing the rude humor of humiliation with an affirming, tolerant, almost scolding final message: Be nice! It dabbles in sexual naughtiness without dreaming of going too far into complicated zones of lust and betrayal. (The French version, as you might expect, goes much further.) Read more

Movie Review: Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore

No movie — whether aimed at adults or kids or canines themselves — has the right to be as tiresome and unoriginal as this action-comedy mutt. The plot of Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore concerns cat and dog spies who team up to fight a feline terrorist. Is it too much to hope that, by exhausting the English language’s supply of bad animal puns, the filmmakers may have spared us any more sequels? Read more

Movie Review: Charlie St. Cloud

Zac Efron may be the prettiest young actor in movies today — he’s like a preppy update of Shaun Cassidy in his teen-dream prime — but he also demonstrates that looks will get you only so far. As the title golden boy of Charlie St. Cloud, Efron plays a small-town competitive sailor whose beloved little brother, Sam (Charlie Tahan), gets killed in a car crash. (Charlie was at the wheel.) Read more

Movie Review: Salt

“Salt” is, quite literally, a shaggy dog story.

Despite the cryptic ads that pose the question, “Who Is Salt?” and regardless of the various twists and turns designed to throw us off, the intentions of Angelina Jolie’s super-spy character, Evelyn Salt, are never really in question. This is obvious, based on one comparatively small gesture in an early scene. Read more

Movie Review: Inception

Let’s begin by announcing, with great relief, that all the hype is justified. Writer-director Christopher Nolan’s first film since “The Dark Knight” is a stunningly gorgeous, technically flawless symphony of images and ideas. “Memento,” the mystery-in-reverse that put Nolan on the map a decade ago, looks almost quaint by comparison. Read more

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