The Architect
This well-meaning social drama about the intersecting lives of a dysfunctional, upper-middle-class family in suburbia and the residents of a deteriorating public-housing project is flimsy at best.
Steve Davis
391-420 of 660 entries
Movie Review, Dec. 8, 2006
The Return
Sarah Michelle Gellar plays a woman who keeps seeing a dead murder victim in her dreams, so of course she must get to the bottom of this mystery.
Movie Review, Nov. 17, 2006
Driving Lessons
A 17-year-old boy's dull summer turns more eventful when he gets a job assisting an unconventional retired actress who leads him into a series of character-defining adventures.
Movie Review, Nov. 7, 2006
Time to Leave
This oddly dispassionate film about a young man dying of cancer is the French antidote to those Hollywood weepies in which the heroine courageously faces her own mortality with every hair in place.
Movie Review, Sept. 22, 2006
My Country, My Country
Using the Iraqi democratic elections in early 2005 as its focal point, this powerful documentary is the sad lament of Iraqis who truly want the best for their homeland, despite seemingly overwhelming odds.
Movie Review, Aug. 25, 2006
John Tucker Must Die
Teen female-revenge comedy doesn't live up to the edginess promised by its title.
Movie Review, Aug. 4, 2006
Waist Deep
An ex-con in Los Angeles gets pulled back into the gang wars when he has to rescue his son, who was in his carjacked vehicle.
Movie Review, June 30, 2006
The Da Vinci Code
Faithful adaptation of Dan Brown's bestseller treats the novel as if it were a sacred text even though it's basically a Hardy Boys mystery dressed up in provocative attire.
Movie Review, May 26, 2006
The Sentinel
This serviceable action thriller disintegrates into an implausible mess that's barely salvaged by the presence of old pros like Michael Douglas and Kim Basinger
Movie Review, April 28, 2006
Academy Award-Nominated Documentary Shorts 2005
A rare opportunity to see what's considered the best in the field of short docs; plus all four nominees have a socio-political bent.
Movie Review, April 7, 2006
Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector
A movie so exasperating it's driven our reviewer to escape into song.
Movie Review, March 31, 2006
Gay Sex in the 70s
Little more than a series of interviews with those who survived those times, interspersed with titillating soft-core clips from the archives, this documentary offers a sympathetic perspective of the post-Stonewall sexual liberation years in New York City.
Movie Review, March 10, 2006
Doogal
A clunker if there ever was one, Doogal is so mind-numbingly incoherent that parents and children alike will stare dazedly at the movie screen wondering what the heck is going on.
Movie Review, March 3, 2006
The Pink Panther
In this pointless rehash of the 1964 Blake Edwards film that introduced Inspector Clouseau to the world, Steve Martin inhabits the role of the bumbling French detective without a trace of the comic genius of Peter Sellers.
Movie Review, Feb. 10, 2006
End of the Spear
Members of the violent Waodani tribe of Ecuador kill five Western missionaries, but as a result they choose to abandon their kill-or-be-killed ways.
Movie Review, Jan. 27, 2006
The Producers
The film's wonderfully over-the-top performances often feel constrained by first-time film director Susan Stroman, whose inexperience behind the camera is all too apparent.
Movie Review, Dec. 30, 2005
Cape of Good Hope
There's a sweet bent to this simple South African film about a multicultural group of employees at a Cape Town animal shelter who find both goodness and hope in their troubled lives.
Movie Review, Dec. 16, 2005
Pride & Prejudice
This fresh adaptation of Jane Austen’s masterpiece starring Keira Knightley presents a witty and lovesick skirmish of the sexes that exceeds all expectations.
Movie Review, Nov. 11, 2005
Oliver Twist
Some may doubt the need to once more bring Dickens’ tale to the screen, but Polanski’s deft adaptation proves that there’s still life in that well-worn story of a boy who beats the odds.
Movie Review, Oct. 7, 2005
Proof
As with many film adaptations of stage successes, David Auburn’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play about mathematics and madness loses something in its translation to celluloid.
Movie Review, Oct. 7, 2005
An Unfinished Life
An Unfinished Life never transcends its simple storyline to charter original ground, but it’s the kind of movie you can’t fault too terribly much, primarily because its heart seems to be in the right place.
Movie Review, Sept. 16, 2005
Yes
While the unconventional Yes doesn’t realize all of its artistic ambitions, its depiction of romantic passion still resonates.
Movie Review, July 29, 2005
Ladies in Lavender
Even though grande dames Maggie Smith and Judi Dench share the screen in this drama, their immense talents are mostly wasted.
Movie Review, June 17, 2005
Crash
The paths of a seemingly unconnected, multicultural group of Los Angelenos cross in the most compelling American movie to come around in a long while.
Movie Review, May 6, 2005
Callas Forever
While Callas Forever seems sincere in its attempt to pay tribute to the world’s most famous opera singer, it unwittingly disserves her in its bizarre wish-fantasy about resurrecting her voice onscreen.
Movie Review, March 25, 2005
Hitch
What should be a battle of the sexes is more like a brief skirmish without any of the romantic tension that makes for an interesting – much less great – screen pairing.
Movie Review, Feb. 18, 2005
Million Dollar Baby
Glorious performances and Eastwood's confident direction result in a film that transcends the rules of its genre and shows us, with an unvarnished simplicity, how human beings struggle to come to terms with the unthinkable.
Movie Review, Jan. 28, 2005
Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Phantom of the Opera
The plodding stage musical finally comes to the big screen, its relentlessly bombastic score intact with a vengeance.
Movie Review, Dec. 24, 2004
Finding Neverland
Johnny Depp delves into the mind of author J.M. Barrie in this adeptly realized celebration of the wonder of the imagination.
Movie Review, Dec. 10, 2004
Shall We Dance?
Richard Gere, Jennifer Lopez, and Susan Sarandon co-star in in this tempting remake of a Japanese film about a man's midlife slump.
