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Our reviews of recent movies

CBCNews.ca staff
December 18, 2008
<em>A scene from The Day the Earth Stood Still. (Twentieth Century Fox)</em>
A scene from The Day the Earth Stood Still. (Twentieth Century Fox)
Frost/Nixon review
Frost/Nixon
"Frost/Nixon is a good place for Ron Howard's inherent empathy. He's made a compassionate and fascinating film, a triumph that leaves the human spirit unbludgeoned."
Un Conte de Noël review
Un Conte de Noël
"For a movie that begins in a cemetery and is, in many ways, a rumination on failure and death, Un Conte de Noël is never less than life-affirming."
Australia review
Australia
"Baz Luhrmann is a true mash-up artist, a synthesizer of cinematic and pop-culture styles who has a driving compulsion to entertain."
Milk review
Milk
"Director Gus Van Sant has taken a subject that might seem controversial or obvious and made it emotional and relevant."
Four Christmases review
Four Christmases
"Scuttled by a lazy script and a surprising lack of chemistry between the two leads, Four Christmases never gels."
Twilight review
Twilight
"Director Catherine Hardwicke conveys the exquisite torture — and the slow boil of lust — that marks first love."
Bolt review
Bolt
"Bolt succeeds because the innate drive of a dog's unconditional love and devotion hews close to the happily-ever-after stuff that fairy tales are made of."
Quantum of Solace review
Quantum of Solace
"What was great about Casino Royale, and now Quantum of Solace, is the focus on two things that the Bond series discarded in the '70s: drama and character development."
JCVD review
JCVD
"For the last decade or so, Jean-Claude Van Damme has existed only in the DVD shadow world, shooting cheap and dirty action flicks in Asia and Eastern Europe."
Slumdog Millionaire review
Slumdog Millionaire
"Boyle's rollicking vision of contemporary India — one bold foot in the 21st century, the other still deeply mired in its ancient past — is hugely exhilarating."
Synecdoche, New York review
Synecdoche, New York
"Synecdoche, New York is a riff on time and mortality featuring one of those great, absurd Charlie Kaufman conceits...a gigantic, ongoing theatre piece that strives to mirror real life."
I've Loved You So Long
I've Loved You So Long
"If this were an American film there would be talk of 'forgiveness' and 'healing.' Thankfully, the sentimentality is well controlled, even allowing for some moments of dark comedy in the tsunami of sniffles."
Role Models review
Role Models
"Role Models isn't stunningly ambitious or original, but it delivers the funny in a crisp, efficient fashion."
Zack and Miri Make a Porno review
Zack and Miri Make a Porno
"Smith digs a little deeper than most comedy directors today, using his louche, slovenly, unbeautiful movies to ask real questions about America."
What Just Happened review
What Just Happened
"The trouble with Hollywood insider tales is that they've all been told."
Changeling review
Changeling
"Jolie is terribly, dangerously skinny from first frame to last. Couldn't director Eastwood have forced a snack break?"
Pride and Glory review
Pride and Glory
"Pride and Glory aims to create a Sidney Lumet-style ethical quagmire, but director Gavin O'Connor and screenwriter Joe Carnaghan bring nothing new to the corrupt-cop genre."
W. review
W.
"Too often in Oliver Stone's career, conviction has snowballed into bombast. So it's strange that the biggest problem with W. is that it's so unadorned that it verges on dull."
Happy-Go-Lucky review
Happy-Go-Lucky
"Without forsaking his trademark kitchen-sink realism, director Mike Leigh has crafted a non-ironic ode to optimism that acts like a tonic in these gloomy times."
Body of Lies review
Body of Lies
"Scott's film is often about blowin' things up real good. Body of Lies boasts some truly bombastic action sequences that would look more at home in a Michael Bay movie."
RocknRolla review
RocknRolla
"With RocknRolla, director Guy Ritchie replicates the formula of Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels as slavishly as if he were following step-by-step instructions."
Elegy review
Rachel Getting Married
"Director Jonathan Demme has scaled back from offbeat docs and recent excesses like The Manchurian Candidate to craft an intimate family portrait."
Elegy review
Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist
"Nick and Norah's has one tight-panted leg in the zone of kids-in-the-underworld nail-biters like Go (1999), while the other one is planted in the generation-defining ethos of the John Hughes canon."
Flash of Genius review
Flash of Genius
"It's too easy to portray a corporation like Ford as an evil empire, swiping ideas from hapless geniuses. There is another side to the story."
Miracle at St. Anna
Miracle at St. Anna
"Miracle at St. Anna aims to undo decades of exclusionary, bloated Hollywood mythmaking, but it still features its worst characteristics: over-simplification, superficiality, sloppiness."
The Lucky Ones review
The Lucky Ones
"The Lucky Ones is Planes, Trains and Automobiles with dog tags."
Ghost Town review
Ghost Town
"It's a perfect role for Gervais, who specializes in the antisocial boor. He plays grumpy Bertram with waspish zest."
The Duchess review
The Duchess
"The Duchess is enough of a literary inquiry that it almost makes you forget Knightley's recent decline from actress to cosmetics model."
Appaloosa
Appaloosa
"In Appaloosa, the platonic romance between Viggo Mortensen and Ed Harris is far more interesting than the one between Renee Zellweger and… anyone."
Burn After Reading review
Burn After Reading
"Burn After Reading is the Coens in buffoons-and-bloodshed mode. It's minor, but not meaningless, a screwball comedy that contains a few mini-truths worth divining."
The Women review
The Women
"These aren't the fanged, upper-crust wives that Joan Crawford contended with in Cukor's Women. They have been softened, Oprah-ized to send a feel-good message about self-improvement."
Traitor review
Traitor
"Traitor is caught between competing creative ideologies, striving for piquant political analysis while emulating every undercover-cop movie ever made."
The House Bunny
The House Bunny
"Any bitter aftertaste related to experiencing The House Bunny is mitigated by two factors: 1) Anna Faris is the most gifted comedienne working in Hollywood today; and 2) the movie is often very funny."
Hamlet 2 review
Hamlet 2
"Without spoiling its daft plot, let's just say that Hamlet 2 involves a time machine. And a sexy, rock 'n' roll Jesus. And a gay men's chorus singing Elton John's Someone Saved My Life Tonight."
Elegy review
Elegy
"Ben Kingsley hasn't fallen prey to overplaying, which hampers contemporaries like Dustin Hoffman and Al Pacino as they struggle to be seen in increasingly small roles."
Tropic Thunder review
Tropic Thunder
"A good comedy, but it could have been great if the filmmakers were more willing to cop to their own complicity."
Amal review
Amal
"There are clumsy moments and some first-timer flaws, but with profound affection for its characters and the teeming city they inhabit, Amal cheerfully resists cynicism."
Pineapple Express review
Pineapple Express
"A loose, giddy little comedy, anchored by a beautifully blissed-out performance from James Franco, who will leave you giggling helplessly."
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor review
The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor
"Yes, it's crap, but it's very enjoyable and very cheeky crap, and its lightness proves especially welcome in a summer that's otherwise been dominated by downer blockbusters."
Swing Vote review
Swing Vote
"The filmmakers pretend to be speaking for the working poor while they actually condescend to them, with a Ford truck full of Budweiser-drinking, Twinkie-eating, trailer-dwelling clichés."
Speed Racer review
The X-Files: I Want to Believe
"The film culminates in a climax that's so hurried and half-baked, it's hard not to feel that the real ending is, like 'the truth,' still out there."
Step Brothers review
Step Brothers
"Step Brothers is like a mash-up of the Matthew McConaughey rom-com Failure to Launch and Disney's The Parent Trap, with faint echoes of another Disney classic, Freaky Friday."
Batman: The Dark Knight
Batman: The Dark Knight
"Caked in clown makeup, Heath Ledger's Joker licks his scarred lips and utters variations on 'Anarchy now!' in a voice that's part Howdy Doody, part dragon."
Mamma Mia! review
Mamma Mia!
"Streep gives the potentially slight Mamma Mia! significant force and feeling. Really, she's better than the material deserves."
Hellboy 2 review
Hellboy 2: The Golden Army
"Hellboy 2: The Golden Army proves that no filmmaker is more in touch with magic and the potential of a wild, fully liberated imagination than Guillermo del Toro."
Meet Dave
Meet Dave
"Meet Dave. Or don't. Eddie Murphy doesn't particularly seem to care one way or the other."
Savage Grace review
Savage Grace
"As played by Julianne Moore, Barbara Baekeland is a first-class narcissist, a mom who takes “attachment parenting” to its farthest, most unappetizing extreme."
Brick Lane review
Brick Lane
"If Brick Lane never reaches the heights of Monica Ali's wryly observant source novel, it's not the fault of cast members, who give uniformly appealing performances."
Hancock review
Hancock
"The best joke of Hancock is: What if there were real-world repercussions for the kind of otherworldly, comic-book behaviour in superhero movies?"
WALL*E review
WALL*E
"The fact that this is a kids' movie seems only to have amplified the filmmakers' moralizing. Fortunately, there's a love story at its core, one that's deftly handled and sweet as a plum."
Wanted review
Wanted
"If I were making movies, I'd spend an awful lot of time and money trying to replicate this particular formula. It's killer."
The Love Guru review
The Love Guru
"Relentlessly puerile yet also painfully sincere, The Love Guru is a strange movie by anyone's standards."
Get Smart review
Get Smart
"In its twin efforts to please fans of the original TV show and provide a more general action-comedy for the rest of the audience, Get Smart takes more pratfalls than its clumsy hero."
Young People F---ing review
Young People F---ing
"The most radical thing about Young People F---ing is not the sex or the title — it’s the mass appeal."
The Incredible Hulk review
The Incredible Hulk
"In between lacklustre action scenes, it offers the depressing sight of normally exceptional actors struggling to give texture to a threadbare script."
The Happening review
The Happening
"The Happening serves up the kind of half-baked sci-fi/horror scenario that even Ed Wood might have disowned."
You Don't Mess with the Zohan review
You Don't Mess with the Zohan
"This isn't a film that's going to smooth relations in the Middle East, but it tries awkwardly to serve a palatable love-one-another message to the masses."
Kung Fu Panda review
Kung Fu Panda
"In playing the title character, Black tempers his usual frantic edge and taps into his oafish charm."
Sex and the City review
Sex and the City
"Even from the sometimes-frustrating confines of its candy-coloured bubble, the show/movie is political and is in tune with history."
The Strangers review
The Strangers
"A voice-over tells us that The Strangers is based on 'true events.' This disclaimer adds nothing to the long and largely silly cat-and-mouse game that ensues."
Postal review
Postal
"In Postal, Boll is out to offend everyone. Cats are used as gun silencers. Feces or stray body parts are never far away."
The Edge of Heaven
The Edge of Heaven
"There is a bracing honesty to Akin's film that is all but inconceivable in Canadian cinema."
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is matinee trash of the highest order, not sanitized digital perfection of the lowest."
Capsule review
Where in the World is Osama bin Laden?
"To say that the Super Size Me director's latest documentary is a gimmick would be a gross understatement — that's Morgan Spurlock's trademark modus operandi."
What Happens in Vegas
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian
"It offers up the cringe-worthy sight of actors playing awkwardly against CGI talking animals and drawn-out battle scenes that just feel rote."
What Happens in Vegas
Flight of the Red Balloon
"There were times watching it when my teeth hurt from boredom. This is a slow film. Snail-on-crutches slow. Suh-looooooow."
What Happens in Vegas
What Happens in Vegas
"What happens in Vegas is exactly what you would expect. It's formulaic, slapsticky, silly and loud, until it goes all gooey in the end."
Speed Racer review
Speed Racer
"Speed Racer makes a virtue out of artifice, with an exaggerated colour palette, stark contrasts between light and dark and an utter lack of depth."
Stone Angel review
The Stone Angel
"The Stone Angel ends up trapped in the time crunch common to cinematic adaptations of well-known books."
The Babysitters review
The Babysitters
"It will be interesting to see if anyone is outraged by lines like, 'Paid fellatio is not that much more humiliating than flipping burgers.'"
David Mamet's martial-arts drama Redbelt is tangled and tiresome
Redbelt
"Every line in the film is portentous, plump with metaphor, supremely arch. Redbelt is a David Mamet film, after all."
Filmmaker Errol Morris trains his lens on the infamous Iraqi prison
Standard Operating Procedure
"Morris the investigator is thrown off course by Morris the auteur, and Standard Operating Procedure is not the powerful indictment it should have been."
Made of Honor is a tired retread of better nuptial rom-coms
Made of Honor
"I'm not sure the idea of a guy wrapping candles and bath bombs for a bridal shower is inherently hilarious anymore."
Comic hero Iron Man flies high on the big screen
Iron Man
"Sure, it's Barack Obama-era wish fulfillment, but it lends Stark, and Iron Man, a complexity that's rare in the comic-book movie universe."
Tina Fey and Amy Poehler inspire belly laughs in Baby Mama
Baby Mama
"A sweet-tempered but predictable comedy that begs for a sharper edge."
Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay review
Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay
"The script dances around the Abu Ghraib jokes waiting to be told, and goes instead for a litany of generic homophobic prison-sex gags."
John Cusack's War, Inc. serves up smug and pointless satire
War, Inc.
"A broad, cartoonish mess of a movie that finally chokes to death on its own manic glee."
Forgetting Sarah Marshall review
Forgetting Sarah Marshall
"There seems to be a nicely democratic division of jokes amongst the guys, and the ladies are tossed the leftovers."
88 Minutes review
88 Minutes
"88 Minutes is just a paycheque gig for Pacino. Why else would he bother starring in a second-rate beat-the-clock thriller shot like an episode of CSI?"
Street Kings review
Street Kings
"The most interesting (and generous) reading of Street Kings is as a contemporary political allegory, with the LAPD as just another system that rewards corruption."
Capsule review
Chaos Theory
"The tone ricochets wildly. Director Marcos Siega and screenwriter Daniel Taplitz seem unsure of what kind of movie they're making."
George Clooney's pigskin comedy drops the ball
Leatherheads
"George Clooney forgets the most basic hallmark of successful screwball comedy: it's gotta be funny."
Stop-Loss review
Stop-Loss
"After a promising beginning with echoes of Michael Cimino's antiwar classic The Deer Hunter, it descends to the dull earnestness of recent Iraq war dramas."
21 deals moviegoers a lousy hand
21
"Perhaps director Robert Luketic hoped to craft a lament for the old Vegas. Too bad the champagne setting is as generic as the characters."
The Grand review
The Grand
"While some of the gambits work better than others, it's one of the few recent mockumentaries to consistently score big laughs."
Days of Darkness review
Days of Darkness
"The film aspires to a kind of acrid cri de coeur. But director Denys Arcand is too timid or unimaginative to take on any really tough targets."
Director Gus Van Sant's honest depictions of young people
Paranoid Park
"One of Gus Van Sant's most compelling movies to date."
A subversive film treatment of a Dr. Seuss classic
Horton Hears a Who!
"With its abundant wit and energy, the film bests the noisy and noxious live-action adaptations of Dr. Seuss' How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat."
Funny Games (Warner Independent Pictures)
Funny Games
"If I could have, I would have walked out of Funny Games. I don't need the torture porn of Saw, and I don't need this."
10,000 B.C. review
10,000 B.C.
"It has all the imaginative trappings of a great fantasy, but the writing and acting are as flat as paintings on a cave wall."
The Counterfeiters is a thought-provoking Holocaust tale
The Counterfeiters
"Stefan Ruzowitzky's gripping Holocaust drama is primarily a sombre film, but scratch its dark surface and you'll find the entertaining thrills of old-time prison-camp movies."
Vantage Point review
Vantage Point
"What begins looking like an intriguing hybrid of Rashomon and JFK finally degenerates into laughable Hollywood hokum."
In Bruges review
In Bruges
"Funny, nasty, slightly absurd and blacker than Colin Farrell's five o'clock shadow."
27 Dresses review
27 Dresses
"A film as schematic as 27 Dresses should be, if nothing else, a sexy escape hatch from the real world. But the romance is as neutered as High School Musical."
Cloverfield review
Cloverfield
"The TV-bred creators seem to have forgotten they were making a feature film and instead have turned out a really good 90-minute episode."

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