Screen
Grown up but not good
Grown Ups is a sure thing — a film you think you’ve seen before, and probably saw somewhere a second time, so why not another? Actors, particularly stage actors in longrunning plays, strive for “the illusion of the first time.” High-concept comedies like Grown Ups ...
Three’s a charm
If Toy Story 3 had sprung, Slinky Doglike, from any creative think tank besides Pixar Animation Studios, it might be considered a classic. As is, it’s a good sequel to the 1999 Toy Story 2 and the 1995 original. After a rather shrill and conventional first half, ...
An icon under the microscope
There`s a scene in the gripping documentary Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work guaranteed to complicate whatever feelings you have about the movie’s turbulent subject. Rivers, who says in the film that she’d knock out her own teeth if she could get a dentures ...
Capturing that local flavor
You can take the man out of the Mission, but you can’t take the Mission out of the man,” one of lead-character Che’s (Benjamin Bratt) homeboys in La Mission says during a low-rider jaunt through the North Beach district of San Francisco after Che expresses ...
Don’t pity the A-Team
Based on the 1980s TV series of the same name, The A-Team starts with the formation of the team by former Army Rangers. Eighty successful missions later, they’re tricked into recovering stolen U.S. Mint plates that threaten to enable terrorists destroy the nation’s...
Geneticists and horror
Equal parts Species and The Savage is Loose, the eccentric and crafty new thriller Splice isn’t for audiences who require strong, noble rooting interests in their questing protagonists of science. Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley, neither of whom make it a habit to ...
Rock ’n’ roll odd couple
Extremely raunchy, Get Him to the Greek is also very funny. Like the film that first paired Jonah Hill and Russell Brand, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, the new comedy is unexpectedly sincere about the thing that matters most in a relationship: trust. It is also ...
High-flying fun
Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time is tremendous fun, non-stop action and an adventure film with an appealing story. The film starts with Dastan (William Foster), a beggar boy living by his wits in the bazaar in Persia, getting caught stealing. Seconds before he’...
Out with the old, please
Two years ago, with the world economy about to be credit-defaultswapped right in the kisser, the first Sex and the City feature made $415 million worldwide. Its pre-sold fan base, already nostalgic for Cosmopolitans, heaved a collective, economically envious sigh: ...
Are you awake?
The folks at Microsoft announced Alan Wake back in 2005, hyping how the game would change the face of gaming. Wish they let us know we would have to wait five years for the game, during which Gears of War, Grand Theft Auto IV and Modern Warfare have already changed ...
Crass and fun
It`s not good to start a review by saying that the film wasn’t anywhere near as bad or as stupid as I was afraid it’d be, but that’s exactly how I felt about the inane satire MacGruber. Crude and sophomoric, it still had lots of laughs and a surprisingly polished ...
Better under the bridge
Dreamworks seems bored with the ogre who laid the golden egg. Shrek Forever After, the fourth film in the lucrative franchise and the first in 3-D, barely tampers with the Shrek formula (oneliners, flatulence jokes, pop tunes), and not enough to breathe life into ...
