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Black Hawk Down meets Independence Day in Battle: Los Angeles, an entertainingly gung-ho alien-invasion epic starring Aaron Eckhart and Michelle Rodriguez that practically doubles as a military recruitment film.

Having seemingly fallen off the Hollywood map after their 2007 remake of The Heartbreak Kid, the Farrelly Brothers return in a big way with Hall Pass, a raunchy and very funny comedy starring Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis in which the filmmakers once again mix over-the-top toilet humor with lots of heart.

The Concert, at least initially, is a goofy farce with a moderately ridiculous premise. A janitor working at the Bolshoi in Moscow, who himself was once its celebrated–and politically discredited–conductor (Alexeï Guskov), intercepts a fax from Paris inviting the orchestra to fill in for the L.A. Philharmonic, which has canceled. He [...]

It’s said there are only seven plots in literature and film. Film has different strictures so depending on how willing you are to sub-define/divide “plot” and where you land online, you end up with a number over thirty.
Maybe template is a better choice of words. We’re not deciding where these two [...]

Michael Bay was originally going to direct I Am Number Four, but he passed, and the job went to D.J. Caruso. Good thing, too, because in Bay’s hands this sci-fi action flick would probably have been a bombastic mess, whereas the director of Disturbia and Eagle Eye makes it into a thoroughly entertaining mix of [...]

Being the 11 year old I am, I would say that the ongoing garden gnome battle of the Reds and Blues would be better if there were more than just one death. But it is of course a Disney movie, so kids from the ages of 3-8 would enjoy this. But, [...]

This isn’t a real review–I’m just writing to bring a movie to your attention: Burning Palms. I previewed this movie–a collection of five stories–over the weekend, and it was good. Really good. Here’s my caveat, though: It is dark. Very black humor. The themes may be disturbing to some, including rape and [...]

The characters in Vanishing On 7th Street spend most of the time running away from shadows, a notion that initially may sound as silly as seeing people flee from the wind in The Happening, but one that, in the capable hands of director Brad Anderson, gets turned into a nicely low-key hair-raiser of a [...]

Remember back circa 2004, when Jude Law seemed to be in every other movie that came out? Well, this year it’s proven the same with Natalie Portman (Black Swan, No Strings Attached, Your Highness, Thor, etc.). This time, in The Other Woman, she’s playing the second wife of a successful New York lawyer (Scott Cohen) [...]

It may share the same plot and title, but this souped-up remake of the 1972 Charles Bronson/Jan-Michael Vincent thriller The Mechanic is really just another excuse for action star Jason Statham to shoot guns and kick butt, albeit one that director Simon West (Con Air) shoots and edits with energetic efficiency.