More animated martial arts and loveable Chinese-bear antics in Jennifer Yuh’s sequel. Voices by Jack Black, Gary Oldman, Dustin Hoffman, Seth Rogen, Angelina Jolie, Jackie Chan, Jean-Claude Van Damme.
The daughter of Sir Richard Croft inherits a sacred mission from her late father, who seems to have known when she was eight years old that she would grow up to be a militant extremist of Girl Power, and known too that she would discover the hidden clock and his …
"Let us tell an old tale anew, and let us see how well you know it," intones Maleficent (a waxen Angelina Jolie) at the outset of this botched Sleeping Beauty tweak-job. It's fine to tell old tales anew, and it's fine to mold them to some new purpose — say, …
For a while, near the end, this is a surprisingly solid PG war movie, full of grand-scale spectacle, fraught intimate battles, multiple shifts and twists, and violence that manages to feel significant without also traumatizing the youngsters in the target audience. Neat trick, that. Before and after, however, it’s a …
For a while, near the end, this is a surprisingly solid PG war movie, full of grand-scale spectacle, fraught intimate battles, multiple shifts and twists, and violence that manages to feel significant without also traumatizing the youngsters in the target audience. Neat trick, that. Before and after, however, it’s a …
For a while, near the end, this is a surprisingly solid PG war movie, full of grand-scale spectacle, fraught intimate battles, multiple shifts and twists, and violence that manages to feel significant without also traumatizing the youngsters in the target audience. Neat trick, that. Before and after, however, it’s a …
Preprogrammed comedy of a stiff-necked Texas Ranger charged with safeguarding five witnesses to homicide, a Texas Longhorns cheerleading squad. (He confiscates their cellphones, implements a dress code, shops for Tampax, gets advice on dating, grooming, and relating to his daughter.) Tommy Lee Jones, displaying a murderous deadpan, would be the …
A stargazer's delight, if, anyway -- and it's a big if -- you can take delight in gazing at Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie (lips and more lips), worshipfully photographed by Bojan Bazelli, and pamperingly enshrined in an ambience of pristine showroom opulence. There is space in this firmament for …
A tangle of separate lives in Los Angeles, tied up at the end in a tight little knot. Vaguely Alan Rudolph-esque in its refrigerated romanticism, but slicker, perkier, prime-timelier. The large and largely appealing cast (chief exceptions: Ryan Phillippe and Angelina Jolie, deservingly paired off together) has little to work …
"From respected surgeon to mob doctor to FBI snitch" -- the story in the words of the protagonist. Aspirations toward the hip and the cool get only as close as the bogus. David Duchovny, Timothy Hutton, Angelina Jolie; directed by Andy Wilson.
The ace air-traffic controller of the Newark-JFK-LaGuardia triangle goes into a tailspin after the arrival of the "interesting" new guy from Arizona, half-Indian and half-cowboy -- not to mention the new guy's very young wife, a full-lipped, full-bosomed, tattooed lush. Some well-turned gags, and some pointed scrutiny of masculine rivalry, …
The Cold War refrozen: a subterranean population of Russian “sleeper” agents in a Destroy America operation that dates back to Lee Harvey Oswald. For a short time the film, like its patient spies, puts up a decent front. Director Phillip Noyce, who owns such respectable credits in the genre as …
Subaqueous computer animation; or, Finding Nemo's Sunken Treasure. Not only is the plasticky animation done by computer, but also the plotting, scripting, casting, everything. We have here, plugged in as variables in the formula, hip-hop fish (voice, and lips, of Will Smith), Mafia sharks (voice and facial mole of Robert …
Juvenile yet antiquarian adventure yarn, a pastiche of 1930s science fiction and Saturday-matinee serials, a more or less black-and-white film with just a blush of color, a blend of antecedents as diverse as Max Fleischer's Superman cartoons, Spielberg's Indiana Jones series, Lars von Trier's Zentropa, Prince's Under the Cherry Moon. …
Copycat serial-killer film. But let's be clear: it's not really the killer who's a copycat -- one of those diabolically clever, games-playing, wits-matching superfiends -- but rather the film itself, with its strained performances, transparent tricks, jack-in-the-box jolts, and palpable, sliceable, spreadable sense of dread. The big influence is Seven, …