With a sprinkle of Wishing Dust, the disaffected young heroine, on her first day of teenhood, is spirited into her future life as a "thirty and flirty and thriving" editor of her favorite fashion magazine, Poise. Yet she's still thirteen in her head, with none of the knowledge, the experience, …
High-concept romantic comedy about a love-'em-and-leave-'em ladykiller, a marine-park veterinarian in Hawaii, who tumbles for a brain-damaged blonde who can retain no short-term memories since her year-ago car accident and who is doomed every day to relive the day of the accident with no knowledge of intervening days: a scoop …
Rhinestone heist thriller (a brandished DVD of To Catch a Thief establishes a standard of comparison) about a couple of high-tech jewel thieves in smug retirement in the Islands: "Now the challenge is to find joy in simple things." But then the third of the priceless Napoleon Diamonds, of which …
Not too glossy or glossed-over a portrait of Jackie Kallen (a hoarse, coarse, brassy, sassy Meg Ryan), a woman in a man's game, manager of a prizefighter whom she discovered in a brawl with two crackheads: "Reminds me of Marvin Hagler." Not too believable a portrait, nevertheless. Charles S. Dutton, …
Creditable retelling of an early chapter in Texas history ("As goes the Alamo, so goes Texas"), not as cumbersome as the John Wayne version of 1960, perhaps even a little cursory. Director and co-screenwriter John Lee Hancock humanizes the central figures -- Crockett, Bowie, Travis, Houston, though not the ogre-ish …
A new, updated, relocated Alfie — an Alfie for America, for the Bedhead generation, for the erectile-dysfunction era. He's still a Brit, and still talks straight to the camera, but now our lady-killer must be a chiselled Adonis (Jude Law) instead of a legitimate heir to Michael Caine (a Rhys …
Plural, more accurately: Aliens vs. Predators, facing off in the arena of an ancient pyramid under the Antarctic ice. Notwithstanding the outward hostilities, it's a pragmatic pooling of commercial assets by the Fox studio, profit motive only. A clearer motive, at any rate, than that of the dreadlocked Predators, who, …
An ostensibly romantic comedy throwing together Mr. Uptight (Ben Stiller) and Ms. Free Spirit (Jennifer Aniston), written and directed by John Hamburg, whose mind is quite literally in the toilet. The fart at the men's-room urinals is just a warm-up for the illustrated definition of "shart," an intended fart that …
A cursory crisscross of the country, from sea to shining sea, in glossy coffee-table photography, for a gallery of portraits of ordinary citizens: a cowboy, a Cajun, a gospel singer, a weaver, a dairy farmer, a hatmaker, a vintager, a bicycle messenger, a klezmer musician, a salsa dancer, a blind …
The rare Perennium Mortalis blooms but once every seven years in the jungles of Borneo, harboring behind its beauty a "pharmaceutical equivalent to the Fountain of Youth." ("That'd be bigger than Viagra!") Bad luck for the botanical team, then, that it's blooming during mating season for a strain of giant …
Promising comic premise -- a swinging single San Diego newsman in the Seventies, and his personal attraction but professional resistance to a female colleague -- subjected to a strategy of anything-for-a-laugh: wild exaggeration, improbability, impossibility, fantasy, absurdity, ribaldry, animal abuse, cartoon interlude, musical numbers, celebrity cameos (Vince Vaughn, Jack Black, …
Old Henry's last will and testament includes an ashes-scattering map for the three succeeding generations of males, Turner, Jason, and Zach. An insufferably cutesy salute to family ("A family carries each other"), regularly interrupted by ads for Kentucky Fried Chicken: mandatory stops on the map. With Christopher Walken, Josh Lucas, …
A remake of the Jules Verne circumnavigatory adventure, converted into a vehicle for a Jackie Chan plot about a stolen jade Buddha. (The voyage is a mere getaway from the police and a passage to China.) No doubt the Mexican comedian Cantinflas, in the 1956 version, was no more faithful …
A world-class Swedish symphony conductor (Michael Nyqvist, a big, strong Richard Burton-y pocked face) moves back to his native village with a bad heart, whips the church choir into competitive shape, upsets the local bluenoses, shelters abused women, wins the heart of the budding Jezebel, draws out the village idiot, …