Just in case there was any doubt left, yes, Robert Downey is in blackface for almost the entirety of Tropic Thunder. And no, I didn't feel guilty about laughing at him. That's because Downey, who plays the Russel Crowe-like Kirk Lazarus, is laughing at himself. It's a ridiculous premise: a multi-time Oscar winner, Lazarus undergoes controversial (you don't say!) skin pigmentation-altering surgery to play the African-American sergeant of the American platoon featured in the Vietnam......

I can't remember a recent film that's received as much publicity leading up to its release as The Dark Knight. What with all the insane viral advertising, marketing deals with Domino's and Comcast and whoever else, and then all the press surrounding the sudden and tragic death of Heath Ledger shortly after he completed filming his role as the Joker, it's been hard to avoid hearing about the movie. Reviews of the film have been......

As the credits rolled on Get Smart, I thought to myself: "Ah. Well that makes sense." The missing piece to the puzzle? Mel Brooks and Buck Henry, the creators of the original series, served as consultants on the film. My guess is that they're the reason things in the film, although silly, never got too over-the-top, and that as things began to near the top, there was just a little bit of restraint used. Which......

I entered the Ritz East with a mixture of trepidation and excitement. Excitement because, well, this was Sex and the City the movie. Fear because after six seasons of a fun (albeit not always well-written) show and a surprisingly satisfying finale, how could doing a follow-up movie possibly be a good idea? Turns out that both emotions were perfectly justified. There was plenty to be excited about: a reunion of four of my favorite television......

Like many other members of my generation, I grew up with Indiana Jones. Along with the Star Wars trilogy, the films about the dashing, whip-cracking, snake-fearing archaeologist who was named after the dog were three of my favorite movies (yes, I'm one of those poor bastards who drank all the George Lucas Kool Aid he was given and then asked for more), and I still think they're some of the greatest action movies ever made.......

I have distant and blurry—but very fond—childhood memories of the old original Speed Racer cartoon. Based on those memories, the show was about a family of people who all talked very fast (with their lips never quite matching up with the words they were saying) and drove very fast and had crazy adventures. Oh, and there was a monkey. So when I first heard the Wachowskis, of all people, were making a live-action adaptation, I......

Let me begin by saying, Iron Man disappointed me. This disappointment, however, stemmed mostly from my own incredible optimism when it comes to films of this type, and the incredible amount of hype that has surrounded this film since it was announced. These two factors had been working on me together, building and building, until, when I walked into the theater for the preview screening of Iron Man, I was fully convinced that it would......

Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle is about as good as a stoner movie can get – and we mean that in an enthusiastic way, not a disparaging one. It is sufficiently stupid on its surface, but has some surprisingly good, smart laughs in it. Plus, as much as it's about a couple stoners craving a meal, it's also about being in your early 20's and not really sure what to do with yourself......

Ryan Phillipe stars in Stop-Loss as Sergeant Brandon King, just home to Brazos, Texas from serving in Iraq. Expecting to be "gettin' out," instead he is informed that the Army has invoked the Stop-Loss provision, meaning that his contract will be involuntarily extended and he must return to Iraq. Director Kimberly Peirce will tell you that this is not an Iraq war movie, but that should be clear to anyone who views the film. Rather,......

Pop quiz: On your first day of high school, if you are a shy, gangly teenager whose only friend is a pudgy wannabe rapper, when you see some bloodthirsty upperclassmen stuffing the only kid dorkier than you into a locker, do you stand up for what's right or do you slink into the corners and thank god it's not you? In Drillbit Taylor, young Wade (Nate Hartley) chooses the noble and stupid option #1. This......

I like Jason Statham. I think he's a really talented guy. But let's face it, besides Snatch and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, he hasn't been in very many decent movies. Just look at his filmography: Transporter 2, that Uwe Boll Dungeon Siege thing, The One. Ugh. For that reason, I went into my screening of The Bank Job with pretty low expectations. And I came out pretty impressed. It's actually a really solid......

Penelope is explicitly a modern fairy tale—even to the point of opening with "Once upon a time..." and ending with "...and they lived happily ever after"—about a young woman named Penelope (Christina Ricci), who is cursed. Her family is very old and very rich, and many years ago, a male of their number thought he'd fallen in love with a washerwoman, but ultimately broke his promise to marry her. When the woman subsequently committed suicide,......

Ah, the teen comedy. It's one of those genres that just won't die, and why should it? When we're younger, we get a glimpse of what might be. When we're actually teens, we're able to gaze upon an alternate reality: "Mine's not like this, but maybe someone else's is." And upon reaching adulthood, we can view the films and laugh at how unrealistic their premises are, and yet how real some of their characters seem......

Ever since I saw Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind—the wildly imaginative, deeply moving, incredibly insightful sci-fi/romance/drama/comedy with Jim Carrey that came out in 2004—I've been pretty keen to see what else writer-director Michel Gondry can do. I found his next fiction feature film, The Science of Sleep, ultimately unsatisfying, but just as imaginative and affecting as ESotSM. So I was thrilled to hear about Gondry's latest project: Be Kind Rewind. This film—set over the......

UPDATE: Digg this, please! “Thanks for coming out to the movie tonight. If we catch you filming anything, we will pull you out of here and prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law, so (Jack Benny-esque comedic pause) enjoy the movie.” With these words spoken by a suited, security officer before the screening of Sylvester Stallone’s new Rambo film, perhaps I should have been tipped off to the aggressive nature of the film......

So, what is Cloverfield? Probably if you've watched the ads, you've thought of Godzilla, and although it certainly has a lot in common with that series, it also has elements of The Blair Witch Project. It's a monster movie, but told in a hyper-realistic way, from the point of view of the people on the streets who are running between the toes of the monster. Critics (well, the cut-rate ones, anyway) will often compare films......

Imaginary phone call between Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman (pretend you're hearing it it in their voices): JN: Hey there, Morgan. What are you up to the next six weeks? MF: Don't have any set plans, Jack. All the voice-over work I'm doing these days is pretty flexible. To be perfectly honest with you, it's a little boring. JN: I hear ya. Diane Keaton is tied up making shit movies for the next few......

Editor's note: This review contains some comments and descriptions that could be considered "spoilers," but only if you're unfamiliar with the story of Sweeney Todd, which is unforgivable anyway, so we have little sympathy for you. I love Stephen Sondheim. I even took a semester-long course on Stephen Sondheim. I like to think of myself as pretty intimately acquainted with Sondheim's work. And so I'm probably going to be a lot pickier about an adaptation......

“Shit, I could write that,” said a woman at the Bridge on Monday, when told that Juno was about a teenage pregnancy. Thing is, dear reader, so could you. Not because you found yourself trying to buy a ticket for three to your junior prom, mind; but neither Juno nor this summer’s Knocked Up stray too far from the basic emotional territory set out in Nine Months, Father of the Bride Part II, and the......

Will Smith is one of Philadelphia's great "local boy makes good" stories (and Philly hasn't forgotten that, either; I'm pretty sure I sat next to his school teacher at the preview screening of this film that I attended, and even though she was asleep for a good portion of it, she seemed happy to be there). He's come a long way, and although he doesn't always make the best choices, he does always put in......

Take a cursory look at the release history of Blade Runner (which originally came out in 1982) and you might begin to think that Ridley Scott has caught a George Lucas-sized case of Special Edition-itis - you know, that terrible disease that afflicts some directors and causes them to keep tweaking and re-editing and re-releasing their films in different versions, over and over and over. Wikipedia lists seven different versions of Blade Runner, for......

Although The Golden Compass is being compared to the Narnia Chronicles in some of the ads, the series that the book it's based on is a part of - Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy - is really the anti-Narnia: equal but exactly opposite to C.S. Lewis' saga of Christian allegory. Some people are saying that The Golden Compass is anti-Catholic - and they're right. The movie doesn't emphasize it as much as the book......

(This movie has already been out for over a week, obviously. However, when I saw it last Friday I felt compelled to write about it—it's been a long time since I saw a movie that stayed with me for this long. If you haven't had a chance to see it yet, by all means do so ASAP.) It must be something in the water. Filmmakers have rediscovered the mythology of the American frontier, and that......

Love in the Time of Cholera is a good example of a bad adaptation. Garcia Marquez fans realize, I hope, that the man’s strengths don’t easily translate to film, so you shouldn’t be shocked to learn that the film Love in the Time of Cholera feels more like an adaptation of a GGM-inspired Saturday morning cartoon than of the novel itself. Cholera the film is a fairly ordinary Hollywood period piece; it’s the sort of......

When Richard Kelly's film Southland Tales was originally screened at Cannes, the buzz was extraordinarily negative. The word was that the movie was a great big mess - ridiculous and nonsensical. I didn't want to believe it. I really enjoyed Kelly's amazing indie/romance/sci-fi flick Donnie Darko. I thought maybe people were reacting to Southland Tales the way that some had reacted to The Fountain: they were confused by it because they hadn't looked hard enough......