"A person's a person, no matter how small!" So runs the motto of the title character in "Dr. Seuss' Horton Hears a Who" (20th Century Fox), an enchanting computer-generated animated adaptation of Theodore Geisel's classic 1954 children's book.
The film begins with some portentous narration solemnly intoned by Omar Sharif putting the film in its fictional historical perspective. But once the action gets going, "10,000 B.C." (Warner Bros.) proves an all too familiar and only fitfully involving epic taking place at the end of the Ice Age.
"College Road Trip" (Disney) is an unobjectionable, though uninspired, family comedy. While the film conveys good messages about parental concern and the need for trust, most of its humor is too implausible to really work.
This modest little film is just endearing enough to earn some sort of cult status before long.
As a wise man once said, it all depends on how you look at it. The aptly named "Vantage Point" (Columbia), a propulsive thriller about an attempted assassination of a U.S. president (William Hurt), gives us the same events in the same time frame from eight disparate perspectives.
Charlie Bartlett
"Heart speaks to heart." This motto, popularized by the great Victorian churchman Cardinal John Henry Newman, establishes the ambitious theme of "Charlie Bartlett".
"Heart speaks to heart." This motto, popularized by the great Victorian churchman Cardinal John Henry Newman, establishes the ambitious theme of "Charlie Bartlett".
In an unseen world of goblins, sprites and ogres, an ordinary family gets caught up in the epic struggle between good and evil, discovering the need for teamwork along the way. Such is the worthy theme of "The Spiderwick Chronicles"
Imagine yourself in a terrible scrape, your life about to end, and in no time flat, you can disappear and re-emerge safely in Paris, Tokyo, among the pyramids, or in your very own bedroom.
"Rambo" (Lionsgate), the latest offering in a franchise begun in 1982, is remarkable only for the toxic level of graphic violence enabled by recent advances in special effects.
"Untraceable" (Screen Gems) is a grimly unpleasant thriller concerning an Internet killer who tortures kidnapped victims on a Web site he calls "killswithme.com."
"There Will Be Blood" (Paramount Vantage/Miramax) is an extraordinarily fine drama loosely based on Upton Sinclair's 1927 muckraking novel, "Oil!" set during the early 20th century.
At the start of "I Am Legend" (Warner Bros.), a grim but effective thriller, Emma Thompson, in a delicious cameo, plays a self-satisfied doctor informing an incredulous news interviewer that she has found the cure for cancer.
(WARNING: Review contains a possible spoiler!)
The movie "The Golden Compass" has prompted a blizzard of words assailing the movie and the books on which it is based, as well as defenses of the film.
Whoa! Armored warrior bears! How cool is that! Add flying witches and airborne schooners along with one’s soul which lives outside of your body in an animal shape called a daemon (demon) that walks by your side—and ...wow! You’ve got yourself one heck of a Christmas film. Simply beautiful to look at—sort of like the forbidden fruit on the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil in the Garden of Eden. Looks great but in the end, nothing there, only despair.
"The Savages" (Fox Searchlight) is a strongly acted, perceptive study of middle-aged brother and sister Jon and Wendy Savage (Philip Seymour Hoffman and Laura Linney), called upon to care for their emotionally and geographically distant father, Lenny (Philip Bosco), who has had a stroke at his Arizona home and is being kicked out by the owner, the daughter of his late live-in companion.
The holiday season gets off to a surprisingly delightful start with "Fred Claus" (Warner Bros.), a generally funny yet bittersweet tale about Santa Claus, aka St. Nicholas (Paul Giamatti), and his older, neglected brother, Fred (Vince Vaughn).
Silence has never been so excruciatingly terrifying as it registers in this latest film from the Coen brothers, based on a 2003 novel by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Cormac McCarthy.
"Martian Child" (New Line) is a delicate, highly unusual story -- based on David Gerrold's semiautobiographical short story, "The Martian Child" -- about widowed science fiction writer, David Gordon (John Cusack), with a yen for adopting a child to fill his empty life.
Steve Carrell may be the best reason to see "Dan in Real Life" (Touchstone/Focus), a pleasantly amusing if unremarkable comedy.
Sarah Landon and the Paranormal Hour
Much as we like to be supportive of family-friendly films, especially independent works made on modest budgets, "Sarah Landon and the Paranormal Hour" (Freestyle) is, we're afraid to say, the kind of Halloween film you'd be forgiven for wishing would be run out of town by parents armed with pitchforks and torches.
Much as we like to be supportive of family-friendly films, especially independent works made on modest budgets, "Sarah Landon and the Paranormal Hour" (Freestyle) is, we're afraid to say, the kind of Halloween film you'd be forgiven for wishing would be run out of town by parents armed with pitchforks and torches.
