‘Hancock’: Rarely has a dumb movie struggled to be so weighty

Hancock’s high concept—it’s Super-Hobo!—is a fun one, though it’s already been done in the 1983 Alan Arkin musical The Return of Captain Invincible. And the trailers, with Will Smith as a drunken misanthrope flying into buildings and tossing whales around with impunity, suggested the kind [...]

‘Gonzo’ is a respectable draft of the great Hunter Thompson documentary
The great Hunter Thompson documentary has yet to be made, but there’s a respectable draft—including a blueprint on what not to do—in Gonzo. Things begin promisingly enough, with rare footage of Thompson, fresh off his bestselling debut, looking young and uncomfortable on the set of [...]

Self-pity lands like a sack of wet flour in ‘When Did You Last See Your Father?’
I don’t understand Anand Tucker. His first big film, Hilary and Jackie, was an adaptation of a memoir of sorts, and there he seems to have kept a healthy distance from his subjects. His last project, however, seemed to have [...]

Pirouetting cars and leaping assassins: the enjoyable nonsense of ‘Wanted’

Few things set anxious hormones twittering like overblown violence and the sight of Angelina Jolie’s overblown lips. The best thing you could say about the grating, cacophonous Wanted is that it offers up ample servings of both.
Wesley (James McAvoy), a lowly office drone, spends his days [...]

‘Savage Grace’ remembers tabloid story best left forgotten

A blast of luridness, equal parts unnerving and irritating, Savage Grace gets a lot of mileage out of a typically fearless performance from Julianne Moore. She plays notorious socialite Barbara Daly Baekeland, who in 1972 was brutally murdered by her own son Tony (Eddie Redmayne). It wasn’t simply [...]

Documentary ‘Bigger, Stronger, Faster*’ looks at American failure
This documentary examines the impact of steroids on, first, American culture, and second, an American family of five. The family in question has two parents and three sons. The parents are overweight and very normal, the brothers are beefy and spent a good part of their developing years [...]

Not merely an homage to ‘Election,’ ‘The Promotion’ grows into something of its own

In 1999, Alexander Payne released Election, his small, deep, near-perfect comedy charting a Midwest high school’s race for student body president. With mathematical precision and a Christ-like empathy for his characters, Payne cracked open a whole world of American ambition and failure, [...]

We get what ‘War, Inc.’ is saying—but it’s still worth a listen

There’s a scene in this movie that is its heart. And to obtain the right understanding of War, Inc., the workings of this heart must be understood. If you miss it, the greatness of this film will be lost in the chaos of its [...]

‘Don’t Mess With the Zohan?’ Looks like somebody messed too much with the script
Remember the ’90s? When Adam Sandler was our everything—when he was king, queen, court jester, landed gentry, sheriff, yeoman, America’s sweetheart, and, um, candlestick maker? And Robert Smigel was Secretary of Consistently Making Lindy West Laugh, and Judd Apatow was nobody, yet, [...]

‘Kung Fu Panda’ bodes well for Dreamworks Animation

Snarky irreverence will always have a place in cartoons, of course—to claim otherwise would be to invite an anvil on the head—but in the case of Dreamworks Animation, there’s the frustrating sense that wise-ass is the only option they’ve got. As their distressingly megabucks back catalog of the [...]