Review: Subtle Scares in `Orphanage'

The Orphanage

Floors creak and doors slam. Hidden passages lead to secret compartments. Ratty old dolls show up out of nowhere.

Are these playful signs from the children who lived in "The Orphanage" long ago, or a harbinger of something more sinister? That's the mystery in this well-crafted if familiar haunted house story, the first feature from young Spanish director Juan Antonio Bayona.

Guillermo del Toro serves as one of the film's producers and Bayona, working from a script by Sergio Sanchez, seems to be aiming for the same mix of the real and the supernatural that del Toro himself achieved last year with his excellent "Pan's Labyrinth." It's a tough balance to strike, and it's even tougher to live up to comparisons to such a cinematic original. ("The Orphanage" is actually more reminiscent of Alejandro Amenabar's super-creepy "The Others," starring Nicole Kidman.)

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Review: `Persepolis' Is Wildly Inventive

Persepolis

"Persepolis" is a true original in the eclectic world of animation, one that's full of fascinating contradictions.

It's a colorful autobiography rendered in crisp black-and-white; it's about Iran's Islamic revolution, but it's a comedy. You won't see another film like this anytime soon, if ever, which is precisely why you should seek it out.

Marjane Satrapi adapted her own graphic novels (with the help of best friend and fellow comic book artist Vincent Paronnaud, who co-wrote and co-directed) and she did it with great humor, honesty and heart. Except for a chunk of the midsection where "Persepolis" gets a bit draggy, especially after wowing us with its inventiveness early on, you'd never know you're in the hands of a first-time filmmaker.

The animation style may seem overly simplistic at first, but on the contrary there's so much going on, it's impossible for the eye to take it all in at once. Clearly inspired by German expressionism, Satrapi and Paronnaud make especially stunning use of severe angles, silhouettes and shadows.

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Review: `Blood' Is Anderson's Epic

There Will Be Blood

Someday, we're probably going to look back at "There Will Be Blood," Paul Thomas Anderson's epic about greed, lies, manipulation and insanity, and call it his masterpiece.

Which is incredible because, except for the inescapable intensity, it's nothing like his previous films; if Anderson's name weren't on it, you'd never know it was his. It's thrilling to see him reinvent himself this way, applying his formidable directing talents in a totally different fashion.

Gone are the film-school tricks he made his name with in "Boogie Nights" and "Magnolia" (and this critic loved those movies). Anderson has moved out of contemporary L.A. and away from the histrionics of the carefully orchestrated ensembles he set there. He now seems more interested in storytelling and character development.

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Review: Denzel Steers 'Great Debaters'

The Great Debaters

It could have been overly sentimental and feel-good, this movie about a pioneering black debate team in the segregated South. But Denzel Washington, as director and star, manages to find the right tone much of the time in "The Great Debaters."

It certainly doesn't hurt that he has an inspiring true story to work from Oprah Winfrey liked it so much, her Harpo Films company produced it.

Washington stars as professor Melvin B. Tolson, a future poet who serves as debate coach at the tiny, all-black Wiley College in Marshall, Texas. In 1935, Wiley's debaters did something unprecedented: They competed against several predominantly white schools and won, including Harvard (in real life Wiley beat USC, but you get the idea).

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Review: `Water Horse' a Touching Story

The fantasy family film "The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep" was directed by Jay Russell, who previously directed "My Dog Skip." And the script was based on the book by Dick King-Smith, who also wrote "Babe: The Gallant Pig."

In other words, bring tissues that means you, moms and dads.

This extremely sweet tale of a lonely boy named Angus MacMorrow (Alex Etel) who finds an egg on the shore and befriends its contents once it hatches a slimy, mischievous but irresistibly cute creature that can only be described as a baby water horse will tug at anyone. In era when pop-culture onslaughts are more fashionable, family movies of this quality are hard to find.

Sure, it borrows more than a little from "E.T."

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Review: `Bucket List' Survives Gimmicks

The Bucket List

Facing terminal illness, we all should get to experience a no-costs-barred world tour to do everything we ever wanted.

Most of us don't have the convenient bottomless wallet that allows Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman to do just that in "The Bucket List," a comic drama that puts director Rob Reiner back in commercial if not artistic form.

Unlike Reiner's string of duds the last 10 years or so, the movie is easily accessible, with Nicholson and Freeman elevating a story overloaded with cliched life lessons and self-help slogans into a tolerable, relatively painless way to go.

Nicholson and Freeman are so lovably companionable, they almost make you forget the glaring contrivances screenwriter Justin Zackham concocts to bring these two mismatched cancer patients together, making steadfast buddies out of men who never would have met and connected in real life.

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Review: `Treasure' Finds Fool's Gold

National Treasure: Book of Secrets

The founding fathers of the "National Treasure" franchise wisely know not to tinker with a formula that inexplicably works.

Nicolas Cage, Jon Turteltaub and Jerry Bruckheimer discovered the secret of alchemy with the first movie three years ago, turning mediocre action spiced with American lore into box-office gold, and the same is likely to hold for the second chapter in their history text.

"National Treasure: Book of Secrets" is another romp through the past that flits from one disjointed action sequence to another, gussying it all up with crowd-pleasing morsels of fact and rivers of crazy legends that turn out to be true.

Knuckle-headed as the movies are in historical context, they sure know how to reel in great casts. Joining Academy Award winners Cage and Jon Voight and fellow "Treasure" veteran Harvey Keitel is Helen Mirren, fresh off her Oscar win for "The Queen," along with Ed Harris.

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Review: `Charlie' Is a Crisp Satire

Charlie Wilson's War

"Charlie Wilson's War," a crisp, biting satire that confidently mixes sex and politics, glides along so smartly and smoothly, it makes you wonder how it's possible that director Mike Nichols and writer Aaron Sorkin have never teamed up before.

Based on the true story of a congressman (Tom Hanks), a Houston socialite (Julia Roberts) and a CIA operative (Philip Seymour Hoffman) who conspired to arm Afghanistan's mujahedeen against Soviet invaders in the early 1980s, "Charlie Wilson's War" represents comfortable territory for both men, despite the complexity of its subject matter. (Sorkin's script is based on the book by George Crile, who profiled Wilson as a producer on "60 Minutes.")

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Review: `Walk Hard' Hilariously Familiar

Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story

Judd Apatow can do no wrong, apparently.

Even in taking on a genre parody, an endeavor that would seem painfully hackneyed by now following "Scary Movie," "Epic Movie" and the like, the comic mastermind behind "Knocked Up" and "Superbad" manages to find fresh laughs again and again.

"Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story," a take-off on the music biopic, hits all the familiar conventions we've seen in overly earnest movies like "Ray," "Walk the Line" and even "La Vie en Rose," with its ballyhooed portrayal of Edith Piaf by Marion Cotillard. (This time, longtime Apatow friend and collaborator Jake Kasdan directs, and the two co-wrote the script.)

The marginally talented country rocker Dewey Cox (John C. Reilly) comes from humble, Southern beginnings and experiences tragedy early his brother's death, which haunts him long into adulthood. He marries his childhood sweetheart and eventually fulfills his dreams of music stardom through sheer heart and grit, even though the ones closest to him never quite believed in him.

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Review: `Sweeney,' Burton a Perfect Fit

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

"Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" is the quintessential Tim Burton movie, even though it springs from somebody else's celebrated mind.

Everything about Stephen Sondheim's revered musical, which provided the inspiration for the film, seems tailor-made for the director's sensibilities. Truly, what other filmmaker could tell the story of a vengeful barber (Johnny Depp) who slits his customers' throats and the lovesick baker (Helena Bonham Carter) who grinds up the dead bodies for her meat pies?

It's strangely beautiful and beautifully strange, with horrific subject matter that produces plenty of wicked humor and characters who initially seem ghoulish but ultimately reveal themselves as sympathetic and deeply sad.

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Review: `Golden Compass' Is Lackluster

Dakota Blue Richards

Nicole Kidman's presence in the elaborate fantasy flick "The Golden Compass" is emblematic of the movie itself: aesthetically lush but ultimately cold to the touch.

This adaptation of the first novel in British writer Philip Pullman's "His Dark Materials" trilogy has some fanciful moments but never achieves the sense of awe-inspiring wonder of the "Lord of the Rings" films, to which comparisons will be inevitable. It's also probably too scary for a lot of kids, with its themes of totalitarianism and mind control; adults, meanwhile, may find it hard to take seriously, despite how seriously it takes itself.

Writer-director Chris Weitz ("About a Boy") takes on the biggest project of his life with this CGI-filled spectacle, which he also had to cram with tons of exposition to set up a potential series. The visual highlight is supposed to be the battle between two powerful, armored polar bears, voiced with ire and gravitas by Ian McKellen and Ian McShane; since this is the film's signature sequence and we know it's coming, much of "The Golden Compass" feels like a waiting game until it arrives.

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Review: `Atonement' a Dazzling Romance

Keira Knightley, left, and James McAvoy

Those ruby-red lips puffing away at a delicately hand-rolled cigarette, those shoulder blades jutting like weapons from a knockout of a backless, emerald-green gown Keira Knightley would seem to be starring in an elegant period drama, one that's predictably and self-consciously reserved.

"Atonement" is anything but. It changes again and again, lulling us in with its glamorous trappings before turning sexy, suspenseful, richly romantic and achingly sad. And if you haven't read the Ian McEwan best-selling novel that inspired it, you'll be dazzled by its twist of an ending.

Joe Wright, who directed Knightley to an Academy Award nomination for 2005's "Pride & Prejudice," rejoins most of his technical team from that film for this decades-spanning story of jealousy, betrayal, damage and repentance. Where his Jane Austen adaptation reveled in the gritty reality of the time, here he luxuriates in high style everything has a shimmering, dreamlike sheen about it, perhaps as an homage to the sweeping, historical romances of long ago but without lapsing into parody. It's just exceptionally well-crafted.

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Review: Guy Ritchie's `Revolver'

Jason Statham

If a spoiler alert is needed for a panel of real-life psychiatrists, consider yourself forewarned.

That's how Guy Ritchie's "Revolver" ends: with a series of brief clips of psychiatrists explaining the difference between the id and ego. Not exactly the Death Star exploding, is it?

Our experts have nothing directly to do with the plot, but they're there to help explain the mess of a movie that has preceded them. "Revolver" is a hard-boiled crime flick with its mayhem aimed at the inner workings of the mind.

It's filled with constant inner monologues, Machiavelli quotes and enough chess theory to make Bobby Fischer blush. All of this makes up the subtext to "Revolver," which is otherwise the usual style-over-substance theatrics of Richie, whose films include "Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels" and "Snatch" but who is best known as Mr. Material Girl.

Jake Green (Jason Statham) is a con man who has been released from prison after seven years of solitary confinement. Somehow during this period, through some kind of prison-wall osmosis, he's been schooled by his jailed neighbors on the art of war, deception and chess.

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Review: `Juno' a Small Comic Charmer

ennifer Garner, left, Jason Bateman, center, and Ellen Page

Juno MacGuff is the kind of teenager we all wish we could have been: quick-witted, frighteningly intelligent beyond her years and comfortable enough in her own skin to resist those incessant high-school pressures to conform, even as her body expands with an unplanned pregnancy.

And "Juno" is the kind of movie all indie comedies wish they could be: light and lovable, perhaps a bit too pleased with the cleverness of its dialogue, but a small charmer nonetheless.

It's also sure to make a star of the appealing Ellen Page, who had already proven she could be a tiny force of nature in the tense but little-seen "Hard Candy." Page absolutely shines in this second feature from director Jason Reitman, who once again shows a deft touch with tone following his 2006 debut, "Thank You for Smoking." There's a lovely openness to her face, an accessibility to her demeanor, even when she's being smart-alecky and cynical.

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Review: `August Rush'

August Rush

There are precious movies and then there are movies about 11-year-old orphans following "the music."

In this respect, "August Rush" is on another level. We need to break out a whole new definition of cheesiness for a film like this, augmented by fake tears and vomit gestures.

"August Rush" begins with a boy (Freddie Highmore) standing in an open field where the surrounding sounds the wind, the trees, the grass swirl like a symphony in his head. In a whispering voice-over, he says: "I believe in music the way that some people believe in fairy tales."

"August Rush" thus proceeds in fairy-tale fashion, though it's more unrealistic than surrealistic. Without any tangible evidence, our protagonist senses his parents are still alive and that he just needs to make music loud enough so they can hear him (sort of like the ethos behind a Coldplay album).

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Review: Tension Builds in `The Mist'

The Mist

The first two times Frank Darabont adapted and directed a story by Stephen King "The Shawshank Redemption" and "The Green Mile" the results were dramatically compelling and duly acclaimed, but they didn't leave you tensed up and terrified in your seat.

They weren't trying to. "The Mist" is, and it succeeds beautifully.

It's a reflection of both men's horror roots in the late '80s, Darabont wrote the remake of "The Blob," the third "Nightmare on Elm Street" movie and "The Fly II" and King ... well, you know who he is but it's also a welcome return to the kind of subtle, slowly building scares we don't see anymore in this overly graphic age of torture porn.

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Review: Say `I Don't' to `Margot'

Jennifer Jason Leigh, left, and Jack Black

With 2005's "The Squid and the Whale," writer-director Noah Baumbach created characters who were smart, witty, sad, vulnerable and, above all else, laceratingly verbal.

With "Margot at the Wedding," he's got the laceratingly verbal part down, but he left out all the rest.

In this claustrophobic homage to the French New Wave (the title seems to be an allusion to Eric Rohmer's "Pauline at the Beach"), Baumbach depicts sibling rivalry not as something fragile and evolving but as blood sport.

Nicole Kidman stars as Margot, an accomplished Manhattan short-story writer who travels with her adolescent son, Claude (Zane Pais), to the East Coast island where she grew up for the wedding of her estranged hippie-chick sister, Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh).

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Review: `Beowulf' Sexes Up Epic Poem

Beowulf

The name "Beowulf" alone surely will inspire painful memories of high-school English class and pangs of dread.

Never fear. This 3-D animated "Beowulf" is more like "300," only with more violence, if that's possible. And nudity lots and lots of nudity.

Director Robert Zemeckis, using the same performance-capture technology he introduced with 2004's "The Polar Express," takes on the epic Old English poem by sexing it up. It's the cinematic equivalent of slipping pureed spinach into your kids' brownies.

Adapted by Neil Gaiman (the "Sandman" comics) and Roger Avary (who co-wrote "Pulp Fiction"), the film follows the mythic Viking hero who emerges from the sea to rid a Danish kingdom of the bloody, raging, pus-covered monster Grendel (played with pathos and twisted physicality by Crispin Glover). Only then can there be much merrymaking and mead-drinking and wench-bedding.

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Review: `Magorium' Forces the Magic

Dustin Hoffman, left, and Natalie Portman

You'd have to be a really little kid we're talking young enough to be enthralled by colorful, shiny objects and oblivious to the necessity of character development to want to hang out at "Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium."

With wild hair and an annoying accent, Dustin Hoffman looks completely uncomfortable as the titular impresario, a childlike eccentric who doesn't just sell toys but whose store is a living being with feelings.

Now, at age 243, he decides it's time to leave (read: die, inexplicably) and hand the keys over to store manager Molly Mahoney (Natalie Portman in full-on pixie mode), a former piano prodigy who's stuck creatively. (Ah, the irony she works at a place that encourages creativity!) Only Mahoney doesn't feel ready for the challenge, and the store throws a temper tantrum to keep Magorium from going.

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Review: Emotion Deficient In Cholera

Giovanna Mezzogiorno, left, and Benjamin Bratt

A lot of the great delight of reading an writer like Gabriel Garcia Marquez is the truth that you're reading him that you're granting yourself to turn absorbed in his flamboyant phraseology and bright descriptions, that he's taking you to a amply realized lieu, and that you're knuckling under, gladly.

When a author phonation is as distinguishing as the Colombian Nobel Prize winner's, it's hard to duplicate it on-screen, even though director Mike Newell and screenwriter Ronald Harwood remain for the most part loyal to "Love in the Time of Cholera" in their wildly blemished version of Garcia Marquez' brooming 1985 novel about a decades-old loving fixation.

Harwood won an Academy Award for his version of "The Pianist"; here, he conserves much of the master copy dialogue, but the signification and emotion behind it is often oddly deficient. So when the graceful Dr. Juvenal Urbino (Benjamin Bratt) guarantees his pure bride (Giovanna Mezzogiorno) on their honeymoon, "This is going to be a example in love," a line that might have looked palatable on the page clangs on the ear alternatively.

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