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As much as I respect Richard Roeper's opinion, when it comes to film criticism, I think he grossly misses the point Alexandre Aja is making with his remake of the Wes Craven horror classic, The Hills Have Eyes. Aja's 2006 remake isn't simply about a group of flesh-hungry mutants living in the desert and feasting on any unlucky passerby. Sure, that is certainly one element of the film, but upon further inspection we come to understand that The Hills Have Eyes (2006) is more about the breaking point of the normal human being. It's more about transformation and testing the very limits of the human psyche than...Read the entire review

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Thetrue test of any person (creative or not) is how they respond toadversity. How does one recover from their lowest of lows? Howdoes one attempt to turn those lows upside down and createsomething successful again? The fourth season of GilmoreGirls marked a largely transitional year for the show.Characters went in opposite directions, people changed,relationships turned around, and the two closest people on theshow (Lorelai and Rory) had to be separated for an extendedperiod of time. In my estimation, Amy Sherman-Palladino andDaniel Palladino did a pretty fine job of making it work in theirshow's fourth season. While it may have lacked a little bit ofthe usual vivaciousness, the fourth season of Gilmore Girlsstill had plen...Read the entire review

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Aftercreating two making-of documentaries about the excellentChristophe Gans film, Brotherhood of the Wolf (Le Pacte desLoups), Pascal Laugier finally had a chance to make afeature film of his own. With financial (and moral) support fromGans, Laugier set out to create the haunting tale of a youngwomen sent to look after a decaying, abandoned orphanage in theremote French Alps. The building, and its few inhabitants, harborsome deep, dark secrets that even Laugier seems to have troublefully explicating. House of Voices, originally titled SaintAnge, is an ambitious first feature that tries so hard to bemore than just another confusing thriller or simple ghost story,but unfortunately somewhere along the line the film ...Read the entire review

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Mentionthe word voodoo and the first image that comes to mind, for mostpeople, will be a little doll with a bunch of pins stuck in it.Voodoo (and particularly voodoo dolls) has been prevalent inmovies for many years, but I'm not so sure that Hollywood's givenpeople the right message about the subject. Most people, Iimagine, wouldn't have any clue that voodoo is actually areligion that has many followers in the New Orleans area. They'dalso probably have no idea what hoodoo is and the majority ofpeople, in fact, probably have the impression that voodoois actually what hoodoo really is. Magical spells anddolls that you can make to hurt someone you don't like. That'snot voodoo, despite what Hollywood might have you think. That...Read the entire review

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I have yet to have children of my own and, therefore, cannoteven imagine what it must have felt like for the parents of SteveBranch, Michael Moore, and Christopher Byers to first hear of thebrutal, unimaginable crimes that were perpetrated upon theirchildren. I've lost many people in my family, but the pain thatone must feel for the loss of a parent or child is something thatI cannot even begin to fathom. That being said, West Memphis,Arkansas not only experienced an absolutely heinous c...Read the entire review

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Thetough part about creating quality dramatic television is that,unlike many sitcoms and reality shows, the hour-long drama (oreven comedy-drama) must grow. Sitcom characters neverhave to change. That's part of the charm of those types of shows.They are completely episodic, the characters can stay the sameage forever, and we can simply watch them go through somedifferent type of predicament every week. The hour-long drama(especially those with season, or series, long story arcs like Buffythe Vampire Slayer or Veronica Mars) has aresponsibility to allow its characters to grow, go throughtransitions, and tackle all the difficulties that come along withthat growth. This difficulty, on the other hand, is also whatmake...Read the entire review

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Oneof the best things about writing for DVD Talk is having an editorthat trusts his staff of writers. We are never stifled,influenced, or told what to say about a particular title simplyto cater to a certain studio or DVD release. Having this kind offreedom is what allows us to be extremely honest and not followany bandwagon buzz about a highly anticipated disc. That beingsaid, I think what we have here at DVD Talk is probably prettyrare in the grand scheme of the media (be it TV, radio, Internet,etc) world. And while may people might think the Internet is thelast truly free medium, I'd wager to say that there's plenty ofdishonesty and manipulation afoot there as well. It may not be onas quite a large scale as television, but the next few y...Read the entire review

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Plentyof filmmakers have attempted (most unsuccessfully) to emulateSteven Soderbergh's breakthrough indie film sex, lies, andvideotape since its release in 1989. The problem, however,with trying to emulate Soderbergh's classic is that the slightestmisstep tends to make your film appear amateurish andmanipulative. I'd accuse Gregory Hatanaka's Until the Nightof doing this very thing, but the problem here is that Hatanaka'sfilm doesn't really know what it wants to be. The characters seemto drift in and out of the film with little semblance as to whatexactly their purpose is in the overall narrative. Which would befine if Gregory Hatanaka was as capable a filmmaker as Soderberghbut, unfortunately, he's not.

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Were it not for the critical success of Errol Morris, and hisevolution as a filmmaker over the past few decades, we mightnever have seen the resurgence and unprecedented popularity ofdocumentary films over the past few years. To put it bluntly,without an Errol Morris there would probably not be a MichaelMoore today. Whether or not you think the idea of a world without MichaelMoore is a good thing, it would be hard to argue withthe fact that Morris has made an indelible mark not only on theworld of documentary filmmaking, but also on the world ofAmerican Cinema as a whole.

Withthe release of...Read the entire review

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There'san old saying that goes: "When you assume, you makean…" Well, I probably don't need to tell you the rest.That saying, however, couldn't be more important than it is inMike Binder's The Upside of Anger. Assumptions, whetherwe often realize it or not, are really good for nothing. They'reusually not based on any type of factual information and theyusually result in anger, sadness, or some type of despair. Theyare, basically, a great waste of time and energy. And in the caseof Binder's film, they are what fuel the anger and resentment inan entire family.

Binder's film tells the story of a suburban housewife, played byJoan Allen, whose husband mysteriously disappears. She assumesthat he's run off...Read the entire review

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There'sa scene near the beginning of Million Dollar Baby inwhich Clint Eastwood's character, Frankie Dunn, tells MorganFreeman's character, Eddie "Scrap-Iron" Dupris, to buythe cheap, generic bleach to clean up around the gym."Scrap" tells Frankie that the cheap stuff doesn'tsmell as good as the real Clorox bleach. "Bleach,"Frankie says in turn, "smells like bleach." This is aline that, in any other movie, would have probably been meant fora small chuckle or a throwaway. In Million Dollar Baby,however, that very conversation about bleach tells more about thetransformation that takes place within Frankie Dunn throughoutthe film than any other moment in the film.

When we first meet Frankie Dunn, he's beaten down and d...Read the entire review

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During the timethey spent working on The King is Alive, KristianLevring and Janet McTeer decided they wanted to write a filmtogether. The end result of that collaboration eventually became TheIntended - a film which seems, on the surface, to be aperiod piece about a couple whose relationship drasticallychanges when they flee the depression of post-war Europe to workat an ivory trading post deep in the jungles of Malaysia. Uponfurther inspection, however, The Intended ends up beinglittle more than a longer, more elaborate version of IndecentProposal set in a dense jungle accessible by boat only whenthe river rises every six months.

Okay, maybe that's a bit harsh. There are certainly some nuggetsof quality cine...Read the entire review

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John C. Reillyis one of my favorite actors, which makes it very easy for me tosay that his performance is absolutely the best thing about thefeature film debut of Director Gregory Jacobs. Based on the film NineQueens, Criminal is a slick caper film that playsthe "who's conning who" game over and over again.Produced by George Clooney, Steven Soderbergh, and Jacobshimself, Criminal allows John C. Reilly to take centerstage as a character very similar to those he's played (insecondary character roles) in other films before. He gets to bethe star here and his performance, along with the work of DiegoLuna and Maggie Gyllenhaal, are what makes Criminal avery entertaining film.

While there's not a ...Read the entire review

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When I wasyounger, I remember spending just about every weekend at my bestfriend's house playing video games, shooting hoops, and fieldingground balls at the little league field. After a hard day doingwhatever teenage boys do, I'd usually end up spending the nightand feasting on his mother's homemade pancakes the next morning.Aside from those video games and sports we loved so much, ourfavorite pastime was hanging out in the basement (where we'deventually pull out of sleeping bags for the night) and studyingthe infamous "Cable Guide." This holiest of holy bookswas our way of scoping out what movies would be on late-nightHBO, Showtime, or "Skinemax" (Cinemax). We knew all thecodes: V = Violence, L = Adult Language, B...Read the entire review

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A.M. Homes isknown around the literary community as a bit of an expert when itcomes to writing about suburban families. Nearly all of hernovels and story collections focus on the issues facing themodern suburban family. Jack is actually one of two ofher books to be made into a cable television-original. The other,The Safety of Objects, tried to turn her first shortstory collection into a Short Cuts-esque film starringGlenn Close and Dermot Mulroney. Short Cuts it is not,but The Safety of Objects does have a few shiningmoments. Jack may not fare quite as well with StockardChanning and Ron Silver in the starring roles, but the charismaof a young actor named Anton Yelchin does manage to give the filma...Read the entire review

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September 11th clearly changed everything. Foreign politics,security measures, gathering and distribution of intelligenceand, of course, the willingness of people to believe that justabout anything can happen. No one believed that the events thathappened on that infamous morning could ever happen. It was toosurreal, too far fetched, and too much like a Hollywoodblockbuster to be realistic. Unfortunately, those events becameall too real, and changed how we live from day to day. Thequestion remains, however, as to just how prepared ourgovernments are in the event that a similar terrorist attack wereto happen.

Dirty War takes that very question as its premise andsets out to show - albeit with a fictional story - that as muchas our...Read the entire review

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AdriánCaetano's A Red Bear (Un Oso Rojo) is all aboutredemption. It's about how we try to redeem ourselves to ourfamilies, our employers, and most of all, to ourselves afterwe've done a horrible thing. The only difference is that Caetanochooses to play all this out in the suburbs of Buenos Aires,Argentina - a place not often seen in film. His gritty, intensefilm takes us into the streets and slums of Argentina where theeconomy is suffering and the underworld of robbery and crimereigns supreme. This isn't your typical postcard view of BuenosAires, but a more real glimpse into the lives of people that haveto scrap to make a living, and who sometimes must do theunspeakable just to feed their families.

Bear has been in...Read the entire review

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There are somefilms that are difficult to watch because they're filled withintense, gory violence, and there are some films that aredifficult to watch simply because of their subject matter. TheWoodsman is one of the latter. Not only does the filminvolve one of the most difficult-to-watch subject matters -child molestation - but it also contains one of the mostunsettling scenes in recent memory. It may be well crafted andexpertly acted, but the fact remains there is a certain number ofpeople who simply will not be able to watch the film purely onthe fact that it breaches some very taboo subjects in a veryrealistic and painful manner. And, to be completely honest, Ican't blame them.

First-time Director Nicole Kassell rarely p...Read the entire review

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Paul Weitz hascome a long way since American Pie. From creating a teensex comedy that, while it had its laughs and heart, was moreabout gross-out humor than anything else to crafting anintelligent, heartfelt British drama (About a Boy), andnow to writing and directing an excellent, little film thatcarefully straddles the line between comedy and drama that is so apparent in everyday life. Like I said, Paul Weitz has come a longway.

The marketing campaign for In Good Company would haveloved for you to believe that the film was either a comedy or aromance. In reality, however, the film is so much more than thosesimple genre definitions describe. About a Boy allowedaudiences to see that Paul W...Read the entire review

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If a showhappens to get through its first year as a critical darling and aratings success, the inevitable issue of the "sophomoreslump" usually rears its ugly head just about the time thatthe first season is concluding. Needless to say, it's anincredibly hard time for television shows to be a success withall the reality programming jamming up the airwaves. For a showto continually achieve that success year after year is even morerare. Gilmore Girls really hit the ground running withtheir first season, and their second season was nothing less than animprovement upon the themes and...Read the entire review

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A Love Songfor Bobby Long is the kind of film that requires a fewviewings to warm up to. The first time I saw the film I was, toput it mildly, lukewarm about it. I thought the characters wereshallow and unlikable, the plot had too many convenientcoincidences, and the film was way too long. Then Iwatched it again and I started to see how deep and wellfleshed-out these characters are throughout the course of thefilm. So I watched it again and the plot - even though there arestill a few of those convenient coincidences - didn't seem tobother me as much. I decided to give the film one more shot towin me over, and through the course of that last viewing, Idecided that, although the film is still a bit overlong,everything really started to...Read the entire review

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Director DavidGordon Green is one of those directors whose work is instantlyrecognizable from only a few moments of a scene. The youngdirector's vision is so unique and interesting that every singleframe is imbued with absolute precision and care. Critics havelikened Green to Terrence Malick and labeled his work as SouthernGothic. He has been praised endlessly for his first two films, GeorgeWashington and All the Real Girls, and has become abit of an independent wunderkind. All this and Undertowis only his third feature film.

For every bit of critical praise that Green received for hisfirst two films, Undertow is not only the mostaccessible, but also the most entertaining and deeply moving ofhis fi...Read the entire review

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There have beennumerous film versions of The Phantom of the Opera overthe years. The most famous is probably Lon Chaney's frighteningturn as the Phantom in the classic silent version of the film. Upuntil 2004, however, there has never been a film made of AndrewLloyd Webber's musical version of The Phantom of the Opera.After it's enormous success, as a musical, on Broadway and aroundthe world, the idea of bringing Phantom… to thesilver screen was an obvious one. So obvious that Webbercontacted Director Joel Schumacher about doing a film adaptationfourteen years ago. That version, unfortunately, nevermaterialized and the idea went onto the shelf. The resurgence ofthe musical in recent years - and the success of fi...Read the entire review

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I'm not exactlysure when my interest in serial killers began, but I do rememberbeing quite the happy high school graduate when one of thepresents I opened at my graduation party was a book about EdGein. There was a time, near the beginning of my collegeeducation, that I was a double major in Criminal Justice andPsychology with my sights set on being a Forensic Psychologist. Ican easily remember having to tell everyone on my floor (at ourfirst dorm meeting upon arrival to college) something interestingabout myself, and deciding that naming as many serial killers(and their basic stories) as I could name in the span of fiveminutes would be a warm welcome for the rest of the dorm. I thinkI ended that speech with "I'm not crazy. I'm just veryinter...Read the entire review

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I think, sadly,that the time when young boys were overwhelmingly fascinated withcowboys has come to an end. It's hard for me to imagine, intoday's day and age, that any youngster dreams of becoming acowboy when he has all these video games and superheroes andvarious indoor activities to eat up his time. The lore of thelegendary cowboy has, unfortunately, passed. I remember a time,however, when wanting to be a cowboy was just about the coolestthing you could ever want to be. Riding horses, roping cattle,and driving the range was all so macho. It was John Wayne. It wasCowboys and Indians. And it was the roughest men of them all: theBull Riders.

As many times as I'd wished, as a kid, that I could move out Westand get a couple horses, I never reall...Read the entire review

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MTV seems tohave found the right formula for hit television. Throw someunknown youngsters (chosen by their ability to fill a certainstereotype) in a house and let the cameras roll: The RealWorld. Take the same basic ingredients and throw them in anRV to roam the country and do a few stunts: Road Rules.Put the same people in a competition against each other to seewhich group whines more: all those seemingly endless installmentsof Real World-Road Rules Challenge. They even broke themold a few times by surrounding a rock-God (Ozzy) and his familywith cameras: The Osbournes. Then, they took a newlymarried couple of B-level celebrities and turned them intoHollywood A-listers: Newlyweds. For a station that usedto...Read the entire review

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When I wastrying to decide on a witty, intelligent quote from GilmoreGirls: The Complete First Season to use as an introductionfor this review, I suddenly began to feel a bit overwhelmed anddecided, after all, not to use a quote at all. Why? Simplybecause there are way too many to choose from throughout theseason. For a show whose original premise, taken at face value,sounds about as exciting as watching paint dry, Gilmore Girlseasily eclipses anything that you might be thinking about itbefore you actually sit down to watch an episode. Hmm, let's see,a 32-year-old mother and her 16-year-old daughter (both sharingthe same name, mind you) are not only related, but they're bestfriends. How The WB ever had the cojones to give ...Read the entire review

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Given thechance, there are probably a lot of people that would love tostay young forever. Ever since J.M. Barrie first created thecharacter of Peter Pan, that is precisely what people have beendoing. For numerous years, they've been escaping from the rigorsof adulthood and daily life, by stepping into the shoes of a boywho never grows up, on stage and on screen. One of the mostcherished of all literary characters, Peter Pan reminds us allexactly what its like to live in a world of innocence and fun. Hetells us to forget our worries and fly off to a place whereanything is possible. Barrie's creation, however, didn't justcome out of nowhere. He had some major inspiration in the form ofa widow and her four adventurous boys. At least that's wha...Read the entire review

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Are you ready, kids? I can't hear you…

I can rememberexactly the two specific moments when I fell in love with SpongeBobSquarePants as a television cartoon. One involves thesurprising appearance of Nosferatu, and the other includes theguest appearance of John Lurie as a fisherman. Sure, these aretwo very odd moments for me to choose as my reason for beingforever hooked into the undersea world of Bikini Bottom, butthese moments encompass everything that is so great about theshow itself. What initially attracted me to SpongeBobSquarePants were the silly dialogue and the fact that itseemed so absurd for a sponge (let alone one that looks likesomething you'd find in your kitchen sink) to be the impetus fora c...Read the entire review

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There is aspecific moment near the end of Closer that transformsit from being a very good film into a great film. It is, inactuality, two brief moments that achieve thistransformation, but they happen so quickly and subtly that youjust might miss them if you turn away for even an instant. Thesemoments, however, are so powerful that they succeed in wrappingup the entire ethos of the film. I don't want to say exactlywhich moments I'm referring to, but suffice to say that they areexactly what made the film stick in my head for days on end whenI first saw it.

Adapted by Patrick Marber, from his own stage play, Closerdoes what few films have the tenacity and courage to do; ittackles the subject of relationships ...Read the entire review

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As much as Ihate to admit it, I am absolutely awful at the game ofSCRABBLE®. I was an English major in college, and I've beenwriting for as long as I can remember, but something about makingwords out of those little tiles just boggles my mind. When it'smy turn, I often find myself drawing a blank, taking way toomuch time, and eventually putting down something my infant niececould have conjured up from my rack. So, needless to say, I wasimmediately intrigued by the idea of a documentary that followsfour of the world's top players as they advance to the NorthAmerican Championship in San Diego.

A hit at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival, Word Warstakes the viewer deep into the intense world of competitiveSCRABBLE®, whether it be in a tour...Read the entire review