We get to know early-20th-century oilman Daniel Plainview pretty well over the course of "There Will Be Blood's" 2 1/2 hour running time, and there's no question that blood is important to him, in both its literal and metaphorical senses. He's willing to shed it when necessary (i.e., when it suits him), and he puts a lot of stock in the blood shared between family members. "If it's in me, it's in you," he says to his brother of a character trait he has, one that there's no reason to assume would be genetic. Plainview's son is adopted -- which to Plainview means he might as well be some stranger off the street.

But in Paul Thomas Anderson's sprawling, engrossing, multi-layered adaptation of Upton Sinclair's "Oil!," Daniel Plainview (played with characteristic intricacy by Daniel Day-Lewis) is most obsessed with a different kind of blood, the black, viscous kind that runs through the veins of ...Read the entire review

Hilary Swank doesn't usually play girlie roles, and the unabashed chick flick "P.S. I Love You" demonstrates why: She's not very girlie. Her Oscar-winning performances in "Million Dollar Baby" and "Boys Don't Cry" are proof enough that she's at her best playing boxers or dudes, not "Sex and the City" types who wear designer clothes and worry about whether their shoes know how much they love them. "P.S. I Love You" even casts Kathy Bates as her mom. I kept expecting them to put on some denim jackets and head down to Home Depot.

Swank plays what obviously should have been the Sandra Bullock part, an uptight, pragmatic woman named Holly with a happy-go-lucky Irish husband named Gerry (Gerard Butler). They are very happy despite their differences, for they are soul mates.

Then, wouldn't you know it, Gerry dies of a brain tumor. She is inconsolable for several weeks, despite the best e...Read the entire review

"The Water Horse" is set on the banks of Loch Ness, and it's about a reptilian creature that lives in the lake and becomes famous, and someone stages a photo that turns out looking exactly like the iconic picture of the Loch Ness Monster -- yet the movie never refers to it as "the Loch Ness Monster." Everyone calls it a water horse, after a beast from some old Scottish legend. Does the real Loch Ness Monster own the rights to that name? Is "water horse" the generic version? Is this like when a movie wants to have a character who's in the Boy Scouts, but the real Boy Scouts won't give their permission, so they call him a "Junior Camper" instead?

Am I obsessing over tangential matters because the movie itself is forgettable and kind of dumb and I don't feel like talking about it? Yes. You know me so well.

Oh, it's harmless enough, as family movies go. It's not substantially differen...Read the entire review

It takes a smart team to make a good spoof. This is evident in the many not-good spoofs that have polluted cineplexes in recent months, simple-minded exercises like "The Comebacks" and "Date Movie" that think referencing something is the same thing as spoofing it.

"Walk Hard" gets it. Written by Jake Kasdan and Judd Apatow and directed by Kasdan, it's a parody of musical biopics, particularly "Walk the Line" and "Ray," and it merrily deconstructs the conventions of the genre with subtlety and (where required) blatant outright mockery. When the legendary rock singer Dewey Cox (John C. Reilly) stands contemplatively in the shadows backstage before a performance and a crew member urges him to get ready, a band member explains: "Dewey Cox needs to think about his entire life before he plays."

The rest of the film is a flashback, of course, starting with Dewey's childhood in Arkansas i...Read the entire review

"The Great Debaters" is Oprah-produced, Oprah-approved, and Oprah-endorsed. Oprah, people! If you think I'm going to criticize an Oprah movie, you're crazy. She's all-powerful. She will cut you.

It's a perfectly respectable drama, made from the Inspiring Sports Movie template but centered around a college debate team instead of a sports team. All the tropes are there: the plucky underdogs, the unlikely victories, the defeats that come as the result of intra-team squabbling, the triumphant finale, and so on.

And you know how Inspiring Sports Movies always have a lot of rousing speeches? "The Great Debaters" is about making speeches! It's not annoying or manipulative that every other scene has someone giving an impassioned discourse on a weighty social issue -- it's what they're supposed to do! Speechifying is inherent in the subject matter. That's very handy.

This is onl...Read the entire review

I devoutly believe Stephen Sondheim is the greatest songwriter in the history of musical theater (note I do not say "most hummable"), and "Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street" is one of his best works, a darkly comic and truly horrifying tale. Yet though I've seen some great live productions of it, I've never seen the show's rich themes brought to life as vividly as in Tim Burton's new film version.

Burton nails it, starting with the casting (Johnny Depp as Sweeney? Helena Bonham Carter as Mrs. Lovett? Perfect!) and continuing with the cold, desaturated colors of Dariusz Wolski's cinematography and the fantasy-nightmare version of 19th-century London as reconstructed by production designer Dante Ferretti and set decorator Francesca Lo Schiavo. Heck, let's mention Colleen Atwood's deliciously grimy costumes and the hair and makeup staff, too! When Mrs. Lovett has a sunny daydream a...Read the entire review

The most startling thing about "I Am Legend" is how quiet it is. That's logical, since it's about a man who for most of the film is the only human being in New York; but given Hollywood's propensity for loudness at all costs -- and especially given director Francis Lawrence's pedigree of music videos and the chaotic "Constantine" -- it's a pleasant, eerie surprise to be overwhelmed by all that silence.

Based on Richard Matheson's novel (previously filmed as "The Last Man on Earth" and "The Omega Man"), the movie is set in 2012, when a virus has killed the vast majority of the world's population. Of the few million people left alive, most have turned into cannibalistic zombie vampire-y things, preying on whatever animals or people they can find.

Then there's Dr. Robert Neville (Will Smith), a military scientist. He and a tiny percentage of other people were strangely immune to the ...Read the entire review

"The Kite Runner" might be the year's best example of a well-meaning movie that doesn't have anything significantly wrong with it -- it just doesn't have anything significantly right with it, either. I feel just as bad criticizing it as I would recommending it.

Anemically adapted by "Troy" screenwriter David Benioff from Khaled Hosseini's bestselling novel, "The Kite Runner" was directed by Marc Forster. In tone, it falls somewhere between the two films he's best known for: It has alarming plot elements like "Monster's Ball," but it's toned down and glossed up like "Finding Neverland." Consequently, those traumatic events barely register, either with the characters or with the viewer.

It's an American production that was shot partially in China with dialogue mostly in Dari, a Persian dialect spoken in Afghanistan. It is in Kabul in 1978 that we meet Amir (Zekeria Ebrahimi) and Has...Read the entire review

"It's probably just a food baby," says 16-year-old Juno's best friend Leah when Juno says she's pregnant. "Did you have a big lunch?"

No, there was no big lunch. Juno is pregnant for realsies, and "Juno" is one of the year's snappiest, snarkiest, most quotable comedies. Diablo Cody, a former stripper who's now a writer, penned the screenplay, and she populated it with hip characters who speak not in the manner of real people but in the manner of self-aware movie characters. And yet, just as Joss Whedon accomplished with his TV series (notably "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" and "Firefly"), "Juno's" people can pepper their language with stylized slang and still come off as believable, human characters.

Juno MacGuff (Ellen Page) is the kind of Middle American high schooler who's too interesting to be popular and too savvy to care. She listens to cool '70s bands and watches obscure foreig...Read the entire review

Childish misunderstandings produce dire consequences in "Atonement," an achingly poignant melodrama whose title's significance doesn't hit home until the final minutes. Based on Ian McEwan's novel, the story is awash in tragic romance, the kind where lovers are at the mercy of cruel fate as minor events change the course of their lives.

It begins on a hot summer day in 1935 at the Tallis estate in England. Thirteen-year-old Briony Tallis (Saoirse Ronan), a bossy and precocious writer, is trying to corral her cousins into performing a play she's written for the evening's entertainment, as her older brother and a friend are visiting from London. But the kids are more interested in swimming. Everyone is listless and deflated, the way lazy summer afternoons often make us.

From her bedroom window, Briony sees her older sister, Cecilia (Keiry Knightley), out on the lawn, talking to Robb...Read the entire review

Jerry Seinfeld's "Bee Movie" doesn't really make sense, even taking into account that it's a cartoon. The plot is absurd, sometimes so outrageously harebrained that you have to figure Seinfeld and company were doing it on purpose. Other times, you think the whole thing is just a mess and they didn't know what they were doing.

Both views are at least partially correct. I ultimately come down on the side of liking the movie for its bold disregard for convention (whether it was intentional or not), and also because I laughed quite a bit during it. That said, it's a minor film. It'll be amusing once and then forgotten.

Seinfeld hatched the idea and co-wrote the screenplay with some old "Seinfeld" scribes, and he voices the main character: Barry, a bee who has just graduated from school and is preparing to enter the workforce but doesn't like the idea of doing the same task constantly ...Read the entire review

When I asserted in my review of "1408" that everyone loves John Cusack, I heard from a few people who don't. Apparently, some people can't stand him. I DO NOT WANT TO HEAR FROM THESE PEOPLE EVER AGAIN. To hate John Cusack is to hate life!

My pro-Cusack philosophy no doubt enhances my appreciation of "Martian Child," in which he plays a widower who adopts a peculiar young boy. The story has the makings of a sappy, manipulative "family film," and maybe it is one. I proudly state that I do not care. It's sweet and lovely and honest, and it made me laugh and cry, and John Cusack and the little boy, Bobby Coleman, are fantastic, and I want them to move next door and be my brother and nephew, respectively.

Cusack plays David, a successful fantasy novelist whose big hit is being made into a movie, while his publisher is chomping at the bit for a sequel. David likes the fantasy genre beca...Read the entire review

As nearly everyone knows, the surest way to suck all the scariness out of your villain is to over-explain him. "Saw III" had that in spades, reducing the once-creepy Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) to a laughable, bedridden wreck. In "Saw IV," Jigsaw is dead -- and yet he STILL manages to be in about half the scenes, thanks to the magic of flashbacks. The "Saw" masterminds are apparently so determined to ruin this character that they'll find ways for him to appear even after he's dead.

We begin with Jigsaw's autopsy, presented in gruesome, painstaking detail. It's so vivid you can't help but laugh at all the time and expense involved in producing the scene, especially considering it's entirely unnecessary. Whoever created the fake head and torso for them to tear apart, though, that person deserves a raise.

Even from beyond the grave, Jigsaw is up to his old tricks. The game this time involves...Read the entire review

To give his career a much-needed boost and regain some of the credibility he once had, Ben Affleck has returned to his roots with "Gone Baby Gone." Not only is the film set in Boston, Affleck's home turf, but he adapted the screenplay from Dennis Lehane's novel -- and writing is how Affleck rose to fame in the first place, you'll recall, winning an Oscar for his and Matt Damon's "Good Will Hunting" script.

Actually, maybe it's not fair to say that a desire to restart his career is why Affleck made the film, only that it should be one of the byproducts. There's certainly nothing desperate or calculating about the final product. This is a riveting mystery/thriller that warrants attention regardless of who made it, or why.

Affleck casts his brother Casey in the lead, a private investigator named Patrick Kenzie who has lived on the same Boston block his entire life. He and his girlfri...Read the entire review

We've all been disappointed by lousy thrillers that had cool ideas but didn't know how to execute them. "30 Days of Night" is the rare horror film that actually lives up to its potential.

Based on a comic book mini-series by Steve Niles and Ben Templesmith, the film's premise is so ingeniously simple you'll wonder why you didn't think of it yourself: A band of vampires targets an isolated Alaska town where there's no sunlight for 30 days at a stretch. That's a lot better than movies about vampires who live in L.A., which makes no sense at all.

These bloodsuckers are smart, making sure to cut off electricity and communication, and to sabotage the local helicopter. Tiny towns like Barrow -- population 563, except during the dark month, when all but 152 of the stalwarts move to sunnier digs -- need a chopper because the nearest community is 80 miles away, and the road to it is often ...Read the entire review

The story in "Reservation Road" is centered around coincidences so extraordinary they pull me out of the film. One of them isn't even necessary. It's there ... why? So the film can boast the highest coincidence count of 2007?

It feels like anything I say about the plot will be a spoiler, but what can you do? I've just watched the movie's trailer, and everything I'm about to tell you is in it.

We have two fathers, Ethan Learner (Joaquin Phoenix) and Dwight Arno (Mark Ruffalo). Ethan is a college professor and a contented family man; Dwight is divorced, his life a mess, though he adores his son, Lucas (Eddie Alderson). One night Dwight briefly loses control of his car and hits a kid standing on the side of the road, killing him instantly. Panicked, Dwight drives away. The kid? Ethan's son.

The men do not know each other, of course, and state troopers are combing the area ...Read the entire review

James Gray wrote and directed "Little Odessa" in 1994, waited until 2000 to make "The Yards," and has waited since then to do "We Own the Night." The question I have is: Why the wait? It couldn't have taken seven years to write a screenplay this leaden and uninspired. Surely something like this could be churned out in a weekend.

He's rejoined by his "Yards" stars, Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg, who no doubt were hoping for something as substantive as their previous collaboration. Phoenix plays Bobby, a Queens nightclub manager who, in these heady times (it's set in 1988), enjoys his cocaine and other drugs as much as the club's freewheeling patrons do. He has not followed the same path as his brother Joseph (Wahlberg), who's a straitlaced cop, as is their father (Robert Duvall).

Bobby's club is owned by an old Russian man, Marat (Moni Moshonov), who treats Bobby like a son. Bo...Read the entire review

Queen Elizabeth I caught a lucky break with her navy's defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. Her luck runs out, though, with "Elizabeth: The Golden Age," a gorgeous but flaccid film about that incident that is all the more disappointing for being a sequel to 1998's superb "Elizabeth."

I said the new film is about the war with Spain, but that's not entirely true. The film is "about" several things, and that's its problem. Where the 1998 movie, also directed by Shekhar Kapur and starring Cate Blanchett, painted a compelling portrait while also telling a riveting narrative, the sequel simply takes a chunk out of Elizabeth's life and says, "Here's what happened during these years," without bothering to shape it into a story.

It's about her friendship with Sir Walter Raleigh; about the beef with Spain; about the Catholic/Protestant division; about her desire to be a fulfilled, happy wo...Read the entire review

I don't like being the bad guy. Why do I have to be the one to tell you that "The Final Season," a perfectly wholesome, American, corn-fed film about high school baseball, is amateurish and hackneyed? It makes me look like a jerk.

"What?" people say. "You don't like inspiring sports dramas -- based on true stories, no less -- about our national pastime? HAVE YOU NO SOUL?!"

Fine. You want to see it? Be my guest. But it is my duty to inform you that it practically bursts at the seams with the same stock characters and clichés you've seen in countless other Inspiring Sports Dramas.

In fact, even within the genre of mediocre Inspiring Sports Dramas, it's not particularly good. For example, it is a baseball movie, yet it has curiously few scenes of people playing baseball. It starts with a three-minute montage of a team doing infield practice drills, which is even less inte...Read the entire review

Knowing that "Into the Wild" was written and directed by Sean Penn and features songs by Eddie Vedder, you'd expect it to be the most self-serious film ever made, full of lectures and humorless scolding. And there is some of that. The film is certainly the brooding, contemplative type. But it's also at times surprisingly emotional and unguarded, with a central performance that could be one of the year's best.

Based on Jon Krakauer's book, it's the true story of Christopher McCandless, a privileged Virginia kid who at age 22 left his family and friends and set out on a two-year trek West, wandering from place to place before ending up in Alaska. He made reckless and foolhardy decisions and has become for today's disaffected youth either a folk hero or a cautionary tale, depending on your perspective.

Penn seems to view McCandless as a tragic figure, and his film mixes the beautiful...Read the entire review

From what I gather, "The Seeker: The Dark Is Rising" is not very faithful to the Susan Cooper fantasy novel on which it is based. I certainly hope this is true. I would hate to think that Ms. Cooper had written a book as vague, halfhearted, and uninteresting as this. Surely the film causes her to roll over in her grave, unless she is not dead, in which case surely it causes her to rue the day she sold the movie rights.

This is a slapdash story told hastily, without whimsy or wit. It's about a boy named Will Stanton (Alexander Ludwig) who learns on his 14th birthday that he is destined to play a role in helping the Light defeat the Dark. He and his large family are Americans living in a small English village, where local strange old people Merriman Lyon (Ian McShane) and Miss Greythorne (Frances Conroy) fill him in on his magical powers and what he's supposed to be doing to help their ancient...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE

"Screen Door Jesus" is an overlooked, ignored gem. I almost said "forgotten," but that's not true. Anyone who's actually seen it isn't likely to forget it anytime soon.

Crafted like a sprawling Robert Altman film, it has dozens of characters occupying the small town of Bethlehem, Texas, where religion plays a part in everyone's lives. What makes it different from most films about small Southern towns, though, is that the religion is treated intelligently and knowingly, rather than merely being used as a shorthand method of describing someone. (How many movies feature characters summed up as "narrow-minded Christian from the South"?)

The central event is that old Miss Harper (Cynthia Dorn) has discovered a shape on her screen door that looks like Jesus. Soon her front yard is overrun by pilgrims eager to see the Lord and worship at His screen door image. The whole town'...Read the entire review

Some reviews and summaries of "The Game Plan" will refer to Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's character as an NFL quarterback. This is incorrect. He plays for the Boston Rebels, which of course is not a real NFL team. (It seems to me that "Rebels" calls to mind the Southern states in the Civil War more than it does the American revolutionaries of 1776, but never mind.) The Rebels' opponents are carefully referred to by their city, never by team name. And the big game at the end of January -- which in real life would be the Super Bowl -- is just called the "championship game." In other words, the most likely scenario is that the NFL wouldn't let Disney use any of its teams, logos, or trademarks.

I mention this because how bad does a movie have to be for an organization that employs mostly felons and miscreants, and which will put its name on just about anything, to want nothing to do with it?
...Read the entire review

I feel like Hollywood is conspiring to make me read a Jane Austen novel. There have been two adaptations of "Pride & Prejudice" in the last few years, the quasi-biopic "Becoming Jane" earlier this year, and now "The Jane Austen Book Club," in which six modern-day readers discover how Austen's stories are relevant to their lives.

I give up! I will read a Jane Austen book! I promise! Just leave me alone!

Based on Karen Joy Fowler's bestseller, "The Jane Austen Book Club" is such a chick flick that when I it was over, I had begun ovulating. But despite a shaky beginning where it seems doomed to mediocrity and blandness, the film ultimately emerges as an intelligent, witty production, with honest characters and likable performances. By the end its charms had won me over -- though I definitely get the sense that it's even better if you've read some Austen. (OK, OK! I'll go to the l...Read the entire review

Every year thousands of young women and boys are smuggled illegally into the United States and pimped out or sold to perverts. Peter Landesman wrote an article about these sex slaves ("The Girls Next Door") for the New York Times Magazine in 2004, and while some of the details of his account have been called into question, there's no doubt that the basics are true.

That does not mean, however, that "Trade," the grueling new film inspired by Landesman's article, is automatically worthwhile. On the contrary, it is a grotesque movie about grotesque people who do grotesque things. Its alleged interest in calling attention to the atrocities of sex-slavery notwithstanding, it's simply not a well-made movie.

The story is of Jorge (Cesar Ramos), a Mexico City teen who sets out to rescue his 13-year-old sister Adriana (Paulina Gaitan) from the Russian traffickers who have abducted her and ...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE

HBO's "Dare to Dream: The Story of the U.S. Women's Soccer Team" is a competent but unremarkable documentary about the ladies who were at the forefront of the American women's soccer craze circa 1999. It aired on HBO in 2005, using the late-2004 retirement of three key players -- Mia Hamm, Julie Foudy, and Joy Fawcett -- as its jumping-off point to tell the story that stretches back two decades.

The team was assembled in 1986 by coach Anson Dorrance, who scoured the nation's high schools and youth leagues looking for good players. Among his finds were the three players just mentioned, plus eventual superstars Kristine Lilly, Brandi Chastain, and Michelle Akers. This team played in the first-ever Women's World Cup in 1991 -- and won it.

From the beginning, the players were energetic and happy, but they were plagued by one thing: indifference. Americans generally didn't ...Read the entire review

In "Resident Evil: Extinction," five years have passed since the events in the last film. The zombie-making T-Virus has spread worldwide, with only small patches of humanity left. Those few groups stay on the run, avoiding the flesh-hungry infected while searching for fellow survivors.

This is the third film in the "Resident Evil" series, and it feels like it's lost whatever steam it had to begin with. I know there have been multiple RE video games; I don't know if this film is based on a particular one. If it is, it must not be a very faithful adaptation. I don't think there are any video games where the whole point is to sit around doing nothing for 95 minutes. Did Samuel Beckett design video games?

Milla Jovovich is back as Alice, an unstoppable killing machine who was one of just two people to escape the lab where the virus was first unleashed. She's a lone wolf now, riding ar...Read the entire review

"Sydney White" is a cutesy retelling of "Snow White," but I believe its working title was "OMG! The Movie." You can almost hear the squeals of 14-year-old girls as they soak up all the many things the movie does to pander to them.

Amanda Bynes -- who still generally believes that the best way to react to a strange situation, comedically speaking, is to bug out her eyes in wonderment -- is Sydney, a tomboyish college freshman whose mom died young and left her to be raised by her doting construction-worker father (John Schneider). Because Mom was a member of a particular sorority, Sydney feels compelled to pledge -- and being a "legacy," she's more or less assured membership.

This doesn't sit well with Rachel Witchburn (Sara Paxton), the head bimbo in the sorority of beautiful blond bimbos (OMG, they wear such pretty clothes!), who feels, quite rightly, that Sydney doesn't fit in. R...Read the entire review

Paul Haggis made a lot of enemies when his shallow race-relations morality play "Crash" became inexplicably successful and won the Oscar for Best Picture. Now comes his follow-up, "In the Valley of Elah," and all is forgiven. Where "Crash" was bombastic and heavy-handed, "Elah" is subtle. Where "Crash" was full of contrivances and coincidences, "Elah" is honest, raw, and real. I can hardly believe these films were written and directed by the same man.

Based on a true story and set in November 2004, "In the Valley of Elah" stars Tommy Lee Jones as Hank Deerfield, a retired military police officer who lives with his wife, Joan (Susan Sarandon), in a small Tennessee town. Their son, Mike (Jonathan Tucker), has been with the Army in Iraq. They are proud of him.

Hank gets a call one Sunday morning from Ft. Rudd, the Army base where Mike's unit has recently come home. Mike is AWOL. It d...Read the entire review

There are several moments in "Eastern Promises" that warrant discussion. The bloodletting that opens the film, for example, or the way someone puts out a cigarette with his own tongue before casually cutting up a corpse. You remember things like that. But you will also remember -- and probably discuss in the most depth -- the scene in which a completely naked Viggo Mortensen engages in a brutal hand-to-hand fight in a bathhouse.

There are good reasons for Mortensen to be naked in the scene, both thematically and from a story standpoint. The movie was directed by David Cronenberg, whose films are often extreme but seldom gratuitous. Here Mortensen plays Nikolai, a chauffeur for Russian mobsters in London who is well on his way to becoming a wise guy in his own right. Bathhouse meetings are traditional for men in this profession because they allow you to see the tattoos -- and thus the career ...Read the entire review

"Only the most ridiculous parts of this story are true," says the disclaimer at the beginning of "The Hunting Party." If we accept that at face value, it means some really, really ridiculous things are true. And they are. In the battle for supremacy in the field of strangeness, truth once again prevails over fiction.

The true story is found in a 2001 Esquire article entitled "What I Did on My Summer Vacation," in which Scott Anderson recounts how he and four other journalists, fueled by alcohol and mischief, halfheartedly tried to capture a notorious Bosnian war fugitive -- and almost succeeded. Something the entire Western world had allegedly been trying to do for five years, and these guys almost did it in two days. (The Esquire article is reprinted here; it's a great read.)

"The Hunting Party," spiritedly written and directed by Richard Shepard, fictionalizes some of the detail...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE

Poor Gracie Bowen. All the 15-year-old wants to do is play soccer. But the boys and men in her town all say a soccer field is no place for a girl! Those meanies!

This is New Jersey, 1978, where the actress Elisabeth Shue grew up. Her brother Andrew helped conceive this story, basing it on their experiences as children; both Andrew and Elisabeth play supporting roles; and her husband, Davis Guggenheim, has directed it -- directed it like the drippy, faux-inspirational sports drama it is.

Soccer is all the Bowen family cares about. When Dad (Dermot Mulroney) and the boys babble on and on about it at the dinner table, Mom (Elisabeth Shue) says, "Can't we talk about something else?," and Dad replies, "There is nothing else." SO SHUT IT, MOM!

Even Gracie, the one Bowen daughter among three sons, is smitten with soccer fever. She practices frequently with older brother John...Read the entire review

There are two surprising things about "Mr. Woodcock." One, it's not full of sophomoric jokes about the title character's name. Two, it's actually not a bad movie, with enough scattered laughs to make it worth seeing. At matinee prices, anyway. At the cheap theater.

It is, unfortunately, one of those comedies where someone is obviously evil, mean, or obnoxious, yet only one person seems to realize it, while everyone else thinks he's great. These things always frustrate me. It doesn't help that in this case, the evil character never really gets the comeuppance he deserves. In fact, the Lone Voice of Reason character is punished for trying to expose him! Where's the justice in that?!

But let me start over. The hapless victim is John Farley (Seann William Scott), now a successful self-help author but formerly a picked-on, overweight middle-schooler. He returns to his Nebraska hometown...Read the entire review

THE SHOW

"It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" is like a more caustic, slightly younger version of "Seinfeld." You have three men and a woman who selfish, petty, and vindictive, who consider themselves friends yet who would sell any of the others out in a heartbeat. They're reprobates and narcissists. And they're also hilarious.

The show premiered on FX in 2005, did seven episodes that summer, then returned for a 10-episode second season in 2006. Now all 17 episodes have been released in one DVD package, and while the extras are lacking (see below), the show itself is well worth owning. You can watch these repeatedly and still find something to laugh at.

IASIP was the brainchild of its three male stars, Rob McElhenney, Glenn Howerton, and Charlie Day, who also serve as executive producers and write every episode. They play Mac, Dennis, and Charlie, three guys in their late 20s who...Read the entire review

THE MOVIE

"Re-Animated" premiered last December as Cartoon Network's first original live-action film, but don't worry if that seems incongruous. The movie is live-action, but its plot plays out with the lapses in logic and the simplified storytelling you'd get in a cartoon.

It's not bad, as these things go. It's about Jimmy (Dominic James), an unassertive and unpopular seventh-grader who gets in an accident at Golly World (think Disney World) and winds up with the brain of beloved cartoon creator Milt Appleday (Fred Willard) transplanted into his head. With Milt's brain in place, he sees what Milt used to see: cartoon characters hanging around, talking to him, telling him what to do, and giving him creative inspiration.

The Appleday company installs Jimmy as its new president, since he has their founder's brain. This upsets Milt's evil son, Sonny (Matt Knudsen), who plots to get...Read the entire review