steal these movies: great heist flicks

Mad Money opens tomorrow, and it’s yet another heist flick, which are almost always fun — and this one is unusual in that it’s the girls getting to have all the felonious fun this time around. And so I figured I’d put together a little retrospective of great heist movies. Which I started, as I … more…

new on DVD: ‘3:10 to Yuma,’ ‘Sunshine,’ ‘Joshua,’ ‘Eye of the Dolphin,’ ‘Eagle vs. Shark,’ ‘Death Sentence’

See it: • 3:10 to Yuma [buy it]. From my review: Mangold makes you feel like you’ve never seen a Western before. The stagecoach ambush and robbery that opens the movie features some pretty clichéd moments — thundering horses, good guys and bad shootin’ at one another, etc. — but Mangold finds fresh angles on … more…

new on DVD: ‘Stardust,’ ‘The Simpsons Movie,’ ‘Balls of Fury,’ ‘The Last Legion,’ ‘Illegal Tender,’ ‘Alien Apocalypse,’ ‘The Man with the Screaming Brain’

See it: • Stardust [buy it]. From my review: I wish I could be more enthusiastic about Stardust. I like it just fine: it’s sweet and amusing and nicely diverting. And it’s colorful enough and clever enough and jam-packed enough with all sorts of pretty to wonder at that if this is your kinda thing, … more…

best of 2007 (that’s already on DVD)

It’s that time of the year: critics like me are starting to put together our final best-of lists for the year. And the sad truth of the matter is that the content of those lists will consist mostly of movies released in the last month or two. (And some of those movies are ones we … more…

female villains we love to hate

If you’re not all that familiar with the story of The Golden Compass, you may not know that the character Nicole Kidman plays, Mrs. Coulter, is the villain of the piece. Female bad guys — alas that “bad girls” does not have the same connotation of treachery and vileness — are few and far between, … more…

new on DVD: ‘Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End,’ ‘Arctic Tale,’ ‘The Nanny Diaries,’ ‘Superbad’

See it: • Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End [buy it]. From my review: So the supposed bad guys — the pirates — have become the good guys, fighting for their right to exist, for their sovereignty from corporate piracy that cloaks itself in respectability; and the supposed good guys — the fine corporations … more…