movie buzz

Back from the long holiday weekend, and I feel strangely agitated. I goofed off work enough not to get anything done, but not enough to make me feel relaxed and rejuvenated. How does that happen? There’s a major assault of movies coming in the second half of December: eight movies will open wide between Friday, … more…

August Rush An urchin musical prodigy spins melodic magic to find the parents that abandoned him as a baby. It’s the first mashup of Charles Dickens and Amadeus Mozart. (my review is here) Enchanted A Disney princess finds true love in the Big Apple. Wait till she encounters the next fantasy: a two-bedroom doorman apartment … more…

I’m outraged! Outraged, I tell ya! I’m so steaming mad at how, um, Joel and Ethan Coen have, er, tried to fool us into thinking that actress Kelly Macdonald is actually from West Texas — she’s Scottish!!! — in No Country for Old Men that I demand all proud Americans immediately boycott this movie! Yes! … more…

Beowulf The ur action hero gets a brand-new CGI makeover. I wish they hadn’t thrown in the Uzis, and the scene in the strip club makes me suspect they didn’t adhere closely to the original medieval poem. (my review is here) Love in the Time of Cholera A man in 19th-century South America pines for … more…

Hey, there’s a new Mummy movie heading our way. Did you know that? I didn’t. I really loved 1999’s The Mummy — I loved it cuz it was the fourth Indiana Jones movie we’d been waiting for — and the 2001 sequel, The Mummy Returns, is almost as much fun. So I’m primed for more. … more…

I’ve got a somewhat less crazy week this week, so I should be able to catch up with my Doctor Who and Torchwood blogging… It’s the movie I’m officially Dreading at the moment: Robert Zemeckis’s Beowulf [opens November 16]. I used to really like Zemeckis’s stuff, back in the day of Back to the Future … more…

The films of the After Dark Horrorfest — playing at a little over 300 theaters this weekend and running through November 18 — were not screened for critics, but I did see one of them at the Tribeca Film Festival this spring: Mulberry Street. Check out my review here. Could the rest of the Horrorfest … more…

Fred Claus Vince Vaughn is Santa’s wisecracking, screwup of a brother who crashes the North Pole just before Christmas and makes himself generally unwelcome. No, seriously: that’s what the movie is about. Honestly, no kidding. (my review is here) Lions for Lambs Senator Tom Cruise has the solution for fixing the Middle East! He lost … more…

“It’s just a movie.” We movie critics here that a lot, usually when we’re being exhorted to relax, turn our brains off, stop overthinking things, and simply enjoy ourselves. But sometimes a movie isn’t just a movie, and isn’t intended merely for our entertainment. That’s obvious, sometimes, when we’re talking about activist documentaries like two … more…

Eleven movies between today and Thurday. Might find time to sleep somewhere in between. We’ll see. I’ve been hearing so many amazing things about Joe Wright’s Atonement [opens limited December 7], and hoorah! I’ll finally get a chance to check it out this week. Wright made that incredible version of Pride & Prejudice a few … more…