Street Kings (review)

I’ve been seesawing with myself on Street Kings since… well, since I was sitting in the screening room watching it. It’s not an easy movie to recommend — I can’t honestly be totally gung-ho on it — but it’s not an easy movie to dismiss, either.

Fantastic Four (review)

Oh my, but we’ve been spoiled for comic book movies these last few years, haven’t we, with *X-Men* and *Spider-Man* and *Hulk* and *Batman Begins.* I just get all warm and squishy and totally turned on thinking about anguished, neurotic, potentially psychotic, not-at-all-well superheroes who need desperately to be hugged and coddled and, ahem, comforted after indulging their angsts and neuroses while beating the living crap out of bad guys bent on world domination or somesuch. What girl doesn’t?

Cellular (review)

That’s the kind of flick *Cellular* is: goofily obvious when it isn’t unexpectedly exciting. It’s one of those movies that succeeds partly by not being anywhere near as bad as you were expecting it to be — by being, really, not so bad at all, much to one’s shocked surprise. Seriously, I was anticipating two hours of that annoyingly pseudo-hip Elvis Costello-ish guy from the TV commercials who wanders around saying ‘Can you hear me now?’ into his cell phone — and why o why won’t someone kidnap *him*? — and instead the goofily obvious stuff is more than made up for by the suspense and the humor.