A father (Robert De Niro) pays a surprise visit to his daughter Rosie (Drew Barrymore) in the family drama “Everybody’s Fine.” To its credit, Kirk Jones’ estranged family-in-crisis drama “Everybody’s Fine” refuses to pull out the pliers to yank tears from our ducts. But it thinks about it – really hard. “Everybody’s Fine” is a […]
Monthly Archives: December 2009
‘Ninja Assassin’ oozes with graphic gore
The “Ninja Assassin” (Korean pop star Rain) dispenses his brand of video-game violence in a blood-soaked action movie. Are the parents sitting on the MPAA’s ratings board out of their minds? This is not a rhetorical question, because the answer is “Yes, they are” if they honestly believe that the stab ’em, rip ’em, slice […]
In ‘Red Cliff’ Woo handles insightful saga without smothering characters
Power-hungry Cao Cao (Zhang Fengyi) gathers his troops to invade Southern China in John Woo’s historical “Red Cliff.” At a cost of $80 million, John Woo’s historical China war epic “Red Cliff” ranks as the most expensive Chinese-language movie ever made, and Woo puts every penny of it on the screen and in the sound. […]
Post-apocalyptical ‘The Road’ leads down one bleak path
A father (Viggo Mortensen) defends his son (Kodi Smit-McPhee) from marauding cannibals in “The Road.” A bleak and barren tale of a post-Apocalyptical world where bands of cannibals hunt down, kill and digest their own kind, “The Road” leads to a hollow and laughable ending that so desperately wants to be sweet, it’s sickening. I […]
Shallow ‘Old Dogs’ lacks emotional bite
Account executive Ralph White (Seth Green) serenades an amorous gorilla in Walt Becker’s comedy “Old Dogs.” There’s one sure way you can tell that Walt Becker’s new comedy “Old Dogs” is better than his 2007 hit “Wild Hogs.” “Old Dogs” is 12 minutes shorter. No doubt, the same crowds of fun-starved filmgoers who made “Wild […]