Hurt Locker, The (2008)

Why is the U.S. Army out to get Wilhelm Furtwängler? Who knows why the U.S. Army does anything in the movies?

Another movie celebration of media narcissism, and an evocation of pathos for the long recessional of the newspaper business’s terminal decline

It’s got Brad. And Julia. It’s also got a Very Big Star in a surprise cameo in the last reel playing (uncredited) the mysterious tycoon whom everybody has been talking about but no one has seen. And, as if all that were not enough for you, it’s got Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) in the very…

Like most Hollywood attempts at satire, Dick, directed by Andrew Fleming, falls into the fatal trap of becoming too cozy with the object of its satirical attentions. This is a pity because there are many good and funny things in it. It would have been a great movie if it could have kept its focus…

Bring It On, directed by Peyton Reed, offers the movie connoisseur plenty of shots of high school girls in their underwear and some terrific choreography of synchronized cheering routines which seem to have little if anything to do with cheerleading in the traditional sense but which are apparently true to life. If so, they are…

One thing you can say for One Night at McCool’s, directed by Harald Zwart and written by Stan Seidel, is that it is funny. Not subtle or meaningful or profound or even interesting but funny. Maybe that’s enough to make it worth seeing. The trouble is that, in the intervals of trying and (mostly) succeeding…