There is this undeniable, crazy-intense talent that I think Rainn Wilson has yet to unleash on us, that goes beyond his hilarious and iconic portrayal of Dwight Schrute on The Office. Thanks to smaller roles that he's had, including his creepy character on Six Feet Under, I've had faith that Wilson is not a one-note actor, and that he possesses the tools to take part in a variety of genres. So, I was looking forward to his first time out as a comedic lead in The Rocker. And while the movie is far from perfect and not the laugh-riot that will launch him into major stardom, it's an excellent start.

What strikes me most about this movie is how good-natured it is underneath its gimmicky concept. If I had some teenagers to entertain this weekend, this is the kind of movie I'd love to watch with them. It's hard not to compare the overall spirit of this funny high school tale with that of other recent Summer comedies, and the biggest difference to me is that it has a warm and fuzzy center (despite the groin pain it causes the main character).

To see what I mean by "groin pain" and why I think The Rocker is a pleasant addition to this Summer's comedies, read more

Note: I posted this review soon after I saw this movie at Sundance, and today it's out in theaters, so I thought I'd share my thoughts again. It has some flaws, but overall I really like this movie.

Henry Poole Is Here was one of the first non-documentary feature films to be snatched up by a studio at this year's Sundance, and I can easily see why. It's a sweet, feel-good movie featuring great performances and a quirky look at the old discussion of faith vs. reason. It's not for everyone, veering as it does into some schmaltzy territory, but the subject matter lends itself to some cheesiness and I can't quite see how that could have been avoided. The hipster soundtrack helps to make things more edgy, as does the artful direction by Mark Pellington.

Luke Wilson plays Henry Poole, a grouchy man who buys an ordinary house in Southern California. Before long, his very friendly neighbor Esperanza (Adriana Barazza) notices a stain on the outside of Henry's house that she thinks is the face of Jesus. She calls in a priest (George Lopez) and starts telling everyone in town about "the miracle" at Henry's house, much to Henry's annoyance. Henry tries his best to get rid of the stain, wanting nothing more than to be left alone in his dreary house. But the more he angrily resists the "miracle" on his house, the more proof presents itself that the stain truly does have some kind of power. For more of my thoughts about Henry Poole, read more

I never really thought I'd say a Ben Stiller comedy was genuinely smart and funny, but here I am, saying just that. It's partly the talented cast and partly Stiller's collaborator on the film, Justin Theroux, but whatever the cause, Tropic Thunder is a hilarious movie that doesn't completely rely on gross-out humor or cheap shots for laughs. The entire thing exists to comment on the hypocrisy, egotism, delusional sense of self-importance and backward moral codes of the people who keep the Hollywood machine churning. And it's all set against the backdrop of one of the most serious film genres: the war movie.

Stiller plays Tugg Speedman, a has-been action star who hopes that the filming of the war movie Tropic Thunder will restart his fading career. Soon, however, the film's director Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan) decides to drop the film's stars into the middle of the jungle to get some "grittier" footage. The group of actors includes the Australian Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.), an Academy darling who has surgically changed his skin color to play a black character, an actual black actor named Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson), newbie actor Kevin Sandusky (the beloved Apatownian Jay Baruchel) and goofball comedian Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black). The men find themselves in a real combat situation, and it takes them a while to realize that they're not actually on a controlled movie set. The whole thing is a series of jokes, explosions and gunfire, resulting in a kind of giant comedic spectacle. Those are just the basics, though, so read more

I live near Napa Valley and I enjoy wine a great deal, so when I first heard about a new little movie called Bottle Shock all about the historical legitimization of California wine, I was intrigued. I may have taken for granted the fact that Napa hasn't always been a world-renowned winemaking region, and that at one point it was viewed as nothing more than a bunch of back-water country hicks noodling around with grapes. Which is why I was disappointed to not love this sincere attempt to bring this story to life on the screen. I had such high hopes, but in the end the movie spends too much time on other stuff and not enough on the part that's the most interesting.

Invariably, this tale of Napa's beginnings will be compared to another indie film about California wine, Sideways, and though the subject matter may be similar, it's not an accurate pairing. Where Sideways uses wine country as a setting in which to explore the lives of four intriguing characters, Bottle Shock is a saccharine mix of slapstick comedy, melodrama, and sweeping shots of California's golden hills. This director practically fetishizes the beauty of the state's coast, and at times the movie feels more like a tourist ad than anything else. I wish the filmmakers had relied on the interesting true story for a dramatic arc rather than tossing in several tedious subplots, including an emotionally weightless father-son drama and a mind-numbing love triangle. To see why, read more

How much you enjoy Pineapple Express may depend more on how charmed you are by the chemistry between James Franco and Seth Rogen and less on how funny you find pot jokes. Don't get me wrong, marijuana jokes abound in this comedy written by Rogen and his frequent collaborator Evan Goldberg, and they are funny. But I was surprised by how much more Pineapple Express falls into the category of buddy movies like Lethal Weapon, rather than the stoner category like Half Baked. I guess I'll put it this way: You don't have to be high to be entertained by this.

I've been feeling fatigued by some of cinema's leading funny men these days who keep pumping out the same old comedies left and right, and Rogen's shtick is definitely pushing it for me. But I was pleasantly surprised to see how well he plays the straight man (no pun intended) to Franco's snuggly drug dealer. They strike a hilariously delightful chemistry together, which I kind of didn't want to end. But there's more going on here besides the two lead actors. To see why I think the director of this movie was a cool choice and which scene-stealer I think earns himself a place in the Apatow kingdom, read more

At one point in the second installment of the stories surrounding girls who have pants and will travel, an exasperated Carmen (America Ferrera) says something like, "Can we just please focus on the pants?!" And yet, that's the thing I find most refreshing about this sequel: there's not really a focus on the pants. The fact that Carmen has to remind her friends to think about the pants is a good sign in this case; the focus should be on these girls and their friendships, not two tubes of faded, magic denim. And as the girls have grown older and more mature, in Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 they're centering on the important stuff: their relationships, their goals, finding themselves and supporting each other.

Like the first movie, this one consists of four separate storylines that occasionally intersect. When we are reintroduced to the four friends, they're all in college: Tibby's (Amber Tamblyn) making movies at NYU, Carmen is at Yale and does backstage work at Yale's School of Drama, and Lena (Alexis Bledel) is painting (and cavorting with the insanely hot model Leo, played by Jesse Williams) at Rhode Island School of Design. Bridget (Blake Lively) doesn't yet know her major, but she decides to try her hand at archeology for the time being. After spending the year at their respective schools, Carmen, in particular, is anxious to have some good sisterhood time together over the Summer — only to find out the other three won't be in town at all. So, Carmen decides to do her own thing and goes to work backstage at a theater in Vermont.

For more of my take on the movie, read more

Full disclosure: I've never paid too-too much attention to these Mummy movies starring Brendan Fraser, but I know they're meant to be fun action-adventures that we shouldn't take too seriously. For this third installment, I thought it would be a good idea to take my manfriend along with me to see The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. Sometimes instead of spending brain power on a review of a movie like this, it's more helpful to just talk it out with someone who's more likely than I am to passingly enjoy this kind of Summer action flick.

But as generous as my boyfriend can be about action movies and CGI, even he wasn't swayed by the "charms" of Brendan Fraser, and came away feeling like the movie's kind of a mess. I don't want to give away too much of our conversation before the break, other than the big takeaway: he really likes the Yetis, and I don't think he'd object if the fourth movie were to star them instead of the humans.

To check out our review discussion, read more

Step Brothers is yet another entry into the canon of movies that have resulted from the collaboration between director Adam McKay, star Will Ferrell, and (. . . wait for it) producer Judd Apatow. After mining all kinds of scenarios for comedy (anchormen, race car drivers, the '70s in general, etc.), even these funny guys have to hit the bottom of the barrel sometime. I imagine the concept that would result from that rock-bottom brainstorming session would go something like this: "How about instead of making a movie about a guy who has a grownup job but sometimes acts like a childish loser, we literally just make a movie about a childish loser?" In other words, it would look a lot like Step Brothers.

And so it goes, with Ferrell of course taking the overgrown-child role. Add to the mix a crew of esteemed supporting actors including Mary Steenburgen and Richard Jenkins, and you end up with a familiar comedy that explores some unfamiliar territory (Ferrell's private parts — I'm not even joking). The movie had me buckled over in my seat laughing about half the time, but I spent the rest of it horrified and a little bored with how standard it all felt. To see what I loved and what I'm tired of, read more

You can count me among the fans — but not the super-fanatics — of The X-Files when it aired in the '90s. I may not have been as insane about it as others, but I kept up with the weird, spooky drama and I looked forward to new episodes. Plus, Gillian Anderson's character, Dana Scully, is a strong, female sci-fi heroine of sorts, and I really looked up to her at the time. Oh, and of course David Duchovny's Fox Mulder was definitely crushworthy so all in all, it was a highlight of my TV-viewing universe. This is why I had nothing but high hopes for X-Files: I Want to Believe, and I tried to ignore those pesky questions during the build up to the release like: "Really, ten years later?" and "Will people still, in fact, want to believe?"

I should also point out that this movie has been promoted as a stand-alone story, meaning that even folks who have little knowledge of the series would be able to get on board and enjoy a dark thriller with a compelling mystery. In fact, details of the plot have been kept so tightly under wraps my assumption was that they must have thought of something really awesome to hinge a new movie around — hence everyone's willingness to get back together years after the series left the airwaves.

Which brings me to the bad news first (and I won't give away spoilers): the so-called "mystery" that has been so shrouded in secrecy is truly nothing very exciting. In fact, it hardly stands up to the most mediocre of episodes, which only adds to my perplexity over this movie. Truth be told, I'm pretty bummed out. To see why, read more

In select cities, a little indie thriller titled Transsiberian quietly opened over the weekend and did fairly well in the indie market (despite the long shadow cast by The Dark Knight's opening), which frankly surprises me. With some folks calling the movie "Hitchcockian" in its suspense, and featuring a cast that includes the enigmatic Emily Mortimer and a shape-shifting Ben Kingsley, I was interested in seeing it myself. But now I kinda wish I hadn't.

Emily Mortimer and Woody Harrelson play Americans Roy and Jesse, who are taking a train through Russia after completing a missionary assignment teaching English in China. Roy is your typical all-American tourist, boisterous, over-eager and naive, while Jesse has worked hard to get over her bad girl past, in which she struggled with alcohol and drug addiction. They meet another young couple, Carlos (Eduardo Noriega) and Abby (Kate Mara), who turn out to have some shady secrets of their own, and Carlos manages to rope Jesse into a dangerous world of drug trafficking. Enter the two-faced Russian cop Grinko (Ben Kingsley) who has interests in Carlos's activities extending beyond official police work. When Carlos goes missing and Jesse was the last to see him, Grinko focuses all his energies on the American couple, and the movie kinda derails from there. To see what I mean, read more

If there were a family get-together with all the slick, recent Broadway-to-film productions, like Hairspray and Dreamgirls, Mamma Mia! would be the drunk older aunt whose clothing doesn't really match and who says all the wrong things but you love her and her kooky, off-kilter self anyway. The movie is, like that aunt, all over the place: Only a third of the cast can actually sing, the plot is thin, and the characters are — with the exception of a few moments — as one-dimensional as it gets. Oh, and there are hardly three minutes between one ABBA cover and the next.

In place of the large-scale choreographed dance productions of other musicals, Mamma Mia! chooses to go heavy on stuff like arms waving in the air, frolicking through streets, and bed bouncing. It has all the girlish exuberance of a slumber party, the sweaty debauchery of a bachelorette party, and the spectacle of a big fat Greek wedding. The movie — and all the actors in it — so unabashedly embrace a spirit of innocence and joy that it's hard to imagine a more perfect form of escapism.

To see why, despite filming in a stunning sun-drenched location, the cast is the real reason this summer movie shimmers, read more

"This town deserves a better class of criminal." – The Joker

Indeed. And by extension, audiences deserve a better class of villain. In The Dark Knight, we get one. Director Christopher Nolan seems to have a keen understanding that we want our heroes to be badass — but we want our villains to be way badder. The movie tells a story about Batman, sure, but really, this is The Joker's tale. Even when it's Batman's story. . . The Joker owns it.

The Dark Knight is unlike almost any other superhero movie that came before it. It's insanely dark, it's melancholy, it doesn't leave you with a great sense of peace. But the thing is, we can handle it. I think this is Nolan giving audiences some credit. And every superhero tale has these themes of good vs. evil, order vs. chaos, hero vs. villain. It's just that this one doesn't sugarcoat these things at all. And why should they be sugarcoated? The superhero's tale is actually the perfect vehicle for exploring these things, and explore them we do. Nolan brings us an affecting, disturbingly dark tale, and one that could easily be seen as an allegory for the goings-on of today's world (terrorism vs. peace, cowardice vs. heroism, etc.). To see more what I mean (and I promise — no spoilers), read more