The Ice Harvest (2005)

Lawyer for the mob decides to steal about $2 million from his boss on the brink of a Christmas Eve ice storm. He's got a partner who seems to have had little to do with the planning or execution and is simply around to hold the money - against the lawyer's wishes.

It seems to be aiming for noir with dark comedy, but the "dark" is often just mean or, worse, boring. Lots of topless dancers are thrown in for no reason -- except for the obvious "hey! boobs!" factor (as far as I can tell, anyway). The segment with Billy Bob and the trunk is lively and seems to promise that the film is, finally, going somewhere...but it ends abruptly and we go back to the main action or, rather, inaction.

I'm not really sure what I was expecting from this film...so how can I even be sure that it failed to meet my expectations? That's a bigger mystery than any of those the movie bothered to present.

C+

Wedding Crashers (2005)

Certainly has the right actors and a golden idea...but, overall, I was disappointed. Too many of the scenes were lazy and simply didn't work. Yes, I'm happy about the return of the R-rated comedy -- enough already with the teenagers having all the fun -- but I really thought this would be a step up from those.

There are several funny situations, but I think that's the whole problem. This should have been a movie that is nothing BUT funny rather than some funny with long stretches of cliché and "jokes" that fall flat. The maniac of a boyfriend, the horndog of an older woman, the potty-mouthed grandmother, the nympho daughter, and the sour/sensitive/aggressive homosexual son were three unbelievable characters too many.

C

Keane (2005)

Keane grabbed me from the first minutes as a man is questioning customers and employees in a bus station about his missing daughter. He's desperate and angry and frustrated and the documentary feel of the composition added to the mood.

Quickly, though, my sympathy turned to irritation as Keane went on to make a general pest of himself in a few situations. It's quite clear that he's got a tenuous grasp on reality -- and, because the only information we have is what we're seeing -- there's no way to know if the missing daughter is even real, which made me feel as though I were stuck in the character's nightmare. I believed this guy. Great acting.

Things get considerably less tedious once Keane befriends a single mother and her young daughter who are living in the same by-the-week motel as he. The relationship he forges with the young girl (Abigail Breslin -- adorable) is both touching and tense.

B-

The 40 Year-Old Virgin (2005)

I'm sure I'm one of the last to see this one...

Steve Carell is charming. I liked the "buddy" dynamic the co-workers shared -- reminded me a bit of Clueless in that, once they determined to make a project out of Andy, they couldn't get enough of him. There were quite a few scenes where I laughed so hard I hurt (condom scene especially, I'm slightly mortified to admit).

Somehow I wound up disappointed, though. It was enjoyable, but not the "movie of the year" I'd been prepped to experience. It's not even my top pick for comedy of the year -- so far I'd go with Kung Fu Hustle for that title.

B-

Everything is Illuminated (2005)

Jonathan Safran Foer (Elijah Wood) puts himself in the hands of Heritage Tours, consisting of Alex, Alex's "blind" grandfather, and Sammy Davis Jr. Jr., their insane "seeing eye bitch," when he travels to the Ukraine in search of family history.

The screenplay wisely chops out the book's flashbacks detailing the early days of Trachimbrod (the city for which the protagonist is searching) and focuses on the present-day journey. It basically ends up being a fun roadtrip movie with a powerful and sobering climax. Somehow, though, the journey felt too short and too slight to have paid off so richly.

B-

The Squid and the Whale (2005)

This semi-autobiographical movie about a marriage coming apart at the seams in the mid-'80s leaves no doubt about who the author blames for the mess his family went through.

Bernard (boorish professor and has-been novelist) and Joan (warm and giving up-and-coming novelist) are breaking up and blindsiding their two boys, Walt (16) and Owen (11), with the news. The father comes up with a joint custody plan that maximizes the difficulty of the situation, lives in a dump, constantly talks his wife down to his boys, invites a young female student to live in the home, and openly dislikes his younger son. The mother seems to work hard to cast Bernard in a decent light, allows her older son to make his own decisions -- even when it involves accusing his mother with words his father fed him, and tries to keep things as normal as possible. So, we get it. Dad's a selfish pig and mom should get a medal for putting up with him as long as she did. The acting is superb all around, but the one-sidedness of the story really bothered me. It felt unfair to deny Bernard any redeeming qualities. Is anyone this one-dimensional? And, if so, how often do they get a wife who ISN'T a doormat to stick around for almost 20 years?

I was also seriously disturbed watching most scenes in which Owen was alone. Sure -- I know that divorce screws kids up, but he gets screwed up in a spectacularly dysfunctional way. That this young actor had to even pretend to do the things he did was uncomfortable knowledge.

C+

The Best of Youth (2005)

I'm not a fan of long films as I find that they're usually unnecessarily lengthy -- an indulgence rather than good storytelling. This six-hour epic spanning almost 40 years really cast a spell on me, though. I took my time with it -- spreading it out over more than a week. It felt rather like watching a complete season of a particularly engrossing series or like getting lost in a wondrous book. I neither thought "when the heck is this gonna be over" nor, when it concluded, "is it over already??" I was satisfied.

The story focuses on two Italian brothers whom we meet in college. They are both this side of big changes in their lives -- and the choices they make are about as different as two can be. One opts for the rigidity of the police force, while the other rambles about the country for a while, picking up work when he needs money. That's just the first couple of hours though -- and, anyway, this film should be experienced rather than reviewed.

B+

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask (1972)

Divided up into seven chapters, each answering a question.

The most successful segment is the last -- "What Happens During Ejaculation?" -- which lets us peek inside at the little people running all of the centers of the body, including a priestly conscience attempting to prevent erection. There were a couple of chuckles in the rest of the movie, but most of situations were straining hard. And, apparently, Woody Allen believes that "sodomy" means "bestiality." I understand that one can sodomize a beast, but...um...nevermind.

The least amusing Woody Allen comedy by a wide margin. And yes, I've seen Celebrity.

D

Bubble (2006)

The most interesting thing about this movie is that it was released in theaters and DVD simultaneously. The actual content, however, is less noteworthy.

Bubble follows a couple of workers from the local baby doll factory. Martha seems to be a fairly content woman with a very dull middle-aged life. She lives with her elderly father, who needs some care, and considers her mopey 20ish co-worker Kyle to be her "best friend." Kyle neither owns a car nor has a bank account and lives with his mother. The factory has a big order coming up, so they hire a new girl -- Rose -- who puts Martha's little world in jeopardy.

The feel of the movie is spot-on. No problem getting me to buy this dead-end of a town filled with people sleepwalking through their lives. I love that the actors are non-professionals and yet don't display any self-consciousness. But if the story's not interesting, what's the point? There is a plot twist about two-thirds through, but the level of reaction we see is about the same as you'd get from someone if they were told that a television show they never cared for had been canceled: barely an eyebrow-raise.

C

Separate Lies (2005)

The movie opens with an accident -- an event that throws a wrench into a quietly functional, upper-crust, British marriage.

We then backtrack a little (though this was unclear and, frankly, confusing) and we see what life was like before the accident. It's kinda dutiful and somewhat boring, but certainly not unbearable. Then the accident occurs and we, along with the husband, find out that the life he thought he had was illusory.

The acting is exemplary and the story itself is my cup of tea -- I love a good moral dilemma. But there was something false about it all. I didn't believe in the choices that the wife made post-accident, nor did I understand the husband's response to them. Also, the jumps in time kept me off-balance. I never knew exactly how long it'd been since the last sequence.

Still, I thought about the unmistakable truth in a couple of scenes for several days. Even though it didn't entirely work, it's worthwhile.

B

The Weather Man (2005)

We're supposed to identify with Dave Spritz (Nicolas Cage) -- but he's so dang mopey that it's pretty hard to do so. He's got a ton of money for a job he's unqualified to hold, an ex-wife who's pretty dang tolerant of his presence when we know (via both flashback and present-day examples), that he's the responsible party in their dissolving relationship, and children who seem to like him despite the fact he doesn't seem to really earn it. He should have been rejoicing in his good fortune -- a family who loves him and a job he doesn't deserve, but instead he's an unlikable zero. His running mental commentary, which might have let us understand him better, is usually just a series of disjointed sentences.

It's listed as a comedy, but everything on screen -- from the characters to the weather -- was dreary, and it kind of seeped into my living room. I was especially put off by the way the "camel-toe" segment was handled. We're treated to several visual close-ups of what, exactly, a camel-toe looks like, when it'd already been verbally described. This is a middle-school-aged child being discussed. I was appalled.

Michael Caine, as Cage's successful-writer father, single-handedly saves this film from being an absolute waste of time. The scenes with him don't really work, but he's interesting nonetheless.

C-

Modern Romance (1981)

I think that Albert Brooks is a lot like Leonard Cohen. They're both brilliant, original writers and they both are entertaining and interesting performers...when taken in small doses. Listening to an entire Cohen CD is monotonous, as is watching Albert Brooks kvetch in every scene -- especially as he's alone, monologuing, in many of them. What seems like a burst of creativity when it pops up for a few minutes every half hour winds up being tedious and distinctly unfunny when it's the entire show.

This was less of a romance than a look at a budding stalker who whines aloud. The only good scenes were the ones that had nothing to do with the title "romance" -- shopping for running gear and editing in sound for a running sequence on a film were the only amusing portions...and they were only mildly so. The main storyline is terrible.

D

Zathura: A Space Adventure (2005)

I'm not a fan of Jon Favreau's earlier directing efforts ("Made" and "Elf"), but with this movie, he won me over. I was especially impressed with the sure hand he had in directing children -- so many directors seem not to know what to do with them and, apparently, give up on a scene before natural behavior has been captured on film.

I picked the movie (it was my birthday and my family were stuck watching whatever I chose). Despite initial skepticism, my husband, two teenaged sons, and I all were surprised by how entertained we were. What a fun and exciting film.

B+

Tadpole (2002)

Privileged, 15-year-old Oscar has a crush on his oblivious stepmother, Eve. While drunk (I don't know how spindly Oscar convinced the bartender that he's at least 21 -- but let's not worry about that right now), Oscar runs into Eve's best friend, 40ish Diane, and spends the night. Sarcasm alert: how delightfully charming!

Diane's not the only one turned on by Oscar -- the prettiest gal in his class is crushing on him and all of Diane's bored circle of ladies who lunch hang all over him, one even slips him her number. Um...excuse me. When the hell would this EVER happen? It's one thing to locate a single pedophiliac -- another for an entire GROUP to validate (and desire to commit) such horrible behavior as statutory rape.

Alright. Rant over. Even if the subject matter weren't both ridiculous and offensive, the movie's simply not well-written. Oscar and his best friend (the much LESS urbane Charlie) have self-conscious, overly-scripted chats about romance and, because Eve expressed a fondness for sideburns in her youth, shave a dog together to give Oscar some. There's also a ridiculous dinner scene with Diane, Eve, Oscar, and Oscar's father, Stanley, in which Oscar and Diane engage in some sort of madcap-in-slow-motion code talking, the schoolgirl hottie turns up in the same restaurant, and Diane forces an away-from-the-table kiss on Oscar which, due to the placement of a mirror, is seen by Stanley (who should, at this point, call the police -- but, again, let's not worry about that as the film sure as hell doesn't).

I simply have to write this movie off as a teenboy fantasy. I'm thankful it's such a sloppy film...it means I don't have to worry about anyone thinking I'm endorsing its content by giving it a high grade.

C-

Wimbledon (2004)

Successful American gal meets less successful British guy and sparks fly, obstacles appear, and it all works out in the end. It's like Notting Hill with less charm and star wattage. Oh, and this one has tennis, too.

It's been done better (and, to be fair, worse) many times before.

C+

Twelve Monkeys (1995)

This was the my second viewing of the film (I wanted my older son to see it) -- the first time I watched it was at least eight years ago.

What I remembered as an amazing, twisty movie simply doesn't hold up to repeat viewings. It's one of those stories like "Jagged Edge" -- once you know, you can't forget. And that's a real shame for two reasons: 1) The unknown is a huge factor in the enjoyment of this film. Too much knowledge makes it impossible to enjoy it in the way it's intended. 2) The movie is so confusing on first viewing that it rather needs to be seen at least twice.

But regardless of whether you admire the movie as a whole, Brad Pitt's performance here should wow even avowed Pitt-haters.

B

Sayonara (1957)

Slooooowwwwww-moving interracial love story. Brandon is a major in the Air Force transferred to Japan during the Korean War. He apparently has no military duties as he's either hanging out at his friends' house (a fellow serviceman and his Japanese bride) or courting the star of a women's acting group disallowed from having relationships with men.

This is a hit-you-over-the-head-with-a-hammer message movie. It would've been better to make it an interesting and well-made movie. A remarkable number of scenes feel like practice runs...as though the actors have forgotten their lines but have been instructed to stick with the scene regardless. And what's with Brando's accent? It sounds like drunken good ol' boy.

There is a sweet romance in this film. Too bad it's the secondary "best friends" story and isn't given the screen-time it deserves.

C-

In Her Shoes (2005)

I'm just so surprised that this film failed to find an audience. Do girlfriends not have movie nights any more?

Toni Collette is, as ever, wonderful here. I was moved by her character: the girl who never felt as though she could quite measure up in the dating world, so she's dependable and successful and hard-working instead. I get that. I lived that. Cameron Diaz is also quite good as a lazy loser who relies on her sister to rescue her whenever she needs it -- which is often.

The movie cruises along at a decent clip that puts both women into phases of change quickly. I enjoyed both journeys -- loved seeing them each believably morph into more satisfying selves. It may be a chick flick, but it's not disposable. It deserves to be seen.

A

Transamerica (2005)

I've heard several people praise Huffman for her portrayal here, saying that they were fooled into believing this was a man who kind of looks like Felicity Huffman...yeah, right. I mean, she does a good job, but I couldn't forget for a second that this was a woman with whom I'm very familiar. Regardless, the concept of the character Bree (Felicity Huffman) is certainly an interesting one -- there's no flamboyance here, just a compulsion to be what she believes she MUST be: a conservative woman.

I saw this in a small independent theater and the audience was so PUMPED to love this, that they sounded like a sitcom laugh track. Bits that, at most, would result in a gentle smile under normal circumstances earned loud "harharhars" which stepped on the dialogue (even the filmmakers didn't know they were writing such funny stuff, apparently). Basically, I think this movie's succeeding on hype alone. Sure, Bree's interesting -- but the situation is forced. "I'll pretend I'm a church worker rather than this boy's father. Hey, let's fly to California together -- just a service of the church. No, let's buy this unproven crappy car with 200,000+ miles on it and drive it across the country instead. Oh no...car and cash have been stolen? I wish John Candy and his shower rings were here to save us! Oh -- he's dead? How about Charles Grodin and his money belt, then?" It's just so tired and the "comedy" is so mild as to be almost imperceptible.

There is a lovely segment when they meet a kind man who lets them stay the night and who gives them a ride the next morning. Bree and he have a beautiful, easy chemistry which, unfortunately, exposes the unnatural feel of the rest of the movie.

C+

Wallace & Gromit: the Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005)

Certainly deserved to win the Oscar for best animated film. We watched this the day after seeing Corpse Bride and the mood in our house was so much more...well...animated while viewing this one.

Lots of laughs -- the whole family had a great time with it.

B+

Pride & Prejudice (2005)

I've heard that Colin Firth is the "definitive" Darcy...but as this is the only adaptation of P&P I've ever seen, I can't weigh in on Firth's performance. I can, however, say that I fell in love with Matthew Mcfadyen's Darcy in this film.

Although Mcfadyen was, for me, the standout performance here -- the entire movie hangs together beautifully. There's just so much fun and anger and heartbreak and romance. I laughed, I cried, I loved it.

A

Camp (2003)

For a movie about aspiring actors, I'm surprised at how cruddy the acting was. The best moments take place "on stage" -- and there are precious few of those.

The story is packed full of types: the bitchy girl who gets the plum parts, the fat girl who learns to love herself, the plain girl who's often ignored but is full of talent, the has-been drunken writer, the gay boy unaccepted by his parents, and on and on -- none of whom have a story arc that's either incisive or fun enough to matter.

When you consider the weakness of the story, the "made on the cheap" production values, and amateurish performaces, it's simply not worth watching.

C-

Corpse Bride (2005)

Beautiful to look at, but too slight a story to sustain a full-length feature.

It's supposed to be a musical, but this movie would have been far better if they'd excised all of the songs. They're not memorable and they only serve to slow down the story. Plus, if we're meant to enjoy the lyrics, the singers need to be both understandable and able to carry a tune. It makes no sense to me that the actors did their own songs -- most came off as tonally wobbly and mush-mouthed.

C

XX/XY (2003)

A guy (Coles) and a girl (Sam) meet uncute in college and immediately strike up a sexual relationship. Their first try includes the girl's best friend (Thea) -- a menage a trois that stalls when Sam chickens out or feels dirty...or whatever. The couple should've taken the hint that, as long as there's extra people in the relationship, it's not gonna work. Instead they plod along uninterestingly together and finally have an ugly break-up right after Coles decides to screw Thea -- continuing the deed even after Sam walks in on them and holds Coles gaze for a few seconds.

Fast forward several years: Coles is in a long-term relationship, Sam has just broken off an engagement, and Thea's married to a successful restaurateur. But when Coles and Sam run into each other on the street, things start back up between them. Yawn.

The second act is about 300% more tolerable than the first, but since I disliked the first quite passionately, that's not saying much. If any of the characters had any redeeming qualities, this might have been more interesting. I certainly don't know that for sure, but it's an idea.

D+

The High and the Mighty (1954)

A rather empty flight from Hawaii to California encounters some problems (engine giving out/loss of fuel) past the "point of no return" and everyone on board deals with this potential crisis in their own way -- though most choose to deal with it rather calmly.

This is the quietest, most uneventful disaster movie I've ever seen. And, despite the fact that we are helpfully introduced to almost all of the passengers as they collect their boarding passes, I still had trouble telling several of the auburn-haired impeccably-lipsticked women apart.

C+