Starring:
Robert Pattinson, Kristen Stewart, Taylor Lautner
Review:
Swooning tweens of all ages and sexes will work themselves into a lather deciding whether to join Team Edward (that's sometimes-shirtless vampire Edward Cullen, played by Robert Pattinson) or Team Jacob (that's perpetually shirtless werewolf Jacob Black, played by Taylor Lautner). Sign me up for Team Confused, since this is now the second film in Stephenie Meyer's four-book Twilight saga that fails to ignite the flame of Meyer's overheated prose. Director Chris Weitz shares the secrets of New Moon Catherine Hardwicke, who directed the first film, better caught the virginal yearning in Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), the high school girl torn between both monsters. Chris Weitz, the director of New Moon, pumps up the action as Jacob turns into an unconvincing digital...
Rating: 2 Stars

Starring:
John Cusack, Danny Glover
Review:
Beware 2012, which works the dubious miracle of almost matching Transformers 2 for sheer, cynical, mind-numbing, time-wasting, money-draining, soul-sucking stupidity. We probably are nearing the end of the movie world when it's easy to predict that the biggest turd in the bowl will rise to the top of the box office. Equally depressing is the pass some critics are giving to this 158 minute (you heard me!) slog through every end-of-days cliché in the Hollywood playbook. The fresh angle is the Mayan calendar that allegedly predicts that we will all bite the bullet on Dec. 21st, 2012. The Mayans should sue. See Peter Travers review 2012 on "At the Movies with Peter Travers" Where to start apportioning blame? How about director Roland Emmerich, who threatened the...
Rating: 1 Stars

Starring:
Penélope Cruz
Review:
You may get whiplash following the twists and turns in the latest wild ride from Spain?s Pedro Almodóvar. But it hurts so good. Broken Embraces is the fourth film in which Almodóvar has directed his muse, Penélope Cruz. They bring out something elemental in each other, even when a plot defies description. Cruz plays Lena, a hooker-turned-actress who falls for her Almodóvar-ish director (Lluís Homar), who uses makeup, wigs and wardrobe to morph her into sexual fantasies men can watch. Then a car crash ends Lena?s life and the director?s career until . . . Get more news and reviews from Peter Travers on the Travers Take Well, I?ll never tell. What I will conjecture is that Broken Embraces, lyrically shot by Rodrigo Prieto, represents Almodóvar?s broken love affair with film itself...
Rating: 3 Stars

Starring:
Rhys Ifans, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Nick Frost, Bill Nighy, Janua...
Review:
Rock & roll history is being retraced in this appealingly ramshackle comedy from Love Actually writer-director Richard Curtis. Set in England circa 1966, the movie revels in the chaos that ensued when prudes at the BBC decided rock music was an evil that needed censorship and maybe banning. That?s when a renegade band of merry-prankster DJs, collectively known as Radio Rock, took to the sea in an old tanker and started broadcasting the devil?s music 24/7. The BBC, in the tight-assed person of Kenneth Branagh?s government minister, declares war. Get more news and reviews from Peter Travers on the Travers Take Leader of the pirates is Quentin (the sublime Bill Nighy), a man not adverse to drugs and hookers if they keep his DJs spinning. The boat is overloaded with eccentrics, including...
Rating: 2 Stars

Starring:
Nicholas Cage, Eva Mendes
Review:
There are few things more entertaining than watching Nicolas Cage go bug-fuck in a movie that knows how to present the spectacle in style. To my list of fave Cage meltdowns — Vampire?s Kiss, Wild at Heart and Face/Off — add this bad boy from director Werner Herzog, no stranger to diving off deep ends. Get more news and reviews from Peter Travers on the Travers Take Let me interrupt this review to state that any resemblance between this Bad Lieutenant and the 1992 Abel Ferrara landmark is purely in the head of the dude who thought up the title. Cage plays a junkie cop, just like Harvey Keitel did in the first one. End of similarity. As Cage?s Lieutenant Terence McDonagh roams the Katrina-ravaged Big Easy (Keitel?s beat was New York), Herzog doesn?t so much direct him as...
Rating: 2 Stars

Starring:
George Clooney, Meryl Streep, Bill Murray
Review:
Maybe it?s a coincidence that two gifted young filmmakers — Wes Anderson and Spike Jonze (both born in 1969) — have latched on to kid lit and puppets for inspiration in the same year — first Jonze with Maurice Sendak?s Where the Wild Things Are, and now Anderson, having artful fun with Roald Dahl?s Fantastic Mr. Fox and giving the film a palpable texture (fur and corduroy, who knew?) by utilizing stop-motion animation with the skill of a master. (Regarding the controversy that Anderson gave instructions from Paris while the puppets were being moved in painstaking increments on a London set: So what? Anyone who?s seen Bottle Rocket, Rushmore, The Royal Tenenbaums, The Life Aquatic and The Darjeeling Limited knows this movie has Anderson in its DNA.) And the decision to...
Rating: 3 Stars

Starring:
Cameron Diaz, James Marsden, Frank Langella
Review:
I'm not ready to give up on Richard Kelly and his questing intelligence as a filmmaker. Memories of Donnie Darko stay strong, no matter how much Kelly's focus came unglued in 2006's Southland Tales and now, to a lesser extent, in The Box. The premise, drawn from a 1980's Twilight Zone episode itself drawn from Richard Matheson's short story Button, Button, is creepily delicious. The setting is the suburbs of Virginia, near NASA's Langley Research Center. The year is 1976 when NASA's Viking Project became the first U.S. mission to land a spacecraft on the surface of Mars and send photos back to earth. Frank Langella (Oscar nominee for Frost/Nixon) is wonderfully sinister as an elegant stranger with a hole in his cheek who shows up — the box in hand — at the home of...
Rating: 2 Stars

Starring:
George Clooney, Jeff Bridges, Kevin Spacey, Ewan McGregor
Review:
It's hard to resist a satire, even when it wobbles, that insists the most unbelievable parts are the most true. If you always thought the men who run U.S. military intelligence are wack jobs, here's the farce to prove it. Michigan journalist Bob Wilton (Ewan McGregor), reporting in Iraq circa 2003, stumbles on a story that dates back to the 1980s, when the government organized a secret unit of psychic warriors devoted to achieving peace through telepathy. These men can stare a goat down till its heart stops. And that's just for starters. Watch them try to walk through walls and read the minds of their foes. Watch Peter Travers review The Men Who Stare At Goats on "At the Movies with Peter Travers" Bob's source is Lyn Cassady, hilariously played by George Clooney...
Rating: 3 Stars

Starring:
Woody Harrelson, Ben Foster, Samantha Morton
Review:
If anyone asks you where the best and brightest new directors are coming from, point to Oren Moverman, whose vividly touching and vital debut feature signals the arrival of a filmmaker — he wrote the script with Alessandro Camon — who can bare the soul of a character with precision and healing compassion. The Messenger, showing humanity under siege, opens wounds inflicted by the Iraq War — not on the battlefield but in the hearts of the families of soldiers who never made it back home. It's the job of Capt. Tony Stone (Woody Harrelson in top form), of the Casualty Notification Office, to knock on the doors of wives, husbands and parents to deliver the worst kind of news. See Peter Travers review The Messenger on "At the...
Rating: 3 Stars

Starring:
Gabourey Sidibe, Mo'Nique, Mariah Carey
Review:
When I tell people how good this movie is — and I can't shut up about it — they flash me the stink eye. As in "Yeah, right, like I need to sink into a depression coma for two hours watching a fat, illiterate, HIV-positive Harlem girl get knocked up (twice) by her daddy, brutally battered by her mother and laughed at by a world eager to pound abuse on her 16-year-old ass." Watch Peter Travers review Precious on "At the Movies with Peter Travers." Won't you dickheads be surprised. Precious, saddled with a clumsy subtitle — Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire — tunnels inside your head, leaves you moved like no film in years and then lifts you up in ways you don't see coming. Despite the pain at the story's core, the movie has a spirit that soars....
Rating: 3 Stars

Starring:
Michael Jackson
Review:
Michael Jackson's perfectionism fails him in This Is It, and we're all the better for it. What we see in this unmissable two-hour concert film, culled from 120 hours of digital-video footage of Jackson rehearsing for a promised comeback that ended with his death at age 50 on June 25th, is a world-class performer trying to make the MJ on stage match the MJ in his head. Watching his struggle is illuminating, unnerving and unforgettable. First Take: Michael Jackson?s Final Dreams Come to Life as This Is It Film Premieres. During prep time from March to June of this year, director Kenny Ortega caters to the every whim of his fragile, passive-aggressive star, knowing instinctively that yelling will only produce pouting not results. This Is It, a so-called "gift" to the...
Rating: 3 Stars