When the Chinese Triads finally mix it up with the Japanese Yakuza, they'll have the trash talk all worked out, thanks to "War." Triad hoodlum to Yakuza thugs in this new Jet Li picture: "Hey, Buddha-heads!
What's on tap for the week of Aug. 27-Sept. 2 (dates subject to change) The following movies are scheduled to open this week in the Bay Area: Wednesday: "BALLS OF FURY" (PG-13): A down-on-his luck professional Ping-Pong player is recruited by an FBI agent for a secret mission.
'September Dawn' questions role of Mormon prophet Brigham Young in 1857 slaughter of pioneers headed West
Two years after an 1857 murder clouded in mystery, investigators combing the shallow gullies of southwest Utah found the bones of children who died clinging to their mothers and tufts of women's hair tangled in sagebrush.
"War" is another generic Jet Li thriller, with body-blows and bullets and blood and naked bodies, a few chases, lots of shoot-outs and a plot-twist of a finale that is, at least, surprising, even if it makes little sense.
"Two Days in Paris," a comedy about a French woman (Julie Delpy) who makes a brief stopover to see friends and family in her native Paris with her American boyfriend (Adam Goldberg), is a crazy quilt of uncomfortable moments.
The following movies are scheduled to open today in the Bay Area: "CLOSING ESCROW" (PG): A comedy about three quirky families all trying to buy the same house.
The following are reviews of selected home-video releases: "Perfect Stranger": Bruce Willis does better at the box office without hair. Before he saddled up as the bald action hero in the summer hit "Live Free or Die Hard," he let his hair grow and joined Halle Berry earlier in the year for this
In the earnest, thoughtful "Resurrecting the Champ," Josh Hartnett plays a sportswriter whose questionable reporting methods and ethics live up --or down -- to most of the country's negative assumptions about journalism.
Why Al Gore is a great movie star, Exhibit A: "The 11th Hour."
'Mr. Bean's Holiday" is a comedy seemingly aimed at children and dimwits.
Forget about Lord Voldemort and Megatron. The biggest movie villain this summer looks like Kenny Loggins (circa "House at Pooh Corner"), possesses cloak-and-dagger artistry that would put Jason Bourne to shame and wears really, really ugly ties.
It isn't often that you see the hero's hand shaking when he holds a gun in a movie. Most of the big-screen shooters we encounter -- even the ones who supposedly have no firearms experience -- have the steady grip of a confident marksman.
THE LOW BUDGET indie film "Right at Your Door" features a major disaster -- the explosion of dirty bombs in downtown Los Angeles at LAX airport -- but it's not exactly a doomsday movie.
Adapted from the best-selling novel by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus, "The Nanny Diaries" tells the story of a young college graduate named Annie (Scarlett Johansson) who chooses, in the absence of more inspiring career opportunities, to become a nanny for an Upper East Side family.
'TWO DAYS in Paris," a comedy about a French woman (Julie Delpy) who makes a brief stopover to see friends and family in her native Paris with her American boyfriend (Adam Goldberg), is a crazy quilt of uncomfortable moments.
They sat in their remote homeland and seethed with hatred over their mistreatment -- real and imagined -- at the hands of the United States. They plotted.
An old-school sword-and-sandal spectacle on an almost-epic scale, "The Last Legion" is such a square and diligent piece of entertainment that it put me in a nostalgic mood for the honest B-pictures they don't make anymore.
A drawing-room farce that draws heavily on the sort of heavily telegraphed sitcom antics seen on shows like "Three's Company," the Frank Oz-directed "Death at a Funeral" comes across as pretty genteel in this Comic Age of Apatow.
A stage and TV veteran well before the Disney Channel's "High School Musical" shot him into the pop-culture stratosphere, 19-year-old Zac Efron just can't stop the music now.
From "American Graffiti" to "American Pie," "Sixteen Candles" to "Can't Hardly Wait," one thing the movies have done reliably throughout the era of youth culture is create iconic comedies of American high schools, graduation and life after it.
According to Anne Hathaway, if it hadn't been for her sick chocolate lab keeping her awake all night, she might not have gotten the role of the much-loved British author Jane Austen in the new film "Becoming Jane.
Shakespeare on film, ay, there's the rub. Strut and fret too much -- that is, try to make the Bard cinematic -- and suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
Anthony Hopkins kills his wife, confesses, stands trial and decides to defend himself in "Fracture," a moody psychological thriller that becomes more complex as it unfolds.
"High School Musical 2" debuts Friday night, and if it comes anywhere close to approaching the success of its predecessor, it will bop to the top of multiple media platforms.
WRITER-DIRECTOR Julia Taylor-Stanley used a 1936 Noel Langley novel called "There's a Porpoise Close Behind Us" as the basis for her film "These Foolish Things," which centers on a group of aspiring young theater types in pre-World War II London.
There's a lovely scene in the coming-of-age comedy "Rocket Science" when Hal Hefner, a teenage boy with a stuttering problem, is trying to say to his father, "It's not rocket science.
THE UNITED STATES leaves Iraq. North Korea renounces nuclear weapons. Darfur is saved. Hunger, poverty, war and crime come to an end. It's on TV and in all the papers.
"SUPERBAD," a simple tale of a daylong teenage odyssey to obtain alcohol, is the best comedy about youthful friendship since "Dazed and Confused." It's nearly as touching as it is horrifically crude.
LOS ANGELES -- People rushed to theaters to see the police buddy comedy "Rush Hour 3," making the last of this summer's big-budget Hollywood films the top movie at the weekend box office.
"Spellbound" director Jeffrey Blitz moves from real-life spelling-bee whiz kids to fictional debate-team geeks in "Rocket Science," a quirky coming-of-age story (is there any other kind these days?
Much as we love fairy tales, we no longer seem to want them in their purest form. Perhaps there's something mortifying about dreaming of sparkly tiaras in the contemporary world.
The last time we saw Los Angeles Police Detective James Carter and Chinese Chief Inspector Lee, in "Rush Hour 2," they had dusted off another bunch of bad guys and were headed to New York City for a Knicks game.
People usually remember Fred Savage as the cute, camera-friendly kid from TV's "The Wonder Years," or as the boy, bedridden with the flu, whose grandfather reads aloud to him from the book "The Princess Bride.
The live-action movie "Underdog," in which an actor talks for the superpowered pooch, made us realize just how many movies have had a celebrity-voiced talking dog.
"The following movies are scheduled to open today in the Bay Area: "NO END IN SIGHT" (NR) A documentary that chronicles Iraq's descent following the U.
Films about skinheads represent a serious chore for audiences. When anti-social, racist types are involved, everyone knows the story won't end well. "This Is England," a moody drama from writer-director Shane Meadows, is no exception, although its strong performances and powerful sense of time and
When "No End In Sight" was awarded a special jury prize for documentaries at this year's Sundance Film Festival, it was not the first time the film's director, Charles Ferguson, scored a huge success in a new business.
Much as we love fairy tales, we no longer seem to want them in their purest form. Perhaps there's something mortifying, at least for adults, about dreaming of sparkly tiaras and white steeds in the contemporary world.
There has never been a film equivalent of "The Best and the Brightest," David Halberstam's masterful analysis of the mistakes that led to the American quagmire in Vietnam.
If there were ever a moment the moviegoing public might suffer from a case of pixie-dust poisoning, now's the time. With Hogwarts, hobbits and all manner of hobgoblins haunting movies, the obvious question has to be raised: Has film's fixation with fantasy run its course?
"Rush Hour 3" stars Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan are the new Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, a leering loudmouth and a man of grace and talent hitting the road together for a series of comic misadventures in exotic locales.
Guess what other "Hairspray" star has another movie out? It's Queen Latifah, who brings down the house as Motormouth Maybelle in the goofy musical. Her role in "Arctic Tale" is much subtler -- we never even see her -- but perhaps even more crucial.
Eddie Murphy and Jeff Garlin must be the smartest men in the entertainment world. The actors had enough brain cells to know that their "Daddy Day Care" was an unexpected hit in 2003.
So gorgeous. So talented. So mean! Don't know how, exactly, Michelle Pfeiffer became Hollywood's biggest villainess this summer.
So gorgeous. So talented. So mean! Don't know how, exactly, Michelle Pfeiffer became Hollywood's biggest villainess this summer. Sure, she's played ladies of questionable character in the past -- "White Oleander's" murdering mom, "Batman Returns'" whip-cracking Catwoman, "Scarface's" trophy coke
It still has a place in that darned Thanksgiving parade of balloons. But maybe you have to be a certain age and have a memory of a middling but endlessly rerun TV cartoon from the '60s to get a thrill from its theme song.
When filmmaker Deborah Kaufman decided to commit her mother's poem "Ezekiel's Wheels" to film, she chose to let the poet and the poem speak for themselves.
Though she plays a mean girl in the new movie "Bratz," Chelsea Staub wants you to know she's nothing like her character.
"An Inconvenient Truth," the Oscar-winning 2006 documentary about Al Gore's little slide show, offers a wealth of facts, figures and graphs on the state of the planet and its grim future if current global warming trends are not reversed.
"An Inconvenient Truth," the Oscar-winning 2006 documentary about Al Gore's little slide show, offers a wealth of facts, figures and graphs on the state of the planet and its grim future if current global warming trends are not reversed.
"El Cantante," the new biopic about salsa legend Hector Lavoe, gets right in your face. It's loud, atmospheric and full of bravado. But even while it's barking wildly at us, the film's only skimming the surface, leaving the barest impression of a man who loved drugs, music and his wife in
Though she plays a mean girl in the new movie "Bratz," Chelsea Staub wants you to know she's nothing like her character. "It was weird being mean to my castmates.
"Bratz," a live-action movie based on a set of dolls who have also inspired assorted animated direct-to-video releases, isn't all that. With those bubble-gum origins, it never was going to be much.
'WRITE WHAT you know," typically the first instruction given to aspiring authors, has become a reversible adage: Whatever he has penned, he must have known.
DON'T TRY THIS at home, kids. Professionals performed all the stunts featured in "Hot Rod," to the extent that someone can be professional at ramming a motorbike full speed into an RV.
Anytime you compile a series of vignettes and call it a feature film, you're going to have hits and misses. It's the nature of the structure. Some recent examples ("Paris Je T'aime," "Coffee and Cigarettes") have had more hits; "The Ten," unfortunately, has more misses.
In "The Bourne Ultimatum," we're drawn to Jason Bourne's side and he couldn't shake us off if he tried. This is what action movies are supposed to be.
New biopic about salsa legend Hector Lavoe is loud, atmospheric and full of bravado. But it only skims the surface.
"Becoming Jane" is a romantic dramedy based on the life of Jane Austen. To which fans might say: Holy Mr. Darcy's wet smock! And to which Austen scholars are saying: Uh-oh.
HE HADN'T made a theatrical motion picture since 1982's "Fanny and Alexander," vowing to retire after completing the highly autobiographical project. He spent his later years dabbling in theater and working in television in his native Sweden.
Bourne to be alive again. "The Bourne Ultimatium" tops movies opening this week.
YOU MAY KNOW them as the digital comedy pioneers who turned Natalie Portman into a potty-mouthed rapper and Justin Timberlake into an early-'90s R&B cheese ball.
What Tiger Woods giveth, Faizon Love taketh away. The estimable Mr. Woods may have shown black America that the game isn't just for badly dressed white men any more.
Any lingering doubts that Lindsay Lohan's judgment isn't all that it should be are answered with "I Know Who Killed Me."
Any lingering doubts that Lindsay Lohan's judgment isn't all that it should be are answered with "I Know Who Killed Me," forever hereafter known as the movie that came out the week her personal life may have hit bottom.
Chairs, sleeping bags and blankets are scattered aimlessly across the ballfield at Heather Farm Park in Walnut Creek. Children's laughter and screams duel with music blaring from speakers that flank a giant inflatable screen.
In an unusual marketing ploy, "Zodiac," new on DVD this week, delivers an on-screen promise when you press "Previews" on the menu: A two-disc collector's edition, set for 2008, will include every commentary, making-of short and story dissection of the serial-killer saga that you can imagine.
The satisfying culinary romance "No Reservations" divides and conquers by making us crave the utterly attainable -- spaghetti with fresh basil -- as intensely as we do either of its unattainable leads.
The satisfying culinary romance "No Reservations" divides and conquers by making us crave the utterly attainable -- spaghetti with fresh basil -- as intensely as we do either of its unattainable leads.
In an unusual marketing ploy, "Zodiac," new on DVD this week, delivers an on-screen promise when you press "Previews" on the menu: A two-disc collector's edition, set for 2008, will include every commentary, making-of short and story dissection of the serial-killer saga that you can imagine.
When they succeed, romantic comedies leave us hungry for love, even when we've adjusted our expectations of companionship downward from telegenic movie stars.
IN THE LIMP French farce "My Best Friend," a successful antiques dealer named Francois (Daniel Auteuil) goes out to dinner with his closest friends. In apparently typical behavior, he's late and inattentive.
French filmmaker Patrice Leconte doesn't have a best friend. And that suits him just fine. "I have very good friends," says the 59-year-old writer-director of such films as "Ridicule," "The Hairdresser's Husband" and "Intimate Strangers.
With "Hairspray" on the big screen and "The Simpsons Movie" opening Friday, big hair is on our minds. It's also on the heads of many, many people. From Marie Antoinette to Nikki Blonsky (and John Travolta) and Don King to Marge Simpson, here's a look at some famous big hair.
AS THIS summer's slate of sequels marches on, Hollywood is planning even more installments of the biggest franchises. With an indefinite number of future "Spider-Man" movies on tap and an 11th "Star Trek" coming next year, how many sequels are enough?
Brittany Snow doesn't get the kind of attention that the other young celebrities with her first name draw. The 21-year-old Tampa, Fla., native doesn't party with any of Hollywood's various Jessicas or skip work due to "exhaustion.
"The Simpsons Movie" lives up to its own fine standards -- but doesn't exceed them.
Quick question: If you are a character in a movie, and an alien lands in front of you declaring "I come in peace," do you a) embrace him or b) run like hell?
FEW FANS of "The Simpsons" can match the unwavering loyalty of Scott Vestnys, who compulsively watches three or four episodes a day and dresses up as Homer Simpson every Halloween.
THERE ARE a lot of great things about being the Man Who Brought Harry Potter to America: You don't have to care about the latest Potter movie, for example, or the bazillion-copy print run for "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows," or the Harry Potter theme park scheduled to go into competition
"Cashback" springs from that childhood fantasy of being able to stop time and wander freely among the temporarily frozen. If only writer-director Sean Ellis had done more than use the conceit for a functional romance.
AS YOU'VE probably guessed from the TV commercials, or even just the billboards, "I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry" is a one-joke movie -- and that joke might have seemed edgy back in 1977, when Billy Crystal was playing a gay man on "Soap.
IN THEORY, a long French erotic film sounds, well, desirable. In the case of "Lady Chatterley," though, the nearly three-hour running time leaves perhaps more room for tedium and ludicrousness than it should have.
Like the teenage girls who laminated their locks before appearing on a '60s TV dance show, the entertainment deities have ruled that there's never too much "Hairspray.
LOOK, "GREASE" was great. It was, after all, the word. But after nearly 30 years, it's time for another happily nostalgic big screen musical to come along and set feet tapping.
ANYONE FAMILIAR with the paintings and lithographs of Francisco de Goya, whose canvases captured many of the nightmares of the Spanish Inquisition, could not have missed the resemblance between the legendary Spaniard's work and the torture photograph -- taken at Abu Ghraib prison in the early days
Without browbeating, hectoring, lecturing or sermonizing, "Manufactured Landscapes" makes an inelegant point elegantly. The point: Humanity is altering the landscape drastically and, by implication, irrevocably.
IN "INTERVIEW," journalist Pierre Peders (Steve Buscemi) gets nearly 83 minutes of unfettered access to his subject, starlet Katya (Sienna Miller), most of it in her home.
WHEN IT COMES to feature films set in space, at one end of the spectrum, we have snicker-inducing messes like "Battlefield Earth." At the other end, there are films such as the original 1972 "Solaris" or "2001: A Space Odyssey," which call for admiration, even if the only time you've managed to
Before landing her first professional job in the "Hairspray" movie musical, Nikki Blonsky was working at the Cold Stone Creamery in Great Neck, Long Island (her specialty was Strawberry Shortcake Serenade).
Beautiful, upscale art student moves to New York, becomes Andy Warhol's muse, sleeps with Bob Dylan and gets hooked on drugs. Isn't it always that way?
Film director Joey Travolta -- brother to John -- directed a retro "American Grandstand" during a film camp for teens with autistic spectrum disorders and their friends at St. Mary's College.
"Captivity" is another one of those "torture porn" thrillers you've been hearing about. Some character or other is taken prisoner by some often faceless/often motiveless villain.
"Captivity" is another one of those "torture porn" thrillers you've been hearing about. Some character or other is taken prisoner by some often faceless/often motiveless villain.
It was enough to make die-hard "Sex and the City" fans choke on their Cosmopolitans. When news broke that a long-stalled "Sex" movie will begin filming this fall with its four stars (Sarah Jessica Parker, Cynthia Nixon, Kristin Davis and Kim Cattrall) reprising their roles, word also came that
"The Last Mimzy" is an all-access gem that children -- and grown-ups who appreciate imaginative thinking -- are bound to succumb to..
Brenda Blethyn is a force of nature, which is simultaneously the best and worst part of the Australian comedy "Introducing the Dwights."
In the sickeningly creepy "Joshua," a 9-year-old boy becomes a sort of living embodiment of a new strain of post-partum depression following the arrival of a baby sister who gets the doting attention of his parents.
THE CHILD PRODIGY in "Vitus" can play the piano brilliantly at 6 and the stock market for millions by the time he's 12, but he wants nothing more than to be a normal boy.