Unraveling

Stella (Natasha Richardson) hates her life. Or so it seems from frame one of David Mackenzie's second film about married lady distress. The first, Young Adam, encrypted its interest in the unhappy wife by a focus on her psychopathic lover. In Asylum, she is the initial center, unraveling before your eyes.

As Asylum begins, sometime in the 1950s, Stella and her stuffily ambitious... continue

The complexities behind the notorious meltdown of corporate monolith Enron are expertly smoothed out by writer-director Alex Gibney's doozy of a documentary. Much like Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, you already know the outcome without having to see it, but Gibney's movie yields far more fascinating entertainment value en route, qualifying for an instant "buy"... continue

Dog Heads and Computers

George (Alessandro Nivola) seems easy enough to read. At a Chicago art gallery opening, surrounded by people dressed in sleek black, he spots the owner, Madeleine (Embeth Davidtz). He meets her in front of a simple-seeming painting of deer in snow, exchange shy smiles. "It makes me happy," he says of the artwork. And with that, the film's credits begin, as George and Madeline kiss,... continue

"There are over 550 million firearms in worldwide circulation. That's one firearm for every twelve people on the planet. The only question is: How do we arm the other 11?"

Lord of War stars Nicolas Cage as Yuri Orlov, a Yugoslavian who immigrated as a child to Brooklyn. During the early 80s and the Cold War, he decides (through the violence which infested his neighborhood, as he realized the money that... continue

In The Man, Samuel L. Jackson stars as Special Agent Derrick Vann, a man on a mission to find the crooks who killed his partner. It's not so much that Vann is grieving the loss of his partner, because the partner was a dirty cop. It's the fact that because his partner was dirty, Vann is also under suspicion. And the gun that was used to kill his partner was a stolen gun. Vann sets up a meeting to buy some of the guns that were lifted from police storage but a mix-up... continue

Lemons

Maybe Al Pacino is losing his satanic touch. As much as his latest corruption-of-the-innocent-boy movie sets up for the same pattern as his previous corruption-of-the-innocent-boy movies, it actually goes somewhere else. That is, it leaves the devil redeemed.

This probably sounds more complicated than it is. Two for the Money is nothing if not reductive. It opens on the ostensible victim, a sports-loving kid named... continue

Flavorless

Nick Cannon's been on a roll. Seems like everything he's touched recently turns to good publicity, if not precisely gold. His MTV game/skit show Wildin' Out is a hit and renewed for a second season, his semi-controversial summer single ensured his name was everywhere, and most folks were happy to remember Drumline instead of Love Don't Cost a... continue

Not to be confused with the campy 1982 thriller with Oliver Reed and Susan George, this standard-issue creepshow gathers a gaggle of young actors and rappers (yup, Method Man adds another title to his resume) for some cajun-flavored carnage in Louisiana. In a hard-to-figure scenario by Flint Dulle, John Zuir Platen and Brandon Boyce, voodoo grandma Miss Emmie (Deborah Duke) gets frantic over a suitcase of Mamba serpents, the slithering manifestations of the evil souls she has "milked" from humans over the years. The snakes soon put the bite... continue

I guess I should get the bad news out of the way right up front.

The Chumscrubber, the new first feature from writer Zac Stanford and director Arie Posin (who created the story to Stanford's script), has one of the most infelicitous titles of any movie all year. The headless antihero of an apocalyptic video game, the Chumscrubber stalks through the computer and television screens of the film's teenage characters. He seems, in some hard-to-define way, to shape and to reflect their view of the world, while their... continue

Jason Statham returns as Frank Martin in Transporter 2 . This time around, the only thing Frank is transporting is the young boy of a rich Miami family. The Transporter is now just your everyday driver. That is until, for reasons I'm still not 100% sure, the boy gets kidnapped and injected with a deadly virus. Of course Frank is suspected of being the kidnapper so not only must he clear his own name, he must rescue the boy and find the antidote for the virus.
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