Pete Vonder Haar

Say what you want about Mel Gibson, but that sadomasochistic anti-Semite knows how to shoot a movie.

Glendon Swarthout’s 1988 novel offered a rare approach to those Old West stories by shifting the focus to the women and children who often bore its brunt the worst, and Jones has — for the most part — successfully captured this, often in devastating fashion.

One of the best movies of the year, and a great accomplishment for Messrs. Harmon and Schrab. Maybe now we’ll get a feature length "Robot Bastard" movie.

The doc affords us a look into a world rarely seen by the lumpenproletariat, though we could have done with fewer aerial/time-lapse shots and more history.

Fracture may be smarter than the majority of movies out there, but it's not half as clever as it thinks it is.

The testimonials from a few of these people, with the realization they speak for tens of thousands, reinforces Inequality for All's sobering message while at the same time undercutting Reich's optimism.

Honestly, the most shocking thing put forth in Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay just might be the proposition that George W. Bush is actually a pretty cool guy.

The movie's strength is in the performances. And they're enough to make Steel City worth a look.

A broad and occasionally disjointed indictment of the New York art scene and horrorcore rap that leaves no broad side of a barn untargeted.

Sellers' comic mastery is completely fumbled by Martin and director Shawn Levy.

An oddly sweet little tale, and easily Ferrell’s most enjoyable movie in recent memory. And even though his onscreen chemistry with Gyllenhaal fills me with murderous rage, this film goes a long way towards erasing the memory of his more obnoxious roles.

Intermittently refreshing yet thoroughly unpleasant.

Almost unforgivably sentimental.

It elicits so many laughs, in fact, that you have to wonder just what Judge did to piss off the suits at Fox so much that they would willingly torpedo one of the only genuinely hilarious movies to come out this year.

Monotonous. For while it offers a few precious laughs, Talladega Nights simply apes the look and feel of most recent Ferrell movies.

A curious little film. On the surface, it's a story about one man's mission to create an Orthodox monastery in Denmark, and along the way it manages to say something about everyone's desire to be remembered after they pass away.

It's in the film's second half that Parkland goes all Tony Romo and fumbles. Instead of becoming truly engrossing, it threatens to descend into unreserved melodrama.

Comedy, like most everything else, is subjective, and this may be the greatest example out there of "getting it" or not. If you thought the first movie, the original TV show, the Three Stooges, or "Football in the Groin," was funny, chances are “ackass: Number Two is right up your alley.

Far from a disaster, but doesn't rank with Mann's best work.

Watching this movie is like sitting on your couch for two hours to catch a little network prime time: you may be mildly entertained, but damned if you’ll remember any of it five minutes later. On the plus side, you probably won’t care.

I can't deny it: I had a shit-eating grin on my face for most of the ensuing two hours. I also can't deny that many of the criticisms about to be leveled at Spielberg and Lucas over "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" are well-deserved, but it's still good to see Indiana Jones, and Marion, back in action one last time.

Home Sweet Hell is a pleasantly unpleasant dark comedy, one that gives new meaning to "detached and subdivided" in the mass production zone.

The Hallow offers plenty of scares and is unnerving from wire to wire, wrapping up the second act with a bang and red-lining the tension until the end.

Reports of boos at the film's debut at Cannes are more understandable now, not because Marie Antoinette is an inaccurate or indifferent look at French history (it is), but because it's self-indulgent shit. Booing - and beheading - are too good for it.

For all of its shortcomings, Wanted is a strangely enjoyable flick.

1408 isn’t great cinema, but does an adequate job in spite of its flaws.

I humbly submit that Cedric the Entertainer be required to give up the "Entertainer" portion of his nom de plume until he actually starts entertaining us.

The end result is stale, clumsy, and about as compelling as an average episode of "As the World Turns."

It’s a thoroughly intense and mostly entertaining movie.

It's funnier than "Wild Hogs," which is about as ringing an endorsement as I'm capable of these days.

Let's be honest; a great deal of the sh-- you find funny when you're high really isn't (as anyone who's smoked a few bowls and laughed like a hyena to "Assy McGee" can attest). So hopefully nobody will be too disappointed when I tell them that "Express" is largely hit and miss.

It's a reasonably entertaining actioner, and Zwick doesn't shy away from depicting violence or the horrors of war, but as a social statement it falls a little short. And emeralds are prettier anyway.

For my money, no movie comes close to capturing the high school experience like "The Substitute."

It'll appeal to that segment of the population that goes to movies like this on Valentine's Day, but other than that, Something New feels pretty worn.

Q: When is a vampire not a vampire? A: When it goes out in daylight, sees itself in a mirror, doesn’t drink human blood, and still manages to suck.

There's much to like here, and ample scares for your brains.

A straight-ahead exercise in brutality.

Thanks to a compact story and some economical direction, it actually ends up better than it has any right to be.

Is Walk Hard” funny? Sure; very much so, in places. At least I think it is. It might just be the “Date Movie” talking.

A handful of nifty battle scenes and some decent performances aren't quite enough to make Kingdom memorable.

Once you become accustomed to her material and begin to anticipate it, some of the shine comes off the act.

Too often, the movie follows up Adams’ chaotic humor with weak slapstick and the incongruous love story.

Changeling is an almost universally impressive all-around effort, and is the best "dirty underbelly of Los Angeles" movie since "L.A. Confidential."

What ultimately keeps The Weather Man from being a better film than it is that it doesn't no when to quit.

What's more refreshing about Severance is how the movie's humor offsets the violence, and even that is pretty restrained (at least by modern standards).

With its emphasis on dialogue and political machinations over explosions and kung fu fighting, it remains to be see whether or not V for Vendetta will actually find one (a wider audience).

Unfortunately, Black Sheep takes so long to get going and misses so many easy opportunities for classic comedy it has to be regarded as a noble failure.

It's a simple and sweet-natured movie, and one that seems appropriate even for the very young.

Surprisingly good.

In the end, nothing about The Interpreter strikes us as very original.

Actually one of the better comedies I've seen this year speaks volumes for the quality of the performances and the caliber of the script.

Stop-Loss is a bit uneven. Mixed messages abound.

Let’s not lose sight of what's really been accomplished here. Alex and Marty – just like Batman and Robin, Fred and Barney, and Snagglepuss – are welcome additions to the gay animation pantheon.

Every so often you catch glimpses of a better movie behind the simplistic structure and formulaic plot.

Depending on your expectations for Transformers, rear-ending theaters this July 4th, you’ll either be ecstatic or horrified to learn that the movie hits on all three cylinders in convincing fashion.

The festival's audience is as integral a part of the proceedings as the music, and we get a rich portrait of the wide variety of pranksters, iconoclasts, and freaks that descend upon the West Country of England in the hundreds of thousands every year. Glastonbury offers an exhaustive look at what remains the largest event of its kind.

As it is, Flightplan is half of a pretty good movie. But to maintain that impression, I recommend you take a nap for the last 40 minutes.

Absent the actual music, Notorious would be a lot worse.

A film about a family billed as "bizarrely dysfunctional" – is a pleasant enough experience. However, it probably could have used a little more of the bizarre or dysfunctional to spice things up.

If you're over the age of 11, there's obviously not much reason to see this.

Noonan's life is one few of us can comprehend, and Mac Intyre's documentary, A Very British Gangster, is like a Guy Ritchie film come to life, only with a better dressed cast.

Shot Caller is Coster-Waldau’s show, and he’s up to the task.

We Are Wizards is a nifty look at a few small but significant slices of Potter mania that evokes interest rather than provoking disdain, not always an easy feat.

The plot is paper-thin, and the set-up is beyond contrived (a plant waterer?), but there are a surprising number of laughs, and the saccharine content is kept to a minimum. A mostly enjoyable experience, all told.

The Wicker Man isn't all that bad a movie; it's visually striking and ambitious in some ways. It just fails to bring enough to the table to fully distance itself from the original.

I think this one of the first King movies to legitimately give me the creeps.

Kinkle shows a deft hand at pacing and the gore is kept to a minimum.

Has a few high points, but feels far too disjointed and slapdash to favorably compare to what came before.

Jarhead does feature stunning visuals. Mendes and cinematographer Roger Deakins have created some fantastic imagery.

1. It has the potential to supplant "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" as the greatest audience participation movie of all time. 2. It is, simultaneously, one of the worst and best movies I’ve ever seen.

First-time director James Gartner has managed to whittle away whatever was compelling about the 1966 Miners championship run.

Depressingly inert.

Should have billed itself as a fairy tale, as that’s the only possible way to swallow what Prince-Bythewood and Kidd are feeding us.

Ultimately a story about the American mindset post-9/11, Right at Your Door is also a much more personal tale, as it forces all of us to consider what we would do if the chips were down.

Right out of the gate, we realize that bringing the series to the big screen makes the flaws that much more obvious. The voices are too thin, the music and lyrics too simplistic, and the production values are – frankly – too "televisual."

It's a bit of a shaky first screenwriting effort for Coupland, but not without its charms.

“Syriana's” dumber, louder cousin.

Honestly, this movie would've worked a lot better had the Red Sox not won the World Series.

Give Harsh Times an "E" for effort, but not much else.

Mostly, Guilty of Romance seems content allowing characters to verbally abuse each other before eventually reaching the inevitable conclusion that life is a burden and all love is illusory.

The most interesting aspects of the film — the real pressures felt by caregivers; popular perception of the severely disabled — are obliterated by the heavy-handed script and Swank’s inspirational bromides.

Watchmen is indeed gorgeous, with Gibbons' original work reproduced and – in some cases – improved upon by detailed F/X, but even at a healthy two hours and 41 minutes the story feels truncated. Even abrupt.

The direction is lackluster, the child actors – with the exception of Eisenberg – are pretty dismal, and the whole thing is about 15 minutes too long.

Leatherheads is as trifling as Clooney’s second movie (“Good Night and Good Luck”) was significant, but that’s okay. It succeeds where so many other romantic comedies fail because of a superior script and because everyone involved has the good sense not to take themselves too seriously.

Formulaic and creaky as a Harrison Ford action sequence, but sufficiently gussied up with good actors and a decent director so that you don’t entirely mind.

Golf's become such a ridiculously well-heeled pastime that it's refreshing to see it portrayed in its infancy, when clubs were carried like a bunch of kindling and the desolate greens of St. Andrews were more like the hazards of today's game.

Messina, making his directorial debut, keeps it simple. Alex undergoes a surprising amount of personal maturation in a week, but Winstead never lets the character bog down in excessive navel-gazing.

The movie's front-loaded with puerile, junior high humor (and, admittedly, several laugh out loud moments), which is fine, but all this still followed by an increasingly awkward and clichéd third act.

As an official history, Spark shines adequate light; I just wish it had spent a little more time on the shadows.

Very little in Reservation Road ultimately rings true, which makes the anguished theatrics on display that much more exasperating.

Two things come to mind as you watch the first act of Street Kings, the first is how fresh and exciting the movie would’ve been if it was released in 1984, the second is the question, “James Ellroy wrote that?”

There's no denying Banderas' talent as an actor, and he's admittedly fun to watch. The rest of the cast are serviceable, meaning Woodard finds new ways to show us how this Latin heartthrob melts her icy exterior.

There’s a lot of talent up there on the screen, and some authentic laughs, but too much of it is comedy territory that was claimed long ago.

In spite of the tatty "coming of age" familiarity, Johnson's vision seems fresh and vibrant.

Kirk and Mol are convincing, easily inhabiting their respective roles.

Quinn Shephard’s directorial debut, Blame, leans heavily on this persistent despair, yes, but also leverages it in innovative and occasionally startling ways.

As a look at the disenfranchised of America, Explicit Ills could use some work. As a debut, however, it's quite promising. I'm looking forward to seeing what Webber comes up with next.

Your enjoyment of Alpha Dog may very well depend on how put off you are by these facts, as well as how much you buy Timberlake in his role, and how in the mood you are to sit through "River’s Edge" set in the "Entourage" universe.