A movie like Valkyrie irritates me to no end. The ending is not in doubt. We already know what’s going to happen. How could we not? The events of the film are a matter of the historical record. Anyone with a sixth-grade history education already knows what’s probably going to happen. Director Bryan Singer’s handicap is already a large one. His best hope is to have sterling acting and some genuine suspense. Neither aspect is in evidence. That’s a shame because he has some very good actors. Tom Cruise, Kenneth Branagh, Bill Nighy, Terence Stamp, and Tom Wilkinson are pretty good actors, even though they don’t sound German. No big deal. The suspense is never there because none of the characters come across as particularly smart or interesting. They’re dedicated to killing that bastard Hitler, yes, but so were a lot of people. If anything, Valkyrie is boring and that is a fatal sin.

That’s a shame because there is potential, even if the ending is never in doubt. The story of Colonel Stauffenberg (Cruise) and his plot to kill Hitler is...

How do you live life? That is the central question behind David Fincher’s epic The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, which has little to do with the F. Scott Fitzgerald short story it is based on. How do you live life when you’re “born under unusual circumstances” as Benjamin (Brad Pitt) puts it. He is a child who looks more than eighty years old at birth. Instead of getting older, he starts looking younger. His story, much of it narrated through a journal being read by Caroline (Julia Ormond) to her mother Daisy (Cate Blanchett) while they prepare for Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

The movie itself goes back and forth between 2005 and the past. The movie starts in 1918 at the end of WWI with Benjamin being born. His mother dies in childbirth and his father (Jason Flemyng) leaves him behind on a stoop. He is brought in by Queenie (Taraji P. Henson), who becomes his surrogate mother. As he grows, Benjamin struggles with his childlike curiosity and frail physical state. Much of the first hour is dedicated to Benjamin learning about the...

Themes rather than plot take precedence in John Patrick Shanley’s film adaptation of his acclaimed play, Doubt. There is a lot of talk of improper behavior amongst Catholic priests that resonate very strongly today. That’s not the crux of the play. The story is a mere backdrop, an idea so the themes can be on full display. What is doubt? What is certainty? How do we act and how do these vague, but powerful ideas shape who we are and how we behave? Religion is the perfect setting, especially in 1964, when the movie is set. The Catholic Church, just like the rest of America, was going through a difficult transition. Father Flynn (Phillip Seymour Hoffman), a progressive, represents the change in the winds. Sister Aloysius (Meryl Streep) is the old-school, the kind of person who believes ballpoint pens are a sign of what’s wrong in America. She means it, too.

And there are quite a lot of fireworks to be had between two sterling actors. The duel begins when Aloysius receives word of strange behavior from Sister James (Amy Adams). She thinks something might’ve happened to a...

Ron Howard, after years of fighting the Oscar jinx, is back to his old self with his engaging and occasionally exciting Frost/Nixon, which is based on the stage play by Peter Morgan. Now, I haven’t seen the stage play for myself, but Howard and Morgan do a solid job of making the movie feel like more than just a stage movie brought to the big screen. That’s not always easy because the stage play has a certain claustrophobic element that is often there in the script. To Howard’s credit, he makes excellent use of the varying locations and giving the movie a more worldly view.

The movie focuses on the famous 1977 interviews between David Frost (Michael Sheen) and disgraced President Richard Nixon (Frank Langella). Frost, an entertainer known for doing odd-ball shows throughout America, England, and Australia, is determined to land this exclusive interview no matter what. Nixon and his handlers, which include his slimy agent (Toby Jones) and former Chief of Staff Jack Brennan (Kevin Bacon) are more intrigued by the money than by the interview. Frost throws every last cent he...

Were Charles Dickens alive today, I could imagine him writing a novel like Slumdog Millionaire. In fact, this is based on a book by Vikas Swarup, an Indian novelist. While I haven’t read the book myself, I do think there is a very strong British sensibility behind the camera and in the story structure. Director Danny Boyle and his writer Simon Beaufoy are the two most responsible for this as they tell an off-beat, unorthodox, but riveting story about a young man named Jamal (Dev Patel), a self-described slumdog in Mumbai, who is on the verge of game show history only to be challenged about how an uneducated man like himself could get farther than just about anyone else on the Indian version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire?

The structure of the film goes back and forth in time as we understand who Jamal is through his current experiences in contrast with his prior experiences. While is he being interrogated, he explains how he knew each and every one of the answers asked to him by a smarmy host (Anil...

Will Smith has spent a lot of his time lately going between more “artistic” fare like Ali and his latest venture Seven Pounds between action flicks like Hancock and I am Legend. He’s had mixed results in both ventures of late. Don’t tell that to his accountant because he’s making some serious bling at the box-office. The fault isn’t with his acting. Will Smith is a fine actor with some real versatility that he doesn’t, unfortunately, get to show very often. His latest “serious” movie, Seven Pounds, is an attempt to try and find some answers into redemption, human suffering, and the value of one’s life over another. This is made by the same people who made the manipulative The Pursuit of Happyness. Like that movie, Seven Pounds will manipulate, twist, and contort the story to get you all welled up inside.

The story revolves around Ben Thomas (Smith) and his attempt to kill himself. The movie shifts back and forth through time. It starts with his 911 call to commit suicide...

Dismissing Yes Man as nothing more than a cheap ripoff of Carrey’s previous 1997 vehicle, Liar Liar is warranted because the premises aren’t all that different from one another. For those of you who don’t remember, Carrey couldn’t lie for 24 hours after his kid made a wish that somehow came true. This time, Terence Stamp and a very enthusiastic crowd entice him to say yes to everything and live life again after being stuck in the throes of a long depression. Of course, both movies play to the extreme and both try to squeeze laughs out of every last spot they can. And why wouldn’t you? I mean, it’s got Jim Carrey in it, right?

This worked for Liar Liar. Watching Carrey’s zany courtroom antics and rapid-fire jokes was a hoot. Watching everything else… not so much. Here, the reverse seems to be true. The jokes aren’t as funny as they should be, but the B-plot, which really functions as the A-plot after a while, has Carrey’s character Carl meeting the free spirit and exciting Allison (Zooey Deschanel). Along...