What's coming out this week
Here is one last, irreverent look back at the movies of 2008. Best villain: Heath Ledger's Joker in The Dark Knight. R.I.P.
Every bit as idiotic as its trailer indicated it would be, Bride Wars is an insipid comedy in which the women are shallow, acquisitive, backstabbing, selfish harridans, and the men who agree to marry them are blank slates who exist solely to provide Tiffany boxes and the merchandise inside. If nothing else, the guys will make you appreciate Sex and the City's Big, who at least had a personality to go with his jewelry-purchasing function.
Every bit as idiotic as its trailer indicated it would be, Bride Wars is an insipid comedy in which the women are shallow, acquisitive, backstabbing, selfish harridans, and the men who agree to marry them are blank slates who exist solely to provide Tiffany boxes and the merchandise inside. If nothing else, the guys will make you appreciate Sex and the City's Big, who at least had a personality to go with his jewelry-purchasing function.
Even if you've read the nonfiction bestseller Alive or seen the 1993 feature of the same name (with Ethan Hawke), or if you just know the remarkable story, the suspense in Stranded: I Have Come From a Plane That Crashed on the Mountains is still going to get to you.
Not Easily Broken is a marriage-in-crisis melodrama baked from the Tyler Perry recipe. Take a good-looking, mostly African-American cast, paint the characters in broad ''symbolic'' strokes, place the marriage in jeopardy, add a little ''Take it to the Lord in prayer'' sermonizing and you've got a movie.
If you didn't think he had it in him, check out Jean-Claude Van Damme's acting -- that's right, acting -- in JCVD, an offbeat, fun and funny movie in which The Muscles goes back to Brussels and earns a whole new sort of celebrity.
A strange thing has happened to Revolutionary Road on its way to the screen: All the heat and passion of Richard Yates' esteemed 1961 novel, about a disintegrating marriage in 1955 Connecticut, have seeped out of the material.
With The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, director David Fincher sets aside the darkness and violence of Seven, Fight Club and Zodiac -- the recurring themes that had earned him the mantle of Hollywood's reigning Prince of Darkness -- and tries his hand at an emotional epic. This is a long, impeccably detailed, richly textured movie about a most unusual life, and although it's far from perfect, the sum of it achieves what Fincher set out to do in the first place: Make you blubber like a 6-year-old...
Walt Kowalski, the protagonist of Gran Torino, should be an impossible man to like. A racist, judgmental, foul-tempered loner and recent widower, Walt seems to hate everything about the world (and everyone in it) except for his aging Labrador, his beloved Pabst Blue Ribbon and the mint-condition 1972 Gran Torino parked in his driveway.
The bold visual strokes comic artist Frank Miller used to create Sin City revealed he was the only director who could do justice to the film version of Will Eisner's ground-breaking comic series The Spirit.
Jack Black may have been schooled in rock, but now he'd like to sing at the Grand Ole Opry with wife Tanya Haden's family, who recently turned him on to bluegrass music.
Meryl Streep loves to tell the story about how one learns to be king. It dates to her days at Yale Drama School, when the instructor asked the students how to portray a monarch. 'And everybody said, `Oh you are assertive,' and people would say, 'Oh you speak in a slightly deeper voice.' And the teacher said, 'Wrong. The way to be king is to have everybody in the room quiet when you come in.' The atmosphere changes. It's all up to everybody else to make you king. I thought that was really powerful...
Most dramatic action shows hit a plateau in their third or fourth seasons. The Sci Fi Channel's Battlestar Galactica is one of those rare exceptions, continuing to grow denser and more interesting with each year.
MOVIES Babylon A.D., $29.99; two-disc edition; $34.98; Blu-ray $39.98 Bangkok Dangerous, $29.95; two-disc edition $34.98; Blu-ray $39.99
Just who picks the nominees and winners of the award shows?
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