Film

Mel Gibson has been hiding behind the camera, producing and directing since starring in 2002's dreadful Signs, perhaps a wise choice since he spent equal time revealing weird religious philosophies and actively shocking us with his crazy off-screen persona. But now Gibson makes his somewhat triumphant return to the screen in Edge of Darkness, yet another Massachusetts-set crime thriller in which we're forced to spend time debating the authenticity of the actors’ Boston accents. The good news is this one is not without its merits.
As it happens, the film is a remake. Director Martin Campbell upgrades his 1985 British mini-series (which he also directed) in which a straight-laced father, an inspector of the local police force, deals with the mysterious death of his activist daughter, and the murkiness of the British Nuclear Policy.

When going to see a movie like When in Rome, the best plan of attack is to go in with low expectations, which is exactly what I did. Perhaps the most advantageous thing about seeing a movie when you're not expecting much is that if it's not as bad as you thought, then it could be considered a success. In the end, When in Rome wasn't as bad as I thought it would be and I did get in a few good laughs.
Kristen Bell, whose last foray into the rom-com genre was in Couples Retreat, plays Beth, a curator at the Guggenheim who's admittedly looking for “the one,” meaning the one person she can love more than her job. Nine days before her make-or-break gala opening, she finds out she has to make a 48-hour trip to Rome to attend her little sister's wedding. Unbelievable enough, her sister Joan (Alexis Dziena), who you may remember as the snotty ex-girlfriend in Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist, decides to marry her Italian beau after knowing him two whole weeks. More unbelievable, they are tying the knot in a grand, traditional Italian ceremony a mere two days after Joan tells her sister of her engagement.

The Book of Eli gives us yet another post-apocalyptic end of the world saga. This time, Eli (Denzel Washington) walks through barren wasteland carrying a machete and a Bible. It's almost like Eli travels in the footsteps of Viggo Mortensen, who recently set down his own apocalyptic travelogue in The Road. With the washed-out landscape, deserted and decaying skyways, junked cars, rotting skeletons and onramps to nowhere, both have the feel of post nuclear Westerns. Shot in New Mexico with the Sony RED digital camera, Book of Eli, at the very least features some impressive massacre scenes.
In Eli, due to some divine intervention, the title character must walk “west.” Referring to “before the flash,” a holy war of sorts that blew up the sun, everyone now wears protective (and sometimes designer) sunglasses and no one person under 40 knows how to read or has ever seen a television. Water is scarce and people have turned to cannibalism, but it's all about Eli and his journey. This includes fending off marauding Road Warrior-like thugs (who rape, murder and pillage around every turn), dispatching people with his mystical fighting skills, ending up in a town that resembles a post-apocalyptic Deadwood, adopting an apprentice against his better judgment, going head – to-head with an evil villain and, of course, spreading the gospel. Eli, a true Bible thumper, severs limbs and decapitates with a ninja assassin's flair while trying to remain righteous. Eli doesn't turn the other cheek, but he will chop one off.

Now here's something strange: Extraordinary Measures is essentially a bad television movie played out on a big screen – a banal exercise in paint-by-numbers drama – and then, unbeknownst to itself, it's also a powerful cinematic critique of the American medical industrial complex.
From the director of What Happens In Vegas, this is an idiot savant of a movie. Utterly oblivious to the recent political battles over health care reform, Extraordinary Measures has blundered onto the scene, and by the dullness of its narrative, far exceeds the comparatively mild attempts of Sicko and John Q in exposing the American health care system's dark side.

Colin Firth has crafted a career out of amusing performances as buttoned-down gentlemen in frothy comedies or period dramas. To many he is simply Mr.

Beginning with ultra-cool shots and dreamlike photography, Daybreakers shows promise, but with all of its flourishing potential (and tons of blood and gore) it starts to fall apart midway and never recovers. The Spierig Brothers directed The Undead, a fairly unknown and underrated Australian zombies-from-space flick, but this time the pair of sibling directors traded in zombies for vampires and daytime for night. Daybeakers is an apocalyptic vision wherein vampires rule the world that proves strong in some parts and disappointingly bad in others.
Thanks to a viral epidemic a decade ago, most of the world's population has turned into vampires (the non-sparkly, non-sexy sort of vampires), and a huge corporation oversees a sterile, clinical slaughterhouse that creates the world's blood supply. A brute-force vampire military hunts and herds humans like cattle, but still the blood supply is dwindling. Ethical vampire chemist Edward (Ethan Hawke) is attempting to find a blood substitute but it's not that easy. Without human blood, vampires are starving to death, their physical deterioration resembling bat-winged meth-heads. The covert underground consists of a few straggling human survivors wielding cross bows and shotguns.

Although this movie will be spoken of generally as “the one Heath Ledger was making when he died,” the latest work from the director of Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, Terry Gilliam, is not exactly a Heath Ledger movie. He's hardly in it. And while it's natural to eagerly await the scenes in which he appears – as attractive and talented as he was – to do so while watching The Imaginarium Of Dr Parnassus would be a waste.
If you want some pure, unadulterated Heath Ledger, watch Brokeback Mountain or I'm Not There. Equally, do not expect to see much of the three actors who stepped in for Ledger: Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell and Jude Law, as their scenes amount to about 20 minutes. Instead, go see this one because it's made by an interesting writer-director whose mix of substance and style is consistently daring and thought provoking.

Ten Best Films Of 2009
Holly really liked Paranormal Activity!
By Holly Grigg-Spall
1. Where The Wild Things Are
This dreamy wonder of a movie made me very proud to have once loaned my Internet cable to Dave Eggers while working as an intern in the McSweeney's offices.
2. Fantastic Mr. Fox
Such a jolly tale, handsomely animated and run through with an infectious energy. The badger in the skeleton t-shirt is cute as hell, too.
3. An Education
Carey Mulligan is fantastic as the starry-eyed young girl in this British drama, a performance that will likely glean her an Oscar nomination. She's so dazzling, that her real-life romance with half-wit Shia LaBeouf seems positively bizarre.

In this sure-fire Oscar contender, George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, a man hired by companies to fire their employees. Or rather George Clooney plays George Clooney as a man criss-crossing the country to let people go in the smoothest and easiest way possible. The film begins, and ends, with a collage of actors and non-actors responding to being told that their position is no longer available. Clooney breaks the news, takes their abuse and then offers consolation with platitudes about the possibilities that await them once they cast off the chains of full-time employment.
Some ask in exasperation, who are you? To which, we always expect him to reply, “I'm the movie star George Clooney and I'll be using all the winking, side-smiling and head-tilting charm I've got to make you feel a whole lot better about the economic recession.” And this actually works for the full run time, plus an hour or so.

Ye gad! Guy Ritchie made a kid's movie in the same vein as Pirates of the Caribbean. Sherlock Holmes gives the feeling of a Disney ride – this Ritchie number features uncharacteristically straightforward storytelling and zero cursing. As Sherlock homes would say, “It boggles the mind.”
In the action-packed opening scene, Holmes (Robert Downey Jr.) and Watson (Jude Law) are on the tail of occult “sorcerer” Lord Blackwood (Mark Strong). Their pursuit continues beyond the grave, hampered by criminal seductress Iren Adler (Rachel McAdams) and Scotland Yard's semi-bumbling Chief Inspector Lestrade (Eddie Marsan). This is not the sort of intellectual brain teasers brought forth by of other Holmes sagas nor does it feature the super sleuthing of past Holmes performances that range from the likes of Basil Rathbone, Peter Cushing, Christopher Plummer, Nicol Williamson and even Michael Caine. Rather, Downey's depiction is a buff, brawling, self-medicating, masochistic and supremely reclusive Holmes, humorously conducting experiments on himself and Watson's bulldog.