Film

Eddie Murphy is obviously trying to hurt the world on purpose. Why else would he inflict this "movie" on the masses? (I say "movie" with quotation marks because stringing together one poop joke after another is not what I'd call a movie. I'd call that sixth grade.)
 
Remember Raw-era Eddie Murphy? The Eddie Murphy who shit-talked Bill Cosby and wore the tightest leather pants in the universe? Or remember Eddie Murphy in Beverly Hills Cop? Yeah, well, forget about that Eddie Murphy. All we have now is an Eddie Murphy who lazily fulfills contractual studio obligations by making stupid comedies about spacemen who poop money. I'm not kidding. This actually happens in his new movie. And it happens inside an Old Navy.

nuthin’, waddya you doin’?What is it this year with the superheroes? Bringing to life more comic book superhero blockbuster razzle-dazzle, we now enter the monster-dwelling realm of Hellboy II: The Golden Army. The original showed Hellboy (Ron Perlman) as the demon-turned-super-hero battling present-day Nazis and inter-dimensional monsters, and the sequel continues pulling out all the stops.
 
The movie begins with a sickeningly cute Hellboy (as a boy) brushing his teeth, excited for his bedtime story. And the story is? Yep, the saga of the Golden Army, and told in wooden puppet form, it looks pretty cool. Cut to: the present-the bedtime story is now a reality. An evil prince has to assemble three scattered pieces of a golden crown to raise the evil Golden Army from its dormancy to unleash Hell on earth…here's where Hellboy excels. He likes to kick monster butt.
Hellboy resides in a paranormal research center that is actually the home of a bunch of human oddities that would fare well in a freak sideshow. Oh, and they fight crime. Everyone's back, including sidekick fish-boy Abe Sapien (Doug Jones), but without David Hyde-Pierce's voice. Stepping into the webs-flipper-gills, Jones brings some credibility. Hellboy's girlfriend, Liz the Fire-Girl (Selma Blair) returns as does their totally lame love story. Manning (Jeffery Tambor) is once again the head of the government funded super-freak hideaway.

Even kids love old timey. Is stealing ever okay? How about if it's from a rich banker in order to save the home of an out-of-work family, or committed by those suffering in hunger and despair, as in the Great Depression? In the new film, Kit Kittredge: An American Girl, based on the American Girl book series, Kit and her pals delve into that and other tricky moral quandaries, as they exit the safety of their tree-fort to embark upon various feats beyond their years. It turns out that Kit learns the most about survival, ingenuity, honesty and grace just by looking around her hometown.
 
Abigail Breslin (Little Miss Sunshine) is the perfect choice for the role of Kit. She is confident, poised and assertive, with an earnest innocence. As Kit, Breslin also illustrates that she knows well how to register a look of shock or surprise, keeping a young audience enthralled with the film's exploits and misadventure.
The 30's-era tale chronicles the adventures of an aspiring young journalist who helps solve a mystery that threatens her family's home, as well as her entire Cincinnati neighborhood. When all signs of guilt point to the "hobo jungle" on the city's fringe-where Kit's new friends Will and Countee live alongside other jobless, hungry victims of the Depression-Kit convinces her friends to ferret out the truth.

nothing to see here. Just keep raking. It's been quite the summer for super heroes-Iron Man, Hulk, and now Hancock, who comes in the form of a drunken lout of a super hero.
 
The premise is clever: a super hero with a drinking problem doesn't know who he is or where he comes from. Carrying a truckload of problems, he doesn't really enjoy saving people's lives. He just does it because either he can and/or he's the only one who can. He makes a sloppy exercise out of saving the day, chucking a beached whale out to sea only to hit a sailboat….skewering a car of bad guys on the Capitol Records building… you get the point. Hancock is pretty much despised for all the chaos he causes - the exception being Ray Embry (Jason Bateman), a PR exec that Hancock saves from getting pulverized by a train. In return, Ray befriends the hero and attempts a marketing strategy makeover. Ray brings Hancock home for counseling and to meet his wife, Mary (Charlize Theron), who is busy with her own life and doesn't approve.
Will Smith is a charismatic actor, bringing life to what would normally be a spoof-oriented role. He also plays a believable drunk with some genuine talent. With Theron, though, I wondered for the longest time why she was even in this movie, but she does manage to prove her worth. Bateman is an entertaining guy in a smarmy and witty kind of way, although fairly one-dimensional.

Jolie in a shot from the new Whitesnake videoYou are going to have to set aside common sense to enjoy this movie. It'll be no fun if you question the logistics of Wanted, with its dopey dialogue and ridiculous plot. Better to sit back and enjoy the ride while this flick delivers a ton of exhilarating, jaw-dropping action scenes.
The plot unfolds with a quick voice-over narrative biography explaining the lame existence of one Wesley Gibson (James McAvoy), a stressed out accountant, stagnating in his measly meek life. People abuse and take advantage of him on a daily basis. Oh, if only he could grow a pair… Enter Fox (a tattooed ultra sleek Angelina Jolie) who literally whisks Gibson away to employ his unknown talents for an underground assassin club called the Fraternity. Sound farfetched so far? You betcha. But who cares? Right when you think the film will get long and uninteresting, Wanted pumps in the adrenaline-beginning with some Matrix-effect flying bullets.

The wrath of KhanAs Kazakstan's first entry into the Academy Awards (2008 nominee for Best Foreign Language Film), the epic historical drama, Mongol, will enthrall horse devotees, history aficionados (who can argue afterwards about its authenticity), or anyone else interested in a visually incredible depiction of life on the steppes of 12th century Central Asia.

Who gave the Rock a gun?Get Smart attempts a big-screen adaptation of a small-screen show, trying hard to stay somewhat reverent to the original. The film was the brainchild of Buck Henry and Mel Brooks, (credited as consultants) but this remake somehow lost the duo's slapstick wit and brainy innuendoes. In fact, the entire movie smacks of lackluster performances and tedious plot-fillers. What was once wacky spy stuff alongside the goofiness of Mad magazine, is now an almost risk-free and gutless remake.
 
The opening music wanders in schmaltz land until the credits arrive at the credits with the familiar multiple doors closing shut to the sound of the original TV theme song. The simplistic plot is that KAOS (the evil organization) wants to wreak havoc on the planet by bombing select cities starting with Los Angeles. CONTROL (the good guys) has to stop them.
Steve Carell as Maxwell Smart, aka Agent 86, takes on the Don Adams role in a weirdly subtle performance. Carell is a really good choice, but whereas Don Adams had this kind of pestering suave bravado, Carell comes off as more of a wimp with surprises. The original 86, due to his boasting and know-it-all attitude, brought everything on himself and he got what he deserved. In 2008, we get a pathetic 86 begging you to feel sorry for him-it's just not right. On the other hand, Anne Hathaway is extremely sexy, replacing Barbara Feldon as Agent 99. And that's no small feat. Who didn't have a crush on Feldon's 99? Max's rapport with 99, however, is only sometimes bearable.

Smoking isn’t supposed to look this cool.French actress Audrey Tatou (Amelie), with a personality as effervescent as a flute of Taittinger champagne, takes us on an escapade along the French Riviera in the romantic comedy, Priceless. As Irene, she teaches a naïve bartender, as well as the audience, the finer points of seduction while digging for gold in the form of wealthy single men. She likes expensive things and knows how to get rich, older men to buy them for her; but she pays a high personal price for her hedonistic habits.
 
The film opens with a witty sequence involving a lowly hotel bartender/valet walking dogs at an elite seaside resort for wealthy patrons who speak to their dogs as if they're spoiled children. Jean (Gad Elmaleh, The Valet) serves the every whim of these mavens who, from evidence of their overly tanned skin which is as dark and wrinkled as brown paper bags, seem to have spent most of their lives basking on chaise lounges.
Fate and risk intertwine late that night in the hotel bar, allowing Jean to spend the night with-and subsequently fall for-the irresistible Irene, who has become bored with her older benefactor/boyfriend. Irene, having mistaken Jean for a potential suitor, soon discovers that he's an imposter, and even worse, a hotel employee. She sets out to teach him a lesson and, unsuccessfully, shake him off. What she thinks is most important in life is exactly what he is willing to give up. Even though we can predict the outcome with a high degree of probability, director Pierre Salvador ensures that what happens along the way surprises and entertains.

mark Wahlberg and the world’s largest bowling bag on tour. M. Night doesn't make horror movies; he makes long Twilight Zone episodes.
Shyamalan is known for his narrative twist and turns and surprise endings, but he can't conjure his way out of The Happening's poorly executed script. Most of M's tricks are here but the gimmicks are starting to resemble an aging genre hack. Even his obligatory Hitchcock-esque cameo isn't onscreen-the credits are the only place you'll find him.
Unfortunately right when the film gets eerie, it also gets stupid. Underdeveloped characters are complemented by dismal performances from the actors. The initial scene with Elliot (Mark Wahlberg) and Julian (John Leguizamo) is about as phony as movie dialogue gets. And Elliot's marriage to Alma (Zooey Deschanel) isn't remotely convincing. Soap opera dialogue runs rampant with idiotic attempts at tension-releasing comedic banter. The relationship between the two leads is so cute and demeaning that I almost left the theater. Wahlberg plays a guy who keeps it together in the face of doom, but his wimp voice and crybaby attitude dominate the entire evacuation sojourn. He more or less just walks through the role. He had a few chances to chew up the scene. Instead he's a perpetual one-note grimace. Deschanel just runs around batting her baby blues like some kind of coma victim showing us vapidity gone wild. Responding to the theory that terrorists have devised a toxin to make people kill themselves, Alma utters the ridiculous line, "Just when you think no more evil could be invented…"

all this just for a free blood pressure test?Edward Norton finally gets to play a Hollywood hunk, albeit a large green one. The actor's usual cool demeanor gets ripped in this film as fast as his muscles do, morphing from the research scientist Bruce Banner into Marvel Comics' super-conflicted-hero character, The Incredible Hulk. Not to be confused with director Ang Lee's 2003 take on the comic book character, this rendition is not a sequel; it's an entirely new version of the story. In what quickly evolves into a fast-paced paced political thriller, the first half of which bears resemblance to The Bourne Ultimatum, Norton's acting undergoes its own transformation. Not that he'll be an Oscar contender for this roll, but as Banner the actor's intelligence is infused with as much passion, wonder and determination as a film about a super hero will allow. While reinventing the Hulk, though, he's just kick-ass strong.
 
Following a secret US military science project gone awry in the nation's capitol, the action jumps to Brazil where Banner's earnest character draws us into what appears to be the life of an adventurous, backpack toting post-grad student. He hides out in a color-faded hovel with his loyal dog, while learning Portuguese, meditating for anger control, and working among the natives in a bottling company. I found this part of the film much more interesting-particularly visually-than I had expected. Like Jason Bourne, Banner is a fugitive trying to avoid the US government's radar, and eventually he's forced into a chase scene on foot, only instead of Bourne's Tangiers, we follow our man breathlessly as he races through a ramshackle barrio of Rio de Janeiro.