Roger Ebert – Movie Reviews

June 4, 2010 by admin
Filed under Movie News, Reviews

Read the latest movie reviews from Roger Ebert, the best-known and most widely read film critic in the world.

Eat Pray Love (PG-13) – Two stars
Julia Roberts stars as a New York writer, rebounding from a ditched marriage and a failed love affair, who embarks on a year’s quest Italy, India and Bali seeking balance of body, mind and spirit. During this journey, great-looking men are platooned at her, she meets only nice people, and she eats Pavarottian plates of pasta. Like the meeting of a Harlequin romance and a mystic travelogue, but the 80% female audience seemed to eat it up.

Salt (PG-13) – Four stars
A damn fine thriller. It does all the things I can’t stand in bad movies, and does them in a good one. Angelina Jolie stars as a CISA agent fighting ingle-handedly to save the world from nuclear destruction. Hardly a second is believable, but so what? Superbly crafted, it’s a splendid example of a genre action picture.

Inception (PG-13) – Four stars
An astonishingly original and inventive thriller starring Leonardo DiCaprio as a men who infiltrates the minds of others to steal secrets. Now he’s hired to implant one. Ken Watanabe is a billionaire who wants to place at idea in the mind of his rival (Cillian Murphy). DiCaprio Assembles a team (Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Tom Hardy, Ellen Page) to assist him, in a dazzling achievement that rises above the thriller level and enters the realm of mind control–in the plot, and in the audience. Written and directed by Christopher Nolan (“Memento,” “The Dark Knight”).

Predators (R) – Two stars
Professional killers from earth find themselves in free fall without explanation, and parachute into a forest where they join up to fight ferocious and frisky half-ton warthog-looking things. Much of the fill is spent in fending off attacks shown in often incomprehensible special effects. With Adrien Brody, Alice Braga, Topher Grace, Laurence Fishburne and Danny Trejo.

Despicable Me (PG) – Three stars
A villain instead of a hero. That’s rare in am animated comedy, but the villain is worth his starring role. He’s Gru (voice by Steve Carell), who hatches a dastardly scheme to steal the Moon. Supported by countless little yellow Minions and challenged by there plucky orphan girls, he does battle with his arch-nemesis Vector (Jason Segel). Funny, energetic, teeth-gnashingly venomous, and animated with an eye to exploiting the 3D process with such sure-fire techniques as a roller coaster. But 3D dims the brightness, and the film will look and feel better if you can find it in 2D.

The Last Airbender (PG) – One-half of one star
An agonizing experience in every category I can think of and others still waiting to be invented. Originally in 2D, retrofitted in fake 3D that makes this picture the dimmest I’ve seen in years. Bad casting, wooden dialogue, lousy special effects, incomprehensible plot, and boring, boring, boring.

Get Him to the Greek (R) – Three stars
Jonah Hill plays an earnest young record exec assigned to deliver a wasted rock star (Russell Brand) to his comeback concert at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles. This sets in motion a screwball raunch fest with a surpassingly effective foundation of slow-building friendship. With Elisabeth Moss and Kate Byrne as women tired of enabling. Vulgar, scatological, obscene and funny.

Splice (R) – Three star
Adrien Brody and Sarah Polley play partners in research and romance who clone human DNA with genes from other animals and unexpectedly produce a child or a monster, take your pick. This creature, named Dren (nerd spelled backwards) is smart, fast-growing, and humanoid. Also very interesting, as are her “parents,” but although the film starts on a thoughtful note, it sidesteps some of the implications of this new life form. All the same, it’s well done, and intriguing.

Sex and the City 2 (R) – One star
Comedy about flyweight bubbleheads living in a world where their defining quality is consuming things. They gobble food, fashion, houses, husbands, children, and vitamins. Plot centers on marital discord between Carrie (Sarah Jessica Parker) and Mr. Big (Chris Noth), a purring, narcissistic, velvety idiot? Later, the girls are menaced for immodest dress during a luxurious freebie in Abu Dhabi. Appalling. Sure to be enjoyed by SATC fans.

Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time (PG-13) – Two stars
Monumentally goofy swashbuckler about an urchin who becomes a prince, his father the king, his brothers, his evil uncle, and a beautiful princess who posses a push-button Dagger of Time. Shots of the actors are incorporated cleverly into incomprehensible special effects.

Robin Hood (PG-13) – Two stars
An action bloodbath having almost nothing to do with any Robin Hood you may be familiar with. Actually a prequel to the Robin Hood legends, it has Robin as a mercenary home from France and leading revolt against the tyrannical King John. Cate Blanchett is Marion, not a maid but a widow, and the film is a good deal darker than the title might lead you to believe. The third act is largely violence of the sort we have seen obvert and over and over again.

Iron Man 2 (PG-13) – Three stars
“Iron Man 2″ is a polished, high-octane sequel, not as good as the original but building once again on a quirky performance by Robert Downey Jr. as Tony Stark. The zillionaire is near death with a failing energy source, and protecting his Iron Men from a covetous defense department and a jealous rival (Sam Rockwell). The rival hires a bitter Russian genius with a score to settle (Mickey Rourke), Stark is faithful Pepper Pots (Gwyneth Paltrow) holds the empire together, Stark’s comrade Rhodey Rhodes (Don Cheadle) stands at his side, and an enigmatic warrior woman (Scarlett Johansson) creates mystery. Not as good as the original, but it gets the job done.