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Review: Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel
54 minutes ago
In a year that brought us Coraline, Where the Wild Things Are, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, Princess and the Frog, and Up, how can you justify the existence of Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel as anything less than a mind-numbingly generic brand-name cash grab? It's a shame too, because I honestly like the Chipmunks -- or maybe I liked the Chipmunks. It has been almost twenty-five years since I watched them on television (and in their first feature film, The Chipmunk Adventure). Were they always this boring?
Forcing the Chipmunks to attend an average high school after a taste of rock and roll superstardom could've made for a pretty decent fish-out-of-water comedy (munk-out-of-tree comedy?), but that potential is wasted in favor of an uninspired battle of the bands story, pitting our boys against an all-girl group of chipmunks called the Chipettes. The girls, who are also huge Alvin and the Chipmunks fans, »
- John Gholson
The Best of the Decade: Family Films (Live Action)
2 hours ago
When our managing editor assigned me to list the Best Family Films of the Decade, I thought, "Woohoo! There's Ratatouille, Coraline, and --" then he added, "No animated films. We've got another list for those." I wilted. Do you know how hard it is to talk about films that are suitable for children but also fun for adults, and not include animation? I kept accidentally sneaking them on the list and then reminding myself that, no, Persepolis is in fact animated, and so is everything by Hayao Miyazaki. Gaaaaah.
But once I started looking at my video shelf, and the reviews I've written, ten great "family friendly" films from the 2000s weren't that difficult to find. I did have to determine what qualifies as "family friendly." Just because a movie is about a family doesn't mean it qualifies -- there went The Royal Tenenbaums and World's Greatest Dad. (Kidding. Sort of. »
- Jette Kernion
Review: Sherlock Holmes
4 hours ago
If there exists another film, TV show, or book that makes deductive reasoning and Victorian era procedural investigations as invigorating as the new Sherlock Holmes does, then I am sorely missing out. Don't get me wrong. I've always loved the character in all of his incarnations, but Guy Ritchie's film is positively bursting with an energetic infatuation with the classic logician that is so infectious that by the 10 minute mark only the most prickly purists around will be able to resit its considerable charms.
In retrospect, this should come as no surprise. After a string of indelible, charismatic performances across a wide array of genres, Robert Downey Jr. seemed a perfect match for the curious sleuth. RocknRolla broke director Ritchie's dry spell, announcing a return to form for the man who created Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Snatch. The supporting cast filled out nicely, particularly Jude Law »
- Peter Hall
Cinematical Seven: Your Very-Last-Minute Blu-ray/DVD Shopping Guide
6 hours ago
What's this? You've waited until the very last second to get your holiday shopping done? No worries! Welcome to our ultra last-minute shopping guide, aimed at keeping you in the good graces of everyone on your lists this year. A quick trip to a nearby retailer, or a few clicks and some online shopping, and you should be right as rain. Or, alternatively, if you're stacking up the holiday loot and collecting a lot of gift cards and cash, you can happily spend them on the items in this list.
While this list tends to be fairly Blu-ray heavy, the standard definition of many movies and shows on this list will do you just fine if you haven't yet joined the ranks of the highly defined. Read on for our list of last minute ideas, broken down for you in seven handy categories.
For the Comedy Junkie
Everyone spent the »
- Kevin Kelly
Scenes We Love: Christmas Morning with 'The Thin Man'
8 hours ago
Between Monika and myself, The Thin Man gets plenty of love here at Cinematical, and a few years back Jeffrey included the classic film on a list of non-Christmas movies set during the holiday season. But this time of year I can't help coming back to everyone's favorite alcoholic detective couple, Nick and Nora Charles (played by William Powell and -- swoon -- Myrna Loy), and sharing my appreciation for their witty and drunken ways. If only one person is turned on to this movie with each posting about it, I feel my work at this blog is good for moviegoing-kind. And since tis the season for giving, I'm glad to be able to gift an introduction to or a memory of the first of their six film installments.
Ironically, Nick and Nora may not seem the most clearly Christmas-spirited folks (they tend to prefer an 's' at the end »
- Christopher Campbell
Cinematical Seven: What Not to Watch on Holiday Visits
20 hours ago
It's Christmas Eve, and you're visiting your family. You've just finished wrapping gifts, or going to early church, or entertaining dozens of relatives. Or perhaps it's Christmas Day and you've just enjoyed an enormous dinner. What do you do next? Many of you film geeks are probably thinking that this is a great time to see what holiday movies are on TV, or whip out a new DVD for the whole family to watch.
My little brother the film geek and I have had trouble for years with watching movies around the holiday on our parents' big TV in the middle of their living room. We flip through the channels, we find something interesting ... and then Something Bad Happens. You would not believe the problems that can crop up when you pick the wrong movie or TV show to watch at a relative's house during the holiday season. »
- Jette Kernion
Weinberg's Top 20 of 2009
22 hours ago
Let's keep this quick and easy. You've probably seen twelve dozen year-end "best of 2009" lists, but this one is mine! No rambling commentary, no goofy synopses, just 20 films from the past 12 months that I liked the best. (These are listed alphabetically.)
(500) Days of Summer -- There are tons of romance-intensive films that are funny, familiar, and/or heartbreaking, but here's one that tackles one of the pricklier situations: when one partner is clearly "more into" the relationship than the other. Leads Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel provide pitch-perfect performances, and the screenplay is a surprisingly insightful mixture of warmth, intelligence, reality and fantasy. I saw this one way back in January and it still stands as one of my very favorite films of the year.
Avatar -- Whether or not it becomes the "game-changer" that the hype machine promised is none of my concern. All I know is that, without fail, »
- Scott Weinberg
Shelf Life: It's A Wonderful Life
24 December 2009 2:03 PM, PST
A few weeks ago, National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation was the subject of a "Shelf Life" column, and I was not convinced that it held up when I watched it again for the first time in probably 15 years. Suffice it to say that many readers disagreed - I'm still getting negative comments - but it made me both excited and reluctant to dive into It's a Wonderful Life, which is probably the holiday-movie genre's all-time most-beloved and venerated entry. (Personally, A Christmas Story is my favorite holiday film, but Frank Capra's black and white classic has the advantage of almost 40 years to develop a generation-spanning army of fans.)
Interestingly, I watched the film just a few years ago for the first time, and I didn't like it. For a guy who so often forewent his own plans and ambitions to help others, Jimmy Stewart's George Bailey was whiny and »
- Todd Gilchrist
The Best of the Decade: Sequels
24 December 2009 12:03 PM, PST
Oh, the dreaded sequel. For a while, it was the loathed S-word -- an inevitable drop in quality, almost always revealing an increasing degree of cinematic laziness. But then came the aughts. Not only did we find the S-word replaced with the dreaded R-word (remake/reboot ... take your pick), but we also got a slice of something good. This decade brought some impressive sequels that challenged the well-established notion that continuing a story and revisiting beloved characters would be a bad thing. And now, as the decade wraps up, it's time to rank them.
Compiling the best sequels of the decade is not the most harrowing task out there. My fellow writers have that honor, shuffling through hundreds of films to pick out a few mere handfuls, but the sequel list does elicit questions. For example: What do you do when you desperately want a comedy sequel to be on the list, »
- Monika Bartyzel
Review: Nine
24 December 2009 10:33 AM, PST
Give me a movie where people burst into song and dance for no logical reason and I'm happy ... assuming the musical numbers are good, the story isn't dull and the characters are interesting. Nine, the latest movie musical directed by Rob Marshall (Chicago) has a lot of flash and dash ... so why wasn't I charmed?
Veteran screenwriters Michael Tolkin and Anthony Minghella scripted this adaptation of a 1982 Broadway musical, which includes a few new songs. The Broadway version itself is a musical remake of the Federico Fellini movie 8 1/2. That may be part of my difficulty with Nine -- I've always found Fellini's film tiresome and interminable. I'm more of an Amarcord girl myself.
Adding music to Fellini's story doesn't change it much. Guido Contini (Daniel Day-Lewis) is a famous Italian director in the early 1960s who is two weeks away from the start of production on his next »
- Jette Kernion
Michael Cera and Portia Doubleday Talk 'Youth in Revolt' Book vs. Movie
24 December 2009 9:03 AM, PST
C.D. Payne's ginormous book Youth in Revolt has been boiled down to a movie, and not without significant changes. You can read Cinematical's Toronto Film Festival review, where Erik Davis explains what you get: a decent movie that should you in no way expect to be representative of the novel. Michael Cera said it would probably work better as a miniseries, and he's right ... considering the 499 page-length of the book. There was an abortive attempt to bring it to MTV back in 1998, and this movie might be the best (or only?) version we ever get.
Still, it's an entertaining movie, and shows us a side of Cera that we haven't seen before as a colored contact lens-wearing, cigarette smoking, clad in tight-slacks tough guy. We're hoping this will be the first step on a long road where he branches out beyond the awkward teenager roles he's been performing (and nailing each and every one, »
- Kevin Kelly
Kevin Smith's 'Cop Out' Gets a Trailer
24 December 2009 7:20 AM, PST
Kevin Smith's Cop Out (formerly A Couple of Dicks) has its first trailer online at Apple -- and if you knew absolutely nothing about it, you might find it only mildly amusing. Don't get me wrong, it's funny! But other than a few scenes of wit and a few glimpses of guns, there's nothing that would suggest that it's throwback to the 1980s, or this generation's Road House. It's really cut to look like Generic Cop Comedy, heavy on the Tracy Morgan shenanigans, low on plot, and free of any Kevin Smith. Smith's name isn't even on the trailer, which I suppose isn't too surprising (I mean, Iron Man doesn't exactly slap Jon Favreau on its trailers either), but it suggests the studio doesn't want to alienate those who associate Smith with dick jokes and controversy.
Still, there's glimpses of truly funny stuff here. I love the "I was in the moment! »
- Elisabeth Rappe
Todd's Top 10 of 2009
23 December 2009 7:02 PM, PST
It's absolutely true that 2009 was a great year for movies, but I'm not altogether sure that 2009 was a year for great movies. The difference, some might argue, is negligible, since there probably shouldn't be any sort of division between smarter and more substantive fare and populist entertainment. In a year like, say, 2008, that might have been true, at least where its biggest blockbuster, The Dark Knight, was concerned. But in '09, it seemed like about five people saw the "serious" movies, while everyone else was watching Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.
That said, the value of being entertained isn't necessarily less than that of being enlightened or inspired, and box office success isn't automatically antithetical to quality. (I actually kind of liked Revenge of the Fallen, after all.) Ultimately, however, making a Top Ten list for 2009 has seemed like a more ambiguously-defined process than in previous years, because I realize »
- Todd Gilchrist
Box Office: Better Holmes and Chipmunks
23 December 2009 5:02 PM, PST
Twelve years after Titanic, James Cameron once again has the number one film in America, with his science fiction epic Avatar making more money than all other films in current release combined. Things weren't quite as rosy for the romantic comedy Did You Hear About the Morgans? Here's the top five:
1. Avatar: $73 million $77 million
2. The Princess and the Frog: $12.2 million
3. The Blind Side: $10 million
4. Did You Hear About the Morgans?: $7 million
5. The Twilight Saga: New Moon: $4.4 million
We've got three new contenders as we go into the Christmas weekend with two flicks going into wider release.
Alvin & the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel (on Wednesday)
What's It All About: Those furry little CGI crooners are back for more. This time they're entering a singing contest to save their school's music program, though they face stiff competition from a trio of female singing chipmunks.
Why It Might Do »
- Matt Bradshaw
Sundance Primer: Lucky
23 December 2009 3:02 PM, PST
Welcome to a new series here at Cinematical where we'll shine a spotlight on different films premiering at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival in January.
Jeffrey Blitz probably isn't a name you know right off the bat, but I guarantee you've seen his work. The writer-director exploded onto the scene back in 2002 with his documentary Spellbound, which followed a group of kids competing in the National Spelling Bee and was nominated for several awards including an Oscar for Best Documentary. Blitz then wrote and directed the unique and compelling Rocket Science (his first Sundance film), which, among other things, helped introduce the world to actress Anna Kendrick. After helming several episodes The Office and Parks and Recreation, Blitz has returned to his documentary roots with the film Lucky.
Premiering in the U.S. Documentary Competition section at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, Lucky follows several regular folks whose lives instantly change after winning the lottery. »
- Erik Davis
New to Me: The Black Hole, The Incredible Mr. Limpet and Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
23 December 2009 2:03 PM, PST
If "they don't make 'em like they used to" isn't officially a cliché yet, then it soon will be. Sure, it's about as accurate a maxim as they come -- times inevitably change, and culture as well -- but while it usually laments an era bygone, it often ignores the fact that change has often been equal to a sense of improvement and progress.
The 1954 musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (henceforth Sbsb), the 1964 cartoon The Incredible Mr. Limpet and the 1979 sci-fi adventure The Black Hole are each fair representations of entertainment from their time periods, little capsules of innocence the likes of which are unmatched today, but these passing years suggest that maybe they were just right for just then, best left to steep in nostalgia...
Filed under: Animation, Comedy, Music & Musicals, Romance, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Mystery & Suspense, Disney, Warner Brothers, Family Films, Columns
Continue reading New to Me: The Black Hole, »
- William Goss
Moviefone's Top 50 Films of 2009
23 December 2009 1:02 PM, PST
As we here at Cinematical have kept busy pumping out our Best of the Decade lists, as well as our unique, exotic and random end-of-the-year lists, our pals over at Moviefone locked themselves in a room and slaved over a list of what they deem to be the best 50 films of 2009. Looking over the list there aren't a whole ton of surprises, though I give credit to the person (or persons) who more than likely fought hard to get World's Greatest Dad on that list at number 38. You are a hero in my book.
Honestly, when I look at their top 10, I wouldn't mind it at all if these were the 10 films duking it out in the Best Picture category at the next Oscar ceremony. Of course there's no way in hell films like The Hangover will find their way onto that nomination list, but you never know. Their top »
- Erik Davis
Review: Crazy Heart
23 December 2009 12:05 PM, PST
A colleague of mine recently suggested that playing a boozy, washed-up country singer is the male equivalent of the hooker with a heart of gold. He may be right, but that doesn't mean that Jeff Bridges' performance in Crazy Heart is any less affecting. Writer-director Scott Cooper has effectively captured the essence of obsessive self-destruction, as well as the self-indulgent verisimilitude that drives artists to blur or obliterate the lines between life and art. Bolstered by galvanizing performances by Bridges and Maggie Gyllenhaal as the woman whose own self destruction comes in the form of love for the wrong kind of man, Crazy Heart tells a powerful if sometimes familiar story that ranks as one of the year's best films.
Bridges plays Bad Blake, a penniless 57-year-old country singer who hasn't recorded in years and spends months on the road performing at any venue that will pay him, no matter how small. »
- Todd Gilchrist
Watch This: The Ultimate 2009 Tribute
23 December 2009 11:10 AM, PST
So, yeah, this is the third 2009 YouTube montage we're featuring on the site (here's the first and the second), but all of them have been fun to watch and all are totally worthy of a mention. That said, this will definitely be the last one we promote because it really is the ultimate year-end movie montage in that it features clips from 342 different movies -- a huge undertaking in my opinion. Now I'm not entirely positive if this video includes every single film that hit theaters in 2009, but it comes pretty damn close. Edited by Kees van Dijkhuizen, Cinema 2009 has a running time of about seven minutes and features an eclectic selection of tunes (from "Malabar Front" by If These Trees Could Talk to "Wake Up" by Arcade Fire).
From Kees' YouTube page: "1 Year, 342 Movies, 12 Months of Production, 7 Minutes. 2009 proved that innovation is rewarded, and for that reason, I've decided »
- Erik Davis
Their Best Role: Bill Murray
23 December 2009 10:20 AM, PST
At first Bill Murray was a goofball, a lounge singer or a guy that tried to blow up a gopher. Graduating to movie stardom, he soon found a style of detached cool that worked like gangbusters, or ghostbusters. In movies like Stripes and Ghostbusters, he would make wry comments while the rest of his co-stars acted their parts; he rarely got involved in the drama. But it worked. A decade later, however, he could be seen giving an actual performance in Wes Anderson's Rushmore (1998). He was still funny, but he found a real emotional connection with his co-stars, and he was touching. From there, you could easily look back and find other moments of greatness: his bit parts in films like Tootsie, Ed Wood, Kingpin and Wild Things, his abrasive gangster in Mad Dog and Glory, in the very dark, anxious and underrated Quick Change, which was his directorial »
- Jeffrey M. Anderson
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