> 30 Minutes or Less
Jesse Eisenberg stars in new comedy 30 Minutes or Less.  He plays Nick, a directionless twenty-something perfectly content with the freedom and pocket change his pizza delivery job affords him when he crosses paths with Dwayne (Danny McBride).  Dwayne is an even more directionless thirty-something who has grown tired of waiting for his inheritance.  In an attempt to hasten his birthright, he and his friend Travis (Nick Swardson) devise an elaborate plan.  They need quick cash to hire a hitman so they kidnap Nick, strap a bomb to him and then give him 12 hours to rob a bank.  Read More

> Cowboys & Aliens
It’s a simple, and admittedly awesome, premise.  Aliens invade the old west.  Perfect in its simplicity.  You had me at…well, “Aliens invade the old west.”  But then you tell me that Han Solo and James Bond will have play the cowboys?  Well, that’s just flat out genius now, isn’t it?  However, Cowboys & Aliens, it turns out, is a lot like communism – a good idea on paper but in execution...not so much.  Read More

> Captain America: The First Avenger
Marvel wraps up its long and winding road towards The Avengers with Captain America: The First Avenger.  Set in 1943, Steve Rogers is the quintessential 90-pound weakling when he is selected by the U.S. Army’s Strategic Scientific Reserve to be given their top secret Super Soldier Serum (The Army apparently really likes alliteration).  The program is intended to create an army of perfect physical specimens who will wage war on Nazis.  Read More

> Transformers: Dark of the Moon
Nothing strikes fear in the heart of a film critic more than the phrase “In Association with Hasbro.”  And after Transformers (boring) and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (repugnant), Transformers: Dark of the Moon could have used the tag line “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.”  Read More

> Cars 2
Racecar superstar Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson) and his best friend, dilapidated tow-truck Mater (Larry the Cable Guy), travel overseas to compete in the World Grand Prix.  But Mater quickly becomes embroiled in international intrigue after being mistaken for a spy by secret agents Finn McMissle (Michael Caine) and Holly Shiftwell (Emily Mortimer).  Cars 2 differs from its predecessor by significantly upping the action.  Read More

> The Green Lantern
Hal Jordan (Ryan Reynolds) is a hot shot test pilot who is selected it be a Green Lantern.  The Green Lanterns are an interstellar force tasked with protecting the universe from evil.  These cosmic cops have each been assigned a different sector to guard and protect.  Read More

> Super 8
J.J. Abrams (the man who brought you Lost) and Steven Spielberg (the man who brought you your childhood) team up for Super 8.  Shrouded in great secrecy until just a few weeks before its release, the film is set in 1979 and follows a group of middle-school kids who are burgeoning filmmakers.  After witnessing a train derailment while filming, they begin to stumble into a government cover-up that threatens their entire small Midwestern town.  Read More

> X-Men: First Class
What could have been a phone-in FX-fest is instead the best comic book film since The Dark Knight and the strongest Marvel film since Spider-Man 2.  X-Men: First Class is everything a summer blockbuster should be: smart, witty, charming, sexy (but not too sexy) and action packed.  Read More

> Thor
Chris Hemsworth stars as the titular hero.  Having been cast out of his home of Asgard and onto present day Earth, Thor has little use for our world and is, for the moment, singularly focused on returning to his own.  Of course, if there’s one thing than can make a man forsake his home (not to mention his parents’ basement) that “thing” would most definitely be Natalie Portman.  Portman plays Jane Foster, an astrophysicist who unwittingly stumbles on the rift between our dimension and Thor’s.  Read More

> Rio
Set in Brazil, Rio follows the adventures of Blu, a rare blue macaw.  Blu, smuggled out of Brazil as a baby, has spent the last 15 years of his life enjoying the friendly confined tranquility of Minnesota after falling off of a truck; his owner Linda spoils him at every turn.  But when Blu turns out to me the last male of his species, the two must return to his homeland so he can breed with the recently discovered last female.  Read More

> Arthur
A trust-fund baby, Arthur loves squandering his family’s fortune almost as much as he hates working.  Luckily, his family has more money that he could ever conceivably squander.  However, his lavish lifestyle is threatened when his mother vows to cut off the money if he doesn’t marry the woman of her choosing.  Compounding problems is that the avid bachelor has apparently just met the woman of his dreams.  Read More

> Paul
Simon Pegg and Nick Frost (Shaun of the Dead & Hot Fuzz) team up with Seth Rogen in the sci-fi comedy, Paul.  Pegg and Frost, who wrote the film, star as unabashed sci-fi geeks on their first trip abroad.  They have journeyed across the pond in order to attend that Mecca of nerd-dom: San Diego Comic-Con.  Upon leaving Comic-Con they plan to drive across the South West on a tour of famous UFO sighting locations.  It’s during this trip that the two encounter Paul, an alien (the space kind) on the run from a secret government agency.  Read More

> The Rite
Colin O'Donoghue stars as Michael Kovak, a seminary student having a crisis of faith in the new horror film The Rite. In order to help him overcome his doubt the seminary does what they normally do in situations like this – they ship him off to the Vatican and teach him to be an exorcist.  Read More

> No Strings Attached
The Hollywood rom-com assembly line spits out this month’s entry with No Strings Attached. Ashton Kutcher plays an aspiring television writer trying to live down his famous father’s career.  Natalie Portman plays a driven doctor on the tail end of her residency. She doesn’t believe in love, or more specifically, love that lasts.  So when Kutcher pursues her, she convinces him to embark on a relationship that’s purely sexual.  But since the "rom" in in "rom-com" stands for "romantic," I think we all know how this is going to turn out.  Read More

> The Green Hornet
Seth Rogen plays Britt Reid (aka The Green Hornet), a trust fund playboy suckling at the teat of his family’s media empire when his father’s untimely demise forces him to assume control of the business.  Left to his own devices, Reid quickly forms a bond with Kato (Jay Chou), his father’s personal mechanic.  When the two accidentally stop a robbery, Reid discovers Kato’s natural gift for violence and decides that two should wage a war on crime.  Read More

> Country Strong
Gwyneth Paltrow plays Kelly Cantor, a wildly famous country superstar.  As the film opens we find her in rehab for alcohol addiction where she has struck up a relationship with an orderly who just happens to be an aspiring country musician.  It’s an otherwise touching romance that’s disrupted only by the existence of her manager/husband James (Tim McGraw).  Read More

> Tron: Legacy
This movie is a worthy successor to the original Tron.  Unfortunately, the original Tron was a complete snooze-fest that would have been a footnote in the annals of Disney history, were it not for its interesting visuals and the fact that it was one of the earliest films to take full advantage of the then-burgeoning computer technology.  The first film is a better memory than it is a movie.   Read More

> Burlesque
Christina Aguilera makes her big screen debut as Ali, an Iowa farm girl who’s just landed in the big city (Los Angeles) when she comes across the club Burlesque.  As an aspiring singer she’s immediately entranced by this hyper-stylized throwback to the days of glittery costumes and speakeasy chic.  But in order to get her big break, she must first impress the club’s owner: Tess (Cher).   Read More

> Morning Glory
While not exactly groundbreaking, it is one of the better executed romantic comedies of late.  The characters are well-drawn and the humor comes from them.  While it’s not an uproarious comedy, when it does aim for laughs it almost always hits the mark.  Rachel McAdams is charming and she easily carries the film.  Her relationship with Ford is well-written and remains refreshingly professional.   It was a nice change of pace for a movie such as this to focus on a topic other than will they/won’t they.   Read More

> Megamind
Super-villain Megamind (Will Ferrell) has one goal in life – to destroy his archenemy Metro Man (Brad Pitt).  But after accidentally succeeding he discovers that life is empty and sets out to create a new superhero in the visage Tighten (Jonah Hill).  It’s a great plan until Tighten becomes drunk with power and turns out to be a far greater villain than Megamind ever dreamed of being.   Read More

> Hereafter
Serious films about the afterlife are always tricky - answer questions with too great a degree of specificity and you will undoubtedly alienate audience members whose religious beliefs are different.  Conversely, if your version of life-after-death is so ecclesiastically ambiguous that it can pass as all things to all people then what’s the point?  Herein lies Hereafter.   Read More

> Red
Bruce Willis plays retired CIA operative Frank Moses in the new action/comedy Red.  He is on the run when a non-retired CIA covert team attempts to assassinate him.  His solution is to reassemble his old team of aging veterans to figure out why.  Read More

> Life As We Know It
Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel star as Holly and Eric in this month’s high-concept romantic-comedy Life as We Know It.  The two are bequeathed a child after their mutual best friends unexpectedly die.  Unbeknown to Holly and Eric, their friends have named the two of them as the child’s legal guardian in the event of just such a tragedy even though they are not only not dating but have an active (not to mention well known) dislike for each other. Read More

> The Social Network
Jesse Eisenberg stars as Mark Zuckerberg the disputed creator of Facebook, in what is thus far the best film of the year - The Social Network.  Don’t let the subject matter fool you.  While the technology is new, the story is as old as time – love, loyalty, betrayal.  Set in the present day, we see the film’s protagonists giving depositions in two separate civil suits regarding the creation of Facebook. Read More

> Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps
The film opens in 2001 as Gekko is being released from prison having completed an 8-year sentence for the insider trading scandal from the first film. As he reenters the world, abandoned by his family and devoid of money, he is purportedly a changed man. Read More

> The Town
Ben Affleck follows up Gone Baby Gone, his unexpectedly adept directorial debut, with another crime drama set against the backdrop of his hometown.  Charlestown (aka The Town) is a Bostonian neighborhood which has produced more armored car and bank robbers than any other town in America.  In the hands of these working class Irish, bank robbery is more than just a cottage industry; it’s a trade to be passed down generation to generation.   Read More

> Easy A
Olive (Emma Stone) is a high school student and a good girl.  So much so that her guidance counselor doesn’t even know her name.  Why would she?  Olive is polite, gets good grades and stays out of trouble.  But all that comes crashing down around her when, in an effort to appease her best friend’s (Alyson Michalka) need for smutty gossip, she “confesses” to losing her virginity with a college boy named George.   Read More

> Going The Distance
Former couple Drew Barrymore and Justin Long reunite on screen in the new romantic-comedy Going the Distance.  Barrymore stars as Erin, a woman getting a late start on a career in journalism whereas Long plays Garrett, who is trying to carve out a place for himself in the record industry.   Read More

> The Switch
Jason Bateman and Jennifer Aniston star The Switch, Hollywood's latest attempt to revive the flagging romantic-comedy genre.  Bateman plays Wally Mars, a neurotic stock-broker type who is in love with his best friend Kassie (Aniston).  Wally is crushed when Kassie, hearing her biological clock ticking, decides to have a baby (via artificial insemination) not with him but with a stranger.  Due to some zany plot contortions (more on that later), Wally switches her sperm donor's sample with that of his own and, unbeknownst to Kassie, becomes the father of her baby. Read More

> Eat, Pray, Love
Julia Roberts returns to headlining films with Eat, Pray, Love.  Roberts plays Liz Gilbert, a travel writer "trapped" in an unhappy marriage.  She takes a year off work in order to spend time, not looking for romance but, looking for herself. Read More

> The Other Guys
Will Ferrell and Adam McKay (director of and writing partner on films like Step Brothers an Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy) reunite for The Other Guys, a high-octane send-up of the buddy-cop genre. Read More

> Dinner For Schmucks
Carell and Rudd are masterful comedic actors. Both are at the top of their games, and both are completely squandered in this dreadfully insipid excuse of a comedy. The film contorts itself in order to put the two leads together before the actual dinner takes place and every choice they make rings false. Read More

> Salt
Angelina Jolie plays Evelyn Salt, a C.I.A. operative charged with being a Russian spy (yeah, Russian…go figure).  The accusation, leveled by a defecting Russian spy no less, is that she was taken at birth from her Soviet chess master parents and then, after a lifetime of being trained as a killing machine, inserted into American society and tasked with infiltrating our government.  Read More

> Inception
Don't read this review. Seriously. Don't. Christopher Nolan's latest film is such a twisty-turny fantastical film that, if you have any desire to see the film, you’d probably be best served walking in cold. And honestly, it’s good enough to warrant that you stop reading right now in order to keep your slate clean. Read More

> Despicable Me
In the animated feature Despicable Me, Steve Carell voices Gru, a super villain so reprehensible that he delights in making balloon animals for children solely so he can then pop them. However, Gru’s spotlight is being usurped by Vector a younger super villain who has exploded onto the scene by stealing one of the pyramids. In order to regain supremacy, Gru devises a new and bigger plan. He will steal the moon. Read more

> The Twilight Saga: Eclipse
Saying that Twilight: Eclipse is the best film of the Twilight Saga is (to paraphrase Doug Stanhope) a lot like being the prettiest Denny’s waitress. But, there you have it. Read more

> Toy Story 3
With Andy heading off to college, what will happen to the toys that brought him so much joy as a kid? Read more

> Get Him To The Greek
In Get Him to the Greek, Russell Brand reprises the character of Aldous Snow from 2008’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall. The film isn’t a sequel so much as it is a spin-off. Read more

> Shrek & MacGruber
Shrek is back and this time our hero (Mike Myers) is experiencing a midlife crisis of sort. He and his bride, Princess Fiona (Cameron Diaz) are the parents of triplets and Shrek is bristling at the repetitious mundanity of domesticity longing for the days when he could take a mud bath in peace.

The character is the very definition of a one-joke sketch: MacGruber (Will Forte), a poor-man’s MacGyver, tries to dismantle a bomb using whatever miscellaneous items happen to be laying around and fails. Lather, rinse, repeat. Read more

> Clash of the Titans
Don't read this review. Seriously. Don't. Christopher Nolan's latest film is such a twisty-turny fantastical film that, if you have any desire to see the film, you’d probably be best served walking in cold. And honestly, it’s good enough to warrant that you stop reading right now in order to keep your slate clean. Read more

> Blind Date
Date Night is quite possibly the most difficult type of film to review. Neither good nor bad, the film is…pleasant. Critiquing the plot is practically pointless, as it exists for the sole purpose of placing our protagonists in awkward/dangerous situations so we can laugh at their reactions. Read More

> Death at a Funeral
Chris Rock and Martin Lawrence head up an all-star cast in Death at a Funeral. As family and friends begin to besiege the service a comedy of errors ensues: attendees accidentally take an unnamed hallucinogen mislabeled as Valium, a wheelchair-bound elderly man experiences incontinence and the deceased’s gay lover (who also happens to be a “little person”) makes an unexpected appearance. Read More