Twilight / *1/2 (2008)

Vampires rarely require the companionship of fearless dupes to function as predators, but it certainly changes up the monotony of an exhausting routine. Luckily for one featured in “Twilight,” he makes the company of a teenage girl who audaciously regards him as an equal. Maybe that’s part of what cripples the movie surrounding them: it misconstrues the dynamic that is otherwise fundamental. These are not unions established by conflicted beasts and ambivalent humans, but by souls who find that their alienation is one helluva common interest to flirt over. Sometimes, they even share in the same sense of hormonal desire – hers new and emerging, his apparently immune to hundreds of years of undeath. They circle around the point until there is no way to avoid the inevitable: their awkward exchanges and forceful outbursts are a mechanism standing in for eventual foreplay. That might have worked in a film that had any sense of what characters were about beyond their need to touch the forbidden, but like most great psychological lessons in the hands of novices, this is a story far more interested in dancing to rhythms than understanding melody.

Vicki Cristina Barcelona / ***1/2 (2008)

Romantic interests are rarely as simple as an act of affection or a passionate gesture, though few of the more naïve movie fantasies freely dissent from that assumption. To their directors, it’s easier for a story to coddle the complexities into a neat package of hopes and desires rather than descend into their paralyzing mysteries, though that may be of a great disservice; once we become wise to the sensations we grow to resent the idea of unrealistic happy endings. On the other hand, an exhausting discussion about contradictions can lead less experienced sorts astray from taking risks, because we are not easily programmed to tolerate a constant barrage of mistakes and arguments, especially if they may lead to damaged connections. In some strange way, both perspectives are dealt with at arm’s length by the characters at the forefront of “Vicki Cristina Barcelona,” which tells of two female friends vacationing in the Spanish countryside who walk into the lives of people who may expand (or even tarnish) their views of human relationships. Woody Allen is hardly foreign to the concept of these kinds of spirited discussions, of course, but rarely has he taken them this far, or been so perceptive about the discoveries he makes in the company of his focused actors.

Cloverfield / ***1/2 (2008)

Consider the identity of the primary witness in first-person horror films. When a handheld recording device winds up in the hands of any unfortunate onlooker during a random catastrophe, it becomes just as much a lifeline as it does a record of truth. Perhaps something about the existence of an instrument of documentation provides the advantage of personal security; for the victims, often perplexed beyond coherence, a barrier between themselves and the action can be empowering to their fragile sense of perspective, creating an illusion of endurance that inspires them to capture and preserve all the mayhem occurring around them. Because the underlying rules also suggest that such a position in a tragic event must also mean they can be spared from the inevitability of death, the lens seemingly drives them to look far deeper into the conflict than any innocent bystander might be willing to do. Because after all, when the chips are down and everyone around is caught in the snare of great pain and suffering, who else is going to make it out alive to tell the story besides the one carrying around the most detailed personal evidence?

Burn After Reading / ***1/2 (2008)

Deep dark secrets are the crux for the characters of “Burn After Reading.” Some possess them, others strive to uncover what they suspect are smoking guns in elaborate pursuits. Their common bond, for better or worse, is stupidity; never is there a moment between them (or in isolation) when the obvious conclusions are as clear as they should be, essentially because they are driven by agendas that deny all possible traces of logical thinking. But the journey for answers (and in some cases, general security) carries them along continuously through a plot absorbed in varying levels of suspense, uncertainty and the dubious promise of some great final revelation – of what exactly, who the heck knows, but judging by all those wide-eyed gazes, it sure does look to be suspicious!

WALL-E / **** (2008)

The truth is all in the eyes. In moments of grinding routine and isolation, they stare beyond objects with a seeming sense of longing, like those of an emotional being displaced from the intimacy of interaction. Clips from a movie musical play over a small screen inside a metal shack, and he gazes at them not just with perplexity or wonderment, but also with a slanted brow that suggests untapped desire. How he came to possess these sensations is guesswork in a story unburdened with the formality of comprehensive setup, but this much is clear: the robotic creature at the center of Pixar’s “Wall-E” is something very special, and for 98 minutes moviegoers are not so much witnessing his antics as they are projecting his values into their own existence, and finding resonance in the notion that life, perhaps, really can be simplified into some kind of universal declaration. To see these sentiments delivered so profoundly, furthermore, speaks volumes to the power animation possesses in cleansing minds weathered by the cynicism of adulthood.

Sex and the City / ** (2008)

The governing powers of television comedy would have salvaged many careers and avoided countless embarrassing situations had they established the following doctrine early on: keep sitcoms on the small screen and out of movie theaters, or else suffer the consequences. Evidence supporting this statement fills a list as long as most wedding registries, while notions to the contrary materialize like sightings of the Tooth Fairy. Consider the girls at the center of “Sex and the City,” for example; as the owners of a piece of prime real estate during the weekly cable network lineup for six long years, they earned a notoriety for taking a brazen approach to the taboos of love and sex: discussing them openly, exploring fetishes, dealing with embarrassment and, more importantly, finding their place in a society where they could only guess the intentions of horny men, and either love or hate them for it. Contrary to the suggestion, it was successful not just because it took provocative risks, but because it framed it all with intelligent contemplation.

Doomsday / *1/2 (2008)

Neil Marshall’s “Doomsday” is a Whitman’s sampler of bizarre story ideas and visual gimmicks, congealing around a premise that is so straightforward that it affords them no groundwork for stability or realization. And that’s a sad reality, because the director’s prior professional outing, “The Descent,” snuck up on unsuspecting moviegoers and emerged as one of the most effective horror movies of the past ten years. In that film, characters that are oblivious to terror go cave exploring and are forced to endure survival at the hands of natural dangers while potential supernatural forces reveal themselves. Here, the perspective of the screenplay is not so different… except you get the sense that everyone involved never bothered reading through an initial script treatment, and instead placed their faith on a man who has shown he is capable of genuine entertainment at the movie theater, but apparently lacks the judgment skill to be consistent in that conviction.

Dark City: Director's Cut / **** (1998)

The opportunity to revisit “Dark City” ten years from whence it found its way into the imaginations of a generation of eloquent and sophisticated movie-goers is, in many ways, just as staggering as it is rewarding. A personal barometer for which most (if not all) films have been measured in the years since, the film endures with me as one of the ageless, nourishing visions of modern cinema, significant for the fact that it attained a certain scope of detail that continues to drive the true promise of filmmaking. When I wrote my first series of online reviews in the summer of 1998, here was the film that I would proudly call the benchmark of my critiquing inspiration – and now a decade has passed, time has caught up with me, and both the movie and I meet once again at the center of the spiral. It is amazing how important things have a way of taking you on long journeys, only to end up bringing you right back to the place where you started.

The Dark Knight / **** (2008)

“You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”

The crazed, almost hypnotic dance of wits that is shared between Batman and the Joker is the most memorable of the public rivalries exhibited in the comic books about the caped crusader, a savagely perceptive conflict in which good and evil forces meet and clash with dizzying arrays of results ranging from the exciting to the profound. They also share a chemistry that is often imitated but never fully replicated, and despite a broad arsenal of enemies that have been thrown into the midst of the dark knight’s presence, none of them come close to matching. That’s because the Joker is, for better or worse, the only antagonist in the original stories that seems to understand enough about the Batman identity to dissect it; much like the hero, here is a villain whose own “trauma” in life has essentially made him the spiritual opposite of Gotham’s biggest crime fighter, and the two engage in elaborate plots against one another as if they are brothers of war destined to counter-balance one another’s existence in the scheme of life. Theirs is a tumultuous love affair that is almost endearing as it is wicked.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull / *** (2008)

10 things that come to mind when watching the new "Indy" flick

1. It has been nearly 20 years since the last installment into the George Lucas/Steven Spielberg franchise that solidified Harrison Ford as a Hollywood action star. For those that express concern and/or confusion over the prospect of a movie hero being dusted off and revived so long after the fact, we should remind you that the resurgence of the aged action star is but a new hot commodity in Hollywood. Otherwise, how does one explain the rousing success of recent return ventures into film franchises like "Rocky," "Rambo" and "Die Hard?"

The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian / ***1/2 (2008)

The Narnia of Caspian X is a place more menacing and cutthroat than that of the early age, ravaged by land-hungry totalitarians known as the Telmarines, its wondrous populations of fawns, talking animals and tree spirits silenced by their ruthless pillaging of the establishments of old. They occupy the screen in “The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian” with a certain arrogance in their demeanor, dressed in lush robes and observed carrying themselves less like invaders and more like monarchs of England’s Tudor era. To say that their existence feeds into an assumption that the movie’s writers are beginning to see C.S. Lewis’ magical world from a more political context would be an understatement; when the movie opens, there is no doubt in the minds of its would-be heroes – or the audience, for that matter – that the battle between good and evil no longer comes down to impressive displays of magic and fantasy. Instead, what we get is a film with impressive battle sequences, talk of strategy and intrigue, and character development that spend less time marveling over fantastical sights and more time contemplating the pros and cons that come with change.

Speed Racer / *** (2008)

“Speed Racer” is a stylish, electrifying, intense and visually breathtaking catastrophe of a movie, a picture so filled with wondrous images and astonishing sights that one is left bewildered by the notion of so much technical energy being squandered on a narrative so obviously uninterested in matching it. Or maybe that is basically the whole point. I dunno. Based off of an old 1960s Japanese animated series– one which I am unfamiliar with – the filmmakers present their endeavor with just the kind of flat-footed, shapeless screenplay you half expect to be derived of the source material. But what empowers these filmmakers with enough nerve to justify giving this clueless premise much more enthralling a presentation than it so clearly deserves? This is a movie that forces us to question our very nature as moviegoers: do we simply dismiss such an endeavor because it is all style and no substance, or do we embrace it based on the notion that the style’s scope is so ambitious and intricate that it is basically high art?

Oscars 2008: Nominee Predictions

2008 opens with change in the air. Hollywood quivers under the clout of a potentially drastic change to the industry with an ongoing Writer’s Guild strike. Studios face a future filled with gaps as scripts become more sparse and projects face delays. Networks cope with the prospect that high-profile awards ceremonies will get shortchanged by the absence of important figures. And yours truly has settled back into a groove he had not expected to return to when he gave it up over five years ago: sifting through heaps of awards hoopla in order to come up with a fairly accurate prediction of what the envelopes might contain when the Oscar nominations are announced this Tuesday morning.