'Nothing Like the Holidays': Been there, seen this
By Roger Moore The Orlando Sentinel
Nothing Like the Holidays is a Kinko's copy of This Christmas, which was an African-American homage to The Family Stone. There's nothing new under the mistletoe in this warm but generic family-stressing-for-the-holidays dramedy.
'Delgo': A fantasy run amok
By Roger Moore The Orlando Sentinel
Delgo is yet more proof that not everyone with access to the tools and talent pool to make an animated film should be allowed to. It's a focus-group film, from its all-star voice cast (Jennifer Love Hewitt, Burt Reynolds) to its mash-up of a plot and "cuddly" critters acting it out.
'The Day the Earth Stood Still': As preachy as ever
By Roger Moore The Orlando Sentinel
Keanu Reeves as an alien? Not a stretch. Jennifer Connelly as the empathetic scientist who argues to spare the human race? Again, on-the-nose casting.
Family reviews: 'The Day the Earth Stood Still,' 'Nothing Like the Holidays'
A parents guide to select new movies:
Elizabeth Pena learned a few things making ‘Nothing Like the Holidays'
By Roger Moore The Orlando Sentinel
To give the traditional Hollywood “big family holiday comedy” a Puerto Rican flavor, the producers of Nothing Like the Holidays had to search high and low for actors to play the sons, daughters, priests and parents. They couldn't be “Puerto Rican” picky. They cast the Colombian-American John Leguizamo, the Spanish-Brit Alfred Molina, and Cuban-American Elizabeth Pena. “Latin” would have to do.
Pioneering legislator to be part of documentary
By Tom Eblen Herald-Leader columnist
In a darkened former courtroom on ground where slaves were once bought and sold, Georgia Powers sat in front of a video camera and told her story.
‘Cadillac Records': Too much of a good thing
By Roger Moore The Orlando Sentinel
Brilliantly cast and ambitious to beat the band, Cadillac Records is a little movie that aims big. It tries to capture nothing less than the moment when white culture embraced black music, and rock 'n' roll was born.
'Nobel Son': No prize winner here
By Roger Moore The Orlando Sentinel
Nobel Son stars the great Alan Rickman, over the top and deliciously insufferable as a college chemistry professor who considers his rudeness to everyone, the graduate students he sleeps with and the Nobel Prize he has just won as nothing less than his due for his “superior intellect.” He alone is worth the price of admission to this unnecessarily gruesome caper picture. But there’s also Mary Steenburgen as his forensic pathologist professor wife, Danny DeVito as an obsessive-compulsive neighbor and Bill Pullman as a cop who pines for the Nobel winner’s wife.
‘The Punisher': Watching it is self-punishment
By Roger Moore The Orlando Sentinel
With Punisher: War Zone, Thomas Jane, the actor with two first names and little acting talent, looks like the smartest guy in the room. He never returned to the vigilante film series after making one awful movie four years ago.
‘A Girl Cut in Two': bursting with suspense and passion
By Steven Rea The Philadelphia Inquirer
A cool study of erotic longing, misguided love and class warfare in the civilized spheres of French society, Claude Chabrol's A Girl Cut in Two is a kind of deadpan soap opera — but one that, despite its high melodrama and wicked humor, delivers a real emotional wallop.
Where are all the gay leading men?
By Mark Caro Chicago Tribune
Gus Van Sant's film Milk isn't just a mainstream-minded Oscar candidate; it's also a rallying cry. With Sean Penn starring as Harvey Milk, the openly gay San Francisco supervisor who was gunned down in 1978, the movie makes its message clear: Gay people must be "out" to be counted. It's a timely theme, given California's passage of anti-gay-marriage Proposition 8 this month, but there's also a certain irony: Here's a broadly targeted movie with marquee actors, yet not only is none of the featured players openly gay, there isn't one openly gay leading man in all of Hollywood.
‘Australia': Stars and scenery carry the day
By Roger Moore The Orlando Sentinel
Don't let anyone keep you from Australia. It's messy and overwrought, but ambition this grand is worth two hours and 40 minutes of Aussie scenery, history (fudged), romance and war.
‘Four Christmases': It's all relatives
By Roger Moore The Orlando Sentinel
Four Christmases hurls towering Vince Vaughn at tiny Reese Witherspoon and a lot of Oscars at a lightweight holiday farce. This comedy about a happy couple made miserable by having to visit four divorced parents begins with a bang but settles into sentiment so maudlin that even this cast can't save it.
'Transporter 3': Feebly scripted, it runs out of gas
By Roger Moore The Orlando Sentinel
The director of the third Transporter movie has given himself the name “Olivier Megaton.” Too easy, you say? Very well. Make your own “bomb” joke.