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 | A Bromance (with Cars) [b]Fast & Furious[/b], is the fourth entry in the surprisingly durable car-centered franchise, and the first to reunite the co-stars from the first film, Vin Diesel and Paul Walker, actors badly in need of a commercial hit. And with Justin Lin ([b]Finishing the Game[/b], [b]Annapolis[/b], [b]Better Luck Tomorrow[/b]), the director of the previous film in the franchise, [b]The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift[/b], back as director, Diesel and Walker are all set for their comebacks (or so they hope).More |  | Superlative Historical Drama A remarkably self-assured feature film debut by award-winning, multimedia artist Steve McQueen [b]Hunger[/b] explores, often in devastating detail, the events leading up to and around the 1981 hunger strike conducted by members of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) to both protest conditions at the notorious Maze Prison in Belfast, Ireland, and fight for the “political prisoner” status denied them by the British government.More |  | Slight Satire Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars.
Written and directed by Sean McGinly, [b]The Great Buck Howard[/b], is a satirical show business comedy loosely based on McGinly’s experiences as the road manager to the Amazing Kreskin, a once-famous, still-active mentalist. Featuring a likeable, if passive, central performance by Colin Hanks and an eccentric performance by the eccentric John Malkovich, [b]The Great Buck Howard[/b] makes for light entertainment, enjoyable enough during its running time, but forgettable minutes after the end credits roll.More |  | An Auspicious Filmmaking Debut Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.
Writer-director Cary Fukunaga’s ([b]Victoria para chino[/b]) feature-length filmmaking debut, [b]Sin Nombre[/b] (“Without a name” or “Nameless”), arrives in movie theaters this weekend with high, perhaps impossibly high expectations. The film, one-part crime drama and one-part immigration drama, won the Directing Award and the Excellence in Cinematography Award only two months ago at the Sundance Film Festival.More |  | A Solid Historical Suspense-Thriller Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.
On July 20, 1944, the last of 15 assassination plots against Adolf Hitler was put into motion at his heavily fortified retreat outside Berlin, the Wolf’s Lair. A lesser-known World War II incident, organized by disaffected high-ranking German officers to end the war and save Germany from defeat at the hands of the Allies, is the subject for Bryan Singer’s ([b]Superman Returns[/b], [b]X-Men[/b], [b]The Usual Suspects[/b]) latest film, [b]Valkyrie[/b]. A historical suspense-thriller, the film also represents Tom Cruise’s latest effort to revive his flagging career.More |  | Festival Season Kicks Off The San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (SFIAAFF) returns to the Bay Area for its 27th year (March 12-22) with more than 100 films and 75 shorts and videos from Australia, Canada, China, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Iraq, Italy, Japan, the Philippines, South Korea, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Led by festival director Chi-hui Yang and assistant director Vicci Ho, the SFIAAFF’s programmers selected films both on artistic merit and contemporary relevance (i.e., the global economic crisis).More |  | Sex and a Material Girl in the City Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars.
It’s harder to imagine a film with worse timing than [b]Confessions of a Shopaholic[/b], with its "Sex and the City" obsession with high fashion, social and professional status, and its general obliviousness.More |  | ...And You Won’t Be Into This Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars.
Whatever this film's faults (and it has many), it is a “perfect” date movie for all but the most cynical of couples and, of course, out-of-relationship individuals (aka singles).More |  | Rapper Biopic Soars (Sometimes) Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars.
Even when he was alive, Biggie Smalls (aka Big Poppa, aka The Notorious B.I.G., birth name: Christopher George Latore Wallace) was bigger than life. Almost as wide as he was tall, Biggie Smalls was a man of huge appetites: appetites for sex, money, and fame. Smalls is the subject of [b]Notorious[/b], a biopic directed by George Tillman Jr. ([b]Soul Food[/b], the [b]Barbershop[/b] series) that follows Smalls' meteoric rise to hip-hop superstardom and his premature death at the age of 24, the victim of a still unsolved drive-by shooting in L.A. in 1997.More |  | Fighting Back Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.
The television ads and trailers for Edward Zwick’s ([b]Blood Diamond[/b], [b]The Last Samurai[/b], [b]Legends of the Fall[/b]) latest effort, [b]Defiance[/b], tell you bacically everything you need to know about the movie: an unkempt, Eastern European-accented, darkly brooding Daniel Craig ([b]Casino Royale[/b], [b]Munich[/b], [b]Layer Cake[/b]), exhorts his fellow Jewish survivors to step up and do everything necessary to survive. Cue quick cuts of explosions, bodies flying, gunfire, and Nazi troops. All, of course, filmed in the desaturated color scheme that has become de rigueur for Hollywood war films.More |
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