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 | God Doesn’t Live Here Anymore Rating: 2 out of 5 stars.
There’s no shortage of pain in [b]The Answer Man[/b], the opening-night selection at last April’s Sonoma Film Festival. Nearly everyone in it seems paralyzed by hopelessness, fear of rejection and emotional numbness. They’re looking for a savior, and in one famously reclusive author -- think J.D. Salinger, if he’d written a bestselling spiritual guide instead of [b]Catcher in the Rye[/b] -- they think they’ve found him.More |  | You’re Lost, Little Girl Somebody was bound to be offended. As has been widely reported, adoption advocates plan to boycott Jaume Collet-Serra’s [b]Orphan[/b], which tells the story of a couple who lose their baby and arrange an adoption that turns into a nightmare. Sensitive to such protests, Warner Brothers edited a line out of the movie’s trailer in which the adoptee, nine-year-old Esther (Isabelle Fuhrman, formerly a “Tonight Show” extra), questions any parents’ ability to love an adopted child as much as their own.More |  | Indie 500 Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars.
“This is the story of boy meets girl.” So begins the bittersweet odyssey of greeting-card writer Tom Hansen, the love-starved twenty-something in [b](500) Days of Summer[/b] who harbors dreams of becoming an architect and romancing puckish co-worker Summer Finn.More |  | From Japan, a New Breed of Vampire Slayer Rises Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.
Watching the opening credit card of [b]Blood: The Last Vampire[/b], I couldn’t help but smile. Japan, we are told, has been overtaken by demons masked in human form, and there is but one warrior alive capable of defeating their leader, the evil Onigen. She is Saya, daughter of the legendary vampire slayer Kiyomasa, and she is humanity’s last best hope for survival.More |  | Killers on the Road Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars.
Let the debate rage on. There are those who will argue, without any serious objection from me, that Jennifer Lynch’s [b]Surveillance[/b] is a sadistic bit of pulp fiction that turns on a third-act twist almost too fantastical to stomach. And there are those who will laud it as a taut, twisted crime procedural that veers into some seriously dark territory for a finale that stays with you long after the lights have gone up.More |  | Supermarket Confidential Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars.
One of the year’s most important films, [b]Food, Inc.[/b] traces the industrial food revolution from its mid-20th century beginnings, when new, profoundly influential restaurant chains like McDonalds introduced the factory-inspired concept of line cooking in their kitchens, to the present, when supermarkets are routinely stocked with genetically engineered meats and vegetables.More |  | One Hell of a Return Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars.
Ah, those gypsies and their mystical curses. What will they think of next? Nothing good, I suspect. Ancient curses and supernatural spells have long given filmmakers license to indulge their most exotic fantasies, inspiring scenarios so deliriously macabre they seem more surreal than shocking. And perhaps no American director has proved more adept at playing on our fascination with the occult than Sam Raimi.More |  | It’s Not Personal - It’s Business Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars.
There is nothing warm, fuzzy or even erotic about Steven Soderbergh’s [b]The Girlfriend Experience[/b], a movie bound to be remembered as much for its leading lady’s other on-screen exploits -- she’s world-famous porn star Sasha Grey -- as for its clinical depiction of a high-priced Manhattan escort as a passionless pro.More |  | Machines Dehumanize [b]Terminator Salvation[/b] holds the rare distinction of being both a prequel and a sequel, set 34 years after James Cameron’s 1984 original, whose backstory it seeks to explain, and picking up more or less where Jonathan Mostow’s underappreciated [b]Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines[/b] left off.More |  | A Bore of Biblical Proportions Rating: 2 out of 5 stars.
Rarely before has wordy exposition been employed more excessively and to lesser effect than in [b]Angel & Demons[/b], Ron Howard’s middling follow-up to [b]The Da Vinci Code[/b]. For those craving action and suspense, there’s little to be found here, despite a whirlwind denouement that sees our hero, Harvard professor and renowned symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks), racing around Rome in search of an Illuminati killer.More |
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