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 | Enterprise Gets a New Crew for a Familiar Ride Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.
If J.J. Abrams aimed to boldly go where no man has gone before with [b]Star Trek[/b], his long-anticipated franchise reboot that traces Capt. James T. Kirk’s roots back to his wildly undisciplined youth, give him some credit. While there’s no denying his contribution to the cult phenomenon dreamed up by Gene Roddenberry is cleverly executed, this latest [b]Star Trek[/b] sometimes feels more like a winking homage than a new beginning.More |  | Man on the Run Rating: 3 out of 5 stars.
Aliens have a long, grisly history of invading our planet, bent on eradicating our species and denuding our land of its life-giving resources. They tried it in 1953’s [b]War of the Worlds[/b], and they tried again in this spring’s [b]Monsters vs. Aliens[/b]. The twist in Aristomenis Tsirbas’ [b]Battle for Terra[/b], an animated 3-D adventure not produced by either DreamWorks or Pixar, is brilliantly simple: this time, we’re the aliens.More |  | The Little Garden That Could (or Not) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.
Scott Hamilton Kennedy’s Oscar-nominated follow-up to 2002’s [b]OT: Our Town[/b], his documentary about a Compton high school attempting to stage its first play in over 20 years, chronicles a South Central Los Angeles farming community’s struggle to save its land from a millionaire developer. The stage is set for a power struggle rife with moral outrage, and [b]The Garden[/b] delivers that in spades, but Kennedy’s second effort is as much a compelling, seamlessly crafted underdog tale as a revealing glimpse behind the curtain of big-city politics.More |  | Boy Meets Girl, Boy Uses Girl, Boy Makes Amends Rating: 2 out of 5 stars.
There is an audience for Matthew McConaughey’s romantic comedies -- I know this because Hollywood keeps making them -- but I am not a part of it. I have enjoyed him as a rugged, Indiana Jones-style adventurer in [b]Sahara[/b], and as a fast-talking agent with a conscience in last year’s [b]Tropic Thunder[/b]. But even his low-key charisma and pearly white smile couldn’t redeem cynical exercises like [b]Fool’s Gold[/b]or [b]How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days[/b].More |  | Dullness on the Edge of Town Rating: 2 out of 5 stars.
For all the youthful hedonism and reckless behavior on display in Rawson Marshall Thurber’s [b]Mysteries of Pittsburgh[/b], his strangely stillborn adaptation of Michael Chabon’s first novel, there’s something sorely missing -- a sense of danger, perhaps, or a hint of voyeuristic intrigue. All the necessary ingredients are in place -- the sex, the drugs, even a hardened crime boss played with requisite menace by a leathery Nick Nolte, but they seem positively impotent in a coming-of-age tale wrought with painfully familiar melodrama.More |  | A Fashionista’s Farewell Who is Valentino Garavani? To those who know fashion, the answer is obvious: He is the legendary Italian designer behind the Valentino line of hand-stitched dresses favored by two generations of the celebrity elite, from Jackie Onassis to Jennifer Lopez. Yet, as Matt Tyrnauer’s absorbing new documentary suggests, Valentino, who will turn 77 in May, is hardly sated by his 45-year reign at the forefront of his industry. He is restless, perpetually dissatisfied and capable of finding even his greatest successes inadequate.More |  | Moody Blues and Midsummer’s Romance Those expecting another hormonally charged, cheerfully outlandish sex comedy from [b]Superbad[/b] director Greg Mottola may be surprised to discover that [b]Adventureland[/b], despite a deliberately misleading ad campaign, is nothing of the sort. It is a far more grounded, even somber affair, populated by thoughtful, unaffected characters whose misadventures ring invariably true. It is also one of the year’s best films.More |  | B-Movie Bouillabaisse When DreamWorks Animation chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg hit the road recently to show off the groundbreaking 3-D technology used to make [b]Monsters vs. Aliens[/b], he advocated nothing less than a revolution – a full-scale reinvention of the moviegoing experience intended to lure people back to theaters with the promise of a visually unprecedented communal experience. His company’s first foray into 3-D delivers just that in the form of a sly homage to ’50s B-movies like [b]Attack of the 50 Foot Woman[/b] and [b]The Blob[/b].More |  | For a Freak and a Geek, True Romance Blossoms Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.
Judd Apatow deserves plenty of credit for his contributions to comedy -- among them, TV’s late, lamented “Freaks and Geeks,” [b]The 40-Year-Old Virgin[/b] and the discovery of Seth Rogen -- but one of his masterstrokes has been overlooked until now: the pairing of Paul Rudd and former “Freak” Jason Segel.More |  | Crimson Tie Rating: 4 out of 5 stars.
One can be forgiven for not counting The Game -- the annual college football contest between the Harvard Crimson and the Yale Bulldogs -- among 1968’s most memorable events. During a year that witnessed the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the election of Richard Nixon and the escalation of Vietnam War protests, even one of the most exciting finishes in sports history -- Harvard, an apparently hopeless underdog against undefeated Yale, scored an unthinkable 16 points in the final 42 seconds to earn the now-famous tie -- might understandably be overlooked.More |
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