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BRETT MICHEL

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Review: A Thousand Words

The latest opus from auteur Brian Robbins
"What happens when all the leaves fall off?" celebrity guru Dr. Sinja (Cliff Curtis) asks Jack McCall (Eddie Murphy) after a Bodhi tree has magically sprouted in Jack's backyard.

By: BRETT MICHEL | March 14, 2012

Review: Tim & Eric's Billion Dollar Movie

Adult Swim 's cult comedy duo
It's standard sitcom stuff, and if homeopathic remedies by way of coprophilia aren't your idea of comedy, you'd best steer clear of this shit.

By: BRETT MICHEL | February 28, 2012

Review: Tyler Perry's Good Deeds

Perry's latest melodrama
Tyler Perry is no Douglas Sirk. In his latest melodrama, his uptight exec, San Francisco software company CEO Wesley Deeds, is no Madea, either. Hell, Deeds doesn't even know who he is himself.

By: BRETT MICHEL | February 28, 2012

Review: Bullhead

Michael R. Roskam's debut feature
What this cattle farmer at the center of talented writer/director Michael R. Roskam's debut feature – Belgium's foreign-language Oscar nominee – lacks, he tries to make up for with steroids.

By: BRETT MICHEL | February 22, 2012

Review: This Means War

Spy vs. Spy territory
What promises to be a modern Jules and Jim (until you realize it's directed by a 43-year-old who calls himself "McG") quickly devolves into Spy vs. Spy territory, only with incompetently staged and edited action and little of that ol' Mad magazine zing.

By: BRETT MICHEL | February 16, 2012

Review: The Viral Factor

Run and gun
Made for a modest budget of $17 million — and feeling like it (who needs convincing explosions in an action movie?), Dante Lam's latest still gets the job done from a run-and-gun standpoint.

By: BRETT MICHEL | January 17, 2012

Review: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

An extremely exploitative and incredibly bad tale
Too soon? For Stephen Daldry's 9/11 drama, the right time is "never."

By: BRETT MICHEL | January 17, 2012

Review: The Divide

The horrors of human nature
Many a teleplay for The Twilight Zone threatened atomic Armageddon, and though Frontier(s) director Xavier Gens nukes New York in the opening shots of his latest thriller, he finds more inspiration in the horrors of human nature as seen in the old TV show's episode "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street."

By: BRETT MICHEL | January 10, 2012

Short Takes: Mission: Impossible -- Ghost Protocol

Review: Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol

Worthy of an IMAX screen
Impossible Missions Force agent Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) returns to the screen in dramatic fashion as new teammate Jane (Paula Patton) and the returning Benji (Simon Pegg) break him out of a Russian prison.

By: BRETT MICHEL | December 20, 2011

Review: We Bought A Zoo

Cameron Crowe's film version of Benjamin Mee's memoir
Matt Damon plays Mee, a journalist who decides that he and his daughter (a precocious Maggie Elizabeth Jones) and sullen teenage son (Colin Ford) need a new start after the death of his wife, so he spends his life savings on a house in the country.

By: BRETT MICHEL | December 20, 2011

Review: Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Guy Ritchie's return to the world of Sherlock Holmes
A new game is afoot in director Guy Ritchie's return to the world of Sherlock Holmes, but Robert Downey Jr.'s first outing as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's famed sleuth puts Shadows in the shade.

By: BRETT MICHEL | December 13, 2011

Review: The Sitter

Tale of a Robitussin-addicted man-child
David Gordon Green's latest finds him working in the scruffy comic realm that's shrouded his past couple of pictures in a pot-smoke haze.

By: BRETT MICHEL | December 13, 2011

Review: Jack and Jill

Easily Sandler's worst film
Director Dennis Dugan's second Adam Sandler vehicle of the year turns out to be even worse than Just Go with It.

By: BRETT MICHEL | November 15, 2011

Review: Janie Jones

A generic riff on the Crazy Heart template
Borrowing the name of a Clash song with which it has nothing in common, this generic riff on the Crazy Heart template by writer/director David M. Rosenthal ( Falling Up ) also cribs from Sofia Coppola's Somewhere .

By: BRETT MICHEL | November 08, 2011

Review: The Way

Martin Sheen embarks on a treacly sweet emotional hike
Charlie Sheen finally drops dead in The Way . Oh, my mistake — that might be the subject of a future documentary, and not of this treacly inspirational drama starring his 70-year-old dad, Martin.

By: BRETT MICHEL | October 04, 2011

Review: Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame

Exhilarating action
The latest action epic from Hong Kong new wave director Tsui Hark ( Once Upon a Time in China ) is a fact-based historical drama set in 689 AD, a period when "all hell was about to break loose," according to the dense narration that opens the film.

By: BRETT MICHEL | September 20, 2011

Review: Creature

Don't go swimmin' in the swamp at night, kids.
Why this dreck isn't debuting on SyFy is a mystery, but if Creature were made for the cable channel it might at least have an interesting title.

By: BRETT MICHEL | September 13, 2011

Review: Contagion

The Traffic of viral outbreak movies
For all the death and panic, this is a relatively quiet film.

By: BRETT MICHEL | September 13, 2011

Review: Warrior

Two brothers face off
It's brother against brother in this latest inspirational sports drama.

By: BRETT MICHEL | September 16, 2011

On the road with the director of Bellflower

Big wheels
If you didn't think it was possible to get some stares from jaded onlookers here in the streets of Boston, you haven't been strapped into Medusa, a heavily modified '72 Buick Skylark equipped with a massive silver engine sprouting through its hood, a PA system, external surveillance cameras and, oh, twin exhaust pipes that shoot diesel-burning flame 30 feet into the air.

By: BRETT MICHEL | September 06, 2011

Review: Attack the Block

London crawling
As a group of teenage thugs approach their intended victim (only their eyes are visible as they glare at the trainee nurse who's walking the cold south London streets alone on the way home from her shift), you'll be forgiven if you recall the recent wave of rioting in the UK.

By: BRETT MICHEL | August 23, 2011

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