- Hop
The mere existence of a movie like Hop is depressing enough. That family audiences have embraced it, even amid a paucity of alternatives, is far worse. “An act of aggression against childhood” is how one critic aptly described this movie. If so, family audiences are tragically codependent. Hop is the kind of movie that makes helpless critics wish we could stage an intervention. Parents! It doesn’t have to come to this!- Steven D. Greydanus
- Insidious
"Insidious" is an affectionate visit to the Haunted House Movie, a genre that seems classic in contrast to Queasy-Cam gorefests. It depends on characters, atmosphere, sneaky happenings and mounting dread. This one is not terrifically good, but moviegoers will get what they're expecting. It's a new collaboration between director James Wan and writer Leigh Whannell, who launched the "Saw" franchise.
-Roger Ebert
- Source Code
Source Code, director Duncan Jones’s second feature film, is patently bigger, faster, slicker and more mainstream than his impressive debut film Moon, but it’s a work of similar intelligence, themes and interests. Both films center on a solitary grunt who’s a cog in a much larger machine — an isolated man squirreled away in a cold, metallic space, unable to contact his loved ones, unsure exactly what’s going on, caught up in the seemingly impossible circumstances of a mission he doesn’t entirely understand. Both films raise questions of identity, memory, and human dignity in dehumanizing systems.
- Steven D. Greydanus
"Source Code" is an ingenious thriller that comes billed as science fiction, although its science is preposterous. Does that matter, as long as everyone treats it with the greatest urgency? After all, space travel beyond the solar system is preposterous, and yet we couldn't do without "Star Trek." The "science" in this case is used to prop up an appealing story of a man who tries to change the past.
- Roger Ebert
- Super
"Super" is being sold as a comedy, but I doubt it will play that way. It begins as the portrait of a lovable loser named Frank, and as it ends, we're pretty sure he's an insane ruthless killer. That's not a joke. Maybe writer-director James Gunn intended it as a joke, but after the camera lingers on the young heroine with a third of her face blown off, it's hard to laugh.- Roger Ebert
April 8
- Arthur
"Arthur” is a fairly close remake of the great 1981 Dudley Moore movie, with pleasures of its own. It shares some of the same strengths and virtues, and if it lacks Dudley Moore as Arthur and John Gielgud playing his butler Hobson, well, it has Russell Brand and Helen Mirren playing his nanny Hobson. That's not a tradeoff, but it's a good try.- Roger Ebert
- Born to be Wild (IMAX)
Born to Be Wild is as much a celebration of the better side of human nature as of the natural world. .-Steven D. Greydanus
- Hanna
Hanna becomes a dragon of a film, mired in bloodshed and brutality. And even Mr. Chesterton would have to admit that it's hard to beat a dragon when you live inside its belly.- Plugged in On Line Reviews
- Soul Surfer
The real Bethany Hamilton says that she and her family passed on a number of dubious proposals to bring her story to the screen before finally finding a screenplay worth reading. I believe it. It’s easy to imagine Bethany’s story as a mediocre teen empowerment tale in the spirit of, say, Raise Your Voice (from the same director, Sean McNamara), or else a didactic Fireproof-style movie of interest only to believers. Like a surfer waiting for the right wave, Bethany waited for Soul Surfer, and the ride is worth it.- Steven D. Greydanus
- Your Highness
"Your Highness" is a juvenile excrescence that feels like the work of 11-year-old boys in love with dungeons, dragons, warrior women, pot, boobs and four-letter words.- Roger Ebert
April 15
- Atlas Shrugged Part I
There are however people who take Ayn Rand even more seriously than comic-book fans take "Watchmen." I expect to receive learned and sarcastic lectures on the pathetic failings of my review.
And now I am faced with this movie, the most anticlimactic non-event since Geraldo Rivera broke into Al Capone’s vault. -Roger Ebert
Robert Redford’s film is about a little-known but fascinating and sobering chapter in American history. Credibly researched by screenwriter James Solomon and beautifully filmed by Newton Thomas Sigel (The Usual Suspects, Three Kings, Valkryie), it’s a rare historical drama that credibly captures a sense of another era while allowing its characters to breathe and talk and argue like men and women living in the present tense. No one in The Conspirator seems aware that they inhabit a period piece.-Steven D. Greydanus
- Rio
One of the best sequences is a soaring hang-glider ride over the city that includes a spectacular 360-degree pan around Christ the Redeemer. In 3-D, Christ’s outstretched arms swing right out into the theater, as if to embrace the world. .-Steven D. Greydanus
- Scream 4
All through the movie, "Scre4m" lets us know that it knows exactly what it's up to — and then goes right ahead and gets up to it. The premise is that a psychopath has returned to the town of Woodsboro, which has already seen so many fatal slashings, you question why anyone still lives there, let alone watches horror movies. Does anyone — anyone — watch a movie like this as if it's in any way depicting reality? I dunno. "Scre4m" provides exactly what its audience will expect: one victim after another being slashed, skewered, stabbed, gutted and sliced, with everyone in on the joke. Maybe that's your idea of a good time. –Roger Ebert
April 22
- African Cats
African Cats succeeds despite its narrative weakness. It features gorgeous close-ups of gazelles, ostriches, hippos, rhinoceroses, crocodiles, water buffalo, wildebeests, hyenas, elephants, zebras, and oodles of birds, picking up their various and sundry noises. The images and sounds are worth the price of the ticket alone. =Christianity Today Movies
- Legend of the Fist: The Return of Chen Zhen (limited)
Seven years after the apparent death of Chen Zhen, who was shot after discovering who was responsible for his teacher's death (Huo Yuanjia) in Japanese-occupied Shanghai. A mysterious stranger arrives from overseas and befriends a local mafia boss. That man is a disguised Chen Zhen, who intends to infiltrate the mob when they form an alliance with the Japanese. Disguising himself as a caped fighter by night, Chen intends to take out everyone involved as well as get his hands on an assassination list prepared by the Japanese. Written by Kokken Tor
- Mia and the Magoo (NY; LA release: May 6)
One night Mia has a premonition. So after saying a few words of parting at her mother's grave, she sets out on a journey across mountains and jungles to search for her father, who is trapped in a landslide at a remote construction site. -IMDB
- POM Wonderful Presents The Greatest Movie Ever Sold (limited)
Morgan Spurlock's new documentary, "The Greatest Movie Ever Sold," finances itself by its own bootstraps. It is a movie about making a movie paid for by product placements. In fact, its official title is "POM Wonderful Presents the Greatest Movie Ever Sold," after the pomegranate juice that is, I now know, 100 percent pomegranate juice — unlike Minute Maid's, which is mostly apple and grape juice, with pomegranate finishing under 2 percent.- Roger Ebert
- Stake Land (limited)
Zombies are a great convenience. They provide villains who are colorful and frightening, require no dialogue, motivation or explanation, and yet function efficiently as a negation of all that is good. Just the very word "zombie" can persuade people to buy tickets for a movie, and "sex" hasn't done that in years.-Roger Ebert
- Tyler Perry's Madea's Big Happy Family
Shirley has important news for her family, but she has five grown children with different lifestyles and finds it difficult to get them and the kids all together. So in steps Madea, the Matriarch General, to put the family's life in perspective with a hilarious twist on financial difficulties, drugs and, most important, family secrets. The next generation has a lot to learn. In her own way, Madea expresses how deliverance won't change you to be someone else, but will allow you to be who you really are. Written by Anonymous (IMDB)
- Water for Elephants
There's something endearingly old-fashioned about a love story involving a beautiful bareback rider and a kid who runs off to join the circus. This is good sound family entertainment, a safe PG-13 but not a dumb one, and it's a refreshing interlude before we hurtle into the summer blockbuster season. – Roger Ebert
April 29
- 13 Assassins (limited)
A group of assassins come together for a suicide mission to kill an evil lord.
- Dylan Dog: Dead of Night
The adventures of supernatural private eye, Dylan Dog, who seeks out the monsters of the Louisiana bayou in his signature red shirt, black jacket, and blue jeans.
- Exporting Raymond (limited)
A documentary on Phil Rosenthal's experiences during the making of "Voroniny," the Russian-language version of "Everybody Loves Raymond".
- Cave of Forgotten Dreams (limited)
Herzog filmed in 3-D, to better convey how the paintings follow and exploit the natural contours of the ancient walls. The process also helps him suggest how the humans of the upper Paleolithic Era might have seen the paintings themselves, in the flickering light of their torches.- Roger Ebert
- Fast Five (conventional theaters and IMAX)
What it all comes down to is a skillfully assembled 130 minutes at the movies, with actors capable of doing absurd things with straight faces, and action sequences that toy idly with the laws of physics. –Roger Ebert
But the film is essentially saying that instead of paying the price for reckless, illegal activity, all you have to do is engage in more of the same, look smooth while you do it, then cash out to beat the system completely. Absolutely no one who's even remotely interested in this film's fast cars and fearless action is really thinking about what that message does to our worldviews. Which is exactly why I'm bringing it up.- Plugged In On LIne
- Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil (3D/2D theaters)
Like lightning, chuckle-worthy tales don't always strike in the same place twice. The chaotic, overstuffed sequel is a much more hit-or-miss affair, with creative whodunit twists and turns having been replaced with a whole lot of flailing fairy tale quips tossed up on the screen in hopes that something might stick and illicit a grin or two.- Plugged In Online
- Prom
Over the last few decades, the entertainment industry has been preaching that prom is about dirty dancing and filthy behavior—drugs and drinking and losing one's virginity. And Prom is, in many ways, a repudiation of that. For all its silly melodrama and clichés, it tells its audience that prom isn't about sex: It's about love and romance and fun and friends. (Kissing, too) It's about being yourself, or even finding yourself. It's about looking back and looking forward. It's about magic—the sort of magic that's around us every day but we sometimes forget to notice unless we're in formalwear. If teens draw inferences from films as to how prom should be, I'd far rather they draw those inferences from movies like this than, say, Carrie. – Plugged In Online
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