Watching Funny Games is pure torture. It’s not that the film is bad, mind you. Far from it. Funny Games is a work of unmitigated genius. But it is, most certainly, not for the faint of heart. Deliberately intended to disturb and provoke its audience, Funny Games works so well that it is, at times, […]

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Director Stephen Chow, dubbed the Asian King of Comedy, has made a career out of effects-heavy films about losers with hearts of gold (Shaolin Soccer, Kung Fu Hustle). For American audiences, Chow’s films exist in a sort of neutral zone — half enchanting, half preposterous. There is no denying he’s an acquired taste, but surrendering […]

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Every once in a great while a film comes along that reminds you of the zany screwball comedies of yesteryear and the witty, rat-tat-tat dialogue of a long-abandoned way of writing. Miss Pettigrew Lives For a Day is such a movie, a film of sparkling intelligence and incandescent humor that feels as if it was […]

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Director Roland Emmerich (Independence Day, The Day After Tomorrow) is the ultimate spectacular-over-substance filmmaker. He actually makes Michael Bay look like Stanley Kubrick by comparison. If Emmerich and his screenwriters had paid even a smidgen as much attention to their story on the new 10,000 B.C. as they did the visual effects, they might have […]

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Truth, it has been said, is stranger than fiction. The Bank Job, inspired by the infamous 1971 robbery of Lloyds Bank in London, is built on just that paradox. You just can’t make this sort of stuff up. Generally riveting, this taut film thrives within the unlikeliest of intersections — high-level corruption, sexual scandal, racial […]

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This is an abridged version of a review I wrote for Christianity Today Movies. To read the rest of this review, click here.
Will Ferrell is no stranger to sports movies. He was a hyper-competitive youth soccer coach in Kicking and Screaming, then sped to box-office victory in the NASCAR comedy Talladega Nights, and pirouetted to […]

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