Richard Kelly’s creepily atmospheric thriller starts well and is suitably dark and weird throughout but it starts to unravel in the second half and becomes increasingly pretentious and annoying.

Directed by Richard Kelly and based on both a short story and a Twilight Zone episode by Richard Matheson (I Am Legend), The Box is set in 1976 Virginia and stars Cameron Diaz and James Marsden as Norma and Arthur Lewis, a strapped-for-cash couple with a teenaged son (Sam Oz Stone). Then a facially disfigured stranger (Frank Langella) turns up on their doorstep with a mysterious black box with a red button on it and tells them that if they push the button, they will earn $1 million but someone they don’t know will die as a result.
(more…)

Terry Gilliam’s latest film will delight and infuriate in equal measure; it’s messy, rambling, patchy and occasionally annoying, but it’s also visually stunning and superbly acted, with moments of magic that no other director could pull off.

Billed as A Film by Heath Ledger and Friends, The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is directed by Terry Gilliam and stars Christopher Plummer as Parnassus, an immortal travelling showman who runs a ramshackle magic act, assisted by his daughter Valentina (Lily Cole), assistant Anton (Andrew Garfield) and dwarf Percy (Verne Troyer). Parnassus’ immortality is due to a deal he’s made with the devil, Mr Nick (Tom Waits) and as Valentina nears her 16th birthday, Mr Nick reminds Parnassus that her soul will soon belong to him.
(more…)

In this cleverly sculpted, surprisingly adult-friendly kids’ film, the hulking, muscled mass of Dwayne Johnson (Scorpion King, Welcome to the Jungle) is cast as a violent, over-the-hill hockey player who is made to pay for his tooth-breaking ways on the rink by becoming a tooth fairy.

It’s one of those reliable old cast-against-type comic turns that sends the character on a funny, predictable journey of sobering revelation.
(more…)

If there were ever a milieu made for Jim Sheridan, a military town amid the current war in Iraq is it. Throughout his prestigious career, in movies as different as In the Name of the Father and In America, the Irish filmmaker has specialized in portraits of families under siege and the male psychology pushed to the brink.

In Brothers, the David Benioff scripted remake of the 2004 Susanne Bier film, the two elements blend with such natural precision it’s a wonder Sheridan hadn’t set out to chronicle a small sliver of the American home front before.
(more…)

If you can get past its rather unpleasant, reactionary message, this is a slickly made, trashily entertaining and ridiculously implausible thriller that’s more fun than it has any right to be.

Directed by F. Gary Gray, Law Abiding Citizen stars Gerard Butler as Clyde, whose idyllic life is brutally shattered when two thugs rape and murder his wife and daughter. When his lawyer, Nick (Jamie Foxx), accepts a plea bargain that lets one of the killers walk free after three years, Clyde swears revenge on both the killers and the entire legal system.
(more…)