Blu-ray Movie Reviews

From the time it was first announced all the way through the previews, reviewers and the general public alike roundly derided the idea of another Rocky movie. Stallone, now 60, still boxing on-screen?

What a fun surprise this turned out to be! <I>Night at the Museum</I> stars Ben Stiller as Larry, a wannabe entreprenuer who just can't make it happen for himself. His ex-wife is remarried, and Larry's son Nick now wants to be a straight business man like his step-Dad. Seeking to impress Nick that he's a reliable Dad, Larry grabs a job as the night watchman at the Museum of Natural History. There's something immediately off about the orientation given to Larry by the outgoing trio of watchmen (led by Dick Van Dyke in an inspired turn), not to mention the oddly thick packet of hand written job instructions they hand him.

Thanks to two remarkable films, I've learned more about penguins in the past few weeks than I ever thought I needed to know. The first, <I>March of the Penguins</I> was a surprising hit when it played theatrically in 2005, winning an Oscar that year as the best documentary feature. The second, <I>Happy Feet</I> (review following), won an Oscar as the best animated feature of 2006.

I'm not sure how you write a screenplay designed to show the origins if the CIA and its operations up to and including the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961. But I'm reasonably certain that no one in Hollywood has an inside track to the straight story, despite research into volumes full of speculation and unverifiable leaks. The true history of the CIA and the details of its operation are not exactly found in the public library or on the Internet, and for good reasons.

The Interpreter is a "diplomatic thriller," if such a thing is possible. And, having been a diplomatic correspondent for several years, I can tell you, the thrills, on the rare occasions they can be found, are wholly intellectual. And so it is with this movie. It offers a long, long windup to a fairly tame denouement.

All the clichs are in place. New coach with a checkered past and something to prove. Down-on-its-luck team. Hostile, meddling townsfolk. The big game. You've seen it all before.

Another box-office disappointment here, but its failure was undeserved. This is a delightful romantic comedy. While the title appears to reveal all you need to know about the subject, the R-rating here is very soft. Apart from a few minutes near the beginning, this more of a costume farce than a sex-romp. Perhaps that's why it failed in theaters; it wasn't what the audience expected.