This is Chris's Movie Reviews Page

Current Reviews:

***½ Avatar (2009)
Avatar is a beautiful, stunning film. It is an engrossing epic, a virtuoso action flick, a technical marvel. It is full of wonder and thrills and heartaches and triumphs. It is an incredible movie. If only someone other than James Cameron had written the dialogue. [Full Review]

***½ Sherlock Holmes (2009)
All too often Sherlock Holmes is portrayed as a stuffy, tweedy, dry intellectual, full of calm and cool reason, using only the power of his brain to solve dastardly crimes. But that portrayal has always seemed, well, boring to me. There is nothing boring about Robert Downey Jr. and Guy Ritchie's vision of the famous detective. This brave new Sherlock Holmes is quite a departure from previous film versions of the character, and at the same time extremely reverent to the original stories. And above all else, this one is FUN. [Full Review]

***½ Whip It (2009)
This really is a joy of a movie. It's a fun little flick about girls beating up on each other, and how that toughness makes them grow, but it has a genuine sweetness that isn't cloying, and an intelligence that is real and clever. [Full Review]

** Surrogates (2009)
It has all the makings of a fun time: a sci-fi premise, Bruce Willis, and a dastardly mystery involving the fate of the whole world. But it never really takes off. It's all just kinda there. Just kinda, y'know, "Meh." [Full Review]

*** Where the Wild Things Are (2009)
One adjective always comes to mind when I think about Spike Jonze's adaptation of Where the Wild Things Are: Thoughtful. This is a very thoughtful film. [Full Review]

*** Funny People (2009)
If you have a comedy with the word "funny" in the title then it sure as hell had better actually be funny, or else you're setting yourself up for a nice, hubris-induced fall. Fortunately, there is quite a lot of funny stuff in Judd Apatow's new movie, although not perhaps as much as you might expect coming from him. [Full Review]

***½ Moon (2009)
Moon is a great science fiction movie that I thoroughly enjoyed and will try very, very, very hard to review without including any spoilers. But even saying that much lets you know that there is something to spoil. Hmmm... this is going to be difficult. [Full Review]

** Ponyo (2009)
Ponyo is a beautiful film that haunted and disturbed me at a very profound level. It is one of the more frightening horror films I've seen in ages due in good part to the fact that it's aimed at children. Yes, that's right; Miyazaki made a horror movie for children. [Full Review]

***½ I Love You, Man (2009)
I really think this movie is a hoot, and I might enjoy it far more than some people because it is a very personal film for me. You see, in this movie Paul Rudd basically plays a (slightly) more awkward me. [Full Review]

***½ Coraline (2009)
I liked this movie more than a lot of people I know. It has its problems, I'll freely admit—problems with pacing, structure, and voice acting. But it still managed to completely suck me into its beautiful, fantastical world. I saw it twice and paid the exorbitant 3D fee both times, so that should tell you something. [Full Review]