‘Hotel for Dogs’ movie review: Emma Roberts, Don Cheadle in charming family film
Hotel for Dogs smartly gives its wonderful canine actors as much (or more) screen time as its often-flat human cast
April 15, 2009
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Hotel for Dogs smartly gives its wonderful canine actors as much (or more) screen time as its often-flat human cast
Defiance is a compelling portrait of a community of Jews struggling to survive as a guerrilla partisan group in Belorussian forests in 1941
Gran Torino is a somewhat simplistic film content to tell its own isolated story rather than reaching for something greater
Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky isn’t as lightweight as the title would indicate
There are a lot of good things about The Visitor, but one of the best may be the emergence of Jenkins
Toys in the Attic is a wonderful little children’s picture that’s plenty of fun for adults (especially animation buffs) to boot
A romantic comedy that provides neither romance nor comedy, Gary Winick’s Bride Wars is what many will call a “chick flick”
“New Model. Original Parts.” A nice way of saying Justin Lin’s Fast and Furious is more of the same
The Unborn is yet another unwatchable Exorcist variation, this time with a Jewish twist: the evil spirit is a dybbuk
Sex Drive is the best a film like this can get, with a real affection for its characters
Stuart Townsend’s Battle in Seattle is a surprisingly effective little piece of propaganda
He’s Just Not That Into you is surprisingly watchable and refreshingly inoffensive
Marley & Me features too little Marley and too much Me, in this case Owen Wilson, standing in for the author
John Patrick Shanley’s Doubt is thought-provoking and refreshingly ambiguous
Watchmen painstakingly lays it all out on the screen, daring viewers to accept or reject it on sight
The Pink Panther 2 is an improvement over the much-despised 2006 movie, with some talented players and clever dialogue
The Duchess evokes a nice 17th Century feel but fails to evoke much on the dramatic scale
Slumdog Millionaire is a stylized, energetic, crowd-pleasing picture that almost everyone can enjoy
Bolt is Disney’s best non-Pixar animated film in quite some time
An amiable little family-friendly sci-fi adventure, director Gil Kenan’s City of Ember is reasonably fun and fast-paced
Transporter 3 jettisons the goofy, over-the-top fun of its predecessors in favor of a more serious Bourne-lite ride
Awful in every respect, Frank Miller’s The Spirit is a must-see for bad movie lovers everywhere
Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon fleshes out the famous 1977 TV interview between British talk-show host David Frost and former US president Richard Nixon
Milk certainly isn’t sour, though the traditional Hollywood biopic material is often underwhelming