There’s a limited numbers of people in Hollywood who can take a cautionary tale about the United States’ efforts to aid Afghanistan during the Russian occupation and turn it into a feel-good comedy. Two such people are Mike Nichols and Aaron Sorkin, whose Charlie Wilson’s War, a story of back-channel political dealings, pairs a playboy congressman and an out-of-favor CIA agent to battle for ideals. And only in Washington, D.C., can such a story be so absurd and still be partially true.

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There are countless challenges in adapting a stage musical for presentation on film: capturing huge choral numbers in a medium traditionally reliant on close-ups, balancing the fantasy of expression through song with a more closely guarded check of reality, and finding the right mix of singers and actors are just a few. But when you consider the work of Stephen Sondheim, one of the darkest and most complicated writers Broadway has ever seen, the challenges grow exponentially. In Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, director Tim Burton has taken perhaps Sondheim’s best work and made of it a textbook for translating Broadway to Hollywood.

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Since the dawn of computer-animated feature films more than a decade ago, the Walt Disney Corporation has been a big, juicy target for upstart animation studios looking to eschew the tradition of fairytale cartoons. No irony is lost on the fact that it was Disney’s partnership with the fledgling Pixar group that launched such films into the stratosphere. It seems oddly appropriate, then, that Disney’s latest foray into film amination, the charming Enchanted, perfects the send-up to their own tried and true stories.

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One of the most dangerous games a movie studio can play with its consumers is the game of expectations. Too often, studios overhype films that are undeserving of a cent of marketing. Other times, there’s so little buzz surrounding a film that it catches viewers by surprise. Entering into the latter camp is director Jason Reitman’s second offering, the sweetly sardonic Juno. Delivering everything its hype promised and still keeping a few tricks up its sleeve, this candid but sly comedy is one of the year’s most satisfying experiences.

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For as head-scratchingly complex as No Country for Old Men is – it’s a classic Coen brothers film, for sure – it’s also remarkably simple, much like the western Texas landscape that in which it resides. Utilizing a straightforward narrative triangle based on its three focal characters and basing the action on the primal drive of a chase movie, the film forms a foundation so strong that it affords the Coens the opportunity to add their trademark flourishes. Add in a trio of top-level performances and you have a landmark in a pair of writing and directing résumés with few blemishes in the first place.

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Note: This DVD review was originally published on Blogcritics.org.

Since the debut of Toy Story more than a decade ago, few tunes have become as familiar as the song of praise so often directed toward the formidable team known as Disney/Pixar, and for good reason. Few studios have been as consistently innovative, in animation and in storytelling, as this now legendary pairing. Pixar seems to bring a sweet simplicity to things that should be extraordinarily difficult, and it’s this ease of execution that makes their movies instant classics.

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Note: I spent the last few days in Syracuse, N.Y., with only a little access to Internet. These are the posts that were meant to run on the days in the timestamps.

Since the disappearance of Seinfeld from the network airwaves, fresh, funny, simply silly material has been in short supply (though a few shows have wisely stockpiled the precious jokes). That childish sense of humor has been largely taken over by movies; specifically, the semiannual offerings of Pixar and Dreamworks. Bee Movie, the latest offering by the latter, fully embraces the impish ethos. Not surprisingly, it comes from Seinfeld himself. And while it can’t soar to Pixar’s heights, Bee Movie hovers along rather nicely.

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Who’s more unrealistic: Michael Scott, the charmingly inept, stuffed shirt of a boss at the head of the Scranton branch of Dunder Mifflin in NBC’s The Office or Dan Burns, the advice columnist who is remarkably emotionally immature in Dan in Real Life? More importantly, for which role should Steve Carell be more applauded? In the former, he consistently raises the bar from within a uniformly talented cast and crew. In the latter, he shows a strong dramatic muscle and manages to stand out in a film with a weak script and a bunch of actors going through the motions.

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As summer creeps steadily into autumn, enjoyable moviegoing experiences seem to fall away even more quickly than the browning leaves in my back yard. In a way, that’s why I haven’t been all that active posting lately (and I promise, I’ll keep trying to remedy that inertia). There’s little impetus to go to the theatre, and some movies I see don’t wind up warranting review (e.g. Good Luck Chuck, * 1/2). Thank goodness, then, for Wes Anderson, purveyor of fine art house cinema, whose meticulously constructed style of filmmaking returns with The Darjeeling Limited.

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It’s rare that you walk into a new musical already singing its songs. But what those songs are part of the framework of pop music, it’s almost expected. Herein lies the challenge for Across the Universe, a film that leans heavily on the audience’s adoration of the Beatles and nostalgia for the era that produced them. It’s an ambitious effort, roping together more than 30 of the Fab Four’s best, and more often than not, it successfully translates the songs it chooses.

The story focuses on Jude (Jim Sturgess), a Liverpool native who crosses the pond to find his American father and to lift himself out of the doldrums of his everyday in England. Continue Reading »