There’s the usual seasonal calling for gore, off-colored humor, a cynical yet appreciative point of view, and as well, the ubiquitous cameo by a well-known, well-liked actor.
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Before we delve into the review portion of the evening, there are three things one must first know about Away We Go. First off, Maya Rudolph is charming and funny – a first-rate comedienne. Secondly, John Krasinski is wry and whimsical – bringing his quiet brand of humanity to the role. And third, and most importantly, Away We Go is none of these things – and even less. It’s a shame really, but it’s the truth. While Rudolph and Krasinski seem near perfect for the movie – and for each other, their chemistry a palpable, breathing entity all its own – the film which surrounds them is nothing more than a shameful, cloying, pandering work of optimistically jaded, pseudo-cinematic falderal. And that is my being generous.
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So, like, there are these Satanists, right? And they think this girl is, like, a virgin and stuff — but she’s like, totally not, okay? But then they sacrifice her anyway, so then she has, like, a demon dwelling in her reanimated body, which totally blows, and then she has to eat people to stay alive, which blows even more, am I right? Like, duh.
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Perhaps it’s my nostalgic, somewhat romantic idealizing of the 1970’s of my childhood. Perhaps it’s the simple, but quite head-tilting fact that I actually grew up in an amusement park (stop tilting your head, it’s true – my family worked the park and I had free reign to ride anything I wanted to). Whatever the case, I rather enjoyed this film about college bound kids working at a run-down amusement park in late seventies suburban Pittsburgh. In fact I liked it quite a bit more than I ever expected to. Director Greg Mottola’s previous film (his only previous film actually) was the Judd Apatow-produced Superbad, a lowbrow bro-com replete with the obnoxia more oft than not associated with the Apatow cinematic universe. I was not impressed, to say the least, and though I wasn’t completely put off by the film, its lack of artistic merit gave me woes of anxiety when walking into the screening for the boldly titled (but ironically so, I suppose) Adventureland. Well, those anxious woes were steadily alleviated throughout this smartly written and romantically wry little film. Boy, was my face red.
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Rupert and Kristin Isaacson had an idyllic romance.  According to Rupert, when he first saw Kristin he knew she would one day be his wife.  He took special measures to ensure this would happen when he asked her to marry him on their first meeting.  They married and settled in Texas, Rupert working in journalism and human rights, Kristin teaching psychology.  When their son Rowan was born 2002, everything had seemingly fallen into place for them as a family.

It all fell shockingly apart when Rowan was diagnosed with autism in 2004 and The Horse Boy is their story; a beautiful picture of a family’s love for their ailing son, a love that manifests itself in an unconventional journey across the world to heal the little boy’s raging autism.
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If you look closely at The Informant!, Steven Soderbergh’s new based-on-a-true-story comedy, you just might find a scene that doesn’t have a bust of Abraham Lincoln in it.

Might.
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Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs began in 1982 as a children’s picture book that told a simple tale about a town where it rained food. It was a dreamy bedtime story — whimsical and childlike at its core, but its realistic, minimally-colored drawing style showed that it had been filtered through the mind of a somewhat world-weary adult. The new film from Sony Animation Studios is almost the exact opposite: its visuals are cartoonish, slapstick-filled, and candy-colored, but at its heart lie some very sobering, adult themes. What began as a misty fairytale has been re-imagined into a disarmingly dark parody of science fiction and disaster movies — albeit one with wall-to-wall laughs and some of the most imaginative visuals this side of WALL-E. It borrows a few scenes and plot points from the book, but otherwise makes no attempt to remain entirely true to its themes — and is all the more stunning for it.
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Mike Judge can’t seem to get any respect. Office Space eventually found its audience on DVD (after flopping hard in theaters), but his follow-up, Idiocracy (which, by the way, was brilliant – go see it now) barely even received a theatrical release before being shoveled into Blockbusters everywhere. He’s had a bit more luck on TV, with the long-running Beavis and Butt-head and King of the Hill series, but — seriously — do you know anyone who will admit to watching either one of them? (His latest, The Goode Family, aired on ABC this summer, and was both his most “mainstream”-oriented and also his best; not surprisingly, ABC cancelled it as soon as it was out of the gate.) With an all-star cast and no serious competition at the box-office, his latest film — Extract – is in an ideal position to change this; unfortunately, it’s just not very good.
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“I make movies for the planet Earth”
-Quentin Tarantino

We’ve all heard of writer/director Quentin Tarantino, from his early days working as a video store clerk to his successful independent feature, Reservoir Dogs. Highly controversial in his presentation of violence, language, and race, he has developed a rare fanbase over the years that draws from everyday moviegoers to hardened cineastes. Tarantino’s blend of pulp, dialogue, and homage to other films are his defining characteristics.

Inglorious Basterds, easily one of his most accessible films to date, is set during World War II in “Nazi-occupied France”. The titular heroes are a group of Jewish-American soliders led by Aldo “The Apache Raine (Brad Pitt). Raine gets his nick-name from his habit of scalping Nazis. The Basterds are charged with the duty of reaking havoc among  the German ranks, which they do with glee.

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