It's like a Family Channel movie escaped and hid out in a movie theater. 
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Groucho Reviews
Latest Theatrical Reviews
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The Santa Clause 3: The Escape Clause (2006)
It's like a Family Channel movie escaped and hid out in a movie theater. -
Flushed Away (2006)
More concerned with character, well-timed sight and sound gags, and witty banter than it is with smooth plotting....[but] well-worth the plunge. -
Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2006)
No film in the history of cinema has succeeded in being more 'outrageously funny'... -
Little Children (2006)
That the narration and Field's God's-eye camera draw attention to the film's form doesn't detract from its function: to give us that 'second' in the mirror... -
Conversations with God (2006)
Conversations with God. Nice work if you can get it, and you can get it if you try. -
The Bridge (2006)
Steel assembles a scrapbook of suicide: reminiscences of surviving family and friends and magnetically morbid caught-on-tape records of people's last living moments on Earth. -
Catch a Fire (2006)
Plays like a political Heat, but for the sake of the scrupulously researched social history, a bit of artificially induced pulse-pounding can be forgiven. -
Tideland (2006)
When Jeliza-Rose announces in the first scene, 'Today, we're all going on a great trip!', know that it's to the center of an emotional black hole. -
Marie Antoinette (2006)
Once she makes the sound feminist point that it wasn't easy being a girl in 1768, Coppola proves intellectually taxed. -
Flags of Our Fathers (2006)
Broyles and Haggis redundantly hammer home the same point in scene after scene...while fail[ing] in 132 minutes fully to breathe life into their triad of reluctant heroes. -
Running with Scissors (2006)
With its compulsive theatricality, Running With Scissors enacts what may be the most unpleasant brand of insanity in a film full of them. -
Stormbreaker (a.k.a. Alex Rider: Operation Stormbreaker) (2006)
[Rider's] squirrelly film debut amps up Horowitz's wry humor, putting silliness in unintentional competition with the film's action and dramatic elements. -
Infamous (2006)
With a bit more discipline, McGrath's wide-ranging film would be the equal of its more straightforward, older brother, but Infamous' many charms deserve their own moment in the sun. -
The Grudge 2 (2006)
If Shimizu's aging idea of rage-made wraiths were true, caterwauling critics would be crawling all over the multiplex right about now. -
A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints (2006)
A sincere examination of the moment, on the cusp of adulthood, when children must decide whether to get out of the only life they've known or honor it by staying home. -
American Hardcore (2006)
Though American Hardcore doesn't achieve a cogent and authoritative history, it succeeds in giving the general impression of the early-'80s hardcore punk scene. -
The Queen (2006)
Delicately balances the inherent drama of the tragic circumstances with the comedy of manners that is the Royal Family's dysfunction, and Britain's ambivalent attitudes to the same. -
49 Up (2006)
Though less extreme, the Up series suggests a real-life Truman Show, with subjects sometimes reluctantly allowing their lives to be recorded on film. -
Employee of the Month (2006)
Cook's usual persona is annoying, but with his volume turned down here, he's even more of a zero. -
Shortbus (2006)
More than a stunt...a sincere film that explores cynical sexual discord and hopefully concludes that forgiveness and sexual healing can repair the disrupted currents of modern urban life. -
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning (2006)
Ours is not to question why; ours is but to watch 'em die. -
The Departed (2006)
Kept in balance, The Departed's verbal and visual gifts, gun-toting menace, down-and-dirty existentialism, and bristling suspense should please both sides of the movie aisle. -
The Aviator (2004)
Scorsese keeps a good handle on the turbulent material of Hughes's sprawling life... spectacular... fleet... admirably eccentric. -
Banlieue 13 (District B13) (2006)
While women may certainly apply, it's primarily the guys who will find District B13 irresistible. -
Wu ji (The Promise) (2006)
Flimsy, fake-looking weaponry, bad wigs, grandiose scoring, overacting, simplistic dialogue, illogically elaborate staging, and a plot that goes out of its way to be predictable... -
The Wild (2006)
Hollywood doesn't like to talk about corporate espionage, but the proof is in the identical bowls of pudding. Recently, we had Ultraviolet on the heels of Aeon Flux, and now we have Disney's The Wild... -
The U.S. vs John Lennon (2006)
Serves two useful purposes: to collect some of the Beatle's wittiest social barbs, and to inform a young audience... -
Capturing the Friedmans (2003)
In the book Doing Documentary Work, Robert Coles lays out "a twofold struggle: that of writers and photographers and filmmakers who attempt to ascertain what is, what can be noted, recorded, pictured... -
La Science des rêves (The Science of Sleep) (2006)
The sum of Gondry's parts may be a hole, but the parts can be pretty darn clever and captivating. -
The Guardian (2006)
Pure Hollywood hokum, the sort of picture the Duke might star in today. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Aside from lazy screenwriting. -
Keeping Mum (2006)
Succeed[s] in recreating the simple pleasures of the old Ealing comedies, which let talented character actors shine. -
Jesus Camp (2006)
You know what they say, folks: it's a free country. If Jesus Camp scares you, better start brainwashing some little heathens of your own. -
School for Scoundrels (2006)
It's too bad that Phillips fumbles for comic gimmickry when he has the makings of a rich and timely satire on poison-peddling motivational personalities. -
Hollywoodland (2006)
In what may be the single most damaging performance in any film this year, Affleck puts on extra pounds, a fake honker, and a horrifyingly bad debonair act. -
Flyboys (2006)
Flyboys' spectacular predictability confirms its shallowness. -
Jackass Number Two (2006)
Knoxville at one point sports a T-shirt with a slogan that says it all: "F*** Art: Let's Dance." -
All the King's Men (2006)
Zaillian sells short the faceoff of shrewd old guard and scrappy proletariat by looking away just when the twain meet. -
Confetti (2006)
Weak-tea...with tepid gags, lazy plotting, and scenarios that are mostly too unpleasant to be funny. -
The Black Dahlia (2006)
As the character drama bogs down in Hartnett and Johansson's maudlin mumbling, De Palma starts to focus on shoehorning in a punchy setpiece or stylistic outrage. -
Haven (2006)
As the 2006 Toronto Film Festival unspools, it's instructive to note that Haven played the 2004 festival and only now makes its way into US theatres. As is so often the case, the release of a long-de...