Movie Review: Inception

Director: Christopher Nolan

Starring: Leonardo DiCaprio, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Marion Cotillard, Ken Watanabe, Ellen Page, Cillian Murphy, Tom Hardy, Tom Berenger, Michael Caine

"Inception" is quite simply a great time at the movies. It's as fun to watch its intricately designed and thrilling set pieces as it is to try to make sense of  the convoluted rules and logic of the simulated dream worlds it depicts.  Like director Christopher Nolan's previous works, particularly "Memento" and "The Prestige," it's a cleverly designed puzzle with lots of moving parts. A game, a magic trick, a mind-bending word problem. It can even be seen as a successful metaphor for film-making itself, but I'm just not sure it succeeds completely as art, though.

And you know what? That's not such a bad thing here. It's about time we got a somewhat original, intelligently made blockbuster action movie out of today's Hollywood. Nolan can continue to lazily fudge plot twists in Batman movies if it means more money for him to take on big, ambitious projects like this. 

Movie Review: The Road

Director: John Hillcoat

Starring: Viggo Mortensen, Kodi Smit-McPhee, Charlize Theron, Robert Duvall, Guy Pearce, Garret Dillahunt, Michael K. Williams, Molly Parker

"The Road" is a hopeful movie. Sure, it's set in a barren and scorched post-apocalyptic wasteland that used to be America, and, yes, it seems like most of the survivors of an unnamed catastrophe have teamed up to become roving bands of cannibals. But there is a fire that burns in the heart of this nightmarish vision. It's the fire of a father's love for his son and for the belief that there are still "good guys" out there who'll want to carry on in the face of seemingly unending horror.

Don't expect a sappy, overly sentimental two hours, though, and fans of Cormac McCarthy's novel should be satisfied, although the movie just misses the complete emotional devastation the book provides. Director John Hillcoat is exceptionally faithful to the brutal, uncompromising vision in the source material. Ash and soot cover everything. Water is gray and undrinkable without some very crude purification. Highways and bridges are shattered and abandoned. Every town's a ghost town, and the rare house that may still be occupied might just have a storeroom full of maimed people being kept alive for food.

Movie Review: The Killer Inside Me

Director: Michael Winterbottom

Starring: Casey Affleck, Jessica Alba, Kate Hudson, Ned Beatty, Simon Baker, Elias Koteas, Bill Pullman

Just a warning. I recommend "The Killer Inside Me" enthusiastically, but it's not for everyone. It features some pretty frank depictions of violence against women. It's not glorified or glamorous. It's detestable and disgusting, which is entirely the point. This movie, which is incredibly faithful to its Jim Thompson-penned source novel, tells its story from the perspective of a deeply disturbed man, and while it seeks to understand the killer, it doesn't sympathize with him.

Thankfully, Casey Affleck, who plays the killer, gets this. He's one of the finest actors working today, and his performance here is another great one. That's no small task, since he already set such a high standard for himself in "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford" and "Gone Baby Gone." His ability to switch from awkward weirdness to keen intensity to terrifying blankness reminds me of a younger Robert DeNiro or Christopher Walken when they were establishing themselves as Hollywood's go-to psychologically interesting leading men in the 1970s.

Movie Review: THE PRINCESS AND THE FROG (2009)

Disney heralded "The Princess and the Frog" as a return to the studio's glory days of hand-drawn animated classics, but other than a few flourishes, it amounts to nothing more than a middling, yet enjoyable, diversion. There was also much made about how this is the first Disney animated "masterpiece" that features a black female protagonist. The movie itself doesn't live up to its perceived event status, though.

Our heroine, Tiana, works as a waitress for two or three shifts daily, denying herself fun and romance in Jazz Age New Orleans. She's trying to save enough money to open the restaurant of her -- and her late father's -- dreams. Once it appears she has finally achieved her dream, some dark forces, both realistic and supernatural, interfere.

Movie Review: SHERLOCK HOLMES (2009)

This isn't your father's "Sherlock Holmes." Nor is it your grandfather's or great-grandfather's, for that matter.

No, despite its relative fidelity to Arthur Conan Doyle's source novels, this is a "Sherlock" for the 21st century. That sounds annoying, but it's not. In fact, it's very good, and it could have been great if it weren't for its often mechanical and lumbering plot, which, after culminating in a "Scooby-Doo"-esque explanation of the mystery, amounts to nothing more than an elaborate tease.

Movie Review: CLASH OF THE TITANS (2010)

"Clash of the Titans" is pretty friggin' metal.

Sure, this remake's wall-to-wall CG effects lack the DIY charm of Ray Harryhausen's legendary work on the 1980 original. And Sam Worthington ("Avatar") is no -- in the words of my buddy Nick -- Harry Hamlin Handsome Head. But "Clash" rocks pretty hard, especially in its action sequences.

If only the stuff between the Olympian set pieces (character development, motivation, dramatic tension, etc.) were as compelling.

Movie Review: IN THE LOOP (2009)

"In the Loop" is a writhing, nasty, acidic takedown of government bureaucracy in the U.K. and the U.S., in which even the apparently principled characters are unlikeable. It's also one of the funniest movies I've seen in the past few years.

Set mostly in drab but chaotic offices and halls of power, director and co-writer's Armando Iannucci's satire takes aim at the U.S.-led and U.K.-abetted rush to war in Iraq, without ever mentioning by name the targeted country or the names of the American president or the British prime minister.

Movie Review: ANTICHRIST (2009)

I'm kind of disappointed that I don't feel moved to say much about provocateur director Lars Von Trier's "Antichrist." It was greeted at last year's Cannes film festival with a mix of outrage, befuddlement, adulation and even incredulous laughter. In fact, Von Trier even received a special citation that decried the work as "the most misogynist" of all the director's movies. All I can muster, however, is a "meh."

Not that there aren't any indelible images or moments. There's a clearly animatronic talking dead fox, which utters the movie's most infamous line, "Chaos reigns," as well as some genital mutilation. In close-up. But don't worry, ladies. Here, old Lars is an equal opportunity director.